October 6, 2021 • 25 mins
The Estefans share their personal and gut-wrenching journey through grief as they remember the devastating losses of Gloria and Lili's mothers and Emily's Abuela. Gloria's sister also reveals her traumatic miscarriage and the ongoing pain she struggles with daily. Plus, a world-renowned expert on loss joins the table and shares the SIX stages of grief and how to find meaning and healing after losing someone you love.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Venidos men. Gloria Stephen. Here. You are listening to Red
Table Talk via Stephens Podcast, all your favorite episodes from
our Facebook watch show in audio. This Red Table Talk
is dedicated to healing and finding strength. Right now, I
know millions of you are grieving the unbearable loss of
(00:20):
a loved one, the heartbreaking end of a relationship, your home,
your job, your sense of safety. We all just put
our hands on Mom, telling her we're here. We saw
her heart rate go down like one by one. The
world's leading expert on loss guides us through the six
stages of grief denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Meaning is
(00:46):
the sixth stage of grief. I lost a baby at
fort which was my last opportunity to have a baby.
You did nothing wrong. How to cope with the pain?
Loss can be not only physics, It could be mentally emotional.
Don't give depth the power to end a relationship or
(01:07):
to end your love. Join us for a healing Red
Table She was literally my best friend. Open yourselves up
to the messages that your loved ones are giving you constantly.
Our hope is that by sharing our darkest days, we
(01:29):
can bring some healing in light to those struggling with
grief and loss. Just three years ago, my sister Rebecca
and I lost our beloved mother. My mom had a
long life. You still I talked to her every day
before the show. I talked to her in my car.
I talked to her in my shower a lot. When
my sister Becky and I lost our mother in two
(01:50):
thousand seventeen, a part of us left with her. Gloria
Fajardo was a true diva and the backbone of our family.
After our parents fled from Communist Cuba in nineteen sixty,
our father served in the U. S Military, while our
mother became the heart of our community. But most importantly,
(02:13):
my mother later became a Wila love you all along,
teaching us that there was nothing a woman couldn't do.
Here comes my baby, sister. You better not be crying already,
You're ready. Mom was such a huge mach pr presence.
(02:35):
She made sure that there was a record player in
her house and was constantly music playing in the house.
She established a little kindergarten in our apartment because she
was She had a PhD in education from Cuba, and
she thought that it was so important. She was the
real diva of our family. She sang beautifully, she was gorgeous.
(02:56):
She looked like Liz Taylor. No matter what she was doing,
she was us and made up to the nines. Or
do you think I got dressed like this for her episode?
Because she always thought I was under dress at times,
You guys, are a tumultuous relationship. Oh. I fought with
her like cats and dogs were very similar. Honestly, I
knew that she couldn't help it sometimes. And one day
she came close towards the closest to an apology by
(03:18):
saying to me in a rage, because you know she
would be enraged. And a second she said to me,
I don't know why I do these things. I don't
know why I can't control myself or say what I'm feeling.
And I took it as an apology because I knew,
you know that that's good. I think she was the
most incredible woman in the world. She was literally my
(03:41):
best friend, you know, my grandma. I could talk about anything,
things that I couldn't talk to you about. You you
also got her. I mean I think that she gave
you the best of her. Yes, when you came into
her life, she was ready to do nothing but be
your grandma. That well up. God, yeah, I don't, don't
(04:13):
worry everything, We'll be okay. Thank god, you guys have
the best. The most beautiful thing that was able to
happen with her was that she had the kind of
death that despite all of the things she was hooked
up to, we were all with her at the moment
(04:34):
of her passing and we all just put our hands
on her, naive on her head. All of us were
touching her. Literally watch we're here. That was terrible. We
saw her heart rate go down like one by one.
(04:55):
What privilege for her to have everyone there. We she's
when you say, I'm on my way to a better place,
and she really believed that. By the way, she died
at eight nineteen. That was a message my grandmother. Her
mother died on eight nineteen, So in every possible way,
(05:15):
she sent us messages that my grandmother was there with her.
The harden thing for me was after Pa, for you,
for example, you know, it was very hard to cope.
