June 21, 2021 • 61 mins
AJ opens up about a heartbreaking loss and the grief he is experiencing. Cheryl and Rene offer support from a place of deep understanding.
Work renowned grief expert David Kessler is helping them through it.
David’s advice and understanding can help us through grief that we all experience.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm pretty bad. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of
(00:20):
Pretty Messed Up on I Heart Radio. I'm your host,
a jan Clean with my beautiful co host in a
snazzy denim jacket. Today I like it coming to you
live from the Bay Area. MS chair Bear Cheryl Burke
and my my amazingly handsomely talented tank topped nippled out
(00:44):
best friend from another mother who's literally thirty feet away
from me. Mr Renee Alisando, So so glad to be
here with you guys. Yeah, so um, you know, I
I miss you all well you I see almost every day, Renee.
But Cheryl we we we we gotta do something here, babe,
like we gotta or yeah, that's a little lunch and
(01:10):
that boating and island. I've been watching one show on Netflix.
I want to be a race car driver. Now you
already kind of are. I followed you to rehearsal one
day and I almost lost you because you drive like
a lunatic. You know you like you literally, I was
kind of like, Wow, she's just just blatant disregard for
(01:30):
the other six cars. She just cut off. I love it.
Probably I take out all my anger from the rehearsal
onto the streets. Oh yeah, because from the streets you're
so hardcore, so hardcore. Um, so yeah, you know, I'm
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna beat around the bush
for the elephant in the room. Um you know. Uh
(01:51):
so let me just backtrack really quickly. So, uh, myself, Renee,
my buddy Esaiah, and my brother in law Perry, we
all took a trip to Zion about two weeks ago.
We went to go mountain biking and go hiking and
it was like very spiritual, um, just a fun, incredible trip.
(02:12):
We miss it already. We can't wait to go back. Um,
especially one of the hikes that we want to go
back and make our bitch because it literally kicked our ass. Um.
And then right after that the boys dropped me off.
In Vegas, I had a charity event um for Victoria's
Voice Foundation, which is David Siegel's foundation. Uh. He's the
(02:35):
founder of Westgate Properties. Uh. He lost his daughter to
a drug overdose when she was eighteen years old. Um.
So while I was in Vegas. My parents live in Vegas.
I moved him there about four years ago and Friday night, um,
about a week and a half ago. Friday night, I
went and had dinner with my parents. Everything is normal,
(02:55):
everything is gucci. Uh cut two. I fly home on
Sunday Monday night. Um, my wife and I sleep with
our phones on vibrate, so, you know, because we don't
get a lot of sleep anyways when you have children.
And uh, my alarm went off and uh from my
front door, which means somebody's in the house. So my
(03:15):
wife wakes me up. I'm freaking out. I don't have
any kind of weapon except the baseball bat. I didn't
even go for the baseball bat. I just creeped out
of my bedroom and looked and I see this black
silhouette at the bottom of my stairs. I'm freaking out.
And then I see this arm go up and a
phone light come on, and it's my brother in law.
(03:36):
And I'm like, dude, what are you doing here? It's
like almost midnight. What's up? And you know, when you
could just tell something's wrong, Like he was walking up
the stairs abnormally slow, and he looked me in the eye.
He almost couldn't even say it, and he said, uh,
your stepdad passed away. And I was like, hold on,
(04:00):
what are you talking about? And Uh. My mom had
tried to call my wife and I UH for about
forty five minutes until she finally got through to my
brother in law and my mother in law and UH
and yeah, he uh had a massive heart attack. Thank you.
He had a massive heart attack. UM. You know, he
(04:21):
had been struggling for quite some time. He had had
at least four strokes in the past two years. UM
was dealing with different types of cancerous things and whatnot,
UM which he overcame, but was always on medication for something.
But UM. When I reached out to the team are
(04:42):
amazing producers and Amy and Danielle and Riley and everybody
you know, I asked if we could specifically today have
someone on UM that is an expert in the world
of grief, because I could tell you right now I
haven't really had that that cry yet. I haven't had that,
(05:06):
you know, whether it's denial. And I can't wait to
ask our guests about all the phases of of grief.
So sorry, seriously, my heart goes out to you and
your family. Thank you, babe, Thank you. UM. So on
that note, I wish we were starting to show off
in a little bit better happy mood, but you know
death is a part of life. I do know this.
(05:28):
We all know this, UM. But I want to bring
our guests on right now. UM. David Kessler is one
of the world's foremost experts on grief and loss. His
experience with thousands of people on the edge of life
and death has taught in the secrets to living a
happy and fulfilled life even after life's tragedies. He is
(05:49):
the author of six books, including the new bestselling book
Finding Meaning the Sixth Stage of Grief. He co authored
two books with Elizabeth Coobler Ross Life Lessons and on
Grief and grief Ing, updating her Five Stages for Grief.
He also co wrote You Can Heal Your Heart with
Louise Hey. He also wrote Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms.
In his first book, The Needs of the Dying, received
(06:11):
praise from sat Mother Teresa herself. So on behalf of
myself and my co host, I would love to bring
in Mr David Kessler to the show. Welcome, Welcome, Hello David.
How are you. I'm good, Thank you, thank you for
(06:33):
having me. Absolutely, I'll do a little round robin. My
name is a j um my beautiful. Co host Cheryl
Burke and my other handsome co host, Mr Rona Lazondo. Um. Yes,
so I'm I'm just gonna dive right in. Uh so. UM,
(06:53):
I literally lost my stepfather about a week ago. UM,
and you know I've I've I've experienced death in my
in my lifetime. Uh, both my grandparents. UM. You know
when I lost my grandmother. UM, I was heavily, heavily
(07:15):
into my disease of addiction and alcoholism, so I never
grieved properly. UM and cut two. When my grandfather passed
a few years after, I was about two years sober
at the time, so things were a little different for
me the way I was approaching things. Um, Renee has
(07:35):
lost two brothers and Cheryl has lost her father, so
all of us here have experienced loss to talk to,
no pun intended and so yes, so I reached out
to our amazing team and I asked for the best
there is and you, sir, are that so. UM tell
(07:58):
her I can live up to that. I will do
It's all. Hey. UM, we've all done our research. You
have quite quite an amazing track record. UM. Thank you
again for being on the show. UM. You know I
think first off, can you give our listeners. Just a
little backstory as to why specifically grief and loss is
something that you that you kind of major in, if
(08:22):
you will, sure you know, it's not a profession that
I think, you know, you sort of go to. I
want to be a fireman or a doctor or a
grief expert. It it sort of chose me more than
I chose it. When I was growing up, I had
a mother who was ill, and when she was dying,
when I was about thirteen, at the hotel where we
(08:44):
were across the street, a fire broke out. Fire trucks
pulled up, and then it turned out shooting start, shooting started.
It turned out to be an active shooter. Was one
of the first mass shootings in the US that I saw.
And then my mother died without us being there. So
with all that happening, I either needed to find a
(09:06):
way to heal myself or just get lost. And thankfully
I was able to heal myself and make this a
career where I help others and I have tried to
do that for decades and continue to learn every day.
Well that's I mean, obviously, you know, it's it's interesting,
(09:28):
how um. I mean, most most cases that I've ever
you know experienced, whether it's you know, a friend of
a friend losing someone UM, or you read about things,
it tends to be, like what you said, some type
of a catastrophic event that then leads you down the
path of wanting to know more, wanting to be able
(09:49):
to help others, UM, to understand. UM. And you know,
the probably the biggest question I'll ask and then I'll
open it up to everybody else is uh and and
and this is a question I have for for all
of our listeners as well as for myself right now,
because my mom, you know, my mom and my stepdad
(10:11):
would have been celebrating twenty years together come this November,
UM and you know, Renee and I flew back to
Vegas to go be with my mom, Renee, just to
be you know, support for me, UM, which I much
much appreciate, as does my family. Thank you for that,
bro UM. You know, watching my mom go through like
(10:34):
in a three day period, I feel like every emotion
there possibly could be. She was hysterically crying one minute,
laughing hysterically the next, UM A little days and confused
and lost. UM. What are what are the actual stages
of grief? Because I feel like I like I was
telling you know Cheryl and uh, you know Renee before
(10:57):
you came on. I haven't really cry id yet. I
haven't really had that, you know, a true emotional breakdown moment.
The closest I got was telling my daughters that their
grandpa died. My oldest was upset. My youngest is four.
She didn't really understand. So what are the stages of grief?
(11:19):
So first of all, that portrayal of your mother is
probably as accurate as it gets. That is what grief
looks like. It's messy, it's organic. One moment, we're crying,
we're laughing, we can't cry. That is what grief looks like.
My co author of a couple of books, Elizabeth Coogler Ross,
(11:43):
is the woman who identified the stages. They are denial,
It's the I can't believe they're gone. Then we go
to anger. We're so kissed that they're gone. Bargaining is
the wait, if only we had done that, if only
I had done this? The what ifs in the if
(12:04):
onliest depression, which is the sadness and acceptance. Now. The
one thing her and I always point out to people,
the media has tried to reduce those unknowingly, I think
to five easy steps for grief. They don't occur linearly
(12:24):
like that. The reality is I cannot believe someone's gone
in one moment. The next moment, I can be angry.
The next moment, I can have a period of acceptance
and then go right back to anger. So there's no
map for grief. There's no one right way to do grief.
And the last piece you were kind enough to mention
(12:46):
My latest book is around. My younger son a few
years ago died unexpectedly of an addiction that he had
struggled with for years. And when that happened, I couldn't
stop at acceptance. I just felt like I needed more.
And that's when my research began on the concept of
(13:08):
finding meaning, And to me, meaning is the sixth stage
of grief. That we're a generation, it's not just about
they died all right, accepted. How can we honor them?
How can we never forget them? How can we make
the world a world that sort of cherishes them or
safer for others? So that's sort of how the the
(13:31):
stages lay out, and I caution people use them if
they're helpful. If not, it's completely fine. There's no one
right model for grief, and there's no time frame. I'm
sure is that there's no timeline. You know, when people
say to me, how long is my sister, my brother,
my mom going to grieve? I always say how long
(13:51):
is a person going to be dead? Because if they're
going to be dead for a long time, you're going
to grieve for a long time. The key, though, is
to know in time you can grieve with more love
than pain. Takes time, no prescription sentence. You know, I
was gonna say it, I agree with you. I I
(14:14):
think grieving is a personalized thing, right like if um, so,
I have one brother that took his own life and
I found him right and then I had to tell
my parents, and that came with trauma in it of itself,
was telling my parents. I remember my wife driving me
to my parents house and just kept telling her slow down,
(14:36):
slow down. I don't ever want to get to my
parents house. I don't like keep slowing down. So but
if you had told me, then, if you told me
before I lost any brothers, like, oh, someone lost their
brother and he wore his brother's T shirt for seven days,
I would have said that's crazy and That's what I did.
