November 28, 2025 • 61 mins
Grief isn’t just an emotion, it’s energy that lives in the body until we face it.
I sit down with Meghan Jarvis, a trauma therapist and grief mentor who’s helped countless people find their way through loss. Meghan shares her own story of heartbreak, how grief and trauma intertwine, and the six simple practices she teaches to move that heavy energy through the body and back toward healing. We also talk about midlife transitions, why so many of us feel stuck, and how community can bring us back to life.
👉 Tune in for a real, hopeful conversation about what it truly means to grieve, heal, and grow.
Timestamps:
00:00 Childhood loss that led her to grief work
02:13 Uncovering long-buried trauma
06:02 What trauma teaches about safety and fear
09:29 Grief as energy moving through the body
11:07 How stored grief affects physical health
13:02 Losing her parents and lessons learned
17:29 Checking into treatment and finding purpose
19:32 The vagus nerve and how the body heals
22:19 Midlife transitions and hidden grief
24:18 Helping clients rewrite their stories
26:12 The six pillars of the Grief Mentor Method
31:11 Mindfulness, nourishment, and rituals for healing
39:13 Why midlife brings old losses back
42:21 Signs of unresolved grief
43:55 Finding meaning and joy after healing
47:43 MEA as a space for renewal
51:44 Meghan’s wisdom bumper sticker
Learn more about MEA at https://www.meawisdom.com/
#MidlifeHealing #GriefJourney #EmotionalHealing #MeghanJarvis #LifeTransitions #MidlifeGrowth #HealingAfterLoss #MindBodyConnection #GriefSupport #TraumaRecovery #FindingPurpose #PersonalGrowth #MidlifeAwakening #MentalHealthAwareness #ChipConley
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I define grief as the energy that's created in your body on
account of loss. And so for some people that
might feel like panic and for other people that might feel
like deeply spiritual or religious.
But it, it is an energy that we end up sort of having inside of
us. And our culture prefers if we
push it down. Like we get like maybe 3 to 5
days and then it's like, are youstill on that note of feeling
(00:24):
sad and hard? Welcome to the Midlife Chrysalis
Podcast with Chip Conley, where we explore how midlife isn't a
crisis, but a chrysalis, a time of profound transformation that
can lead to the most meaningful chapter of your life.
Well, I'm excited about this onetoday.
(00:46):
First of all, it's Chip Conley, a midlife chrysalis.
This episode is really meant to be practical.
We have some incredibly famous people on this podcast.
I'm really honored that they join us.
And often they're telling us about their life.
But we don't have a lot of therapists on this podcast.
And today we have a therapist who's not only been an MEA alum,
(01:07):
but they are actually going to be teaching at MEA this upcoming
winter at our Santa Fe campus. Megan Reardon Jarvis is somebody
who found her groove in midlife around age like late 40s.
She's a mother, she has three kids.
She's, you know, she was a therapist, but she was doing it
part time. And, and then at some point she
(01:29):
realized that her specially in trauma was now starting to shift
to especially in, in grieving and learning how to help people
find grieving practices. It was very personal for herself
and she tells a a quite a personal story about her own
grieving. And then she has now written a
(01:50):
couple books and has two more books coming out soon.
And she has a, you know, a wholegrief festival and she's become
sort of a big time person in the, the grief world.
So I think you're going to find this to be a very practical and
applicable episode, especially if you're somebody like me who
(02:11):
tries to run from their their emotions.
So I hope you enjoy it, Megan. It's so good to have you here.
So for a lot of us, grief is something we don't want to talk
about, nor do we want to talk about trauma.
(02:32):
So I wanted, I want you to give us your personal story that has
LED you to being one of the world's leading experts on these
topics. And what and and then also a
little bit about how your point of view on that is a little baby
different than some other folks out there?
Well, first of all, thank you somuch for having me.
(02:54):
It's so good to see you and I amreally excited to be talking
particularly to you and the MEA community about my experience
with grief because I feel like we match up in that idea that
over time you end up sort of having a different experience
than the one that you thought you were starting when you went
(03:16):
to Graduate School and when you.So I have, I live in Washington
DCI have been a trauma therapistspecializing in grief and loss
for 22 years. I had a small private practice.
I have a bunch of kids, three kids, and it was just a perfect
match, the grief, my picking to be a grief specialist really had
(03:39):
to do with an early childhood experience, someone that I call
a cousin beloved to my family drown when I was nine years old.