I've always seen you are strong. She can't do anything,
this woman, and for the first time she was like,
I can't sing, I couldn't record my album. For over
a year. Mom was a powerful force, that little lady.
(05:39):
She continues to be. Un Listen, everybody, open yourselves up
to the messages that your love doing are giving you constantly.
They are I believe firmly that there's a million ways,
and it's always going to be in a way that
only you would know and only you would recognize. They
have gotten us through the toughest moments of our lives,
even when they've been calling. I'm glad you guys were
(06:02):
to tell your mom and grandma everything, because as hard
as that was, your experience was totally different from mine.
My mom passed away when I was very young. It
was one of those things that you never expect. It
happened very fast. I always say that she passed from
(06:23):
a heart attack, but it was actually a tragic death.
Since she was eleven, Lily kept her mother's traumatic suicide
a secret, but loss that she struggles to talk about
to this day. I remember cleaning her bedroom. Oh my gosh,
(06:45):
I went into her room and before the first time
I saw that close it empty. That's when you say
this is real. She had a smile like she was
the sun. You got her. I hope I looked like
her and I hope I bring that joy to everyone.
(07:08):
Even if my worst movements, I try to smile. You
feel empty. I remember, specially getting off the bus getting
back home looking for her. I would always feel like,
oh my god, where is my mom. My mother passed
(07:29):
away December twenty two. I find out there. The burial
was December Christmas Eve. Christmas seat Latinos celebrate Notuenna, like
two or three weeks of party. And my father said,
let's get dressed and we're gonna go and celebrate like
(07:50):
if nothing happened. So we went to Laguna and Uh,
that was hard because the music is going. Everyone knows
what happened. You don't want to make anyone sad, but
you just bury with your mother today. Do you think
that helped to hurt you? And looking back, you know,
(08:13):
I want to tell my father, you know you did
it good. It was the right thing to do. For
many years we didn't celebrate Christmas, and it was because
of my mother. They turning point for me was when
my kids were born and I'm like, we need to
do Christmas big, and I think my mom is happy
(08:34):
for that. This is what I tell people. Don't leave
anything on set because you never know my mom is
my angel. Every night I pray before I go to bed,
I go thank you, mommy, thank you for another beautiful day.
Thank you for everything you do for me. And that's
(08:55):
when I can go to sleep. She's getting me all
the way. Absolutely, I want to ask you because I
know that when Daddy passed, I was Daddy and you
were very close because when I grew up, Daddy was
always somewhere else and he made sure that he was
abreast of everything that happened with us. To me, my
(09:16):
father was a hero fighting the Vietnam War. We couldn't communicate.
There were no cell phones. That's when he bought us
a real, too real tape requarterer so that you wouldn't
forget his voice. That was his main worry because you
were three, Ky come on to Yeah, I yeah, it's
(09:47):
heart wrenching. And you would tell you that he was
going to bite your cheeks when he got here. He
was gonna saw of you and you look so beautiful,
and yeah, I mean, I thank god I have them
because I would not have known my father's voice. Absolutely,
I know so many are suffering and struggling. David Kessler
(10:09):
is a world renowned grief expert who knows the agony
of lost first hand. His journey began at age thirteen,
when he witnessed a mass shooting at the same time
that his mother was dying. Welcome to the table. I've
read your books and was so excited. There's a lot
we want to ask you. I know that you can
(10:29):
be very helpful to us. The first mass shooting, Why
don't you take us through what you went through. My
mother was dying in a v a hospital, just like
your dad. I was thirteen. I couldn't go up and
see her, and across the street at a hotel, a
fire broke out and then shooting began. It went on
(10:51):
for thirteen hours, so one of the first mass shootings
in the US. The shooting and then for her to die.
I was just um and like the The only thing
I was told is be strong. Grief is natural. Organically,
we know what to do. But our modern society is
(11:11):
the one that tells us be strong, get over it,
move on. You shouldn't feel it. Find closure, get over them?
What kind of closure? One of the things people don't
realize is when our loved ones die. I always say,
don't give death any more power. Than it already has.
