084 How I learned to live after losing my daughter

In this episode, Brian Smith shares his lifelong relationship with death—from childhood terror to the devastating loss of his 15-year-old daughter. Instead of being broken by grief, he and his family discovered a path forward through love, communication and respect. He shares all things grief and the GEMS model.

• How Brian’s early fear of death shaped his life
• The raw reality of losing a child—and how grief rewired him
• How families can grow closer after tragedy
• Society's roles and expectations during this time
• The 4-Pillar "GEMS" Method (Gratitude, Exercise, Mindfulness, Sleep) that helped him survive 
• How to honor loss without losing yourself 

This isn’t just a story of pain, it’s a blueprint for resilience. Whether you’ve faced loss or just fear it, Brian’s journey will change how you see life, death, and healing. 

You can find Brian: 

• Website: https://grief2growth.com 
• Store with free and paid resources: https://grief2growth.com/store 
• Substack: https://grief2growth.substack.com 
• Free online grief assessment: https://grief2growth.com/assessment

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
So I had this fear of death, just tremendous fear
of death, panic attacks, allthat stuff.
The moment you take that firstbreath is that there will be a
moment when you take your lastbreath.
The big grief event in my lifeis when my 15-year-old daughter
passed away.
I absolutely 100% believe thatlife continues after our

(00:23):
physical bodies die.
So when a person dies, your lovefor them doesn't die.
We still love them, whetherthey're there or not.
We're still a family of four.
And you see my picture of Shanabehind me here in my studio.
And when my mother was leavingfor the day, she said, this was
a good day.
Nobody cried.
It's like, it's good that you'renot sad.

(00:43):
Being sad Welcome toMultispective.

SPEAKER_00 (00:58):
I'm so excited to have you here.
Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 (01:00):
It's good to be here.

SPEAKER_00 (01:01):
I'd just like to give you a bit of space to sort
of share your story and yourbackground and where it all
begins for you.

SPEAKER_01 (01:07):
That's a big question.
I'll start with in terms ofgrief.
I would say I kind of start inthe middle because the big grief
event in my life is when my15-year-old daughter passed
away.
And this was 10 years ago.
It would be 10 years ago and alittle bit less than a month
now.
As I said, she was 15.
It was a sudden transition.

(01:27):
She was healthy, volleyballplayer, basketball player, and
she passed away suddenly.
She just passed in her sleep.
So that was the beginning of my,what I would call my big grief
journey.
But going back further thanthat, as a child, I had a
terrible fear of death, which isreally weird because most kids

(01:50):
don't think about death.
But I was raised in afundamentalist Christian home,
and they talked a lot aboutheaven and hell, a lot about
hell, and all the things you hadto do to not go there and how
God was, you know, I justvisioned this angry God, and I
just didn't understand why hewas so angry.
And because I view God as kindof a monster, I was like, I

(02:10):
can't really love this God, butI have to, otherwise he's going
to send me to hell.
So I had this fear of death,just tremendous fear of death,
panic attacks, all that stuff.
That lasted until I was in my30s.
And at that time, I startedsaying, okay, I've got to figure
this out because it's driving mecrazy.
So I started studying everythingI could find about what happens

(02:32):
when we die.
What's the afterlife like?
What is Christianity are youreally right?
What do other religions sayabout this?
What does science say about it?
I'm a very scientific person.
I was a kid.
I used to take things apart andput them back together again
because I wanted to know howthey work.
So I'm like, what's the dealhere?
So that was when I was in mymid-30s.

(02:52):
It was about 20 years later whenShana passed.
And the good thing for me iswhen she did make her
transition, and you'll notice Idon't ever say that she died
because I don't believe we dodie.
So when she made her transitionListen.
I knew she was OK.
And a big part of grief is wethink of our loved ones as gone.

(03:13):
They're lost.
Their lives are over.
I didn't have to go throughthat.
But for me, it's like, well, mylife is over, though, because
this is my this, you know, whenas a person who I had two
daughters and I really felt likeI became who I was when my first
daughter was born and my otherdaughter is three years older
than Shana.
So I'm like, but what about me?

(03:35):
What do I what do I do?
What do I do with this?
And you mentioned earlier, youknow, the right way to grieve.
And it's interesting because wealways think there's a right way
to do things.
How do I do this?
Just give me the manual.
And a lot of my clients come tome like, just give me the
manual.
Give me the five steps orwhatever it is.
I know there are five stages ofgrief, they'll say.

(03:55):
So which stage am I in?
That's just not true.
There aren't five stages ofgrief.
And someone asked me the otherday, how many are there?
I'm like, infinite number ofstages.
And they're back and forth andit's up and down.
And grief is unique for everyperson.
And not just for every person,but for every relationship.
So when you have lost, say, aspouse, it's different from

(04:19):
losing a child.
When you lose a parent, it'sdifferent than losing a spouse.
When you lose a best friend, itdepends.
It's just such a multifacetedthing.
So there are some things that wecan do to help us cope with
grief.
There are some things we can doto make ourselves more
resilient.
There are some things we canunderstand about grief in

(04:41):
general, but there's noplaybook.
There's no right way to do it.
Also, last thing I'll say onthis is it's not a disease.
It's not something to recoverfrom.
It's not an ailment.
It can be here to teach us.
We can learn from it.
We can grow from it.
There's something calledpost-traumatic growth.

(05:01):
We always hear aboutpost-traumatic stress.
There's also post-traumaticgrowth.
And it can be an opportunityHmm.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (05:12):
There's so many facets to what you were just
talking about.
There's bits and pieces that Iwant to delve into your journey,
and then bits and pieces that Iwant to talk about, like the
topic of grief in general.
Starting from the early days,you mentioned that the term
death was something that youfeared.
It was debilitating for you.
It got in the way of so much ofyour health and well-being, and

(05:32):
it was partly because of whatreligion had taught you.
And you mentioned that you thendecided, okay, I've got to start
turning around this narrativenow.
I need to start to dig deep intoit.
Yeah, well, in terms of that,I'm going to start reading about

SPEAKER_01 (05:57):
it.
It started again, for me, itstarted with religion.
And it's really interestingbecause I find people on either
end of the spectrum have realproblems with death.
People who are materialists, whosay this is it, death is the
end, and we just blink out andwe're gone, they have a real

(06:18):
problem with it.
And then there's thefundamentalists in any religion.
I always talk about Christianitybecause that's what I was raised
in, but there's fundamentalistsin all religions.
And even some spiritual peopleare very fundamentalist about
their mindsets.
So what I decided to do isbasically start with a blank
slate.
What's true?
And I can only start from theblank slate.