I found his favorite T shirt and I put it on,
(14:58):
and I didn't take it for seven days, you know,
And so I do understand this sort of you never
you never know till you're in it. You can try
to conceptualize it, you could try to analyze it from
a distance, but until it happens, you know, I've never
experienced anything so powerless. I never felt so powerless, right Like,
(15:21):
no matter what I said or did, I wasn't going
to bring them back. You know, you brought up some
really important points there. That Number one, every single person,
even siblings in a family, will experience grief differently because
we all had a different relationship with the person. And
(15:41):
the second thing, when you talk about the shirt, you know,
we all have opinions on what to do and what
you should do. None of us knows what this is
like until we're in it, right do you would you
say grief changes you because when my father died, I
actually went from being or actively drinking because he was
an alcoholic, to actually witting cold turkey. And I think
that has a lot to do with it. It does changes,
(16:04):
it does, and you know, sometimes for the better, sometimes
for the worst. There's no sort of you know, there's
no rule on that, and it's interesting sometimes people will say,
can you just help me? I want to get my
old friend back or get them to be the person
they were, and I'll go, they can't be the person
they were anymore. They've been changed. You know, grief changes us.
(16:29):
You know one other thing I was I was I
was gonna say, yeah, I ended up getting um three
misscalls at one in the morning from A J. I
didn't see him ntil like eight o'clock in the morning,
and I was like, oh my god, what happened Because
I'm still I'm not gonna lie to you. I still
have some like PTSD from losing two brothers. And then
(16:52):
and then I get a misscall from his management and
I'm and so I try to call a J. Right away.
He's not picking up. And I told my wife, I
don't know what to do, and she's like, call his wife.
So I called Rochelle and then Rochelle brought me up
to speeding what happened, and I said, well, a J.
We gotta go to Vegas like as soon as possible.
The one thing I did learn is when you lose
(17:14):
somebody new, I mean, when when you lose somebody, Uh,
it's so important to not try to fly solo with
it right now, fly solo with it and at throwing
one more layer of complication. Here is a j is
fairly new in his sobriety flying to Vegas, fairly new
(17:37):
in your sobriety to deal with death. I felt like,
you can't go there by yourself. I said, doesn't have
to be me, but it's got to be Rochelle. It's
gotta be Perry, It's got to be someone. Not to
say he was skating on thin ice. But I do
know the addict mind, and I do understand the profundity
of losing someone, you know, so I think I think something.
(18:00):
You know, I know my my wife mentioned this to me.
I think it was a day or two ago. You know,
she's she's struggling with that. I mean, i'm, i'm, I'm
I'm not sure where this lays in those six phases
of grief. But the you know, obviously the pandemic hit
(18:20):
changed everything for everybody. Um, you know, my stepdad was
pretty consistently ill, so he was frail. So obviously, you know,
we couldn't see them. They couldn't see us. Um, you know,
they got vaccinated, we got vaccinated. There was still a
(18:41):
window of time that after everybody got vaccinated, we could
have seen them sooner. But again, my stepdad got sick
again and these things, and he couldn't travel and we
were busy on it. So she's dealing with that kind
of you know, that feeling of like, damn, you know,
(19:02):
I wish I wish we could have gone there sooner
um and she and she can't seem to find a
reason why we didn't. And but there, you know, it's
it's it's pretty black and white why we didn't. But
she's battling that in her mind of you know, why
why didn't we just go? I mean, guilty, guilty? And
(19:25):
here's the thing about that, we would always rather feel
guilty than helpless. Her mind wants to try to find
some control. Oh, we screwed up by not doing this.
The thing that she's doing that all of us do
is we take what we know now that he was
going to die, and we blame ourselves for not knowing it.
(19:49):
Of course, if anyone said to you, by the way,
he's going to die soon, oh my gosh, you would
have been there. We don't live our lives that like
every one might die tomorrow, and of course it might,
but it's not a frantic state we can really live in.
We would just be rotating around trying to see everyone
all the time. Do you think grieving is is something
(20:23):
that is like meant to be like self contained journey
or do you think it is something that needs that
needs to be shared with others or does it or
in your experience, is it different for everyone or do
you think both of those things are are helpful to
help someone grieve by sharing it with with someone else,
(20:45):
maybe a family member or not family member, and then
also dealing with your own stuff, it's both. There's something
that grief needs to be witness We want someone else
to see our pain. Are struggled, we need to have
it witnessed. Now. The problem people encounter is we, of
(21:07):
course assume our closest friend, our spouse, our best friend
will be the person that gets it, and sometimes the
person next to us is the one person that doesn't
get what we're going through. That's why since the beginning
of time, I mean, I have online grief groups because
people in grief no on another level, they're the only
(21:29):
ones that can understand it. Like people don't know what
it's like to lose a sibling, but you know, Cheryl,
And when you talk to someone else who's had a
sibling die, you two have a language that the rest
of us don't. My father died, but yeah, no, I
I hear you for sure. Um. I was wondering if I, like,
(21:49):
I have a lot of unanswered questions. My father lived
in Thailand, and like a j and renee, you know,
I dropped everything in my now husband and I went
to Thailand. Um, and there was some any unanswered questions? Um?
Can you get to all six stages with unanswered questions?
Like this? Yes? And part of our work is to
(22:11):
move from the why the how. We often get stuck
oh brutal in the why did this happen? And I
can tell you rarely find a why. And even the
people who get some why, maybe the doctor explains all
the wise knowing in all my decades, has ever told me, oh,
(22:34):
I gotta really satisfying why. It's never going to be
a satisfying why. So you eventually have to work towards
You don't know why, but how can you move forward
now in a way that honors him? In a way
that honors you. I mean, I even saw a medium.
I was like, I was going because there was no
(22:55):
reasoning for his death right. So it was two different
um causes of which was crazy and Thailand it's different
obviously than here in the States. UM. And so I
remember being like an investigator and just trying so hard
to find answers and it was impossible, so I had to.
Like times, people will make you wrong for that. They'll go,
(23:15):
what's the point quit asking questions? And I'm like, you
gotta ask questions in the beginning. We all do that.
You gotta be at the time. Some people don't, don't.
Some people that like I mean, I've I've had friends
that like just like you, Cheryl, that you know, wanted
to want to have certain things answered and then unfortunately
when they got those answers that they didn't like the
results and it almost it almost tainted their view of
(23:38):
that person more or in some cases it actually gave
them closure, you know what I mean. Like, so it's yeah,
do you know I went I went through different stages,
UM because my brother took his own life. And I
understand now that the survivors always asked themselves what could
(23:59):
I have said different, lead what signs did I not
seeing da da da? But I remember I definitely agree
we look for solace with answers. And I remember my
dad and I were driving to empty my brother's home. Uh,
and of course we're both crying on the way there.
(24:20):
And my brother suffered from, you know, severe depression. And
it occurred to me that the the vision that I
saw was the people that were jumping out of the
twin towers. Right. They didn't jump because they were bored.
They jumped because they couldn't take the pain of burning
(24:40):
to death. Right. And it occurred to me that my
brother his flames were not visible to us, they were internal.
Because I was so angry like people, you know a
lot of people are when seeing my parents getting ripped
Apart from this, I was so angry at him at first.
The only way I was able to find some relief
(25:02):
from the anger was to realize that he didn't see
another way he his flames were burning internally. So I
remember on the drive to my my brother's home, I
said to my dad, I said, let me ask you
a question, Dad, And he said yeah, And I said,
if God himself, if there is this God, entity whatever
(25:23):
came down and asked you personally, said, if he told
you personally, I will give you your son back, but
I have to return him with the pain he was in.
Would you accept that from God? And my dad said no,
I wouldn't, and that somehow brought peace to both of
us that he was resting. He's no longer suffering from
(25:44):
these internal flames. So that's what I've been able to
tell some people who have lost people to suicide, is
that they didn't do it because people take it personally right,
It's almost like, how could you do that to us?
Like I would never do that to anybody exactly, you know.
And it's like, so I was able to finally get
(26:05):
peace with it and not be so angry at him
when I realized, like, it's kind of selfish of me
to want him to continue in his pain just so
I don't have to feel the loss. Right anyways, And
here's the concept that you and I can tell you've
done a lot of work on this. The concept that
some people don't get that clearly you get is people
(26:28):
think people who die by suicide were choosing death, and
they don't realize they were trying to manage unbearable pain. Yes,
they were trying to manage pain. And by the way,
for any of your listeners who are dealing with the
death by suicide, UH, if they go to grief suicide
(26:50):
dot com, there's a free three part class they can
take that I created because it is so brutal what
people go through. Yeah, I mean one of the things. Also,
that's that's that's been. Um, it's been kind of going
back and forth in my head. Is you know, I
have an eight year old and a four year old girls, um,
(27:10):
and my oldest. You know, when when the moment came
to explain that Grandpa passed away, I couldn't mutter the words.
My wife was like, if you want me to, I'll
tell her, and she got very emotional because literally the
end of next week we're going to Vegas for Nationals.
(27:31):
My oldest isn't is doing Nationals, which is the biggest
dance competition that there is for that type of age group.
And you know, up to like eighteen years old. UM,
and we haven't seen they haven't seen their grandparents in
a year and a half now because of you know, COVID.
So the other day my oldest like walked out of
(27:52):
her dance class, and she called mommy crying because she
was upset, and then she went back in everything was fine,
and then she called her again like an hour later. Um,
how how how would you suggest it's best to try
to explain grief to an eight year old? I know
my four year old, she's not there yet, and and
(28:15):
I'm not even gonna, excuse me, try to explain it
to her, because what's so endearing and and even my
mom loves it and doesn't want her to even think
of re rewording it is. My youngest told her big sister,
don't worry. You could still send your dance videos to
Grandpa in heaven, and you know, even though that's not
(28:37):
a thing, but it's it's still a thing because he's
everywhere he can see. But how how would you suggest
I approach explaining grief to an eight year old? Because
I don't think she understands why these emotions are kind
of coming and going in these waves. So the most
important thing to do with children is not lie to them,
(28:59):
not use euphanisms. You know, Grandpa hasn't gone to a
long sleep, for a long tramp or any of that stuff.
People say, you just gotta be honest and say he
died and with a young child. When they go what
does that mean? You know, you might say that, well,
they don't drink anymore, they don't you know, eat anymore,
(29:23):
They've gone to heaven. It just might be simple, and
we don't try to overexplain it. The other thing that's
so important that you're doing, and it is painful. We
want our kids to be happy. We don't want to
see them in pain. But your children are going to
go through loss in their life, just like us. And
so you have two things to teach your children, how
(29:46):
to grieve and how to live. So you teach them
by you demonstrating. You cry one moment and then you
continue life the next You're angry one moment, and then
you continue life. That's how grief is. Is that what
you mean by there's no way you say, there's no
way out of the pain, Then through the pain? Correct?