Don't give death the power to end a relationship or
(11:32):
the power to end your love. Death can take someone physically,
but your love of your mom and your mom and
your mom and your grandmother never dies. We can't heal
what we don't feel, so when we suppress them, that's
what goes wrong. We need to get them out. We
judge our feelings. We have feelings on feelings. I'm angry,
(11:53):
but I shouldn't be angry. Go through the process. When
we run from grief, we are in the pain longer.
And to me, the goal of grief work is to
remember those who have died with more love than pain.
When we allow that to happen, it shifts your body.
(12:13):
My younger son had been drug exposed. I naively thought
love will conquirl. Love helps everything, it doesn't stop the
wounds of childhood. And so when he turned sixteen he
called me. Then he said I just tried drugs and
(12:34):
I'm in trouble. And I was like, what, pot beer, what?
And he said meth And I said, your first drug
is meth. And it became a series of years in
and out of rehabs, and he worked so hard to
be sober and to have a life. And he called
up some friends. They went out and used and they lived.
(12:58):
He died, and so heartbreaking. Then heartbreaking. Now I often
say people have said, you talk about gratitude, Can you
find gratitude for your son dying? And I said, here's
how I can find gratitude. There's only one worst thing
I can think of than my son dying, me never
(13:20):
getting to know him this lifetime exactly, even if it
was eleven years, you got to know your mom. None
of this is guaranteed. Lust can be not only physically,
It could be mentally emotional, a job, a wedding, a divorce, pet,
moving a pet, all kinds of changes that we don't want.
(13:41):
Can you take us a little bit through those five
stages of grief? Elizabeth Coogler Ross first identified the five
stages of dying denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance that
came out in her groundbreaking book on Death and Dying.
Over the years, people applied them to grief, sometimes not well.
(14:01):
And that's when I was privileged to work with her
and adapt them in our book on Grief and Grieving,
and literally on page one we say they're not a
map for grief. There's no one way to do grief.
They're not linear. Your grief is as unique as your fingerprint.
The stages follow us, we don't follow them. And you
can go back to a stage in an hour. Anger, acceptance, denial,
(14:27):
absolutely in an hour. You can do them all encircle
around now. I never heard bargaining. Bargaining is the what ifs,
regrets and if only it's the guilt. Most of us
have guilt and what ifs, and if only don't we
even if we always want more And even if there's
nothing that you could have done, even if there isn't
(14:49):
what if, you still wonder what if? And I have
people who their parents have died at a hundred years old.
They still want more, They still wish they could have
done it differently. We all have those feelings. That's so normal.
Losing my mom and I think we can all agree
on this. It was devastating. It was the biggest loss
(15:11):
I've ever experienced in my life. And I lost the
baby at which is was my last opportunity to have
a baby. And you were so excited, we um so
much so that I still have that ultrasound picture on
my phone because I just can't get rid of it.
(15:32):
And I immediately thought, what did I do wrong? It's
funny because I was just starting nursing school. I became
a nurse midlife. About three months into it, I went
into maternity and found out that spontaneous abortions happened between
eight and ten weeks, and normally it's because there's something
wrong with the baby. I was so surprised. When I
(15:55):
was writing this last book, I said, I want to
talk about miscarriage. And people said, but you haven't had
a miscarriage, And I said, I cannot do a grief
book without putting miscarriage in it because it doesn't get
talked about. And when it doesn't get talked about, people
internalize it and think they did something wrong the first thing.
And you know this, you did nothing wrong. Miscarriages, just
(16:19):
like death, have been in our life. I want to
ask you the ultrasound, why why would you want to
let go of it? It's the only picture you have
of your baby. Would we ever say to a parent
give up the one picture you have? No, Oh, my gosh,
there it is. I'm like anyone who says you've got
(16:43):
to give that up. Haven't you given up enough? You
do not have to give that up. You do not.
You keep that in your heart and your job. I bet,
and I've heard this from so many people. I bet
it's true. You wonder how old that baby would be,
what they'd be. Like my husband and I talk about
that baby, Oh how old did they be now? And
(17:05):
I had names picked out. I had. You know, your
work is to raise that baby in your heart. I
learned this with my own son. We think our job
is to make the grief smaller. The grief doesn't get smaller.
