July 11, 2024 • 27 mins
You might be familiar with the “Five Stages of Grief”, but social worker and author Lisa Keefauver is here to tell Jana that those stages are actually a myth.
Lisa Keefauver shares her story of losing her husband and dealing with the lasting grief. Hear how to process loss, whether it’s from death or the end of a relationship.
Plus, Lisa tells Jana how to discuss grief with kids, and how to handle grief as it changes and transforms.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Wind Down with Janet Kramer and I'm Heart Radio podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This week's Thursday Therapy, We've got Lisa Cafov. She is
a grief specialist, speaker, and author. She's got a new
book out called Grief Is a Sneaky Bitch, An Uncensored
Guide to Navigating Loss. Let's get her on. Hi.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Hello, how are you? I am good? I am good.
Nice to meet you.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Nice to meet you too. Thank you so much for
coming on, of.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Course, such a pleasure. Just wanted to say, in case
you wondered why I don't look like the blonde lady,
they probably sent you a picture of I don't know
if they told you. I just went through a year
and a half worth of cancer treatment and lost all
my hair and now I have chemo curls. This is
what come back.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I'm I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
I just always liked to do that because my picture
is out there always, and then like I give talks
and then I show up and people are like, is
that her? H? Well?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
What can I ask? What kind of cancer you had?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Breast? Can't triple positive breast cancer?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Oh wow, I'm so sorry. Is it something that runs
in your family or Nope?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
And it was misdiagnosed for a year, which is the
same thing that happened to my husband with his cancer,
my late husband. I'm a widow. It's been a time,
but I finished treatment. I got a clear scan. It's
all that matters.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
That's amazing. Well, thank you, thank you for coming on
the show and sharing all about this, because I can't
even imagine. I know, we like I share certain things
that I've been through that you know that are hard,
But I mean loss is I mean, I can't imagine
losing someone. That's something that you know I've I haven't,
(01:31):
you know, I've I've lost grandparents right.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
But sort of ordered death.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Right where it's you know, you still mourn their loss,
but it's a it's more of a celebration of life
because they had a beautiful, long life. And I can't imagine.
You know, I have a very good friend who lost
her husband as well, and it's just like I I
that kind of loss. I just I can't even understand.
So someone always like, are you okay, what do you need?
And for you? When your husband how what kind of
(02:00):
cancer did he have?
Speaker 1 (02:01):
He had what turned out to be a grapefruit sized
brain tumor. He had brain cancer mexclioma, which was misdiagnosed
for a year, and they finally ran a scan. So
we had two and a half weeks between his diagnosis
and him dying in my arms. Oh and our daughter
was seven at the time. But I say, I was
saying in a talk I gave recently, I really lost
(02:23):
him at forty three because he became completely unrecognizable and
we were going from doctors to doctors and asking questions
and they were like, oh, it's midlife crisis, mental health,
go on drugs, then go off drugs. Then it's always
making excuses and so anyway, so I sort of lost him,
not just unrecognizable, scary, kind of dangerous, as you might
not be surprised if you've ever known anybody with brain
(02:45):
cancer can completely shift their personality.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
No, I don't know much about it.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
He went from being the love of my life and
the kindest, most gentle, warm human being to be quite
a scary human being. So it was just like such
a rock. It's such a shift. So but I was.
I was, and I am a social worker and a
clinical social worker, and so grief was not my specialty
at the time. But I was with him when he
passed three years later. Was with my friend Joe with
(03:12):
him when he died in my arms, also in his
mid forties, so I sort of turned on and my anyways,
well we'll talk about it, but it's just a it's
a different turn. But actually I'm actually very I always
try to say to people, I'm actually fun at a party,
and I have so much joy. Actually think because I
do this work and because of what I've been through,
(03:33):
not that I don't have my dark moments.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Sure, no, of course, I mean we all did.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
I appreciate I have sort of a capacity for awe
and wander. I think in ways that I am not
sure I would have had.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Right, Well, you know, how truly the gift of life,
how precious everything is.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
I mean a year ago, was in a cheymotrayer, having
horrible reactions, no hair, no eyebrows, no eyelashes, swollen from steroids.
And now I'm doing an eight city book tour. I'm
sitting coming to from a hotel room Baltimore, having flown
a red eye last night. You know, like.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Perspectives, perspective, Yeah, when you got your diagnosis for you like, God,
what are you doing? Like what?
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, I don't. I was a literal yeah, I swear sometimes,
as you won't be surprised since you know the name
of my book in my podcast, But I was a
little like what the actual I call those, I call
these challenges in our lives as a story I think
I tell in the book. This book is a companion
obviously not a it's not a memoir. But my mom
bought me this phrase when I was very young, after
(04:32):
surviving a horrific assault when I was a teen, about
how do you kind of make the most of things.
It's called afghos another growth opportunity.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, yeah, I learned that in therapy as well.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, yeah, one of the many tattoos on my body.
So anyways, so when that when I finally got the news,
not to mention that I got the news ten days
before this book was due to the publisher and a
month before I was about to give a TED talk,
And after a year of arguing with doctors that this
lump I with something and they were telling me it wasn't.
So I definitely was like, Okay, I know there's an
(05:06):
af going this, but I don't need anymore.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
John Good, Yeah, you hit your quota.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
I have ascended to higher awareness many many times. But
you know, we don't really get to choose.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
What do you think the biggest misconception with grief is?
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Oh, gosh, there are so many. We have such a
misguided and limited story of grief that causes us so
much unnecessary harm. It's almost hard to pick one. So
I'm going to just offer a few. I think the
biggest is that the sort of myth of the linear
five stages of grief, which is not actually a thing.