(06:38):
So I first studied my religion,Christianity, and I found out
about the origins of the Bible.
Where did this thing come from?
Because a lot of Christiansthink it came wrapped up from
God and wrapped in leather withgold gild around the edges.
It's like, that's not the waythe Bible came to us.
It was written by hundreds ofmen, only men, over a hundreds

(07:01):
of years from differenttimelines, different types of
things in the Bible.
Some things are meant to betaken literally.
Some things are not.
Christians tend to take allthese things literally.
So I had to separate that out.
I'll learn about the way thatthe canon, we call it, was put
together, which books wereselected to go in, which ones

(07:22):
were left out.
A lot of that was political.
An idea I was taught in Sundayschool was it's perfect.
The Bible is perfect in everyword, every letter.
You can't change anything.
And that's just not true.
There are even hundreds oftranslations even now, and some
are more accurate than others.
The King James is one of theworst.
So I started with that.
And I said, okay, what does thisreally say?

(07:44):
So I went from being anevangelical or fundamentalist
Christian to I became what'scalled a Christian universalist.
And I realized the early church,most of the early church fathers
believed in what we calluniversalism, that God saves
everybody.
And And so I came to thatperspective, which really
alleviated my fear of death.

(08:05):
I mean, it was just kind of goneat that point.
But then again, went from that,like, what does Buddhism say?
What does Hinduism say?
Because I'm only a Christianbecause I was born in America to
Christian parents.
If I had been born in India, Iwould be a Hindu.
So what is Hinduism?
And I found out that all themajor religions anyway, there's
a whole lot of truth in them.

(08:26):
There's a big, giant kernel oftruth in them.
But there's all this crap aroundthem.
There's all this stuff that theylayer on that makes them feel
more, you know, more right andmore exclusive or whatever.
So I'm like, what is the core?
And then again, started lookingat science because I'm an
engineer.
My background is chemicalengineering.
So I looked at that.

(08:46):
So what did I discover?
That.
As near-death experiences tellus, it's all about love.
It's all about love.
This God that we've been told isso angry and all that stuff,
that's a projection of man ontowhat they think God would be
like.
That's not what the infinite islike.
That's not what the creator islike.
I found out there's a lot oftruth in some of the fiction

(09:10):
things we watch.
There's a lot of truth in StarWars.
There's a lot of truth in themovie The Matrix.
So I believe that there's thissource, this context, constantly
reaching out to us, that we'reconstantly reaching back to,
that we all come from and thatwe all return to.
And this trip, this life thatwe're on right now is just a

(09:30):
little blip.
It's like an adventure.
It's a vacation.
It's a trip to the amusementpark.
I wrote a piece the other day.
I referred to life as a trip tothe amusement park.
All these analogies, but it'snot the ultimate reality.
And where we come from, where mydaughter has returned to, we all
come from there.
And you talked earlier aboutfacing things.

(09:53):
And the thing, it's natural to,if something is scary, we want
to turn away from it.
And death is scary because wedon't know about it.
And anything we don't knowabout, we're going to fear.
So what do we do?
We try to pretend that we'regoing to stay young forever.
We try to pretend that we're notgoing to die.
But it's the only thing in life,the only one thing in life

(10:14):
that's absolutely certain, themoment you take that first
breath, is that there will be amoment when you take your last
breath everything else is is upfor chance yeah so why avoid the
one thing you know is coming forus certainly and you can turn
this from and that sounds maybekind of morbid it's like we're
all gonna die it's more likewe're all gonna go home we're

(10:37):
all going to we're all here onthis adventure and enjoy it
learn as much as you can whileyou're here but just like a trip
to the amusement park you go youride the rides you have the you
have the ice cream you have theBut there comes a time when
you're tired and you just wantto go home.
And that's the way I view lifenow.
So that's what I've learned in anutshell.

SPEAKER_00 (10:59):
That's interesting.
I'm not sure if you'd said this,just to clarify.
Do you think, though, that thereis life after you've left this
particular life?
Do you think that there is akarma, the soul has dues, and it
has to kind of fill or learnsomething in this particular

(11:19):
immune system?
Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 (11:21):
Yeah, that's a great question.
Now, what I've come tounderstand, a lot of concepts
from a lot of religions, Ithink, have been misunderstood.
And karma is one of the mostmisunderstood things, because
the way some people view karmais that, okay, if you do a
certain thing, there's like thisabacus or something, there's
somebody keeping score.
So you did a good thing, sosomething good is going to

(11:41):
happen to you.
You did a bad thing, sosomething bad is going to happen
to you.
And it's all got to balance outin the end.
I don't believe that's whatkarma really means.
It's really what karma meansfrom So the thing is, there is a
natural tendency, of course, ifyou put bad things out, you
create an environment where badthings are going to come back to

(12:02):
you.
If you're walking around beingmean to people all the time,
it's not very likely people aregoing to be nice to you.
So that's just a natural law.
I do believe in that.
I absolutely 100% believe thatlife continues after our
physical bodies die, and that'sbecause of all the things that
we do.
I look at it, there's like allthese pillars of information.

(12:25):
There's near-death experience.
There's mediumship.
Now there's consciousnessresearch.
There's precognition, ESP.
There's after-deathcommunications.
There's all these differentthings that add up to show
quantum physics is starting toshow that this reality is not
what we think it is.

(12:46):
So when I add all those thingsup together, I feel like I can
make a very strong case.
for the fact that the afterlifeexists as strong as I could
possibly make without havingbeen there myself.
But I've also talked to a fewhundred people who have been
there and say, yeah, when mybody was on that gurney, I was
up in the corner of the room.