(30:08):
Correct you Just you just have to do it, you know,
I don't have a magic way to tell people to
get rid of the pain. One of the things in
finding meaning that I researched that I never thought i'd
be researching in my life was buffaloes. Buffaloes when they
sense a storm coming, they run into the store, and
(30:29):
they run into the storm because they know they can't
escape it and they want to minimize their time. Us
on the other hand, we think we can maybe escape
grief by running from it, but the reality is the
pain just sits there, and people are in avoiding the
pain because they're bad. It's because we don't know how
(30:53):
to deal with emotions. I mean, you know, when we
talk about addiction, it's it's what we do to not
deal with feelings, not because we're bad, but because those
feelings hurt. Do you find that with addicts it's harder
for them to grieve? I think they really need the
extra support to know it is going to be painful
(31:16):
and you're not going to do it alone. And I
think people are really surprised that a lot of the
things that I teach around grief, they're gonna go, that's
kind of twelve step And I'm like, grief work in
twelve steps very much alike. Do you know, Cheryl, I
was going to say, it depends are we talking in
addict and recovery, because because I found out the hard way, right, Well,
(31:43):
there's there's different grieving right death and then let's take
grieving a relationship right, which is also hurts a lot. Right.
I remember I sorely underestimated drug use. I got really
bad news about a relation, really bad news, and my
thought was because I was struggling to stay sober out
(32:05):
sober at the time, got terrible news and I was like,
I'm going to call a doctor. I'm going to get
seven pain killers. So I'm gonna take one every day,
and then by the eighth day I will have already grieved.
The right turns out, it doesn't doesn't work. It's literally
it's literally waiting for you to be you know. I
(32:27):
think it's I think it's you know, like you mentioned
earlier in a you know me, me not going back
to Vegas without, you know, someone to kind of lean on,
even though the thought of relapse is not even in
my brain and it's not something that I want to
(32:47):
do or think is going to be beneficial, because I know,
the last thing my mom needs, on top of what
she's already dealing with, is for her son to be
out again and worrying is he gonna end up dead
tomorrow morning from a drug over a dose or drinking
or you know what, whatever the case may be. But
you know what I think is interesting now is that
(33:10):
you know, when my when my grandmother passed away, I
was knee deep in it and I didn't I used
the drugs and the drinking to quote unquote cope with
the you know, pain of loss. I didn't. I didn't
grieve until years later. Did I grieve the death of
my grandmother? Um? But now, like I said, I still
(33:32):
haven't had that big emotional moment yet. I'm questioning myself like,
is there something wrong with me? Did I not have
as much of a connection with my stepdad even though
I know I did? Um? But what I what I
do like is the fact that I'm aware of the
feelings I'm feeling right now. I'm not avoiding them like
(33:52):
I did before. But I don't know, Like you know,
I'm starting to question, like, is there something wrong with
my relationship with my stepdad? Why am I not having
that that sobbing mind? You know, let's talk about this.
And I'm in the same boat and it's been two years. Okay,
(34:13):
So here's the thing. We have a picture of what
grief looks like. You think grief should be you on
the floor crying today, and do you know what your
grief looks like. It looks exactly like you in this moment.
There is nothing wrong with the way you're doing it.
(34:33):
The way you're doing it is not a statement of
your relationship. It's the way you're doing it today, and
tomorrow you may do it different, and the day after
you may do it different. But there's a subtle thing.
I'll often say to people, be careful to judge your feelings,
and they'll go, I don't judge my feelings, And I'll go,
(34:54):
wait a minute. If you're saying, why aren't I crying,
you are subtly saying these feelings I'm having today aren't
the correct ones. And I'm here to tell you they
actually are the correct ones. Don't fight them, and my
feelings will take you where you need to go totally.
(35:16):
I mean, I've lost a lot of sleep since two
years ago, like my sleeping pattern. Abe, is that another
way of dealing? Absolutely? You know, And but I also
want to especially this is such an important topic. There's
one piece I want people to understand. Love and grief
(35:36):
our package deal this lifetime, Like you can't come to
this planet and love another person without having grief. So
when people go why is this intense? For why am
I feeling this? Or whatever it may be, because the
love was that intense and sometimes and you know, a
(35:58):
j I don't happen to know what's going on with
you in this moment, but this could be what your
grief looks like. It also could be the pain is
so intense your mind is going, let's shut her down
just a little bit for now until it can come
out ever so slowly. And that's perfect, nothing wrong with that.
(36:20):
That's the grace of denying that sometimes we need. Yeah,
I think, yeah, that that definitely sounds pretty spot on,
because again, you know, um, like you know, there was
a moment where I immediately compared it to in that
moment that my brother in law walked to the top
of the stairs in my house and told me that
(36:42):
that my stepdad had passed. Yes, it was a gut check,
but when my grandmother passed, I literally collapsed like instantaneously. Now,
granted she was in hospice at our apartment, which you know,
if if for anyone out there, if you've never experienced it,
(37:03):
it's no walk in the park. It is not fun. Um,
you know, And in retrospect, I kind of in in
in some some parts of my brain, I wish I
had never experienced that, but that's that's just how it
had to happen. Because of the situation, you were a
lot closer to your grandmother though of course, of course,
(37:25):
of course she did. She did. But I think for me,
my relationship with my stepdad, you know, was amplified by
the joy that I saw in my mother because she
had literally been through the wringer with the dating world.
She was forty plus years old, still living at home
(37:46):
with her son's single parents, you know, trying to get
herself back out there in the world, and being judged
by my grandmother and my grandfather because of course, as parents,
nobody's good enough for our kids. We know that. Um.
You know, I'll tell you right now, there's never gonna
be a boy good enough for either one of my girls.
This is never gonna happen, um, But there might be
(38:07):
one that makes them happy. And as long as they
treat them with them with the utmost respect and they
genuinely love them, then I'll love them too. But yeah,
you know, I I definitely feel I feel better now
knowing after you saying that that that, yeah, this could
be the way I'm doing it today. You know, like
my mom, you know, she literally today I literally just
(38:31):
had this conversation with Renee prior to a Star, you know,
starting the podcast today, I said, my mom went and
picked up Tony's ashes today, Um, and she's and she
told me she's actually doing better today. No, but I
think it's that fact that she that he's home now,
He's back home in some capacity, maybe not in the
(38:51):
physical world, but he is home. And you know, again,
she's going back and forth. You know. When I was there,
I would show her photos of my of my you know, daughters,
of her, of her grandchildren, and I don't know where,
she burst into tears like, oh, I wish Tony could
have seen this. And then, you know, ten minutes later,
(39:13):
I was showing her a funny TikTok video and she
was laughing uncontrollably and she's like, that's definitely something your
father would have sent, you know. So yeah, that that
definitely brings me comfort in knowing that I'm I'm not
doing it wrong, you know, like there is no wrong
way to grieve, And the same way you're having a
(39:35):
moment of comfort with her, you'll also gree when you
see her breathing. Yeah, that that did happen briefly, you know,
while while I was out there, you know, visiting with her.
We were on face time with my youngest and she
just out of the blue set Grandma, I'm really sorry
(39:58):
that Grandpa died. And then my mom lost it, my
step sister lost it, and then of course on the
water works. I mean, it doesn't if I see somebody bawling,
chances are you know I'm gonna start bawling, even if
I don't know why they're right. Yeah, well especially, yeah,
you know, I mean it's like, you know, interestingly enough,
so I lost two brothers and not far apart, and
(40:22):
something you said, a j I used to see people
collapse to their you know, to the floor on in
the movies as I come on, who does that? And
when I got that call that my second brother got
killing a car accident, I literally felt to my knees.
But what I was gonna say is, interestingly enough, I
(40:42):
grieved my different brothers differently, right, it was for me.
It was I was a lot closer to the first one,
and it was a very codependent relationship. He was always
depressed and I was always trying to rescue him. So
we had we'd see each other every day. The other
one we'd see each other once every couple of months.
(41:04):
So it took me. There was a lot slower impact
that he was gone because I didn't even maybe hugo
right uh a j who you met a bunch of times.
We wouldn't see each other very often, so there wasn't
this void hm as it was with the one that
I'd see every single day, you know. So I guess
(41:27):
that impacted the pace and the impact. Can you numb?
I guess can you like not grieve right away? Can
you run away from your feelings? And then will it
hit you stronger or will it be worse for when
you finally come to have a come to Jesus that
you have to go through this process no punishment and grief.
(41:49):
You know, if you don't right now, how I relate
to that? Okay, yeah, I know, I know. You know,
if you don't feel it now, it will just safely
sit on the shelf waiting for you. It won't become worse.
But when it comes back, no one ever says, wow,
this is a more convenient. This is not the best
(42:11):
times when it comes funny, how my mind just like
tries to run away from my feelings, of course, but
for a reason they're painful. They are painful. Yeah, David,
I have a question for you, UM personal question. Uh.
You know you had mentioned that your son had passed
away from addiction. Um, how how how far advanced into
(42:38):
as like what you know now about grieving and loss?
Were you when this tragedy hit or was this kind
of a double catalyst besides your your mother? Was this
what really pushed you over the edge into really wanting
to be helpful to others and understanding grief and loss. Yeah,
(43:03):
I've been doing this for decades. And my younger son
would he'd been to my lectures and I said to him,
I said, David, you have to promise me. I'm seeing
so many Brie parents who their child overdose. Promise me
that will never happen to you. And he goes, I
(43:26):
know what I do, I'm doing. I promise it will
never happen. And as we all know that drugs now
are more deadly. You know, things are laced with things now,
you know. I remember people always talked about relapse is
a part of recovery. It's a little different now with
(43:46):
the drugs being so lethal and you don't even know
what you're doing. And in his case, he had been
sober for a year and him and his girlfriend, you know,
an argument that anyone has with their girlfriend A twenty
one called up some old friends. They went out and
(44:07):
used and in the most painful irony, he did what
he used to do and didn't realize your body can't
do that anymore when you've been sober. Happened so often,
and so you know, it's brutal. And so it did
(44:28):
make me go deeper into this work. It also made
me go deeper into mental health issues and death by suicide.