We have to grow around the grief. When my younger
son died and I was the father who had to
(17:26):
bury a child, but I was also a grief expert,
and I would go, yeah, I'm in anger, Yeah I'm
in bargaining. When I was in acceptance and struggling with that,
I go, I can't do it. I can't stop at acceptance.
I wanted more. And that's when identified that sixth stage
of grief. I wanted us to find meaning. Meaning is
(17:49):
the sixth stage of grief. We're finding meaning at this table.
You're wearing something in honor of your mother is meaning
you being an n I CU nurses meaning you talking
about how grief affects you is giving power to people
to admit it out there who are watching this. That's
your meaning, you know, miscarriage, divorce, saying we're not bad
(18:13):
because these things happen. They happen. That's life, that's part
of the deal. We can't take away the pain, but
we can find meaning. And I know for me, I
mean you clutch onto any possible messages because that's my
mother to me, turns on lights and turns them off.
And literally a week after she passed, I went for
(18:34):
a walk. The minute I started talking about her, boom,
the light over me turns off when we walk to
the second letter said, okay, Mom, if this is you,
turn on the light. Boom, she turned on the light. So,
first of all, I'm an open skeptic. My mother she
died in that hospital. Then decades later, I'm there in
the same city giving a lecture. The hospital has been
(18:57):
closed down. I get special permission. This gentleman takes me
up to the I see you doors and only the
emergency powers on and the light above that bed is
flashing green. And I thought, what does green mean? Green
means you can go, Green means complete, Green means it's safe.
(19:23):
Was that my mom saying I'm here to be seen.
I felt complete that I really could now see her
with love. You feel more complete and it has meaning
for you, Like everything that I see gives me meaning.
It makes me feel closer to my mom. Every time
a light flashes on and off, think of how this
is helping. People will never know you speaking about you.
(19:46):
Know your loss of your mother occurred many years ago.
People think, oh, but you should be done in a year.
We're never forgetting our mother, never, never forgetting our father's.
People say how long will I grieve? I always say, well,
how long are they going to be dead? Because if
they're going to be dead a long time, you're gonna
(20:06):
grieve a long time, not always in pain. Are you agree?
So what have we learned here that even though they're
gone from the physical space? I believe this, we keep
them alive. They're alive in every cell in her bodies,
(20:27):
and they're going to be with us when you guys
are gone. I'm gonna make sure that. David. Thank you
so much, Thank you, thank you very much. David. We
want to leave you with a special song that Emily
and I wrote together for our Broadway show on your Feet.
(20:49):
It's in the scene where my mother comes to the
hospital after I had broken my back and was paralyzed,
that we hadn't spoken in two years. If I never
(21:16):
got to tell you, there's no way I could be
prouder of the life that you've created, all the ways
that you have grown. If I never got to tell
you you are my love, sing ever allowed the first
thing you were in my life, You've been a blessed
(21:40):
And then I need you to know all. I don't
think that you have all the time in the world
to tell someone the reason that you love with one
tries to feel all the words in your heart. They
(22:04):
never he so wants a sense of waiting until muster
led to see it much like a game when we played,
when we just to keep hed it all in side
(22:24):
until it's delay forever, were runn out of food, and
then hers and it's just went me my last copart.
If I never got to tell you all the ways
(22:47):
you made me happy, that the dreams you've been fulfilling
are fulfilling my dreams too. If I now you got
to tell you, have you seen you were planned down
to the moment you have always been the reason for
(23:08):
the choices I have made. I thought I would have
all the time and the world to make things wrong,
but I go was lost tomorrow With one twist of faith,
(23:29):
I was facing the world without you. So why I'm
no longer waiting until it's too late to say it?