(13:07):
When I had my heart attack inthe house and they put my body
in the ambulance, I went in theambulance with my body.
In fact, I talked to someone theother day and she had a
near-death experience at seven,age of seven, at one at seven
and one at nine.
I forgot which one it was.
But she had one where when shefell backwards, when she hit her
head, she left her body and wentto the hospital.

(13:30):
And I said, I've never heard ofanybody who went straight to the
hospital.
And then her body came later.
So I've talked to people thathave had these experiences.

SPEAKER_00 (13:38):
I've done one episode as well where I
interviewed somebody who had anear-death experience.
We always think that science isthe closest thing to the truth,
but science also admits thatthey haven't really found the
answers to everything.
When there's a large enoughnumber of people that can
validate or verify that this hashappened, then therefore it has
to be accepted.

(13:59):
It's just maybe there isn't ascientific evidence to prove it,
but they've never disproved it.
They've never been able to say,no, that doesn't exist.
They're just saying, give us alittle bit of time until we can
find the evidence.

SPEAKER_01 (14:12):
Yeah, that's the promissory note of science, I
think is the term that they use.
It's like they'll say, well, wehaven't figured this out yet,
but give us enough and we'llfigure it out, and there will be
a, quote, natural explanationfor it.
We will find a mechanism.
And I've studied near-deathexperiences quite a bit, and
I've seen people who areskeptics try to take them apart,

(14:33):
and they'll say things like,well, it's just the evolutionary
thing of the dying brain, andthen it fires off DMT, and you
have these experiences.
Okay, well, let's assume thatthat's true.
First of all, why would wedevelop that evolutionary thing?
How is that beneficial for youto have the most lucid
experience of your life At thetime when you're dying, why
would the body develop that way?

(14:54):
And then secondly, what aboutpeople who like my friend Penny,
who had a near-death experienceand was in the hospital and saw
her sister like several statesaway in her car driving to the
airport to go to the hospitaland knew what she was wearing.
And when her sister got there,she's like, why were you wearing
that god-awful outfit when youwere driving to the airport?

(15:15):
Now, they can't explain thingslike that.
And there's thousands of those.
I think there's about 5% of thepopulation they think has had a
near-death experience.
So when you apply that to theworld, hundreds of millions of
people have had theseexperiences.
And when you talk to them,they'll say, no, it wasn't a
dream.
No, it wasn't drug-induced.

(15:37):
It was more real than me sittinghere with you today.
And by the way, I've completelychanged my life since I've had
the experience.
Or I couldn't paint before, butnow I'm like a world-class
painter.
I couldn't play the piano.
And now we can play, people comeback with these abilities.
So yeah, they're absolutely, youknow, there's something going on

(15:58):
there that science can't explainmaterially.

SPEAKER_00 (16:01):
Can you go back a little bit to that moment when
sort of this happened in termsof like, how was the processing
mentally, emotionally for youand for your family at that
time?

SPEAKER_01 (16:12):
Yeah, that's a great question.
For me personally, Okay, so Ihad this understanding that
Shana was okay, right?
And, uh, I remember it, youknow, when it happens, when you
find someone who's no longerbreathing, like your, your mind

(16:33):
can't accept it.
So you're, you don't, you,you're, it's just, you know,
it's happening, but you justreject it.
So it feels like a dream.
Um, but I, I did have enough toknow that, like, when I was
yelling for her to come back,like, she's probably right here.
I just need her to come backinto her body.
Um, So there was that.

(16:56):
But then there was also thisthing like, okay, well, if you
truly believe what you say youbelieve, then you shouldn't be
upset, right?
Because she's okay.
She's happy, whatever.
But there is that aspect ofgrief of like, we miss that
other person.
We want them to be with usphysically.
And I remember listening to anear-death experience by Dr.

(17:18):
Mary Neal, who'd had thisexperience, and she had gone to
heaven.
She'd seen Jesus and all thiscrazy stuff and she was told her
son was going to pass awaybefore her like within like the
next 10 years or so and so shelived with that after she came
back for like about 10 years andthen her son did pass away at
like 18 or 19 and when she wastelling the story she said she

(17:40):
grieved the loss of her son andI realized that That gave me
permission to grieve because ifsomeone who has had that
experience, who's been to theother side, who knows what it's
like, who knows about the lifeplan, the soul plan, who knows
that her son's okay, knows allthis stuff to the core of her
being, if she still grieves,then I should still be able to

(18:02):
grieve.
And so I was like, okay, it'sokay for me to grieve, right?
But then there's this feelinglike, But it's not fair for me
to go on because that person'sgone and my daughter was only
15.
And so, you know, I don't wantto be here without her.
Parents, it's our job to protectour children.

(18:22):
And, you know, I need to bethere to protect her.
And then I got to the pointwhere I realized I went back to,
okay, this is what's the wayit's supposed to be.
This is planned.
I believe it's planned, not byGod, not by some other entity,
but by us.
I think we sit down before wecome in and we plan these major
points in our life.
So if this was planned, thenwhat's my plan?

(18:43):
That was her plan for her timehere.
What's my plan?
And so that's why I starteddoing the work that I do now,
because I'm like, I want to beable to share this with people
so that they don't have to gothrough the fear that I went
through when I was a child, theSo that when we grieve, that we
do it in a way that...
honors our loved one.

(19:03):
I realized that for our lovedone that's passed, you know,
it's interesting.
People will say, well, theywould want you to be happy.
And I always say, no, they dowant you.
It's not that they would wantyou to be happy.
They do want you to be happy.
They are right here with us andthey are cheering us on.
And they're like, okay, what areyou going to do with your time

(19:24):
while you're here?
Because we're all going to betogether soon enough.
So make the most of it.

SPEAKER_00 (19:29):
Would you say that your wife and your other child
your other daughter alsoprocessed it in a similar way or
what kind of effect did it haveon your family?

SPEAKER_01 (19:38):
Yeah.
For me, I was very, veryfortunate.
Now, I was the weird one.
I am the weird one, but I wasthe weird one reading these
books about near-deathexperiences and mediumship and
stuff.
I always visit myself, my wife,in the bed at night and she's
reading a romance novel for herbook club and I'm reading Gary
Schwartz, The AfterlifeExperiment.