(05:45):
That was not what Elizabeth koopleer Ross was saying. She
was talking about people coming to terms with their own death.
And the reason I think that's the most problematic, although
again there's a lot of competition for most problematic, is
that then we judge ourselves against that criteria that I'm
supposed to sort of move much like we do in
a capitalist society through these little five checklists, and then
(06:07):
I'm going to be done and voila. And then when
that isn't the reality of the very messy, nonlinear, you know,
complex experience of grief, then we judge ourselves against it.
But there's a lot more. We also the myth that
grief is just emotions. We have the myth that we
only grieve losses that are death losses. We have the
myth that we can't grieve things that we choose to leave,
(06:30):
which we can like the end of a relationship.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, no, I can speak to that one. I mean
I definitely when I divorced my husband, I mean, it
was it to me, it felt like someone died. But
it was really hard for me to say that because
I'm like, yes, well, no one did die, but to me,
it felt like there was a death in the house
and he left and then it was he was just gone,
and like like, yes, he was still there when I'd
(06:53):
see him, when he'd come to pick up the kids.
But it's just it was that relationship death. But I
didn't really feel like I could say that because it'd
be insensitive that actually have lost people.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yes, now, I do think we I call that grief
thefing We don't need to compare our griefs and we
don't need to be a competition. I do think we
have to be mindful that when someone sharing like their
depths of their child, we're now like, oh, I know
how you well, also don't ever that way, Yes, And
I think your point is really valid and That's part
of the work I do getting on stages writing is
(07:22):
that we have to acknowledge we grieve. These are the
kinds of ambiguous losses. We grieve the loss of things
that didn't come to pass that we had an expectation
that they came to pass, so that could be a
relationship we had imagined going into the future, and all
the dreams and plans that we hoped it could be grieving,
(07:43):
you know, if we didn't have a secure attachment or
a care nurturing parent, or we dream like infertility is
like the death of the dream that we had of
having children, and those losses are just as important for
us to come to grips with. So we get pathologized
with all kinds of things and diagnosed with all kinds
of issues. Not that there aren't validity to diagnoses, but
(08:06):
I think often it's that we're not naming and honoring
and recognizing that this is actually grief and giving ourselves
permission to your point, like, oh, I can't give myself
permission because maybe it's not the same as somebody else,
or because I chose to leave it. No, we get
to grieve those things, and if we don't grieve it.
(08:26):
It's going to show up in all kinds of sideways
ways in our lives.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
And it's been thirteen years since your husband, which.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Is so weird to me because it feels like yesterday
and forever ago. But yeah, it'll be twenty eleven, so
it'll be thirteen years this summer since Eric died.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
How does one walk through when it's been you know,
a year and then two years. Is because I feel like,
you know, my one girlfriend who lost her husband, she's like, no,
you know, she's like, the timing is always hard because
she's just like, we can't move on too fast because
then people are going to think you're insensitive or that
you don't you know, really love that person. Or it's
like after thirteen years, and I mean, I would imagine
(09:24):
that you would still have that loss and that sadness
and that grief. So it's like, what do you kind
of do with that grief after so many years? And
if someone's struggling that those many years after, Yeah, you.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Know, I think the answer is different for everybody. I
do think what happens in our grief and this has
certainly been my experience for my grief over Eric, is
I don't believe grief ends per se. I think that's
one of the biggest myths. I think it just transforms,
and we're transformed by it, and grief becomes a part
of our story, not our whole story, though it feels
(09:56):
that way in the beginning. And so my grief has
looked different every year, and it certainly hasn't looked, you know,
like linear, just neat and orderly, you know, up up
in an upwards fashion. So I carry where Eric with
me definitely in times of both celebration and tumult. His
very present. So during my cancer diagnosis, in the middle
(10:16):
of the night, when I was alone having to go
through all the side effects, he was there in a way,
but his absence was very present, and so I grieved
him in a way that I hadn't grieved him at
other times, at our daughter's graduation from high school, when
she was going through hard things. Even on this you
know here, I am, I published a book, I'm on
this book tour doing all these amazing things, and Eric
(10:39):
isn't here. I think what I've learned over time is
it's certainly less and actually I'm able to remember our
life together, not just as death. I think that's what
transforms for a lot of people in the early years.
Part of how we're remembering our person, if it's a
death loss is how it ended, the disease, the absence,
(11:00):
and over time, for me, I'm much more able to
call to mind the joy and the gift and the
connection and the lessons that I learned. And that's so
like I have a different relationship with him, in a
different relationship with grief over time. Yeah, and then I
don't know if you were sort of alluding to like
moving on meaning dating, I've certainly had my fair share
(11:22):
of dating. I feel like that could be a whole
nother podcast episode about dating after loss. And it definitely
took me a while to sort of figure out, like
what is okay? And are people judging me? And am
I judging myself? And what would Eric think? And you know,
I'm currently single, so I can't say what it means
(11:42):
to be in a relationship at the moment, but it's
an incredible journey. But I and I make so much
space for all the relationships in my life because luckily
for me, I had an amazing real relationship in marriage.
So I think that's the other thing, Like for some
(12:03):
people who lose a spouse or a partner where the
relationship was complicated, then that can be a different kind
of grieving journey because then they're both grieving the person,
but also grieving that relationship never maybe got to be
the way they would have wished it would have been.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Right, how do you walk well, first of all, how
is your daughter? And how do you walk a child
through grief? Because that's got to I can't even like,
even when I explain to my kids about heaven and
you know, they're you know, they'll, it's still such a
like I can't imagine, like if we lost someone, how
then to explain it to them?