Much like a game we played when we choose to
(23:50):
keep it all the side until it's too late forever,
We've run out of all whenever and it's just my
fascot p before rest too m. Thanks for listening. To
(24:38):
join the Red Table Talk family and become a part
of the conversation, follow us at Facebook dot com, forward slash,
red table Talk, Stephens. Red Table Talk via Stephens is
a production of Westbrook Studios in partnership with I Heart
Radio's Michael Dura podcast Network. For more podcasts from my Heart,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple pod Podcasts, or
(25:00):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Venidos men. Gloria Stephen. Here. You are listening to Red
Table Talk via Stephens Podcast, all your favorite episodes from
our Facebook watch show in audio. This Red Table Talk
is dedicated to healing and finding strength. Right now, I
know millions of you are grieving the unbearable loss of
(00:20):
a loved one, the heartbreaking end of a relationship, your home,
your job, your sense of safety. We all just put
our hands on Mom, telling her we're here. We saw
her heart rate go down like one by one. The
world's leading expert on loss guides us through the six
stages of grief denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Meaning is
(00:46):
the sixth stage of grief. I lost a baby at
fort which was my last opportunity to have a baby.
You did nothing wrong. How to cope with the pain?
Loss can be not only physics, It could be mentally emotional.
Don't give depth the power to end a relationship or
(01:07):
to end your love. Join us for a healing Red
Table She was literally my best friend. Open yourselves up
to the messages that your loved ones are giving you constantly.
Our hope is that by sharing our darkest days, we
(01:29):
can bring some healing in light to those struggling with
grief and loss. Just three years ago, my sister Rebecca
and I lost our beloved mother. My mom had a
long life. You still I talked to her every day
before the show. I talked to her in my car.
I talked to her in my shower a lot. When
my sister Becky and I lost our mother in two
(01:50):
thousand seventeen, a part of us left with her. Gloria
Fajardo was a true diva and the backbone of our family.
After our parents fled from Communist Cuba in nineteen sixty,
our father served in the U. S Military, while our
mother became the heart of our community. But most importantly,
(02:13):
my mother later became a Wila love you all along,
teaching us that there was nothing a woman couldn't do.
Here comes my baby, sister. You better not be crying already,
You're ready. Mom was such a huge mach pr presence.
(02:35):
She made sure that there was a record player in
her house and was constantly music playing in the house.
She established a little kindergarten in our apartment because she
was She had a PhD in education from Cuba, and
she thought that it was so important. She was the
real diva of our family. She sang beautifully, she was gorgeous.
(02:56):
She looked like Liz Taylor. No matter what she was doing,
she was us and made up to the nines. Or
do you think I got dressed like this for her episode?
Because she always thought I was under dress at times,
You guys, are a tumultuous relationship. Oh. I fought with
her like cats and dogs were very similar. Honestly, I
knew that she couldn't help it sometimes. And one day
she came close towards the closest to an apology by
(03:18):
saying to me in a rage, because you know she
would be enraged. And a second she said to me,
I don't know why I do these things. I don't
know why I can't control myself or say what I'm feeling.
And I took it as an apology because I knew,
you know that that's good. I think she was the
most incredible woman in the world. She was literally my
(03:41):
best friend, you know, my grandma. I could talk about anything,
things that I couldn't talk to you about. You you
also got her. I mean I think that she gave
you the best of her. Yes, when you came into
her life, she was ready to do nothing but be
your grandma. That well up. God, yeah, I don't, don't
(04:13):
worry everything, We'll be okay. Thank god, you guys have
the best. The most beautiful thing that was able to
happen with her was that she had the kind of
death that despite all of the things she was hooked
up to, we were all with her at the moment
(04:34):
of her passing and we all just put our hands
on her, naive on her head. All of us were
touching her. Literally watch we're here. That was terrible. We
saw her heart rate go down like one by one.
(04:55):
What privilege for her to have everyone there. We she's
when you say, I'm on my way to a better place,
and she really believed that. By the way, she died
at eight nineteen. That was a message my grandmother. Her
mother died on eight nineteen, So in every possible way,
(05:15):
she sent us messages that my grandmother was there with her.
The harden thing for me was after Pa, for you,
for example, you know, it was very hard to cope.
I've always seen you are strong. She can't do anything,
this woman, and for the first time she was like,
I can't sing, I couldn't record my album. For over
a year. Mom was a powerful force, that little lady.