(20:00):
So I had an advantage over them.
But my wife really, I'm reallyproud of her and my daughter
Kayla because Kayla was only 18when her sister passed.
They quickly said, okay, whatare we going to do about this?
How are we going to face it?
And my wife is, we joined anorganization called Helping

(20:20):
Parents Heal a little bit lessthan a year after Shana passed.
We became very, very active inthat.
I'm on the board of HelpingParents Heal now.
My wife is what we call a caringlistener.
So when people People arestruggling.
They reach out and they call,you know, they call one of us or
they call other people in theorganization.
So, yeah, and my wife is, shehad never been interested in

(20:42):
afterlife stuff, but she startedreading the same stuff and
listening to the same podcasts Ido and having, we've had medium
readings where we sat with amedium who's told us about our
daughter.
So, yeah, they've done, they'vedone incredible.
My daughter, Kayla, she switchedher major.
She went she became a mentalhealth counselor so she wants to

(21:05):
help people um so she's doingthat now she's 28 now um so
that's that's what she does andwe um We are on the same page.
It's like we're still a familyof four.
And you see my picture of Shanabehind me here in my studio.
Shana is a part of our lives, avery big part of our lives.
We celebrate her birthday everyyear.

(21:26):
We get together on the day thatshe passed.
And we just, we really make hera part of our lives.

SPEAKER_00 (21:32):
I love that you were able to sort of work through
this as a family together, as afamily unit.
And we're able to sort of likekeep that communication open
between you guys and sort of gothrough the process.
you know, sort of together.
I've done episodes in the pastwhere it's sort of like ripped
couples apart or it's justripped families apart just
because they're just grieving intheir own ways and maybe

(21:54):
sometimes are not able to sortof really connect over it.
I know you mentioned that youguys do celebrate events and
stuff with her.
Do you still kind of communicatewith her on a day-to-day basis?
Like, In what ways do you keepher sort of memory, I guess,
alive?
And can you walk me through thatas well?
Because people feel guiltyletting go of...

(22:18):
the memory of a person thatthey've lost.
So what was that like for youand your family?

SPEAKER_01 (22:24):
Yeah, you know, people are interesting.
We are our own worst enemies.
We beat ourselves up for holdingon to them or for letting go of
them or for what we should havedone or what we shouldn't have
done.
I've heard people who believe inthe afterlife like I do,
sometimes they'll say, well, Ifeel guilty for bothering her.
I shouldn't be bothering her alot of times.

(22:44):
She's got her thing to do.
Can we hold them back.
If I hold onto her too much,will it hold her back?
And you'll see that in somemovies and stuff.
First of all, time is very, verydifferent on the other side if
it exists at all.
Our loved ones are not so busythat they can't spend time with
us.
An analogy I use with people,like if you're calling someone

(23:07):
on the phone and they're busy,they just don't pick up.
So if you're worried aboutbothering them, fine.
Maybe if they're busy, I don'tthink they are, so they can't
talk to us.
They They just won't pick up.
So for me, it's really, reallyimportant to keep Shana in our
lives.
And grief work and the oldmodels of grief, like going back

(23:30):
to Freud, he would be like,okay, you need to get over the
fact that that person is nevergoing to be back.
They're gone.
You have an unhealthyattachment.
So Let go of the attachment.
And that, I don't believe,works.
I know it doesn't work for a lotof people.
We use something calledcontinuing bonds in more, I
think, more modern grief work.

(23:51):
Continuing bonds means we keepthe person with us.
So whether you believe thatthey're really with you or not,
and I do, but you can stillcontinue.
The love doesn't die.
So when a person dies, your lovefor them doesn't die.
We still love them, whetherthey're there or not.
So honor that.
For me, Shana's picture is allover the place.

(24:13):
There's the one behind me.
I have an Apple Watch.
My face is all pictures ofShana.
They rotate through randomly asI look at it.
I don't know if you can see itbehind me, but there's a digital
picture frame, and those are allpictures of Shana.
She's a part of my life everyday because the work I do is
because of her.

(24:33):
So it is a daily communicationwith my daughter.
The first thing I do when I walkout of my bedroom in the morning
is I say good morning to mydaughter.
So I tell people I talk to Shanamore than I talk to Kayla, who
lives 15 minutes from me,because I talk to Shana every
day, whether she's here with mephysically or not.
So in a way, she's actuallycloser And my daughter, it's

(24:56):
funny because my daughter'sboyfriend now, he never met
Shana.
But when we get together, we alltalk about Shana.
And I think he feels like heknows her because that's how
much we talk about her.
So she has a scholarship fundthat we give out a scholarship
every year.
So we gave that out a couple ofweeks ago.
So that's another way.

(25:17):
But for me, it's my daily work.
And like I said, for my wife,she meditates And I think I know
when she meditates, she connectswith Shana.

(25:53):
or anything else.
And so I know that when I seeher, she's going to say, yeah, I
want her to say you did a goodjob.
And everybody tells me thatshe's going to say that.
That's what the mediums tell me,that she's very proud of you.
And so I do live my life to makeher proud of me.

SPEAKER_00 (26:09):
What do you say to individuals that connect
memories of their lost lovedones with a guilt.
And why I say this is because Ido remember once reading on a
forum page someone who said, Ifeel really guilty because I
went through one full day notthinking about someone, the
person that I lost, the personthat I lost and loved.

(26:32):
And I haven't done that in 10years and it's the first time
that I went through a whole daywithout thinking and I feel so
bad.
Yeah.
What do you say to someone?

SPEAKER_01 (26:42):
Yeah, I'd say that's completely natural.
You know, again, I mentionedearlier, every grief is
different.
So my grandmother lived with usfrom the time I was eight years
old until the time, or actuallyprobably younger than that.
But, you know, she lived with usfor quite a while when I was
growing up.
She was like my mother in a veryreal sense.

(27:02):
So when she passed away, ofcourse, I thought about her
every day.
But it's been 45 years now.
I don't think about her everyday.
That's natural.
I mean, my friends, I havefriends that are still here.
I don't think about them everyday.
So I don't know why we'd expectto think about this one person
every single day necessarily.