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Yeah, I mean there are other people who are certainly
experts in I think I come to mind think of
like the Dougie Center out of Portland. And for me,
even though I was a clinical social worker, same thing,
I had that expectation I should know how to do this.
But how does anyone know how to lose their husband
and then go home and tell their seven year old
that their dad is dead? You know, yeah, you don't
know how to do that? Or even I made the
(13:00):
decision we had to take him off life support for
her to come say goodbye, you know, and was that
the right thing? You know? What I've learned both in
my own experience with Lilly, who's now a junior finishing
her junior of college and is doing amazing and I
want to grow up and be like her, So that's
an amazing feat. And he's she's a lot like Eric.
But what I've learned is age appropriate. Of course, sure,
(13:24):
be direct, try not to use euphemisms. Don't say he's away,
because kids have magical thinking, So like, be direct. You know,
maybe his heart stopped beating and we need that, and
he couldn't take in breath and ask the child questions.
Don't be surprised when the child has magical thinking. And
(13:45):
even after you've explained their death, two days later or
two weeks later, they say I want daddy back, or
when's daddy coming back, et cetera. That happens. So, which
is a gut punch for the adult, by the way,
but it's really normal. And I think creating spaces for
that person for your child to be with, peers to
(14:06):
be supported, to have some normalcy and some routine as
much as you can. And that's where you might call
on your grief supporters, because maybe you can't like my
girlfriends immediately because it was the end of summer and
we were literally about to leave on vacation, so I
had nowhere to take my daughter, and I'm trying to
by the way, I had an emergency root canal three
days after he died, because your body completely collapses. So
(14:30):
get your friends and my friends all like enrolled her
in an art camp that one of my friends was running,
and just took her and just kept her at play
dates and doing kind of normal things, allowing your child
to have as much of a normal, safe kind of
life and routine. But to be direct and thoughtful is
(14:52):
feels impossible, but is so important.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
What are some of the tools that you learn and
that were helpful for you during your grief period that
you put in the book?
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Oh, there are so many that I've learned along the way,
some of which comes from my training as a social
worker and narrative therapist, but some have just come by
trial and error and then also by working with people.
For me, a mindfulness practice has been probably my number
one key practice. So that sometimes looks like meditation for people.
(15:27):
But if met the word meditation scares you and you're like,
I'm not good at it. First of all, that there's
no such thing. The goal is not to be good
at it, But it's just really about being mindful, really
checking inWORD, listening to my physiology, listening to my body,
taking breasts, noticing when I become super activated. I also
have a history of trauma prior to that, so mindfulness
(15:48):
and somatics have been really important a tool I teach
people all the time I work. I do this all
the time when I work with people. Is becoming a
should detective, So we should all over ourselves all time,
and grief especially because we have these misguided stories about
what our grief should and shouldn't feel like and look like.
(16:09):
That's actually the opening question I ask all of my
guests on my podcast, what was your earliest memory of grief?
And how are the adults in your life modeling grief
explicitly or implicitly, and how do you think what do
you think that taught you about what grief should or
shouldn't look like?
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Right?
Speaker 1 (16:25):
And how is that serving you now? And so we're often,
again as comes from probably my training as an error therapy,
we're often should and shouldn't seeing all of ourselves and
by the way other people are doing that to us too.
You shouldn't be so sad still, or you shouldn't talk
about your person. But if we can be a should
detective and notice when are we sort of judging ourselves
(16:46):
in ways I shouldn't feel so bad it's been X
number of years, etc. Then we can begin to reframe
and offer ourselves a lot more grace and compassion and
so sort of mindfulness being a should detective, I'd say
the other I don't know if it's a skill, but
another thing to be aware of that it took me
a while to understand as I moved into this work
(17:08):
as a grief activist, is that grief is not just
this emotional thing. It's just not just emotions, and even
within emotions, and not just sad, which is usually what
we talk about. It's actually anxiety and anger and fear
and longing. But grief impacts us emotionally, physically, cognitively, relationally,
(17:29):
and spiritually. So when I think about caring for myself
or caring for my daughter and grief, or showing up
and support of somebody else, I'm always trying to inventory,
checking in on all of those domains of my life.
So I got called back to work two weeks after
my husband died. I was a clinical social worker working
for other social workers and had to go back to work.
(17:52):
And one of the things I hadn't been prepared for
is the cognitive impact on your brain. So you might
have heard of grief brain or brain fog. This is
a real thing. Mary Francis O'Connor has been doing some
phenomenal research on it now. I didn't know that then,
And in a way, it's because we are Grief is
basically a chronic stress state, and when we're in a stress,
(18:14):
straight stress state, for good reasons, our prefront this part
of our brain, the logic and memory and processing part
of our brain, goes offline. Because when you're in a
stress state, that's when you get all the blood pumping,
so you can run from the saber tooth tiger, right Like,
that's why we need that. But I wasn't trying to
run from a saber tooth tiger. I was trying to
raise my daughter and see my clients and do my work,
(18:35):
and so using sticky notes and reminders and giving myself
a lot of grace when I couldn't figure out how
to do things and asking people to help me figure
out all the navigating of the systems that I had
to navigate now getting death certificates and filing for Social
Security disability and you know, filling out all the paperwork, right,
(18:56):
So recognizing and checking in on all the domains of
my life and inviting other people to do that. I
still use that till to this day, because again I've
experienced other losses, and because grief comp carries with us
and transforms over time. But when we go through a
hard thing, a chronic disease, an illness, a diagnosis of
(19:17):
ourselves or someone else we love, when we go through
a loss, a divorce, at the ending of a relationship,
I really encourage people to think about those five domains
of our lives. So when we think about caring for ourselves,
we want to be attending to all of those. And
often when we're struggling or stuck in some way, it's
because we haven't. There's a piece of that part of
(19:40):
our lives that we haven't really attended to.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Sure, yeah, can I ask? And I hope this isn't.