It made me go deeper into addiction work and all
those factors, because you know, it's the world is so
much more dangerous. Yeah, I mean, now I could, I
could try to act. You know, I could go out
(44:49):
and just be an idiot when I was you know,
a kid, and nothing bad would happen to me. Not anymore. Now,
You're absolutely right. The fentanyl that's being pressed into counter
fit drugs. Kids also think they're taking an oxy content,
but yet it's something that was made by someone in
some lab, in some warehouse garage or something put one
(45:10):
too many grains in there. It's happening. I mean, that's
how print Prince died that way. Yeah, I mean a
colleague of mine, Laura Berman, Dr. Laura Burman, who's on
the Oprah Network, her son, literally sixteen years old on Snapchat,
ordered something for his first time that was laced with
fentinel and died. Just just so you know, a little
(45:34):
bit more backstory about us. I probably it's a little
late in the game to tell you, but just so
you know, each of us is sober. We've all crashed
and burned in our own way and had our own
bottoms UM, and we started this podcast to discuss mental
health and recovery as well as living life on life's terms,
(45:56):
and hopefully by sharing our experience, strength and hope we've
all dealt with and continue to deal with UM, we
can maybe help others out there. You know, we're not doctors,
we don't have PhD s. We're never gonna you know,
prescribe anything to anyone, but hopefully there's some there's some
parallels with each of our stories. So you know, again
(46:20):
just you talking about your son and just talking you know,
all of us talking about what we've dealt with, you know,
hopefully will will raise an eyebrows or two out there,
because again, mental health, I feel, up until recently it's
just taboo. Nobody wanted to even talk about it. Nobody
wanted to like make it, make it what it should be,
(46:44):
which is a focal point um globally, because it isn't
just you know, based in the US or in Canada
or in South America. It's it's a global pandemic that
has been around four centuries and it's just been swept
under the rug. And only until recently, I feel like
(47:05):
it's finally becoming less the less the elephant in the
room and more discussed, both on from from from the
government's perspective to press, media and films. People are now
talking about it and and and and it. It brings
me joy to know that we're finally not afraid anymore
(47:27):
to discuss something as as horror as horrific as mental
as mental health issues, because it is, it is horrible,
and it and it and it's it's it's not going anywhere.
It's here, you know, So how do we hope with it? Yeah? Way,
I did know a bit about you all and your
show and your backgrounds, which is why I wanted to
(47:50):
be here. And you know, when I talk about that
sixth stage of meaning, you're literally doing that with this show.
Are using your experience to bring a hope, to bring
meaning to others. And I think that's you know, and
I also believe helping is healing, you know, doing service.
(48:12):
I mean, you know, it's the thing that helps me
the most in the world, is being of service. David
David um I touched upon it earlier, which the different
types of grieving, Right, there's death, there's relationships. How are
you being impacted with your clientele with the sort of
(48:36):
grieving a pandemic lockdown? It's you know, this has been
heavy for people, whether it's anxiety disorders, addiction, drinking, you
name it. You know, because I do think there is
a certain grieving that we're all doing, maybe grieving our freedoms. Right,
So let's talk about the pandemic for a moment. You know,
(49:00):
we often all come to this thinking grief is about death.
But as you've said so spot on, no grief can
be about a pandemic. We've can be a divorce, a
break up, a betrayal, a job loss, all those things.
And the truth is we're collectively grieving. You know, the
world we knew like just a year and a half ago,
(49:22):
where you could hug and go anywhere or do anything
without worrying about you know, is there something deadly on
your hand or oh my gosh, she's sneezed. Are we
gonna be all right? It's like a crazy world where
suddenly in and grief is always a change we didn't want,
So that divorce is a change we didn't want, the
(49:44):
job lost, the pandemic, and the thing that people will
sometimes they'll go, well, which loss is the worst? And
I always respond to that yours, Your loss is the worst.
Whatever you are dealing with is your worst loss, not
what I'm dealing with, what you're dealing Because yeah, I
(50:06):
do see people we are collectively grieving, I am certain
of that, but I see people reacting differently right, whether
it's some people are having violent reactions towards vaccines, towards masks,
towards like you know, it's just so like, would you
have any suggestions for anybody that feels like like life
(50:31):
has changed forever and it will never be the same
and it will never be as good, Which I think
it's a myth, but so I asked people to remove
two words from the vocabulary never in always. When someone
goes I'm never going to be happy again, or I'm
always going to be in pain, I'll go just think
(50:52):
about today today, you're in pain. Never is about the future. Always.
I mean, we actually don't know in a month or
we're gonna be in pain. I don't know, you don't know.
Are we going to be happy? But I can't tell you.
Just for me personally, between a mother dying shooting everyone
(51:13):
i've seen and worked with, my own sun dying, I
have moments of joy. I still have a happiness. No
matter what you've been through on this planet, happiness and
joy are still possible. They're not easy, they're not right away,
but they are still possible. Yeah, amen, what would you um?
(51:38):
What would you say to someone you know? I've I've
seen this happen with a few friends of mine in
the past, where somebody's grieving over the loss of a
loved one and then you know, somebody comes at them with, well,
my situation is worse than yours. My pain is more,
(51:58):
you know, you know it's not comparable to mind How
how do you how do you handle or how would
you suggest handling a situation like that, because again, like
you said, my pain is different than your pain. But
or you know, yeah, so I mean or or or
do you think projecting is part of the process? Well
(52:21):
are the thing? And it goes back to what we
were saying earlier. First of all, the problem with comparing
is if you win, you lose. I mean, who wants
to even win that. Second of all, you know, we
don't have a broken head. We have a broken heart,
and comparing is in our mind. So I tell people,
(52:43):
you're healing isn't going to take place in your mind.
It's going to take place in your heart. Forget the
comparing if you can. And the second thing to realize
is the person that's going Can you believe Cheryld's getting
all that attention when this happened to me, they're really saying, hey,
you're all focusing on Cheryl, but I didn't get enough
(53:05):
attention in my pain. I need help. It's actually a
cry for help. I have a confession. I have a confession.
So I remember, I'm not trying to make light of
this because two dead brothers is not funny, but uh
so I lost one brother, lost a second brother, And
then I remember when I met someone that lost three brothers,
(53:28):
I felt like, you just went up me. I don't
like that, So I'm making. I'm kind of making, but
I gotta tell you, humor is healthy. Humor is healthy,
so you know, and the weird thing is back in
the physical world, I would do these, like, you know,
(53:50):
big events in hotels where there'd be a few hundred
people and in the next meeting room there'd be the
c p a s. In the next meeting room the nurses,
and after everyone left, the cleaning crew would come through
and they'd go, hey, what were you talking about? And
I go, why do you ask? And they'll go because
your group was laughing the most. And I'll go, oh,
(54:10):
it was grief, and they'll go grief. And what they
couldn't understand is grief and pain increase your bandwidth. You
deal with a pain you didn't know you could deal with,
but it also increases your bandwidth for joy kind of
happiness and laughter. Yeah, that's that's definitely my way of
(54:31):
dealing with it because I you know, again, my whole life,
I've never I don't think I've ever dealt with death well,
whether it's somebody I know or somebody I admired or
you know, a a role model. Um, but my my
knee jerk reaction is comedy. It's laughter, it's you know,
(54:56):
like that's how I was when I was with with
my with my um this past week. Was any chance
I got to make her laugh, whether it was reflecting
back on something that my stepdad did, or showing her
a funny video or telling her a funny joke. Um.
You know, my my stepdad was kind of known for
(55:19):
sending me very inappropriate, funny, weird videos and jokes that like,
you know, the second I would get a text message
from him, I would look to make sure my kids
weren't around before I opened it, because I never knew
what I was gonna get. And you know, talking about
those things with her, it was good to see her laugh.
(55:41):
But that's for me, that's how I that's how I
think I cope best with loss is right, and that
is your way and there's nothing wrong with it. And
I think it's you know, we all do that, whether
we admit it or not, we all do that. And
I think laughter through tiers is a wonderful emotion. I
(56:03):
just wanted to know more about your group, Tender Hearts
is that what it's called. Sure. So one of the
things that came out of the pandemic is like all
the grief groups closed, and so I thought, oh, we
need to move it online. And then I went, I
don't want to just move it online and say let's zoom.
I wanted to do something different, and so I built
Tender Hearts, which is a monthly program that people are
(56:26):
in and it's about the cost of having like two
pizzas delivered. And literally we've got a town square where
people share pictures and chat online. There's zooms that are
three to four times a week. I always say people
come for me, but they stay for the community. We've
(56:47):
had movie nights, We're doing a field trip online. It's
really a crazy thing. And there's people there from all
around the world and through all kinds of losses coming
together and supporting one another, whether it's addiction or a
death by suicide, or a child, a parent, a spouse.
(57:07):
So it's been this amazing new model for grief that
I'm really proud of. It's awesome. Congrats, it's beautiful. That is.
We need more people like you. And I was gonna say,
I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to
grieve the end of this podcast, and yes, I wish
it could go on forever. Yes, David, thank you so
much for you guys coming on. And before we let
(57:31):
you go, can you please tell everyone out there where
they can find you, whether it's social media, website, please
sure they can go to grief dot com. There's a
free Facebook group, there's tender Hearts, there's tons of free videos.
UM on social media. Look for me as I am
David Kessler. It's the only name I could get the
(57:52):
other one, So I am David Kessler. You'll find me
there and grief dot com. Thanks so much, Thank you,
thank you for taking the time to join us. You
help me, you you you helped me and all of
us a lot. Thanks anytime, any time. I'm here for
you guys. Thank you for your work. Appreciate it. Man. David. Hey,
(58:25):
I think there's something people are really interested in age.
I heard you got some new tattoos. I know you've
got new tattoos. Can you share them with us? Okay,
I will long as we're talking about grief. Yeah. Okay, Well,
so UM went and got some new ink. I got
a Now correct me if I'm wrong. Renee. It's a
(58:48):
Japanese proverb, right, it's Chinese Japanese problems. I got tattooed
right here on the inside of my arm. Uh. That's
our our literally words I tend to live by for
the rest to my days. Which is true. Victory is
victory over oneself. Um. What is funny though, is my tattoo.
(59:09):
Artists and I sat for about twenty minutes deciphering if
the word oneself is actually a word or it's two words.
It is one word for all, yes, because you know
when you look at the word and it doesn't look right,
it doesn't look right. And like I just I just
had a triple check because I don't want this on
my arm for the rest of my days. And people
(59:31):
are like this dude can't spells, dumbass and the other
two which I'll so gladly show you. Renatus wants me
to lift up my shirt. Okay, so hold on here
we go, hold on right, so right here dad, and
(59:51):
over here says I love you, daddy in both of
my daughter's handwriting. Um, but side note, so Lyric my
youngest she's still she's just now learning how to, you know,
write her letters. So she asked me if I could
do the dots that she could trace. So the dots
are there that she traced, but her d at the
(01:00:12):
end of Dad looks more like an oh, so it's
I love you, Dow. But it's okay, I love you Dow.
Did that hurt because the ribs, uh, you know what
after about the first two minutes, the I think my
adrenaline was so spiked. I didn't I didn't really feel it.
And there's no shading or anything involved, so you know,
(01:00:34):
it's it's a single needle. Shout out. Shout out to
east over at Shamrock Tattoo. Thank you so much for
this amazing you. Check out our instagram for Renee's picture
in his Yeah all right you guys, Thank you so
much to our amazing, amazing guest, Mr David Kessler, UM
(01:00:58):
goes out to you a jank you um go check
out David's new book Finding Meaning at Amazon dot com. Uh,
and for more info on David's groups and workshops, visit
grief dot com. Again. Thank you everybody. Uh, don't forget
to hit that subscribe button. Give us five stars. We
love you guys, Thank you so much, and uh we'll
(01:01:21):
see you guys. Next time. Thank you, I love you guys.