(27:24):
Now, for me, my daughter was 15when she passed and she was my
daughter.
So I expect I will probablythink about her every day.
I have a friend who passed awayjust a couple of weeks ago,
really, really good friend.
And for the first week, I didn'tthink about it anything other
than him.
And it's been, you know, amonth, month and a half now.

(27:45):
And I don't think about himevery day.
And I think about him inappropriate times when I would
think about that person.
So it's, like I said, it'sdifferent for everybody, but
never feel guilt about, youknow, forgetting about somebody
and not think about them everyday.
Never feel guilty about beinghappy.
I found that people sometimeswill think, well, you know, I
should be miserable for the restof my life.

(28:06):
And I was at the party and Ilaughed.
And why was I laughing?
Or guilt about, like, for me,when I didn't cry every day
after Shana passed.
I cried every day for, I don'tknow, probably a couple years.
But I don't cry every day now.
And I don't think it would beappropriate for me to cry every
day.
I don't feel the way that I'vefelt then, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 (28:28):
I was just going to ask you about that as well.
Like, the role of crying for aperson that's grieving.
And especially, I guess, maybewith the expectations of, like,
the term men don't cry sort ofthing.
What was that like for you interms of did you ever feel any
pressure on by your community onhow to sort

SPEAKER_01 (28:51):
of present your grieving?
Usually sarcastic.

(29:11):
That's my family.
So after Shana passed, theysupported me.
It was tremendous.
But my whole family came andstayed for like a week or two.
It was great.
Much beyond what I expected.
But a couple weeks later, theycame back and they were visiting
for the day.
And I had a couple times where Ihad breakdowns.
So I would leave the room.

(29:32):
I'd go outside, go for a walk,or go up to my bedroom and have
a cry and then come back down orwhatever.
And when my mother was leavingfor the day, She said, this was
a good day.
Nobody cried.
And that was when it really hitme.
This is my family, right?

(30:14):
on you.
Men are not supposed to cry.
There's a big thing with that.
And I also will say this to you.
If you think someone is notcrying, you know, there's a guy
who's lost someone, you thinkhe's not crying, he's probably
crying when you're not around.
I would cry in the shower allthe time.
So that's just when it kind ofcame out for me.
But yeah, there's no right wayto do it, and we really need to

(30:37):
honor each other.
And you mentioned earlier aboutfamilies coming together or
growing apart.
There's a myth that when youlose a child.
I remember a friend, she saidit, she had good intentions, but
she said, you know, like 80% ofpeople who lose a child get
divorced or 60% of people wholose a child get divorced.
That's a myth.
It was written in a book in likethe 1960s.

(30:58):
I looked it up and somebodywrote it.
There wasn't any research behindit and it just kept being
repeated over and over againuntil people started believing
it.
Grief can bring you together.
It can bring you closer topeople.
So it doesn't necessarily meanyou're going to fall apart.
But also honor the other personthe way that they grieve.

(31:18):
Some people will get angry.
Some people will get sad.
Some people will turn to work.
So they might say this is a wayfor them to avoid their grief.
They might just start workingall the time.
Some people might sleep a lot.
So understand that just becausepeople aren't doing it the way
that you would do it, It doesn'tmean they're doing it wrong, and

(31:38):
it doesn't mean they didn't careabout their loved one.
I talked to a family where...
The mother wanted to look atpictures of the child and speak
the child's name.
For the father, it was toopainful.
So for him, it was like, I wantto put the pictures away and not
speak his name again.
Now, that's the way people inthe old days handled grief a lot
of times and lost a child, bythe way.

(32:00):
Siblings would say, no one eversaid his name again after he
died.
And that's because that's a wayof trying to avoid it.
So for that mother that I wasworking with, I said, it doesn't
mean your father or your husbanddoesn't love your son, it means
he loves him so much it's toopainful for him to talk about

(32:20):
it.
So I say, why don't you say likeon Saturday morning at 10
o'clock, we're going to sitdown, we're going to pull out a
box of pictures, we're going totalk about him, we're going to
cry whenever, and then we'regoing to put it away.
So maybe if you kind of like puta limit on it, maybe he could do
that and it would satisfy bothof you.
So you can come to thesecompromises where you can honor

(32:43):
them, but not let it bleedMm-hmm.

(33:03):
Last thing I'll say about thisis like, you know, like her
room, her, my, my wife loved togo in her room after she passed.
She was sitting there and shewould feel close to Shana, you
know, smell her smells andwhatever.
For me, I couldn't stand goingin her room after she passed.
I would avoid it.
Um, Both very natural reactions,nothing wrong with either one of

(33:25):
them, we just reacteddifferently.

SPEAKER_00 (33:27):
Yeah.
What did you learn about yourrelationship with your wife and
your family during this process?

SPEAKER_01 (33:34):
For my wife, She surprised both of us.
She's a much more emotionalperson than I am in terms of
expressing her emotions andstuff.
Obviously close to ourdaughters, but she and Shana and
Kayla, it was like the three ofthem.
I'm surrounded by all females,so they're a very, very tight

(33:57):
group.
So I was like, how is she goingto handle this?
What I learned was she was muchmore resilient than I thought
She might be losing a child.
It's one of those things that,you know, she had even said, you
know, probably out loud, but toherself, I couldn't stand the,
to lose my daughter.
It's like the worst thing thatcould possibly happen to me.

(34:19):
Um, my daughter, Kayla, um, Shewas 18 at the time.
I was very, very concerned forher, you know, her mental health
being an 18-year-old and goingthrough the normal stuff that
18-year-olds go through.
And her sister was like, it wasa weird combination of like her
twin and her child because she'sthree years older.

(34:41):
So they were best friends andKayla had plans for Shana where
she was going to take her andstuff.
And I learned she was a lot moreresilient than I thought.
And I think we all, We're allmore resilient than we think we
are.
We say, if that happened to me,I would just crumble.
And I tell people, no, youwouldn't.
You would do what you need todo.

(35:02):
But we also learned that tohonor the way each other does
grief, to understand, like withKayla, I would try to give her
books and stuff and give herpodcasts, and that's not the way
she processes.
So she's like, she didn't do itthat way.
And I didn't realize that'sokay.
If you have a child, you know,When you've lost someone,

(35:24):
children, teenagers handle griefdifferently than adults do.
They typically don't like totalk about it, you know, and
just want to check in, make surethey're okay, make sure you know
you're available for them.
But I learned that, you know, Ihave to honor the way that they
do it.