I'm just I guess curious. On my side, I have
such a fear of death. Has your relationship with death changed?
(20:07):
And is like, what would you say to someone like
me that that does fear death, Like I'm you know,
I've got three children, and I'm I'm so fearful of
so many things. I'm like, well, I don't want them
to grow up not having me in their life and
being a mom. And it's just and then and then what?
And like I believe in God, I believe in heaven.
I believe in all those things, but I still I
still struggle with the fear of it.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah. Oh, I'm going to call on some of my
favorite colleagues in the death doula and hospice space, like
Lisa Paul who created something called the Death Deck and
the End of Life Deck, which you might want to
check out. Or Ailua Arthur who was on my podcast,
who just wrote an incredible New York Times bestselling book,
Briefly Perfectly Human. Is this fun party stat that I
(20:50):
have one hundred percent of us are going to die?
I was joke, like, Hi, my name's Lisa. One hundred
percent of us will experience grief multiple times in our
lives and we're all going to die and meet you.
Except I think and this goes back to what I
said before, and I'll get serious and the answer is,
I actually think having death be present in our life
(21:11):
can be a gift, meaning it helps us get really
clear about what matters and what doesn't. Because think about
all the time you spend in the day about appearance
or the right school, or the how somebody was going
to talk to me, or if they got the raids,
(21:33):
and not that we can't have goals and ambitions, And
I think that's really beautiful. But I think centering death
as a present meditation in our life actually helps us
get clear on what do we value. How do we
value our time, our relationships. Do we communicate with the
people that we love that we love them, and how
often do we do that? Do we make assumptions we
(21:55):
can do this down the road because they're always going
to be here. No they're not, and we're not either,
And the truth is we don't know. Sometimes we have
a clear you know, we have a diagnosis and a
doctor has told us and it's but a lot of
times it's not so to me, I think, first of all,
And I also think, just as a parent, I think
being really practical, like make sure you really don't let
(22:18):
that fear keep you from Do you have a will?
Do you have God? Parents? If people believe in God,
do you have you explicitly said to those people these
are the things that matter to me in terms of
how you raise them. Have you told the people you
love your arrangements. I don't want to be kept on
life support. I do want to be cremated. I don't
want to be cremated. And I tell you this because
the best gift you can give to somebody you love
(22:41):
is having all of those answers really clear. Because when
I've worked with people over time, some of the ways
in which they struggle the most, whether it's the children
of somebody, the partner, the parent, is because they question
whether they did the right thing. Sure you know, and
so recognizing that we don't have control over when the
(23:03):
end comes can help us focus on how to live.
And that's where I started the conversations, like I'm fun
at a party. I live. I do think, not that
I don't get caught up in the mundane every day
bs of life, because I'm human, right, but I think
it helps me live in with a state of awe
and wonder and appreciation. I think I'm a way better
(23:26):
friend than I used to be. I'm a better parent,
I'm a better daughter. Frankly, I'm very grateful to say
that both of my parents are still alive. My dad
is ninety two. Amazing, right, Am I great at it
all the time? No Am I the perfect daughter? No
Am I the perfect mom. Talk to my daughter Lily.
She would probably tell you not, although she does think
(23:46):
I'm pretty cool these days, which is great when they
turn twenty. By the way, if you have a teenager,
it's okay, they come around again, I promise. I think
I live really in alignment with my integrity, and I
think that comes from experiencing so many losses. So I
(24:06):
try my best to think about these losses and even
the expectation of loss. As I said, I just navigated
a year and a half of breast cancer. Thankfully not
come whatever. I've got a clear scan, but as just
a reminder of what I know. It sounds cliche, but
do it. Life is a gift. It is such a
(24:27):
gift's and the way I do that, by the way,
is when death or illness, I start spiral like I
was when chemo was taking me down to the to
the most base human form. I remember to come back
to the present moment, and that's where back to skills
mindfulness is critical, because when we start to spiral on death,
(24:49):
we are in a future, imagined state that we have
no control over and that probably actually won't come to
pass and the way we fear or imagine. So I
always come back to the present and then treat the
present as a present. What a gift? The present is
a present?
Speaker 2 (25:07):
And what do you want your biggest takeaway to be
from this book that people when people read it.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
I wrote this book to be honest in a way,
because it was the book that I didn't have when
Eric died, and then when Joe died, and when other
people died. I want people to feel held and seen
and acknowledged in their grief, in all the messy, beautiful
humanity of their grief. It's full of science, it's full
(25:33):
of personality. It's full of a judicious use of cussing,
as I always say it, and it shows I show
up as myself, both my clinician self but also as
my personal self. But it's really that compassionate companion guide
because so many of us don't have the person in
our life who really gets what grief is and can
(25:55):
and can be with us in the messiness and be
us when we're sitting in the suck, as one of
my guests called it. So I want people to feel
held and seen, just and affirmed just as they are
loved in their grief. And I really do believe that
I was able to offer that in this book.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Well, thank you for everything that you do. Thank you
for this book. It's going to help a lot of people,
and I just appreciate you taking the time. And we'll
be praying for you that everything, all your scans further
are being clear, clear and clear, clear, clear.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah, thank you. It was really wonderful spending this time
with you. I loved it.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Same. Thank you so much. Everyone, Go Get Grief is
a Sneaky Bitch, an uncensored guide to navigating loss.