(05:39):
She continues to be. Un Listen, everybody, open yourselves up
to the messages that your love doing are giving you constantly.
They are I believe firmly that there's a million ways,
and it's always going to be in a way that
only you would know and only you would recognize. They
have gotten us through the toughest moments of our lives,
even when they've been calling. I'm glad you guys were
(06:02):
to tell your mom and grandma everything, because as hard
as that was, your experience was totally different from mine.
My mom passed away when I was very young. It
was one of those things that you never expect. It
happened very fast. I always say that she passed from
(06:23):
a heart attack, but it was actually a tragic death.
Since she was eleven, Lily kept her mother's traumatic suicide
a secret, but loss that she struggles to talk about
to this day. I remember cleaning her bedroom. Oh my gosh,
(06:45):
I went into her room and before the first time
I saw that close it empty. That's when you say
this is real. She had a smile like she was
the sun. You got her. I hope I looked like
her and I hope I bring that joy to everyone.
(07:08):
Even if my worst movements, I try to smile. You
feel empty. I remember, specially getting off the bus getting
back home looking for her. I would always feel like,
oh my god, where is my mom. My mother passed
(07:29):
away December twenty two. I find out there. The burial
was December Christmas Eve. Christmas seat Latinos celebrate Notuenna, like
two or three weeks of party. And my father said,
let's get dressed and we're gonna go and celebrate like
(07:50):
if nothing happened. So we went to Laguna and Uh,
that was hard because the music is going. Everyone knows
what happened. You don't want to make anyone sad, but
you just bury with your mother today. Do you think
that helped to hurt you? And looking back, you know,
(08:13):
I want to tell my father, you know you did
it good. It was the right thing to do. For
many years we didn't celebrate Christmas, and it was because
of my mother. They turning point for me was when
my kids were born and I'm like, we need to
do Christmas big, and I think my mom is happy
(08:34):
for that. This is what I tell people. Don't leave
anything on set because you never know my mom is
my angel. Every night I pray before I go to bed,
I go thank you, mommy, thank you for another beautiful day.
Thank you for everything you do for me. And that's
(08:55):
when I can go to sleep. She's getting me all
the way. Absolutely, I want to ask you because I
know that when Daddy passed, I was Daddy and you
were very close because when I grew up, Daddy was
always somewhere else and he made sure that he was
abreast of everything that happened with us. To me, my
(09:16):
father was a hero fighting the Vietnam War. We couldn't communicate.
There were no cell phones. That's when he bought us
a real, too real tape requarterer so that you wouldn't
forget his voice. That was his main worry because you
were three, Ky come on to Yeah, I yeah, it's
(09:47):
heart wrenching. And you would tell you that he was
going to bite your cheeks when he got here. He
was gonna saw of you and you look so beautiful,
and yeah, I mean, I thank god I have them
because I would not have known my father's voice. Absolutely,
I know so many are suffering and struggling. David Kessler
(10:09):
is a world renowned grief expert who knows the agony
of lost first hand. His journey began at age thirteen,
when he witnessed a mass shooting at the same time
that his mother was dying. Welcome to the table. I've
read your books and was so excited. There's a lot
we want to ask you. I know that you can
(10:29):
be very helpful to us. The first mass shooting, Why
don't you take us through what you went through. My
mother was dying in a v a hospital, just like
your dad. I was thirteen. I couldn't go up and
see her, and across the street at a hotel, a
fire broke out and then shooting began. It went on
(10:51):
for thirteen hours, so one of the first mass shootings
in the US. The shooting and then for her to die.
I was just um and like the The only thing
I was told is be strong. Grief is natural. Organically,
we know what to do. But our modern society is
(11:11):
the one that tells us be strong, get over it,
move on. You shouldn't feel it. Find closure, get over them?
What kind of closure? One of the things people don't
realize is when our loved ones die. I always say,
don't give death any more power. Than it already has.
Don't give death the power to end a relationship or
(11:32):
the power to end your love. Death can take someone physically,
but your love of your mom and your mom and
your mom and your grandmother never dies. We can't heal
what we don't feel, so when we suppress them, that's
what goes wrong. We need to get them out. We
judge our feelings. We have feelings on feelings. I'm angry,
(11:53):
but I shouldn't be angry. Go through the process. When
we run from grief, we are in the pain longer.