I'm pretty bad. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of
(00:20):
Pretty Messed Up on I Heart Radio. I'm your host,
a jan Clean with my beautiful co host in a
snazzy denim jacket. Today I like it coming to you
live from the Bay Area. MS chair Bear Cheryl Burke
and my my amazingly handsomely talented tank topped nippled out
(00:44):
best friend from another mother who's literally thirty feet away
from me. Mr Renee Alisando, So so glad to be
here with you guys. Yeah, so um, you know, I
I miss you all well you I see almost every day, Renee.
But Cheryl we we we we gotta do something here, babe,
like we gotta or yeah, that's a little lunch and
(01:10):
that boating and island. I've been watching one show on Netflix.
I want to be a race car driver. Now you
already kind of are. I followed you to rehearsal one
day and I almost lost you because you drive like
a lunatic. You know you like you literally, I was
kind of like, Wow, she's just just blatant disregard for
(01:30):
the other six cars. She just cut off. I love it.
Probably I take out all my anger from the rehearsal
onto the streets. Oh yeah, because from the streets you're
so hardcore, so hardcore. Um, so yeah, you know, I'm
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna beat around the bush
for the elephant in the room. Um you know. Uh
(01:51):
so let me just backtrack really quickly. So, uh, myself, Renee,
my buddy Esaiah, and my brother in law Perry, we
all took a trip to Zion about two weeks ago.
We went to go mountain biking and go hiking and
it was like very spiritual, um, just a fun, incredible trip.
(02:12):
We miss it already. We can't wait to go back. Um,
especially one of the hikes that we want to go
back and make our bitch because it literally kicked our ass. Um.
And then right after that the boys dropped me off.
In Vegas, I had a charity event um for Victoria's
Voice Foundation, which is David Siegel's foundation. Uh. He's the
(02:35):
founder of Westgate Properties. Uh. He lost his daughter to
a drug overdose when she was eighteen years old. Um.
So while I was in Vegas. My parents live in Vegas.
I moved him there about four years ago and Friday night, um,
about a week and a half ago. Friday night, I
went and had dinner with my parents. Everything is normal,
(02:55):
everything is gucci. Uh cut two. I fly home on
Sunday Monday night. Um, my wife and I sleep with
our phones on vibrate, so, you know, because we don't
get a lot of sleep anyways when you have children.
And uh, my alarm went off and uh from my
front door, which means somebody's in the house. So my
(03:15):
wife wakes me up. I'm freaking out. I don't have
any kind of weapon except the baseball bat. I didn't
even go for the baseball bat. I just creeped out
of my bedroom and looked and I see this black
silhouette at the bottom of my stairs. I'm freaking out.
And then I see this arm go up and a
phone light come on, and it's my brother in law.
(03:36):
And I'm like, dude, what are you doing here? It's
like almost midnight. What's up? And you know, when you
could just tell something's wrong, Like he was walking up
the stairs abnormally slow, and he looked me in the eye.
He almost couldn't even say it, and he said, uh,
your stepdad passed away. And I was like, hold on,
(04:00):
what are you talking about? And Uh. My mom had
tried to call my wife and I UH for about
forty five minutes until she finally got through to my
brother in law and my mother in law and UH
and yeah, he uh had a massive heart attack. Thank you.
He had a massive heart attack. UM. You know, he
(04:21):
had been struggling for quite some time. He had had
at least four strokes in the past two years. UM
was dealing with different types of cancerous things and whatnot,
UM which he overcame, but was always on medication for something.
But UM. When I reached out to the team are
(04:42):
amazing producers and Amy and Danielle and Riley and everybody
you know, I asked if we could specifically today have
someone on UM that is an expert in the world
of grief, because I could tell you right now I
haven't really had that that cry yet. I haven't had that,
(05:06):
you know, whether it's denial. And I can't wait to
ask our guests about all the phases of of grief.
So sorry, seriously, my heart goes out to you and
your family. Thank you, babe, Thank you. UM. So on
that note, I wish we were starting to show off
in a little bit better happy mood, but you know
death is a part of life. I do know this.
(05:28):
We all know this, UM. But I want to bring
our guests on right now. UM. David Kessler is one
of the world's foremost experts on grief and loss. His
experience with thousands of people on the edge of life
and death has taught in the secrets to living a
happy and fulfilled life even after life's tragedies. He is
(05:49):
the author of six books, including the new bestselling book
Finding Meaning the Sixth Stage of Grief. He co authored
two books with Elizabeth Coobler Ross Life Lessons and on
Grief and grief Ing, updating her Five Stages for Grief.
He also co wrote You Can Heal Your Heart with
Louise Hey. He also wrote Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms.
In his first book, The Needs of the Dying, received
(06:11):
praise from sat Mother Teresa herself. So on behalf of
myself and my co host, I would love to bring
in Mr David Kessler to the show. Welcome, Welcome, Hello David.
How are you. I'm good, Thank you, thank you for
(06:33):
having me. Absolutely, I'll do a little round robin. My
name is a j um my beautiful. Co host Cheryl
Burke and my other handsome co host, Mr Rona Lazondo. Um. Yes,
so I'm I'm just gonna dive right in. Uh so. UM,
(06:53):
I literally lost my stepfather about a week ago. UM,
and you know I've I've I've experienced death in my
in my lifetime. Uh, both my grandparents. UM. You know
when I lost my grandmother. UM, I was heavily, heavily
(07:15):
into my disease of addiction and alcoholism, so I never
grieved properly. UM and cut two. When my grandfather passed
a few years after, I was about two years sober
at the time, so things were a little different for
me the way I was approaching things. Um, Renee has
(07:35):
lost two brothers and Cheryl has lost her father, so
all of us here have experienced loss to talk to,
no pun intended and so yes, so I reached out
to our amazing team and I asked for the best
there is and you, sir, are that so. UM tell
(07:58):
her I can live up to that. I will do
It's all. Hey. UM, we've all done our research. You
have quite quite an amazing track record. UM. Thank you
again for being on the show. UM. You know I
think first off, can you give our listeners. Just a
little backstory as to why specifically grief and loss is
something that you that you kind of major in, if
(08:22):
you will, sure you know, it's not a profession that
I think, you know, you sort of go to. I
want to be a fireman or a doctor or a
grief expert. It it sort of chose me more than
I chose it. When I was growing up, I had
a mother who was ill, and when she was dying,
when I was about thirteen, at the hotel where we
(08:44):
were across the street, a fire broke out. Fire trucks
pulled up, and then it turned out shooting start, shooting started.
It turned out to be an active shooter. Was one
of the first mass shootings in the US that I saw.
And then my mother died without us being there. So
with all that happening, I either needed to find a
(09:06):
way to heal myself or just get lost. And thankfully
I was able to heal myself and make this a
career where I help others and I have tried to
do that for decades and continue to learn every day.
Well that's I mean, obviously, you know, it's it's interesting,
(09:28):
how um. I mean, most most cases that I've ever
you know experienced, whether it's you know, a friend of
a friend losing someone UM, or you read about things,
it tends to be, like what you said, some type
of a catastrophic event that then leads you down the
path of wanting to know more, wanting to be able
(09:49):
to help others, UM, to understand. UM. And you know,
the probably the biggest question I'll ask and then I'll
open it up to everybody else is uh and and
and this is a question I have for for all
of our listeners as well as for myself right now,
because my mom, you know, my mom and my stepdad
(10:11):
would have been celebrating twenty years together come this November,
UM and you know, Renee and I flew back to
Vegas to go be with my mom, Renee, just to
be you know, support for me, UM, which I much
much appreciate, as does my family. Thank you for that,
bro UM. You know, watching my mom go through like
(10:34):
in a three day period, I feel like every emotion
there possibly could be. She was hysterically crying one minute,
laughing hysterically the next, UM A little days and confused
and lost. UM. What are what are the actual stages
of grief? Because I feel like I like I was
telling you know Cheryl and uh, you know Renee before
(10:57):
you came on. I haven't really cry id yet. I
haven't really had that, you know, a true emotional breakdown moment.
The closest I got was telling my daughters that their
grandpa died. My oldest was upset. My youngest is four.
She didn't really understand. So what are the stages of grief?
(11:19):
So first of all, that portrayal of your mother is
probably as accurate as it gets. That is what grief
looks like. It's messy, it's organic. One moment, we're crying,
we're laughing, we can't cry. That is what grief looks like.
My co author of a couple of books, Elizabeth Coogler Ross,
(11:43):
is the woman who identified the stages. They are denial,
It's the I can't believe they're gone. Then we go
to anger. We're so kissed that they're gone. Bargaining is
the wait, if only we had done that, if only
I had done this? The what ifs in the if
(12:04):
onliest depression, which is the sadness and acceptance. Now. The
one thing her and I always point out to people,
the media has tried to reduce those unknowingly, I think
to five easy steps for grief. They don't occur linearly
(12:24):
like that. The reality is I cannot believe someone's gone
in one moment. The next moment, I can be angry.
The next moment, I can have a period of acceptance
and then go right back to anger. So there's no
map for grief. There's no one right way to do grief.
And the last piece you were kind enough to mention
(12:46):
My latest book is around. My younger son a few
years ago died unexpectedly of an addiction that he had
struggled with for years. And when that happened, I couldn't
stop at acceptance. I just felt like I needed more.
And that's when my research began on the concept of
(13:08):
finding meaning, And to me, meaning is the sixth stage
of grief. That we're a generation, it's not just about
they died all right, accepted. How can we honor them?
How can we never forget them? How can we make
the world a world that sort of cherishes them or
safer for others? So that's sort of how the the
(13:31):
stages lay out, and I caution people use them if
they're helpful. If not, it's completely fine. There's no one
right model for grief, and there's no time frame. I'm
sure is that there's no timeline. You know, when people
say to me, how long is my sister, my brother,
my mom going to grieve? I always say how long
(13:51):
is a person going to be dead? Because if they're
going to be dead for a long time, you're going
to grieve for a long time. The key, though, is
to know in time you can grieve with more love
than pain. Takes time, no prescription sentence. You know, I
was gonna say it, I agree with you. I I
(14:14):
think grieving is a personalized thing, right like if um, so,
I have one brother that took his own life and
I found him right and then I had to tell
my parents, and that came with trauma in it of itself,
was telling my parents. I remember my wife driving me
to my parents house and just kept telling her slow down,
(14:36):
slow down. I don't ever want to get to my
parents house. I don't like keep slowing down. So but
if you had told me, then, if you told me
before I lost any brothers, like, oh, someone lost their
brother and he wore his brother's T shirt for seven days,
I would have said that's crazy and That's what I did.