Wind Down with Janet Kramer and I'm Heart Radio podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This week's Thursday Therapy, We've got Lisa Cafov. She is
a grief specialist, speaker, and author. She's got a new
book out called Grief Is a Sneaky Bitch, An Uncensored
Guide to Navigating Loss. Let's get her on. Hi.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Hello, how are you? I am good? I am good.
Nice to meet you.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Nice to meet you too. Thank you so much for
coming on, of.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Course, such a pleasure. Just wanted to say, in case
you wondered why I don't look like the blonde lady,
they probably sent you a picture of I don't know
if they told you. I just went through a year
and a half worth of cancer treatment and lost all
my hair and now I have chemo curls. This is
what come back.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I'm I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
I just always liked to do that because my picture
is out there always, and then like I give talks
and then I show up and people are like, is
that her? H? Well?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
What can I ask? What kind of cancer you had?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Breast? Can't triple positive breast cancer?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Oh wow, I'm so sorry. Is it something that runs
in your family or Nope?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
And it was misdiagnosed for a year, which is the
same thing that happened to my husband with his cancer,
my late husband. I'm a widow. It's been a time,
but I finished treatment. I got a clear scan. It's
all that matters.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
That's amazing. Well, thank you, thank you for coming on
the show and sharing all about this, because I can't
even imagine. I know, we like I share certain things
that I've been through that you know that are hard,
But I mean loss is I mean, I can't imagine
losing someone. That's something that you know I've I haven't,
(01:31):
you know, I've I've lost grandparents right.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
But sort of ordered death.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Right where it's you know, you still mourn their loss,
but it's a it's more of a celebration of life
because they had a beautiful, long life. And I can't imagine.
You know, I have a very good friend who lost
her husband as well, and it's just like I I
that kind of loss. I just I can't even understand.
So someone always like, are you okay, what do you need?
And for you? When your husband how what kind of
(02:00):
cancer did he have?
Speaker 1 (02:01):
He had what turned out to be a grapefruit sized
brain tumor. He had brain cancer mexclioma, which was misdiagnosed
for a year, and they finally ran a scan. So
we had two and a half weeks between his diagnosis
and him dying in my arms. Oh and our daughter
was seven at the time. But I say, I was
saying in a talk I gave recently, I really lost
(02:23):
him at forty three because he became completely unrecognizable and
we were going from doctors to doctors and asking questions
and they were like, oh, it's midlife crisis, mental health,
go on drugs, then go off drugs. Then it's always
making excuses and so anyway, so I sort of lost him,
not just unrecognizable, scary, kind of dangerous, as you might
not be surprised if you've ever known anybody with brain
(02:45):
cancer can completely shift their personality.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
No, I don't know much about it.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
He went from being the love of my life and
the kindest, most gentle, warm human being to be quite
a scary human being. So it was just like such
a rock. It's such a shift. So but I was.
I was, and I am a social worker and a
clinical social worker, and so grief was not my specialty
at the time. But I was with him when he
passed three years later. Was with my friend Joe with
(03:12):
him when he died in my arms, also in his
mid forties, so I sort of turned on and my anyways,
well we'll talk about it, but it's just a it's
a different turn. But actually I'm actually very I always
try to say to people, I'm actually fun at a party,
and I have so much joy. Actually think because I
do this work and because of what I've been through,
(03:33):
not that I don't have my dark moments.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Sure, no, of course, I mean we all did.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
I appreciate I have sort of a capacity for awe
and wander. I think in ways that I am not
sure I would have had.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Right, Well, you know, how truly the gift of life,
how precious everything is.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
I mean a year ago, was in a cheymotrayer, having
horrible reactions, no hair, no eyebrows, no eyelashes, swollen from steroids.
And now I'm doing an eight city book tour. I'm
sitting coming to from a hotel room Baltimore, having flown
a red eye last night. You know, like.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Perspectives, perspective, Yeah, when you got your diagnosis for you like, God,
what are you doing? Like what?
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, I don't. I was a literal yeah, I swear sometimes,
as you won't be surprised since you know the name
of my book in my podcast, But I was a
little like what the actual I call those, I call
these challenges in our lives as a story I think
I tell in the book. This book is a companion
obviously not a it's not a memoir. But my mom
bought me this phrase when I was very young, after
(04:32):
surviving a horrific assault when I was a teen, about
how do you kind of make the most of things.
It's called afghos another growth opportunity.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, yeah, I learned that in therapy as well.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, yeah, one of the many tattoos on my body.
So anyways, so when that when I finally got the news,
not to mention that I got the news ten days
before this book was due to the publisher and a
month before I was about to give a TED talk,
And after a year of arguing with doctors that this
lump I with something and they were telling me it wasn't.
So I definitely was like, Okay, I know there's an
(05:06):
af going this, but I don't need anymore.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
John Good, Yeah, you hit your quota.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
I have ascended to higher awareness many many times. But
you know, we don't really get to choose.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
What do you think the biggest misconception with grief is?
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Oh, gosh, there are so many. We have such a
misguided and limited story of grief that causes us so
much unnecessary harm. It's almost hard to pick one. So
I'm going to just offer a few. I think the
biggest is that the sort of myth of the linear
five stages of grief, which is not actually a thing.
(05:45):
That was not what Elizabeth koopleer Ross was saying. She
was talking about people coming to terms with their own death.