And to me, the goal of grief work is to
remember those who have died with more love than pain.
When we allow that to happen, it shifts your body.
(12:13):
My younger son had been drug exposed. I naively thought
love will conquirl. Love helps everything, it doesn't stop the
wounds of childhood. And so when he turned sixteen he
called me. Then he said I just tried drugs and
(12:34):
I'm in trouble. And I was like, what, pot beer, what?
And he said meth And I said, your first drug
is meth. And it became a series of years in
and out of rehabs, and he worked so hard to
be sober and to have a life. And he called
up some friends. They went out and used and they lived.
(12:58):
He died, and so heartbreaking. Then heartbreaking. Now I often
say people have said, you talk about gratitude, Can you
find gratitude for your son dying? And I said, here's
how I can find gratitude. There's only one worst thing
I can think of than my son dying, me never
(13:20):
getting to know him this lifetime exactly, even if it
was eleven years, you got to know your mom. None
of this is guaranteed. Lust can be not only physically,
It could be mentally emotional, a job, a wedding, a divorce, pet,
moving a pet, all kinds of changes that we don't want.
(13:41):
Can you take us a little bit through those five
stages of grief? Elizabeth Coogler Ross first identified the five
stages of dying denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance that
came out in her groundbreaking book on Death and Dying.
Over the years, people applied them to grief, sometimes not well.
(14:01):
And that's when I was privileged to work with her
and adapt them in our book on Grief and Grieving,
and literally on page one we say they're not a
map for grief. There's no one way to do grief.
They're not linear. Your grief is as unique as your fingerprint.
The stages follow us, we don't follow them. And you
can go back to a stage in an hour. Anger, acceptance, denial,
(14:27):
absolutely in an hour. You can do them all encircle
around now. I never heard bargaining. Bargaining is the what ifs,
regrets and if only it's the guilt. Most of us
have guilt and what ifs, and if only don't we
even if we always want more And even if there's
nothing that you could have done, even if there isn't
(14:49):
what if, you still wonder what if? And I have
people who their parents have died at a hundred years old.
They still want more, They still wish they could have
done it differently. We all have those feelings. That's so normal.
Losing my mom and I think we can all agree
on this. It was devastating. It was the biggest loss
(15:11):
I've ever experienced in my life. And I lost the
baby at which is was my last opportunity to have
a baby. And you were so excited, we um so
much so that I still have that ultrasound picture on
my phone because I just can't get rid of it.
(15:32):
And I immediately thought, what did I do wrong? It's
funny because I was just starting nursing school. I became
a nurse midlife. About three months into it, I went
into maternity and found out that spontaneous abortions happened between
eight and ten weeks, and normally it's because there's something
wrong with the baby. I was so surprised. When I
(15:55):
was writing this last book, I said, I want to
talk about miscarriage. And people said, but you haven't had
a miscarriage, And I said, I cannot do a grief
book without putting miscarriage in it because it doesn't get
talked about. And when it doesn't get talked about, people
internalize it and think they did something wrong the first thing.
And you know this, you did nothing wrong. Miscarriages, just
(16:19):
like death, have been in our life. I want to
ask you the ultrasound, why why would you want to
let go of it? It's the only picture you have
of your baby. Would we ever say to a parent
give up the one picture you have? No, Oh, my gosh,
there it is. I'm like anyone who says you've got
(16:43):
to give that up. Haven't you given up enough? You
do not have to give that up. You do not.
You keep that in your heart and your job. I bet,
and I've heard this from so many people. I bet
it's true. You wonder how old that baby would be,
what they'd be. Like my husband and I talk about
that baby, Oh how old did they be now? And
(17:05):
I had names picked out. I had. You know, your
work is to raise that baby in your heart. I
learned this with my own son. We think our job
is to make the grief smaller. The grief doesn't get smaller.