I found his favorite T shirt and I put it on,
(14:58):
and I didn't take it for seven days, you know,
And so I do understand this sort of you never
you never know till you're in it. You can try
to conceptualize it, you could try to analyze it from
a distance, but until it happens, you know, I've never
experienced anything so powerless. I never felt so powerless, right Like,
(15:21):
no matter what I said or did, I wasn't going
to bring them back. You know, you brought up some
really important points there. That Number one, every single person,
even siblings in a family, will experience grief differently because
we all had a different relationship with the person. And
(15:41):
the second thing, when you talk about the shirt, you know,
we all have opinions on what to do and what
you should do. None of us knows what this is
like until we're in it, right do you would you
say grief changes you because when my father died, I
actually went from being or actively drinking because he was
an alcoholic, to actually witting cold turkey. And I think
that has a lot to do with it. It does changes,
(16:04):
it does, and you know, sometimes for the better, sometimes
for the worst. There's no sort of you know, there's
no rule on that, and it's interesting sometimes people will say,
can you just help me? I want to get my
old friend back or get them to be the person
they were, and I'll go, they can't be the person
they were anymore. They've been changed. You know, grief changes us.
(16:29):
You know one other thing I was I was I
was gonna say, yeah, I ended up getting um three
misscalls at one in the morning from A J. I
didn't see him ntil like eight o'clock in the morning,
and I was like, oh my god, what happened Because
I'm still I'm not gonna lie to you. I still
have some like PTSD from losing two brothers. And then
(16:52):
and then I get a misscall from his management and
I'm and so I try to call a J. Right away.
He's not picking up. And I told my wife, I
don't know what to do, and she's like, call his wife.
So I called Rochelle and then Rochelle brought me up
to speeding what happened, and I said, well, a J.
We gotta go to Vegas like as soon as possible.
The one thing I did learn is when you lose
(17:14):
somebody new, I mean, when when you lose somebody, Uh,
it's so important to not try to fly solo with
it right now, fly solo with it and at throwing
one more layer of complication. Here is a j is
fairly new in his sobriety flying to Vegas, fairly new
(17:37):
in your sobriety to deal with death. I felt like,
you can't go there by yourself. I said, doesn't have
to be me, but it's got to be Rochelle. It's
gotta be Perry, It's got to be someone. Not to
say he was skating on thin ice. But I do
know the addict mind, and I do understand the profundity
of losing someone, you know, so I think I think something.
(18:00):
You know, I know my my wife mentioned this to me.
I think it was a day or two ago. You know,
she's she's struggling with that. I mean, i'm, i'm, I'm
I'm not sure where this lays in those six phases
of grief. But the you know, obviously the pandemic hit
(18:20):
changed everything for everybody. Um, you know, my stepdad was
pretty consistently ill, so he was frail. So obviously, you know,
we couldn't see them. They couldn't see us. Um, you know,
they got vaccinated, we got vaccinated. There was still a
(18:41):
window of time that after everybody got vaccinated, we could
have seen them sooner. But again, my stepdad got sick
again and these things, and he couldn't travel and we
were busy on it. So she's dealing with that kind
of you know, that feeling of like, damn, you know,
(19:02):
I wish I wish we could have gone there sooner
um and she and she can't seem to find a
reason why we didn't. And but there, you know, it's
it's it's pretty black and white why we didn't. But
she's battling that in her mind of you know, why
why didn't we just go? I mean, guilty, guilty? And
(19:25):
here's the thing about that, we would always rather feel
guilty than helpless. Her mind wants to try to find
some control. Oh, we screwed up by not doing this.
The thing that she's doing that all of us do
is we take what we know now that he was
going to die, and we blame ourselves for not knowing it.
(19:49):
Of course, if anyone said to you, by the way,
he's going to die soon, oh my gosh, you would
have been there. We don't live our lives that like
every one might die tomorrow, and of course it might,
but it's not a frantic state we can really live in.
We would just be rotating around trying to see everyone
all the time. Do you think grieving is is something
(20:23):
that is like meant to be like self contained journey
or do you think it is something that needs that
needs to be shared with others or does it or
in your experience, is it different for everyone or do
you think both of those things are are helpful to
help someone grieve by sharing it with with someone else,
(20:45):
maybe a family member or not family member, and then
also dealing with your own stuff, it's both. There's something
that grief needs to be witness We want someone else
to see our pain. Are struggled, we need to have
it witnessed. Now. The problem people encounter is we, of
(21:07):
course assume our closest friend, our spouse, our best friend
will be the person that gets it, and sometimes the
person next to us is the one person that doesn't
get what we're going through. That's why since the beginning
of time, I mean, I have online grief groups because
people in grief no on another level, they're the only
(21:29):
ones that can understand it. Like people don't know what
it's like to lose a sibling, but you know, Cheryl,
And when you talk to someone else who's had a
sibling die, you two have a language that the rest
of us don't. My father died, but yeah, no, I
I hear you for sure. Um. I was wondering if I, like,
(21:49):
I have a lot of unanswered questions. My father lived
in Thailand, and like a j and renee, you know,
I dropped everything in my now husband and I went
to Thailand. Um, and there was some any unanswered questions? Um?
Can you get to all six stages with unanswered questions?
Like this? Yes? And part of our work is to
(22:11):
move from the why the how. We often get stuck
oh brutal in the why did this happen? And I
can tell you rarely find a why. And even the
people who get some why, maybe the doctor explains all
the wise knowing in all my decades, has ever told me, oh,
(22:34):
I gotta really satisfying why. It's never going to be
a satisfying why. So you eventually have to work towards
You don't know why, but how can you move forward
now in a way that honors him? In a way
that honors you. I mean, I even saw a medium.
I was like, I was going because there was no
(22:55):
reasoning for his death right. So it was two different
um causes of which was crazy and Thailand it's different
obviously than here in the States. UM. And so I
remember being like an investigator and just trying so hard
to find answers and it was impossible, so I had to.
Like times, people will make you wrong for that. They'll go,
(23:15):
what's the point quit asking questions? And I'm like, you
gotta ask questions in the beginning. We all do that.
You gotta be at the time. Some people don't, don't.
Some people that like I mean, I've I've had friends
that like just like you, Cheryl, that you know, wanted
to want to have certain things answered and then unfortunately
when they got those answers that they didn't like the
results and it almost it almost tainted their view of
(23:38):
that person more or in some cases it actually gave
them closure, you know what I mean. Like, so it's yeah,
do you know I went I went through different stages,
UM because my brother took his own life. And I
understand now that the survivors always asked themselves what could
(23:59):
I have said different, lead what signs did I not
seeing da da da? But I remember I definitely agree
we look for solace with answers. And I remember my
dad and I were driving to empty my brother's home. Uh,
and of course we're both crying on the way there.
(24:20):
And my brother suffered from, you know, severe depression. And
it occurred to me that the the vision that I
saw was the people that were jumping out of the
twin towers. Right. They didn't jump because they were bored.
They jumped because they couldn't take the pain of burning
(24:40):
to death. Right. And it occurred to me that my
brother his flames were not visible to us, they were internal.
Because I was so angry like people, you know a
lot of people are when seeing my parents getting ripped
Apart from this, I was so angry at him at first.
The only way I was able to find some relief
(25:02):
from the anger was to realize that he didn't see
another way he his flames were burning internally. So I
remember on the drive to my my brother's home, I
said to my dad, I said, let me ask you
a question, Dad, And he said yeah, And I said,
if God himself, if there is this God, entity whatever
(25:23):
came down and asked you personally, said, if he told
you personally, I will give you your son back, but
I have to return him with the pain he was in.
Would you accept that from God? And my dad said no,
I wouldn't, and that somehow brought peace to both of
us that he was resting. He's no longer suffering from
(25:44):
these internal flames. So that's what I've been able to
tell some people who have lost people to suicide, is
that they didn't do it because people take it personally right,
It's almost like, how could you do that to us?
Like I would never do that to anybody exactly, you know.
And it's like, so I was able to finally get
(26:05):
peace with it and not be so angry at him
when I realized, like, it's kind of selfish of me
to want him to continue in his pain just so
I don't have to feel the loss. Right anyways, And
here's the concept that you and I can tell you've
done a lot of work on this. The concept that
some people don't get that clearly you get is people
(26:28):
think people who die by suicide were choosing death, and
they don't realize they were trying to manage unbearable pain. Yes,
they were trying to manage pain. And by the way,
for any of your listeners who are dealing with the
death by suicide, UH, if they go to grief suicide
(26:50):
dot com, there's a free three part class they can
take that I created because it is so brutal what
people go through. Yeah, I mean one of the things. Also,
that's that's that's been. Um, it's been kind of going
back and forth in my head. Is you know, I
have an eight year old and a four year old girls, um,
(27:10):
and my oldest. You know, when when the moment came
to explain that Grandpa passed away, I couldn't mutter the words.
My wife was like, if you want me to, I'll
tell her, and she got very emotional because literally the
end of next week we're going to Vegas for Nationals.
(27:31):
My oldest isn't is doing Nationals, which is the biggest
dance competition that there is for that type of age group.
And you know, up to like eighteen years old. UM,
and we haven't seen they haven't seen their grandparents in
a year and a half now because of you know, COVID.
So the other day my oldest like walked out of
(27:52):
her dance class, and she called mommy crying because she
was upset, and then she went back in everything was fine,
and then she called her again like an hour later. Um,
how how how would you suggest it's best to try
to explain grief to an eight year old? I know
my four year old, she's not there yet, and and
(28:15):
I'm not even gonna, excuse me, try to explain it
to her, because what's so endearing and and even my
mom loves it and doesn't want her to even think
of re rewording it is. My youngest told her big sister,
don't worry. You could still send your dance videos to
Grandpa in heaven, and you know, even though that's not
(28:37):
a thing, but it's it's still a thing because he's
everywhere he can see. But how how would you suggest
I approach explaining grief to an eight year old? Because
I don't think she understands why these emotions are kind
of coming and going in these waves. So the most
important thing to do with children is not lie to them,
(28:59):
not use euphanisms. You know, Grandpa hasn't gone to a
long sleep, for a long tramp or any of that stuff.
People say, you just gotta be honest and say he
died and with a young child. When they go what
does that mean? You know, you might say that, well,
they don't drink anymore, they don't you know, eat anymore,
(29:23):
They've gone to heaven. It just might be simple, and
we don't try to overexplain it. The other thing that's
so important that you're doing, and it is painful. We
want our kids to be happy. We don't want to
see them in pain. But your children are going to
go through loss in their life, just like us. And
so you have two things to teach your children, how
(29:46):
to grieve and how to live. So you teach them
by you demonstrating. You cry one moment and then you
continue life the next You're angry one moment, and then
you continue life. That's how grief is. Is that what
you mean by there's no way you say, there's no
way out of the pain, Then through the pain? Correct?