And the reason I think that's the most problematic, although
again there's a lot of competition for most problematic, is
that then we judge ourselves against that criteria that I'm
supposed to sort of move much like we do in
a capitalist society through these little five checklists, and then
(06:07):
I'm going to be done and voila. And then when
that isn't the reality of the very messy, nonlinear, you know,
complex experience of grief, then we judge ourselves against it.
But there's a lot more. We also the myth that
grief is just emotions. We have the myth that we
only grieve losses that are death losses. We have the
myth that we can't grieve things that we choose to leave,
(06:30):
which we can like the end of a relationship.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, no, I can speak to that one. I mean
I definitely when I divorced my husband, I mean, it
was it to me, it felt like someone died. But
it was really hard for me to say that because
I'm like, yes, well, no one did die, but to me,
it felt like there was a death in the house
and he left and then it was he was just gone,
and like like, yes, he was still there when I'd
(06:53):
see him, when he'd come to pick up the kids.
But it's just it was that relationship death. But I
didn't really feel like I could say that because it'd
be insensitive that actually have lost people.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yes, now, I do think we I call that grief
thefing We don't need to compare our griefs and we
don't need to be a competition. I do think we
have to be mindful that when someone sharing like their
depths of their child, we're now like, oh, I know
how you well, also don't ever that way, Yes, And
I think your point is really valid and That's part
of the work I do getting on stages writing is
(07:22):
that we have to acknowledge we grieve. These are the
kinds of ambiguous losses. We grieve the loss of things
that didn't come to pass that we had an expectation
that they came to pass, so that could be a
relationship we had imagined going into the future, and all
the dreams and plans that we hoped it could be grieving,
(07:43):
you know, if we didn't have a secure attachment or
a care nurturing parent, or we dream like infertility is
like the death of the dream that we had of
having children, and those losses are just as important for
us to come to grips with. So we get pathologized
with all kinds of things and diagnosed with all kinds
of issues. Not that there aren't validity to diagnoses, but
(08:06):
I think often it's that we're not naming and honoring
and recognizing that this is actually grief and giving ourselves
permission to your point, like, oh, I can't give myself
permission because maybe it's not the same as somebody else,
or because I chose to leave it. No, we get
to grieve those things, and if we don't grieve it.
(08:26):
It's going to show up in all kinds of sideways
ways in our lives.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
And it's been thirteen years since your husband, which.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Is so weird to me because it feels like yesterday
and forever ago. But yeah, it'll be twenty eleven, so
it'll be thirteen years this summer since Eric died.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
How does one walk through when it's been you know,
a year and then two years. Is because I feel like,
you know, my one girlfriend who lost her husband, she's like, no,
you know, she's like, the timing is always hard because
she's just like, we can't move on too fast because
then people are going to think you're insensitive or that
you don't you know, really love that person. Or it's
like after thirteen years, and I mean, I would imagine
(09:24):
that you would still have that loss and that sadness
and that grief. So it's like, what do you kind
of do with that grief after so many years? And
if someone's struggling that those many years after, Yeah, you.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Know, I think the answer is different for everybody. I
do think what happens in our grief and this has
certainly been my experience for my grief over Eric, is
I don't believe grief ends per se. I think that's
one of the biggest myths. I think it just transforms,
and we're transformed by it, and grief becomes a part
of our story, not our whole story, though it feels
(09:56):
that way in the beginning. And so my grief has
looked different every year, and it certainly hasn't looked, you know,
like linear, just neat and orderly, you know, up up
in an upwards fashion. So I carry where Eric with
me definitely in times of both celebration and tumult. His
very present. So during my cancer diagnosis, in the middle
(10:16):
of the night, when I was alone having to go
through all the side effects, he was there in a way,
but his absence was very present, and so I grieved
him in a way that I hadn't grieved him at
other times, at our daughter's graduation from high school, when
she was going through hard things. Even on this you
know here, I am, I published a book, I'm on
this book tour doing all these amazing things, and Eric
(10:39):
isn't here. I think what I've learned over time is
it's certainly less and actually I'm able to remember our
life together, not just as death. I think that's what
transforms for a lot of people in the early years.
Part of how we're remembering our person, if it's a
death loss is how it ended, the disease, the absence,
(11:00):
and over time, for me, I'm much more able to
call to mind the joy and the gift and the
connection and the lessons that I learned. And that's so
like I have a different relationship with him, in a
different relationship with grief over time. Yeah, and then I
don't know if you were sort of alluding to like
moving on meaning dating, I've certainly had my fair share
(11:22):
of dating. I feel like that could be a whole
nother podcast episode about dating after loss. And it definitely
took me a while to sort of figure out, like
what is okay? And are people judging me? And am
I judging myself? And what would Eric think? And you know,
I'm currently single, so I can't say what it means
(11:42):
to be in a relationship at the moment, but it's
an incredible journey. But I and I make so much
space for all the relationships in my life because luckily
for me, I had an amazing real relationship in marriage.
So I think that's the other thing, Like for some
(12:03):
people who lose a spouse or a partner where the
relationship was complicated, then that can be a different kind
of grieving journey because then they're both grieving the person,
but also grieving that relationship never maybe got to be
the way they would have wished it would have been.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Right, how do you walk well, first of all, how
is your daughter? And how do you walk a child
through grief? Because that's got to I can't even like,
even when I explain to my kids about heaven and
you know, they're you know, they'll, it's still such a
like I can't imagine, like if we lost someone, how
then to explain it to them?
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Yeah, I mean there are other people who are certainly
experts in I think I come to mind think of
like the Dougie Center out of Portland. And for me,
even though I was a clinical social worker, same thing,
I had that expectation I should know how to do this.