SPEAKER_00 (35:40):
I just want to go back to a little bit about, you
know, the outer circle of peoplethat were, you know, coming in
and out of of this of your livesduring this grieving process is
there anything any phrase thatsomeone said to you that stands
out to you anything that youlooking back on you didn't
really it didn't rub you theright way um that people can

(36:03):
avoid if they come acrosssomeone who's in their grieving
process

SPEAKER_01 (36:06):
yeah i actually wrote some of those in my book
um and it's different foreverybody so there's there's no
there's no one right thing tosay there's no one you know
there's There are some wrongthings to say.
There's the things that arepretty much universally people
don't like.
I thought you'd be over it bynow is one thing you never, ever

(36:29):
want to say.
You could have another child forsomeone who's lost a child, like
they're replaceable.
If it's someone who's lost aspouse, oh, you're young, you'll
find somebody else.
People are not...
They're not objects.
They can't be replaced.
You're not going to have anotherchild that's going to replace

(36:49):
your child.
You're not going to find aspouse that's going to replace
your spouse.
Religious things, God neededanother angel.
You know, God had a better planfor them.
As if God took your loved oneaway because, you know, and so,
yeah, that never really workswell for people.

(37:09):
One thing for me, and it'sreally subtle, but moving on,
people would say, you know,moving on.
And I'm a very visual person.
So my vision was like, okay,here's Shana.
She stopped on June 24th, 2015.
And I'm moving on, which meansI'm moving away from her.
I much prefer the phrase movingforward because I believe that

(37:34):
we move forward with our lovedones.
So a big shift for me wasrealizing that, again, my
daughter is still with me.
And as I live my life, you know,she's still living it with me.
So those are a few of thethings.
Some awkward things, you know,and there's nothing anybody can
do about this, but when you'velost a child, people say, how

(37:55):
many children do you have?
And a lot of parents strugglewith that.
They're like, you know, youthink it'd be easy, right?
It's a number.
But for me, I still have twodaughters.
I always have two daughters.
But then you get into likepeople ask you more questions.
Well, where are they?
You know, how old are they?
You know, all those things.

SPEAKER_02 (38:13):
So

SPEAKER_01 (38:14):
you have to kind of like develop strategies for how
you're going to answer this.
And for me, it's very dependent.
Depends on the situation, theperson I'm talking to, how much
do I really care?
You know, if I'm at the grocerystore and someone says, how many
dollars do you have?
I've would just say two and keepwalking.
But I had an experience onenight at a dinner.
It was a woman I knew I'd neversee again.
And she said, how many daughtersdo you have?
And I said, two.

(38:35):
And she goes, oh, where do youlive?
And I told her, are they atLakota?
And I was like, okay, yes, mydaughter goes to Lakota.
You know, how old are, and thenfinally I said, okay, well, my
one daughter has passed awaybecause I didn't really want to
get into this with her.
And then, you know, you get the,oh, I'm so sorry.
And her face gets all weird.
And I'm like, this is why, oneof the reasons I didn't want to

(38:55):
say it, but on the On the otherhand, I've always said I will
never dishonor Shana by saying Ihave one daughter because I feel
like she's standing right theregoing, you have two daughters.
So I'm not going to lie about iteither.

SPEAKER_02 (39:08):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (39:10):
Man, it's such a tough situation because I guess
it's just, it gets very hardto...
Sure.

(39:49):
So how would you suggest then,what do you feel like is a safe
sort of approach to somethinglike this, to a situation like
this?

SPEAKER_01 (39:59):
Well, the thing is...
We're all going to make mistakesbecause, and again, everybody's
reactions to certain things isdifferent.
So I tell the grieving person,I'm like, okay, I know this
isn't fair, even though you'rethe one in grief, but you also
have to give other people grace.
And I understand they're sayingthese things because they, not

(40:21):
out of malice, not to make youfeel bad, they're trying to make
you feel better.
So they're trying to, again,they're trying to take you out
of your grief, basically like,oh, you just lost your husband.
That's okay.
You can find another one.
And they don't realize howdisrespectful that is.
They're just saying it to try tolift your spirits.
So when you're talking to agrieving person, a lot of times

(40:46):
less is more.
It's better to say a little bitless.
You can ask them, how are youfeeling?
Now, it's interesting becausewhen I get on calls with people,
I'll say, how are you doing?
Which is just the thing that wesay.
We don't even think about it.
And of course, they're not Yeah.

(41:18):
What can I do to help is areally interesting one because
people that are in grief a lotof times are just overwhelmed
and they can't even think of it.
So you can offer like practicalthings like, can I cut your
grass for you?
Do you need anything from thegrocery store?
I'm making dinner tonight.
Can I make some for you?
You know, things that arereally, again, those really

(41:39):
early grief, just like physical,like getting by type of

SPEAKER_02 (41:43):
things.

SPEAKER_01 (41:44):
And then I will help people with like, Again, I just
went through this.
My friend who just lost herhusband was going back to work.
And so I'm like, you as thegriever need to have strategies
when you're going into thesesituations as to how to say,
like...
I really am not ready to talkabout this yet.
It's okay to say that.

(42:05):
Or I'm having a really roughday.
It's okay to say that you'renot...
Because we tend to come backwith fine.
I'm doing fine.
I'm doing great.
I'm doing okay.
Doing as well as can beexpected.
But...
and understand again, you aregoing to put your foot, I put my
foot in my mouth.
I've been doing this for a longtime.
I still, you know, sometimes Iwas on a, I was on an interview

(42:29):
and I was talking to someone andI know you never supposed to
compare griefs.
And I slipped and I said, youknow, there's nothing worse than
losing a child.
And the woman who wasinterviewing me said, um, I've
lost a child and I just lost myhusband.
And I can tell you, losing myhusband was harder than losing
my child.
And I'm like, oh, okay.
I know that's something Ishouldn't have said, but I just,

(42:50):
came out.
And that's okay.
You know, we're going to makemistakes.