(30:08):
Correct you Just you just have to do it, you know,
I don't have a magic way to tell people to
get rid of the pain. One of the things in
finding meaning that I researched that I never thought i'd
be researching in my life was buffaloes. Buffaloes when they
sense a storm coming, they run into the store, and
(30:29):
they run into the storm because they know they can't
escape it and they want to minimize their time. Us
on the other hand, we think we can maybe escape
grief by running from it, but the reality is the
pain just sits there, and people are in avoiding the
pain because they're bad. It's because we don't know how
(30:53):
to deal with emotions. I mean, you know, when we
talk about addiction, it's it's what we do to not
deal with feelings, not because we're bad, but because those
feelings hurt. Do you find that with addicts it's harder
for them to grieve? I think they really need the
extra support to know it is going to be painful
(31:16):
and you're not going to do it alone. And I
think people are really surprised that a lot of the
things that I teach around grief, they're gonna go, that's
kind of twelve step And I'm like, grief work in
twelve steps very much alike. Do you know, Cheryl, I
was going to say, it depends are we talking in
addict and recovery, because because I found out the hard way, right, Well,
(31:43):
there's there's different grieving right death and then let's take
grieving a relationship right, which is also hurts a lot. Right.
I remember I sorely underestimated drug use. I got really
bad news about a relation, really bad news, and my
thought was because I was struggling to stay sober out
(32:05):
sober at the time, got terrible news and I was like,
I'm going to call a doctor. I'm going to get
seven pain killers. So I'm gonna take one every day,
and then by the eighth day I will have already grieved.
The right turns out, it doesn't doesn't work. It's literally
it's literally waiting for you to be you know. I
(32:27):
think it's I think it's you know, like you mentioned
earlier in a you know me, me not going back
to Vegas without, you know, someone to kind of lean on,
even though the thought of relapse is not even in
my brain and it's not something that I want to
(32:47):
do or think is going to be beneficial, because I know,
the last thing my mom needs, on top of what
she's already dealing with, is for her son to be
out again and worrying is he gonna end up dead
tomorrow morning from a drug over a dose or drinking
or you know what, whatever the case may be. But
you know what I think is interesting now is that
(33:10):
you know, when my when my grandmother passed away, I
was knee deep in it and I didn't I used
the drugs and the drinking to quote unquote cope with
the you know, pain of loss. I didn't. I didn't
grieve until years later. Did I grieve the death of
my grandmother? Um? But now, like I said, I still
(33:32):
haven't had that big emotional moment yet. I'm questioning myself like,
is there something wrong with me? Did I not have
as much of a connection with my stepdad even though
I know I did? Um? But what I what I
do like is the fact that I'm aware of the
feelings I'm feeling right now. I'm not avoiding them like
(33:52):
I did before. But I don't know, Like you know,
I'm starting to question, like, is there something wrong with
my relationship with my stepdad? Why am I not having
that that sobbing mind? You know, let's talk about this.
And I'm in the same boat and it's been two years. Okay,
(34:13):
So here's the thing. We have a picture of what
grief looks like. You think grief should be you on
the floor crying today, and do you know what your
grief looks like. It looks exactly like you in this moment.
There is nothing wrong with the way you're doing it.
(34:33):
The way you're doing it is not a statement of
your relationship. It's the way you're doing it today, and
tomorrow you may do it different, and the day after
you may do it different. But there's a subtle thing.
I'll often say to people, be careful to judge your feelings,
and they'll go, I don't judge my feelings, And I'll go,
(34:54):
wait a minute. If you're saying, why aren't I crying,
you are subtly saying these feelings I'm having today aren't
the correct ones. And I'm here to tell you they
actually are the correct ones. Don't fight them, and my
feelings will take you where you need to go totally.
(35:16):
I mean, I've lost a lot of sleep since two
years ago, like my sleeping pattern. Abe, is that another
way of dealing? Absolutely? You know, And but I also
want to especially this is such an important topic. There's
one piece I want people to understand. Love and grief
(35:36):
our package deal this lifetime, Like you can't come to
this planet and love another person without having grief. So
when people go why is this intense? For why am
I feeling this? Or whatever it may be, because the
love was that intense and sometimes and you know, a
(35:58):
j I don't happen to know what's going on with
you in this moment, but this could be what your
grief looks like. It also could be the pain is
so intense your mind is going, let's shut her down
just a little bit for now until it can come
out ever so slowly. And that's perfect, nothing wrong with that.
(36:20):
That's the grace of denying that sometimes we need. Yeah,
I think, yeah, that that definitely sounds pretty spot on,
because again, you know, um, like you know, there was
a moment where I immediately compared it to in that
moment that my brother in law walked to the top
of the stairs in my house and told me that
(36:42):
that my stepdad had passed. Yes, it was a gut check,
but when my grandmother passed, I literally collapsed like instantaneously. Now,
granted she was in hospice at our apartment, which you know,
if if for anyone out there, if you've never experienced it,
(37:03):
it's no walk in the park. It is not fun. Um,
you know, And in retrospect, I kind of in in
in some some parts of my brain, I wish I
had never experienced that, but that's that's just how it
had to happen. Because of the situation, you were a
lot closer to your grandmother though of course, of course,
(37:25):
of course she did. She did. But I think for me,
my relationship with my stepdad, you know, was amplified by
the joy that I saw in my mother because she
had literally been through the wringer with the dating world.
She was forty plus years old, still living at home
(37:46):
with her son's single parents, you know, trying to get
herself back out there in the world, and being judged
by my grandmother and my grandfather because of course, as parents,
nobody's good enough for our kids. We know that. Um.
You know, I'll tell you right now, there's never gonna
be a boy good enough for either one of my girls.
This is never gonna happen, um, But there might be
(38:07):
one that makes them happy. And as long as they
treat them with them with the utmost respect and they
genuinely love them, then I'll love them too. But yeah,
you know, I I definitely feel I feel better now
knowing after you saying that that that, yeah, this could
be the way I'm doing it today. You know, like
my mom, you know, she literally today I literally just
(38:31):
had this conversation with Renee prior to a Star, you know,
starting the podcast today, I said, my mom went and
picked up Tony's ashes today, Um, and she's and she
told me she's actually doing better today. No, but I
think it's that fact that she that he's home now,
He's back home in some capacity, maybe not in the
(38:51):
physical world, but he is home. And you know, again,
she's going back and forth. You know. When I was there,
I would show her photos of my of my you know, daughters,
of her, of her grandchildren, and I don't know where,
she burst into tears like, oh, I wish Tony could
have seen this. And then, you know, ten minutes later,
(39:13):
I was showing her a funny TikTok video and she
was laughing uncontrollably and she's like, that's definitely something your
father would have sent, you know. So yeah, that that
definitely brings me comfort in knowing that I'm I'm not
doing it wrong, you know, like there is no wrong
way to grieve, And the same way you're having a
(39:35):
moment of comfort with her, you'll also gree when you
see her breathing. Yeah, that that did happen briefly, you know,
while while I was out there, you know, visiting with her.
We were on face time with my youngest and she
just out of the blue set Grandma, I'm really sorry
(39:58):
that Grandpa died. And then my mom lost it, my
step sister lost it, and then of course on the
water works. I mean, it doesn't if I see somebody bawling,
chances are you know I'm gonna start bawling, even if
I don't know why they're right. Yeah, well especially, yeah,
you know, I mean it's like, you know, interestingly enough,
so I lost two brothers and not far apart, and
(40:22):
something you said, a j I used to see people
collapse to their you know, to the floor on in
the movies as I come on, who does that? And
when I got that call that my second brother got
killing a car accident, I literally felt to my knees.
But what I was gonna say is, interestingly enough, I
(40:42):
grieved my different brothers differently, right, it was for me.
It was I was a lot closer to the first one,
and it was a very codependent relationship. He was always
depressed and I was always trying to rescue him. So
we had we'd see each other every day. The other
one we'd see each other once every couple of months.
(41:04):
So it took me. There was a lot slower impact
that he was gone because I didn't even maybe hugo
right uh a j who you met a bunch of times.
We wouldn't see each other very often, so there wasn't
this void hm as it was with the one that
I'd see every single day, you know. So I guess
(41:27):
that impacted the pace and the impact. Can you numb?
I guess can you like not grieve right away? Can
you run away from your feelings? And then will it
hit you stronger or will it be worse for when
you finally come to have a come to Jesus that
you have to go through this process no punishment and grief.
(41:49):
You know, if you don't right now, how I relate
to that? Okay, yeah, I know, I know. You know,
if you don't feel it now, it will just safely
sit on the shelf waiting for you. It won't become worse.
But when it comes back, no one ever says, wow,
this is a more convenient. This is not the best
(42:11):
times when it comes funny, how my mind just like
tries to run away from my feelings, of course, but
for a reason they're painful. They are painful. Yeah, David,
I have a question for you, UM personal question. Uh.
You know you had mentioned that your son had passed
away from addiction. Um, how how how far advanced into
(42:38):
as like what you know now about grieving and loss?
Were you when this tragedy hit or was this kind
of a double catalyst besides your your mother? Was this
what really pushed you over the edge into really wanting
to be helpful to others and understanding grief and loss. Yeah,
(43:03):
I've been doing this for decades. And my younger son
would he'd been to my lectures and I said to him,
I said, David, you have to promise me. I'm seeing
so many Brie parents who their child overdose. Promise me
that will never happen to you. And he goes, I
(43:26):
know what I do, I'm doing. I promise it will
never happen. And as we all know that drugs now
are more deadly. You know, things are laced with things now,
you know. I remember people always talked about relapse is
a part of recovery. It's a little different now with
(43:46):
the drugs being so lethal and you don't even know
what you're doing. And in his case, he had been
sober for a year and him and his girlfriend, you know,
an argument that anyone has with their girlfriend A twenty
one called up some old friends. They went out and
(44:07):
used and in the most painful irony, he did what
he used to do and didn't realize your body can't
do that anymore when you've been sober. Happened so often,
and so you know, it's brutal. And so it did
(44:28):
make me go deeper into this work. It also made
me go deeper into mental health issues and death by suicide.