But how does anyone know how to lose their husband
and then go home and tell their seven year old
that their dad is dead? You know, yeah, you don't
know how to do that? Or even I made the
(13:00):
decision we had to take him off life support for
her to come say goodbye, you know, and was that
the right thing? You know? What I've learned both in
my own experience with Lilly, who's now a junior finishing
her junior of college and is doing amazing and I
want to grow up and be like her, So that's
an amazing feat. And he's she's a lot like Eric.
But what I've learned is age appropriate. Of course, sure,
(13:24):
be direct, try not to use euphemisms. Don't say he's away,
because kids have magical thinking, So like, be direct. You know,
maybe his heart stopped beating and we need that, and
he couldn't take in breath and ask the child questions.
Don't be surprised when the child has magical thinking. And
(13:45):
even after you've explained their death, two days later or
two weeks later, they say I want daddy back, or
when's daddy coming back, et cetera. That happens. So, which
is a gut punch for the adult, by the way,
but it's really normal. And I think creating spaces for
that person for your child to be with, peers to
(14:06):
be supported, to have some normalcy and some routine as
much as you can. And that's where you might call
on your grief supporters, because maybe you can't like my
girlfriends immediately because it was the end of summer and
we were literally about to leave on vacation, so I
had nowhere to take my daughter, and I'm trying to
by the way, I had an emergency root canal three
days after he died, because your body completely collapses. So
(14:30):
get your friends and my friends all like enrolled her
in an art camp that one of my friends was running,
and just took her and just kept her at play
dates and doing kind of normal things, allowing your child
to have as much of a normal, safe kind of
life and routine. But to be direct and thoughtful is
(14:52):
feels impossible, but is so important.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
What are some of the tools that you learn and
that were helpful for you during your grief period that
you put in the book?
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Oh, there are so many that I've learned along the way,
some of which comes from my training as a social
worker and narrative therapist, but some have just come by
trial and error and then also by working with people.
For me, a mindfulness practice has been probably my number
one key practice. So that sometimes looks like meditation for people.
(15:27):
But if met the word meditation scares you and you're like,
I'm not good at it. First of all, that there's
no such thing. The goal is not to be good
at it, But it's just really about being mindful, really
checking inWORD, listening to my physiology, listening to my body,
taking breasts, noticing when I become super activated. I also
have a history of trauma prior to that, so mindfulness
(15:48):
and somatics have been really important a tool I teach
people all the time I work. I do this all
the time when I work with people. Is becoming a
should detective, So we should all over ourselves all time,
and grief especially because we have these misguided stories about
what our grief should and shouldn't feel like and look like.
(16:09):
That's actually the opening question I ask all of my
guests on my podcast, what was your earliest memory of grief?
And how are the adults in your life modeling grief
explicitly or implicitly, and how do you think what do
you think that taught you about what grief should or
shouldn't look like?
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Right?
Speaker 1 (16:25):
And how is that serving you now? And so we're often,
again as comes from probably my training as an error therapy,
we're often should and shouldn't seeing all of ourselves and
by the way other people are doing that to us too.
You shouldn't be so sad still, or you shouldn't talk
about your person. But if we can be a should
detective and notice when are we sort of judging ourselves
(16:46):
in ways I shouldn't feel so bad it's been X
number of years, etc. Then we can begin to reframe
and offer ourselves a lot more grace and compassion and
so sort of mindfulness being a should detective, I'd say
the other I don't know if it's a skill, but
another thing to be aware of that it took me
a while to understand as I moved into this work
(17:08):
as a grief activist, is that grief is not just
this emotional thing. It's just not just emotions, and even
within emotions, and not just sad, which is usually what
we talk about. It's actually anxiety and anger and fear
and longing. But grief impacts us emotionally, physically, cognitively, relationally,
(17:29):
and spiritually. So when I think about caring for myself
or caring for my daughter and grief, or showing up
and support of somebody else, I'm always trying to inventory,
checking in on all of those domains of my life.
So I got called back to work two weeks after
my husband died. I was a clinical social worker working
for other social workers and had to go back to work.
(17:52):
And one of the things I hadn't been prepared for
is the cognitive impact on your brain. So you might
have heard of grief brain or brain fog. This is
a real thing. Mary Francis O'Connor has been doing some
phenomenal research on it now. I didn't know that then,
And in a way, it's because we are Grief is
basically a chronic stress state, and when we're in a stress,
(18:14):
straight stress state, for good reasons, our prefront this part
of our brain, the logic and memory and processing part
of our brain, goes offline. Because when you're in a
stress state, that's when you get all the blood pumping,
so you can run from the saber tooth tiger, right Like,
that's why we need that. But I wasn't trying to
run from a saber tooth tiger. I was trying to
raise my daughter and see my clients and do my work,
(18:35):
and so using sticky notes and reminders and giving myself
a lot of grace when I couldn't figure out how
to do things and asking people to help me figure
out all the navigating of the systems that I had
to navigate now getting death certificates and filing for Social
Security disability and you know, filling out all the paperwork, right,
(18:56):
So recognizing and checking in on all the domains of
my life and inviting other people to do that. I
still use that till to this day, because again I've
experienced other losses, and because grief comp carries with us
and transforms over time. But when we go through a
hard thing, a chronic disease, an illness, a diagnosis of
(19:17):
ourselves or someone else we love, when we go through
a loss, a divorce, at the ending of a relationship,
I really encourage people to think about those five domains
of our lives. So when we think about caring for ourselves,
we want to be attending to all of those. And
often when we're struggling or stuck in some way, it's
because we haven't. There's a piece of that part of
(19:40):
our lives that we haven't really attended to.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Sure, yeah, can I ask? And I hope this isn't.