SPEAKER_00 (42:55):
We generally, yeah, I tend to think what we think
would be, you know, maybe eitherlike minimizing the other
person's problem by, you know,offering some kind of light on
the situation or offering somekind of relief, but not knowing
how that relief might evensound.
But I love how you said, youknow, asking to offer to, I
don't know, maybe make an extrameal for them or do something.

(43:15):
Focus on the how are you feelingright now is focusing on the
present moment and not bringinga person into that past or into
a future hey let's just let'sjust take it minute by minute
you know how are you in the nextfive minutes kind of thing

SPEAKER_01 (43:29):
yeah and that's really really important when
people in that early phase ofgrief to understand that um and
i know this from personalexperience i can't think about
five weeks from now five daysfrom now you know don't talk to
me about 15 years from now iwould get angry when people
would talk to me about thefuture because i was like first

(43:50):
of all i'm not going to be herei had no plans of being here
it's it's going to be 10 yearsnow um I'm like, I'm focusing on
like now.
And I'll tell people that I'mlike, it's okay to focus on the
next breath, you know, forgetabout like this evening even.
And I saw something in the day Ithought was really profound.
It's like, you know, you don'thave to make it till next week.

(44:12):
You only have to make it till430.
So if you're, you know, ifyou're back at work after you've
lost someone and you're having areally tough time thinking about
the future, just focus on makingit till five o'clock.
And I realized this when I usedto have panic attacks and I
realized this about the wholeidea fear because a lot of us
live in so much fear.
Fear is all about the future.
Fear is all about a future thatI don't want and participate and

(44:33):
anticipate in this future that Idon't want.
And if you go into the momentand literally right in the
moment, no matter what situationyou're in, As long as you're
able to draw a breath, you'reprobably okay.
Now, I may be hungry and I mayneed food in the future.
I may not have any money and I'mgoing to need something in the
future.

(44:53):
But right now, in this moment,I'm okay.
So I try to get people to dothis.
This is why I was talking aboutthe practices that I do every
day.
One of the practices ismindfulness.
Because if we're spinning out,figure out where am I living?
Am I in the past or am I in thefuture?
Because you're probably not inthe present.
If you're in the present, you'reprobably not going to be

(45:14):
spinning out.

SPEAKER_00 (45:15):
What are some of the other practices that you do?
Tell us more about those.

SPEAKER_01 (45:19):
The first one is gratitude, which I always kind
of smile when I say that becausewhen I first heard about
gratitude practice, I was like,that's a bunch of crap.
Again, I'm an engineer, right?
How is this going to change mylife, me just thinking that
things are okay?
And I've realized afterpracticing this for many years
now that it actually is one ofthe most beneficial practices

(45:42):
you can have because there'salways something going right in
your life and there's alwayssomething going wrong.
Biologically, we tend to focuson what's going wrong because
our brains say, I'm here to keepyou alive.
We got to look out for thethings that are going wrong.
So we have to rewire our brainto look for things that are
going right.
And especially when we're ingrief, it's really easy to say,

(46:05):
nothing ever goes right for me.
My life just sucks.
I am cursed.
Everything bad happens to me,you know, etc., If we force
ourselves to say, you know, I'lljust give you an example.
You've lost your spouse.
You've lost someone that youreally love.
And you could say, well, itsucks.

(46:25):
They're not going to be with mefor the next 30 years.
We had these plans, blah, blah,blah.
But what about the fact that youdid have 30 years together?
What about the moments that youdid, the memories that you have?
The fact that you may have somesavings, you know, whatever.
So we can always focus on one orthe other.
So gratitude, and just realsimply to wrap this up is, for

(46:47):
me, I start with first thingwhen I wake up in the morning,
every morning before I even openmy eyes, I'm like, where's some
things I'm grateful for.
It may be that I'm, you know, myfeet work.
I can go for a walk.
During COVID, you know, I wasgrateful for the fact that I
could breathe because we takethose things for granted.
I'll be in the shower sometimes.
It's like this water feelsreally good.

(47:08):
I'm glad I'm able to have a hotshower.
So I try to focus on the thingsthat we take for granted.
You know, sitting here talkingto you right now, it came down
to me one day because I heardabout someone having a power
outage.
That feeling when the power goesout that you're frustrated
You're flipping light switches.
The food's going bad in therefrigerator.
There's that feeling thathappens when the power comes

(47:30):
back on, where it's just likeyou're relieved and you're just
so glad to have lights, right?
What if we did that every day?
What if we just sat andimagined?
So that's the gratitude thing.
Exercise is the second part ofit.
So I walk six miles everymorning before I start work.

(47:51):
So that's my exercise.
It's whatever works for you.
But moving your body, whetherit's yoga, walking, lifting
weights, playing pickleball,whatever it is, that's the body
part of it.
Mindfulness is the third part.
And then practicing self-care.
And part of the exercise, theflip part of that is sleep.

(48:13):
I know sleep is very, veryimportant.
So make sure you're getting theright amount of sleep and stuff.
And then self-care.
Just take care of yourself.
Focus on what you need in themoment.
I'm blessed to be able to workfrom home, so I meditate twice a
day.
Right after I get done with thiswith you, I've got another
meeting, but then I'll do mymeditation.

(48:34):
I'll take a break this afternoonand I'll meditate.
Sometimes it's like, I don'tfeel like working right now.
I'm going to watch a movie.
Just that little thing, doingsomething for yourself.
So those are the four practicesthat I do.
And I do them every day.
And I found that that's reallyhelpful.