We have to grow around the grief. When my younger
son died and I was the father who had to
(17:26):
bury a child, but I was also a grief expert,
and I would go, yeah, I'm in anger, Yeah I'm
in bargaining. When I was in acceptance and struggling with that,
I go, I can't do it. I can't stop at acceptance.
I wanted more. And that's when identified that sixth stage
of grief. I wanted us to find meaning. Meaning is
(17:49):
the sixth stage of grief. We're finding meaning at this table.
You're wearing something in honor of your mother is meaning
you being an n I CU nurses meaning you talking
about how grief affects you is giving power to people
to admit it out there who are watching this. That's
your meaning, you know, miscarriage, divorce, saying we're not bad
(18:13):
because these things happen. They happen. That's life, that's part
of the deal. We can't take away the pain, but
we can find meaning. And I know for me, I
mean you clutch onto any possible messages because that's my
mother to me, turns on lights and turns them off.
And literally a week after she passed, I went for
(18:34):
a walk. The minute I started talking about her, boom,
the light over me turns off when we walk to
the second letter said, okay, Mom, if this is you,
turn on the light. Boom, she turned on the light. So,
first of all, I'm an open skeptic. My mother she
died in that hospital. Then decades later, I'm there in
the same city giving a lecture. The hospital has been
(18:57):
closed down. I get special permission. This gentleman takes me
up to the I see you doors and only the
emergency powers on and the light above that bed is
flashing green. And I thought, what does green mean? Green
means you can go, Green means complete, Green means it's safe.
(19:23):
Was that my mom saying I'm here to be seen.
I felt complete that I really could now see her
with love. You feel more complete and it has meaning
for you, Like everything that I see gives me meaning.
It makes me feel closer to my mom. Every time
a light flashes on and off, think of how this
is helping. People will never know you speaking about you.
(19:46):
Know your loss of your mother occurred many years ago.
People think, oh, but you should be done in a year.
We're never forgetting our mother, never, never forgetting our father's.
People say how long will I grieve? I always say, well,
how long are they going to be dead? Because if
they're going to be dead a long time, you're gonna
(20:06):
grieve a long time, not always in pain. Are you agree?
So what have we learned here that even though they're
gone from the physical space? I believe this, we keep
them alive. They're alive in every cell in her bodies,
(20:27):
and they're going to be with us when you guys
are gone. I'm gonna make sure that. David. Thank you
so much, Thank you, thank you very much. David. We
want to leave you with a special song that Emily
and I wrote together for our Broadway show on your Feet.
(20:49):
It's in the scene where my mother comes to the
hospital after I had broken my back and was paralyzed,
that we hadn't spoken in two years. If I never
(21:16):
got to tell you, there's no way I could be
prouder of the life that you've created, all the ways
that you have grown. If I never got to tell
you you are my love, sing ever allowed the first
thing you were in my life, You've been a blessed
(21:40):
And then I need you to know all. I don't
think that you have all the time in the world
to tell someone the reason that you love with one
tries to feel all the words in your heart. They
(22:04):
never he so wants a sense of waiting until muster
led to see it much like a game when we played,
when we just to keep hed it all in side
(22:24):
until it's delay forever, were runn out of food, and
then hers and it's just went me my last copart.
If I never got to tell you all the ways
(22:47):
you made me happy, that the dreams you've been fulfilling
are fulfilling my dreams too. If I now you got
to tell you, have you seen you were planned down
to the moment you have always been the reason for
(23:08):
the choices I have made. I thought I would have
all the time and the world to make things wrong,
but I go was lost tomorrow With one twist of faith,
(23:29):
I was facing the world without you. So why I'm
no longer waiting until it's too late to say it?
Much like a game we played when we choose to
(23:50):
keep it all the side until it's too late forever,
We've run out of all whenever and it's just my
fascot p before rest too m. Thanks for listening. To
(24:38):
join the Red Table Talk family and become a part
of the conversation, follow us at Facebook dot com, forward slash,
red table Talk, Stephens. Red Table Talk via Stephens is
a production of Westbrook Studios in partnership with I Heart
Radio's Michael Dura podcast Network. For more podcasts from my Heart,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple pod Podcasts, or
(25:00):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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