I'm just I guess curious. On my side, I have
such a fear of death. Has your relationship with death changed?
(20:07):
And is like, what would you say to someone like
me that that does fear death, Like I'm you know,
I've got three children, and I'm I'm so fearful of
so many things. I'm like, well, I don't want them
to grow up not having me in their life and
being a mom. And it's just and then and then what?
And like I believe in God, I believe in heaven.
I believe in all those things, but I still I
still struggle with the fear of it.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah. Oh, I'm going to call on some of my
favorite colleagues in the death doula and hospice space, like
Lisa Paul who created something called the Death Deck and
the End of Life Deck, which you might want to
check out. Or Ailua Arthur who was on my podcast,
who just wrote an incredible New York Times bestselling book,
Briefly Perfectly Human. Is this fun party stat that I
(20:50):
have one hundred percent of us are going to die?
I was joke, like, Hi, my name's Lisa. One hundred
percent of us will experience grief multiple times in our
lives and we're all going to die and meet you.
Except I think and this goes back to what I
said before, and I'll get serious and the answer is,
I actually think having death be present in our life
(21:11):
can be a gift, meaning it helps us get really
clear about what matters and what doesn't. Because think about
all the time you spend in the day about appearance
or the right school, or the how somebody was going
to talk to me, or if they got the raids,
(21:33):
and not that we can't have goals and ambitions, And
I think that's really beautiful. But I think centering death
as a present meditation in our life actually helps us
get clear on what do we value. How do we
value our time, our relationships. Do we communicate with the
people that we love that we love them, and how
often do we do that? Do we make assumptions we
(21:55):
can do this down the road because they're always going
to be here. No they're not, and we're not either,
And the truth is we don't know. Sometimes we have
a clear you know, we have a diagnosis and a
doctor has told us and it's but a lot of
times it's not so to me, I think, first of all,
And I also think, just as a parent, I think
being really practical, like make sure you really don't let
(22:18):
that fear keep you from Do you have a will?
Do you have God? Parents? If people believe in God,
do you have you explicitly said to those people these
are the things that matter to me in terms of
how you raise them. Have you told the people you
love your arrangements. I don't want to be kept on
life support. I do want to be cremated. I don't
want to be cremated. And I tell you this because
the best gift you can give to somebody you love
(22:41):
is having all of those answers really clear. Because when
I've worked with people over time, some of the ways
in which they struggle the most, whether it's the children
of somebody, the partner, the parent, is because they question
whether they did the right thing. Sure you know, and
so recognizing that we don't have control over when the
(23:03):
end comes can help us focus on how to live.
And that's where I started the conversations, like I'm fun
at a party. I live. I do think, not that
I don't get caught up in the mundane every day
bs of life, because I'm human, right, but I think
it helps me live in with a state of awe
and wonder and appreciation. I think I'm a way better
(23:26):
friend than I used to be. I'm a better parent,
I'm a better daughter. Frankly, I'm very grateful to say
that both of my parents are still alive. My dad
is ninety two. Amazing, right, Am I great at it
all the time? No Am I the perfect daughter? No
Am I the perfect mom. Talk to my daughter Lily.
She would probably tell you not, although she does think
(23:46):
I'm pretty cool these days, which is great when they
turn twenty. By the way, if you have a teenager,
it's okay, they come around again, I promise. I think
I live really in alignment with my integrity, and I
think that comes from experiencing so many losses. So I
(24:06):
try my best to think about these losses and even
the expectation of loss. As I said, I just navigated
a year and a half of breast cancer. Thankfully not
come whatever. I've got a clear scan, but as just
a reminder of what I know. It sounds cliche, but
do it. Life is a gift. It is such a
(24:27):
gift's and the way I do that, by the way,
is when death or illness, I start spiral like I
was when chemo was taking me down to the to
the most base human form. I remember to come back
to the present moment, and that's where back to skills
mindfulness is critical, because when we start to spiral on death,
(24:49):
we are in a future, imagined state that we have
no control over and that probably actually won't come to
pass and the way we fear or imagine. So I
always come back to the present and then treat the
present as a present. What a gift? The present is
a present?
Speaker 2 (25:07):
And what do you want your biggest takeaway to be
from this book that people when people read it.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
I wrote this book to be honest in a way,
because it was the book that I didn't have when
Eric died, and then when Joe died, and when other
people died. I want people to feel held and seen
and acknowledged in their grief, in all the messy, beautiful
humanity of their grief. It's full of science, it's full
(25:33):
of personality. It's full of a judicious use of cussing,
as I always say it, and it shows I show
up as myself, both my clinician self but also as
my personal self. But it's really that compassionate companion guide
because so many of us don't have the person in
our life who really gets what grief is and can
(25:55):
and can be with us in the messiness and be
us when we're sitting in the suck, as one of
my guests called it. So I want people to feel
held and seen, just and affirmed just as they are
loved in their grief. And I really do believe that
I was able to offer that in this book.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Well, thank you for everything that you do. Thank you
for this book. It's going to help a lot of people,
and I just appreciate you taking the time. And we'll
be praying for you that everything, all your scans further
are being clear, clear and clear, clear, clear.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah, thank you. It was really wonderful spending this time
with you. I loved it.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Same. Thank you so much. Everyone, Go Get Grief is
a Sneaky Bitch, an uncensored guide to navigating loss.
Host
Jana Kramer
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com