It made me go deeper into addiction work and all
those factors, because you know, it's the world is so
much more dangerous. Yeah, I mean, now I could, I
could try to act. You know, I could go out
(44:49):
and just be an idiot when I was you know,
a kid, and nothing bad would happen to me. Not anymore. Now,
You're absolutely right. The fentanyl that's being pressed into counter
fit drugs. Kids also think they're taking an oxy content,
but yet it's something that was made by someone in
some lab, in some warehouse garage or something put one
(45:10):
too many grains in there. It's happening. I mean, that's
how print Prince died that way. Yeah, I mean a
colleague of mine, Laura Berman, Dr. Laura Burman, who's on
the Oprah Network, her son, literally sixteen years old on Snapchat,
ordered something for his first time that was laced with
fentinel and died. Just just so you know, a little
(45:34):
bit more backstory about us. I probably it's a little
late in the game to tell you, but just so
you know, each of us is sober. We've all crashed
and burned in our own way and had our own
bottoms UM, and we started this podcast to discuss mental
health and recovery as well as living life on life's terms,
(45:56):
and hopefully by sharing our experience, strength and hope we've
all dealt with and continue to deal with UM, we
can maybe help others out there. You know, we're not doctors,
we don't have PhD s. We're never gonna you know,
prescribe anything to anyone, but hopefully there's some there's some
parallels with each of our stories. So you know, again
(46:20):
just you talking about your son and just talking you know,
all of us talking about what we've dealt with, you know,
hopefully will will raise an eyebrows or two out there,
because again, mental health, I feel, up until recently it's
just taboo. Nobody wanted to even talk about it. Nobody
wanted to like make it, make it what it should be,
(46:44):
which is a focal point um globally, because it isn't
just you know, based in the US or in Canada
or in South America. It's it's a global pandemic that
has been around four centuries and it's just been swept
under the rug. And only until recently, I feel like
(47:05):
it's finally becoming less the less the elephant in the
room and more discussed, both on from from from the
government's perspective to press, media and films. People are now
talking about it and and and and it. It brings
me joy to know that we're finally not afraid anymore
(47:27):
to discuss something as as horror as horrific as mental
as mental health issues, because it is, it is horrible,
and it and it and it's it's it's not going anywhere.
It's here, you know, So how do we hope with it? Yeah? Way,
I did know a bit about you all and your
show and your backgrounds, which is why I wanted to
(47:50):
be here. And you know, when I talk about that
sixth stage of meaning, you're literally doing that with this show.
Are using your experience to bring a hope, to bring
meaning to others. And I think that's you know, and
I also believe helping is healing, you know, doing service.
(48:12):
I mean, you know, it's the thing that helps me
the most in the world, is being of service. David
David um I touched upon it earlier, which the different
types of grieving, Right, there's death, there's relationships. How are
you being impacted with your clientele with the sort of
(48:36):
grieving a pandemic lockdown? It's you know, this has been
heavy for people, whether it's anxiety disorders, addiction, drinking, you
name it. You know, because I do think there is
a certain grieving that we're all doing, maybe grieving our freedoms. Right,
So let's talk about the pandemic for a moment. You know,
(49:00):
we often all come to this thinking grief is about death.
But as you've said so spot on, no grief can
be about a pandemic. We've can be a divorce, a
break up, a betrayal, a job loss, all those things.
And the truth is we're collectively grieving. You know, the
world we knew like just a year and a half ago,
(49:22):
where you could hug and go anywhere or do anything
without worrying about you know, is there something deadly on
your hand or oh my gosh, she's sneezed. Are we
gonna be all right? It's like a crazy world where
suddenly in and grief is always a change we didn't want,
So that divorce is a change we didn't want, the
(49:44):
job lost, the pandemic, and the thing that people will
sometimes they'll go, well, which loss is the worst? And
I always respond to that yours, Your loss is the worst.
Whatever you are dealing with is your worst loss, not
what I'm dealing with, what you're dealing Because yeah, I
(50:06):
do see people we are collectively grieving, I am certain
of that, but I see people reacting differently right, whether
it's some people are having violent reactions towards vaccines, towards masks,
towards like you know, it's just so like, would you
have any suggestions for anybody that feels like like life
(50:31):
has changed forever and it will never be the same
and it will never be as good, Which I think
it's a myth, but so I asked people to remove
two words from the vocabulary never in always. When someone
goes I'm never going to be happy again, or I'm
always going to be in pain, I'll go just think
(50:52):
about today today, you're in pain. Never is about the future. Always.
I mean, we actually don't know in a month or
we're gonna be in pain. I don't know, you don't know.
Are we going to be happy? But I can't tell you.
Just for me personally, between a mother dying shooting everyone
(51:13):
i've seen and worked with, my own sun dying, I
have moments of joy. I still have a happiness. No
matter what you've been through on this planet, happiness and
joy are still possible. They're not easy, they're not right away,
but they are still possible. Yeah, amen, what would you um?
(51:38):
What would you say to someone you know? I've I've
seen this happen with a few friends of mine in
the past, where somebody's grieving over the loss of a
loved one and then you know, somebody comes at them with, well,
my situation is worse than yours. My pain is more,
(51:58):
you know, you know it's not comparable to mind How
how do you how do you handle or how would
you suggest handling a situation like that, because again, like
you said, my pain is different than your pain. But
or you know, yeah, so I mean or or or
do you think projecting is part of the process? Well
(52:21):
are the thing? And it goes back to what we
were saying earlier. First of all, the problem with comparing
is if you win, you lose. I mean, who wants
to even win that. Second of all, you know, we
don't have a broken head. We have a broken heart,
and comparing is in our mind. So I tell people,
(52:43):
you're healing isn't going to take place in your mind.
It's going to take place in your heart. Forget the
comparing if you can. And the second thing to realize
is the person that's going Can you believe Cheryld's getting
all that attention when this happened to me, they're really saying, hey,
you're all focusing on Cheryl, but I didn't get enough
(53:05):
attention in my pain. I need help. It's actually a
cry for help. I have a confession. I have a confession.
So I remember, I'm not trying to make light of
this because two dead brothers is not funny, but uh
so I lost one brother, lost a second brother, And
then I remember when I met someone that lost three brothers,
(53:28):
I felt like, you just went up me. I don't
like that, So I'm making. I'm kind of making, but
I gotta tell you, humor is healthy. Humor is healthy,
so you know, and the weird thing is back in
the physical world, I would do these, like, you know,
(53:50):
big events in hotels where there'd be a few hundred
people and in the next meeting room there'd be the
c p a s. In the next meeting room the nurses,
and after everyone left, the cleaning crew would come through
and they'd go, hey, what were you talking about? And
I go, why do you ask? And they'll go because
your group was laughing the most. And I'll go, oh,
(54:10):
it was grief, and they'll go grief. And what they
couldn't understand is grief and pain increase your bandwidth. You
deal with a pain you didn't know you could deal with,
but it also increases your bandwidth for joy kind of
happiness and laughter. Yeah, that's that's definitely my way of
(54:31):
dealing with it because I you know, again, my whole life,
I've never I don't think I've ever dealt with death well,
whether it's somebody I know or somebody I admired or
you know, a a role model. Um, but my my
knee jerk reaction is comedy. It's laughter, it's you know,
(54:56):
like that's how I was when I was with with
my with my um this past week. Was any chance
I got to make her laugh, whether it was reflecting
back on something that my stepdad did, or showing her
a funny video or telling her a funny joke. Um.
You know, my my stepdad was kind of known for
(55:19):
sending me very inappropriate, funny, weird videos and jokes that like,
you know, the second I would get a text message
from him, I would look to make sure my kids
weren't around before I opened it, because I never knew
what I was gonna get. And you know, talking about
those things with her, it was good to see her laugh.
(55:41):
But that's for me, that's how I that's how I
think I cope best with loss is right, and that
is your way and there's nothing wrong with it. And
I think it's you know, we all do that, whether
we admit it or not, we all do that. And
I think laughter through tiers is a wonderful emotion. I
(56:03):
just wanted to know more about your group, Tender Hearts
is that what it's called. Sure. So one of the
things that came out of the pandemic is like all
the grief groups closed, and so I thought, oh, we
need to move it online. And then I went, I
don't want to just move it online and say let's zoom.
I wanted to do something different, and so I built
Tender Hearts, which is a monthly program that people are
(56:26):
in and it's about the cost of having like two
pizzas delivered. And literally we've got a town square where
people share pictures and chat online. There's zooms that are
three to four times a week. I always say people
come for me, but they stay for the community. We've
(56:47):
had movie nights, We're doing a field trip online. It's
really a crazy thing. And there's people there from all
around the world and through all kinds of losses coming
together and supporting one another, whether it's addiction or a
death by suicide, or a child, a parent, a spouse.
(57:07):
So it's been this amazing new model for grief that
I'm really proud of. It's awesome. Congrats, it's beautiful. That is.
We need more people like you. And I was gonna say,
I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to
grieve the end of this podcast, and yes, I wish
it could go on forever. Yes, David, thank you so
much for you guys coming on. And before we let
(57:31):
you go, can you please tell everyone out there where
they can find you, whether it's social media, website, please
sure they can go to grief dot com. There's a
free Facebook group, there's tender Hearts, there's tons of free videos.
UM on social media. Look for me as I am
David Kessler. It's the only name I could get the
(57:52):
other one, So I am David Kessler. You'll find me
there and grief dot com. Thanks so much, Thank you,
thank you for taking the time to join us. You
help me, you you you helped me and all of
us a lot. Thanks anytime, any time. I'm here for
you guys. Thank you for your work. Appreciate it. Man. David. Hey,
(58:25):
I think there's something people are really interested in age.
I heard you got some new tattoos. I know you've
got new tattoos. Can you share them with us? Okay,
I will long as we're talking about grief. Yeah. Okay, Well,
so UM went and got some new ink. I got
a Now correct me if I'm wrong. Renee. It's a
(58:48):
Japanese proverb, right, it's Chinese Japanese problems. I got tattooed
right here on the inside of my arm. Uh. That's
our our literally words I tend to live by for
the rest to my days. Which is true. Victory is
victory over oneself. Um. What is funny though, is my tattoo.
(59:09):
Artists and I sat for about twenty minutes deciphering if
the word oneself is actually a word or it's two words.
It is one word for all, yes, because you know
when you look at the word and it doesn't look right,
it doesn't look right. And like I just I just
had a triple check because I don't want this on
my arm for the rest of my days. And people
(59:31):
are like this dude can't spells, dumbass and the other
two which I'll so gladly show you. Renatus wants me
to lift up my shirt. Okay, so hold on here
we go, hold on right, so right here dad, and
(59:51):
over here says I love you, daddy in both of
my daughter's handwriting. Um, but side note, so Lyric my
youngest she's still she's just now learning how to, you know,
write her letters. So she asked me if I could
do the dots that she could trace. So the dots
are there that she traced, but her d at the
(01:00:12):
end of Dad looks more like an oh, so it's
I love you, Dow. But it's okay, I love you Dow.
Did that hurt because the ribs, uh, you know what
after about the first two minutes, the I think my
adrenaline was so spiked. I didn't I didn't really feel it.
And there's no shading or anything involved, so you know,
(01:00:34):
it's it's a single needle. Shout out. Shout out to
east over at Shamrock Tattoo. Thank you so much for
this amazing you. Check out our instagram for Renee's picture
in his Yeah all right you guys, Thank you so
much to our amazing, amazing guest, Mr David Kessler, UM
(01:00:58):
goes out to you a jank you um go check
out David's new book Finding Meaning at Amazon dot com. Uh,
and for more info on David's groups and workshops, visit
grief dot com. Again. Thank you everybody. Uh, don't forget
to hit that subscribe button. Give us five stars. We
love you guys, Thank you so much, and uh we'll
(01:01:21):
see you guys. Next time. Thank you, I love you guys.
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