SPEAKER_00 (48:55):
And this can sort of apply to anyone that's going
through a difficult time intheir life, whether it be in a
grieving situation, be it in abreakup, be it in whatever the
situation is.
But yeah, self-care.
Self-care, journaling,meditation, mindful practices,
gratitude.
These are the things that wetalk about.
So many people talk about howthey helped overcome or not

(49:19):
necessarily overcome, but, youknow, live through that
adversity or that difficultchallenge in their lives.
But yeah, sometimes it's reallyhard to put into practice,
right?
Especially when we're feelingreally, really low or hurt.
But it's really nice to havethese kind of reminders every
once

SPEAKER_01 (49:35):
in a while.
you're in grief and goingthrough difficult times but it's
something we should bepracticing all the time anyway
because it helps build thatresilience you're building that
muscle that muscle and it is amuscle I tell people you know
you have to you have to workthis you have to develop it so

(49:56):
and like I said I came up withthis framework because it's
literally something that I thatI follow and it's kind of funny
because I do I do my gratitudewhen I wake up then I do my
exercise and then I do mymindfulness so I actually do it
the acronym is GEMS in case Idon't think I said that but the
acronym is GEMS so by putting itinto a framework and I've
actually written a book that youknow people can get and say okay

(50:18):
I'm going to start what's andwhat does it look like for me it
doesn't have to look like what Isaid I mean you might do it
differently you might do somepeople like journaling so you
might do journaling for yourgratitude you might do it in the
evening before you go to bedyour exercise I interviewed a
woman she had lost her motherand she was going through grief
and people were like well youshould walk she's like I tried I
didn't like it you should doyoga she didn't like yoga she

(50:40):
tried all these different thingsand then she said she found
power lifting she goes powerlifting turns me on it was the
repetitiveness whatever it wasand that that turned her on so
find what's what works for youthis

SPEAKER_00 (50:51):
is going to actually segue into the the final
question of the night but do youfind that sharing your story
sharing your journey and helpingother people through their
journey does that help is that aform of self-care for you and is
that something you would alsoencourage people to do in their
own Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (51:10):
Yeah.
One of the things about being ingrief, one of the needs of
people who are in grief is tohave the grief witnessed, have
their grief understood.
So find a safe place to shareyour story.
It's got to be a safe place,right?
So find like a Helping ParentsHeal or another organization
like that.
There's so great now.

(51:30):
There's so many affinity groups.
I have a small community, acircle community that people can
join.
But find a safe place to shareyour story.
share your story with.
And I've found that Once people,if there is an arc of grief, and
as I said, I try to avoid stagesbecause I don't believe there
are five stages or anything likethat.

(51:51):
But when you get to the pointwhere you're sharing your story
to help other people, I thinkthat's kind of like maybe kind
of a final stage to get back tothat.
That is like, that's reallyhelpful for people.
I found in interviewing peopleon my podcast, you know, it's
like once you've found this, youwant to tell people.

(52:13):
Yeah.
You want to help people.
I find near-death experiences,it's really interesting because
some people will say, oh,they're lying.
They're just making it up.
I'm part of IAN's, InternationalAssociation for Near-Death
Studies.
I've heard so many people tellthe story.
They're not making it up.
They're very reluctant a lot oftimes to even tell their story.
But they feel like they have aresponsibility to share with

(52:34):
people.

SPEAKER_02 (52:34):
And

SPEAKER_01 (52:35):
I think that some of us, for some of us, it's not
true for everybody.
We want to say to people, it'sgoing to be okay.
You're going to be okay I wasjust talking with a woman
yesterday, and people ask me,like, well, Brian, doesn't it,
like, make you depressed talkingto people who have lost people
all the time, you know, peoplethat are crying and stuff?

(52:56):
And I'm like, no, not at all.
It's just the opposite.
This woman I got on with her wasa discovery call, and I'd never
met her.
And, I mean, before she even,like, I said, tell me about you
or tell me about your loved one,and she just starts crying.
But by the end of the half hour,I could just tell things had
lifted.
She saw hope.
And so that makes me feelbetter.

(53:18):
So I love doing that.

SPEAKER_00 (53:19):
Talk to me about your podcast, about the work
that you're doing.
Introduce our listeners to allof it.

SPEAKER_01 (53:28):
Yeah, my podcast is called Grief to Growth.
It's grief, the numeral two,growth.
And my website'sgrief2growth.com.
On my podcast, I interview, it'sa really broad range of people.
It's near-death experiencers.
It's mediums who have, you know,communicated with people in the
afterlife.

(53:48):
It's people who've gone throughany type of a grief, you know,
losing a person or gone through,some people, multiples.
I mean, some people have gonethrough just crazy stuff and I
want to it's I guess I hate theword woo woo and I'm not even
I'm not even real big on theword spiritual because I'm a I'm

(54:10):
a pragmatist when it comes downto it I'm like what works what
makes sense and I'm really sickof in our society we've said
spirituality is over here andand science is over there and
you can believe in one but youcan't believe in the other so I
interview a guy named DavidGaggins who He's an electrical
engineer, but he's also ametaphysicist.

(54:31):
And he was the one that reallyintroduced me to the term
metaphysics.
And he's like, when we look atphysics, we think of just the
material stuff.
But there's all this other stufftoo.
So I'm really digressing.
So what I do is I work withpeople.
I do the podcast.
I have a YouTube channel.
I work with people one-on-one.
I have a circle community.
If you go to grief2growth.comslash community, you can join my

(54:53):
circle community.
So you can find me.
You just Google Brian D.
Smith or Google grief2growth.
to growth.
And you can find me in all thoseplaces.
I have two books.
The first one is called, uh,grief to growth, buried, not
planet.
And that was the book I wrotenot too long after Shana passed.
And it's really my experiencegoing through grief.
Some of the things to say, someof the things not to say, uh,

(55:13):
what to expect when you're ingrief, what is, what is grief?
It's just real basic, veryshort, easy to read book.
Um, and then the second book Iwrote, it's called gems of
healing.
And it's based on my, mypractice.
I And it goes into what thosethings are scientifically.
Why do they work?
How do we know they work?

(55:35):
It gives you some examples ofthings that you can do yourself.
And I tell people, you know,it's got to be something that's
comfortable for you.
So, again, I give my examples.
I just gave you my examples ofmy framework.
But fill it out however it worksfor you.
But I think you need some ofthose four elements in there.
You know, I think it's reallyimportant to have one of those

(55:56):
four elements in there.

SPEAKER_00 (55:58):
Brian.
And thank you so much for beingon the podcast and sharing your
journey and actually so muchinsight as well for people to
take stuff away from.
Really, really informative andyeah, amazing.
Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 (56:10):
Yeah, thanks.
I really enjoyed it.

UNKNOWN (56:14):
Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 (56:14):
I'm Jenica, host and writer of the show, and And

(56:44):
you're listening toMultispectre.