And I think most people in healing professions have some
hard story that they work to heal themselves.
So that was my experience. I went to therapy in my early
20s, had a lot of self consciousness, a lot of
(04:04):
reactivity that I felt like my peers didn't have.
And in that very first therapy session, I was there because of
a breakup. I had gone through the world's
worst breakup, but I really genuinely felt like I wasn't
recovering the way I had seen other people recover.
I thought my breakup at that time was the world's worst
breakup. We do catastrophize when we're
(04:25):
young. It is one of the things that we
get better at as we get older iswe don't catastrophize quite as
much. But.
True. Well, the and and the more you
live through, the more you realize that you can live
through. But at that time, I really
didn't think I was going to livethrough this breakup.
I was so deeply attached to thisperson.
He was. I had sort of assigned all my
hopes and dreams to this relationship.
It was the first real relationship that I was in.
(04:46):
So I went to this therapy session only because an A sort
of elder in my office, I was working in social policy at the
time, kind of passed me a name, right, and said, you should go
see this person. I felt really deeply ashamed
that I needed to go to therapy. And I went in and cried for the
50 minutes and said to the therapist, you know, I'm not,
(05:07):
how am I ever going to get over this and my life will never be
good again. And we get right to the 50
minute hour and she says, just out of curiosity, did anything
bad ever happen in your childhood?
And I am crushed if I'm crushed because I'm like, oh, this woman
was not paying attention. This is not about blaming my
family or my siblings. This is about a breakup.
(05:29):
And so I said no. I said no nothing.
I had a really wonderful childhood, five brothers and
sisters, you know, loving family.
And I left, and I was like, damn, I'm going to have to find
somebody else. Or maybe therapy doesn't work.
And by the time I'd gotten back to my house, this person was in
Georgetown. I got back to my house in
Capitol Hill, and I was like, well, actually, you know what?
(05:50):
When I was 9, Chris drowned and we were all there at the beach
and, you know, my mom had PTSD and we never talked about it
again. I had literally tucked it away
so tightly that I didn't think it had any impact.
And so then I was deeply curious, like, oh, maybe this
lady is actually super smart andintuitive, right?
So I go back and I'm like, hey, so I lied.
(06:13):
I didn't mean to lie, but no one's ever asked me this before.
And I've literally never spoken about it since I was a child.
This is a thing that happened. And she was just this very
effusive and easygoing woman. And she said, yeah, no, I knew.
I knew something had happened. And then she sort of unfolded
the trauma story for me and saidloss, early childhood loss, has
(06:39):
been sort of a North star in theway in which you've experienced
the rest of the world. So Fast forward, I went to
therapy, I went to social work, school, I became a therapist.
I trained in everything I could get my hands on.
And because grief is something we avoid, there are not a lot of
grief training. So instead I took trauma
trainings because the loss of someone is a trauma.
(07:01):
What would you how would you define the difference between
trauma and grief? A trauma is an event or a series
of events that is negative and some therapists would say
overwhelming to your central nervous system.
So your brain, your spinal cord,and a lot of people don't know
your optic nerve is part of yourbrain.
So it overwhelms you. It's too much information.
(07:22):
And so that could be you thoughtyou were going to die.
It could just be you got deeply confused and felt really afraid.
But a trauma is a bad event. COVID was a trauma.
The importance of this, though, is that Trump, not all traumas
leave people traumatized. COVID for some people, no
question, it was a trauma. But for some people that was the
(07:44):
best, you know, they were livingtheir Oprah best life in COVID.
So really traumatized is the part that's the most
significant, which is traumatized is what is the
meaning your system makes of thebad event.
What do you think your meaning was from that 9 year old event?
Was it to not was it to not talkabout the things that were most
(08:06):
troubling in one's life and, andto just stuff it?
I mean, what? What does a traumatized person
tend to do? Without particularly with
childhood trauma, which again, can be like a signal event, or
it can be a, it can be a long term series of, you know, it
could be everything from my dad never hugged me and I needed to
be hugged or you know, the terrible things that can happen
(08:27):
to kids in their life. What happens is you begin to
live your life with that meaningas though it is a truth.
So for me the thing I knew at 9 was adults didn't keep kids
safe. After my parents died I went
through all of their things and sorted through their house which
was really horrible and also a deep honor.
(08:49):
And one of the things I found was my my mother had kept my
report cards from I was going into 4th grade.
And the report card said things like Megan is a bright but angry
child. And I remember, and I write
about this in my memoir, end of the hour.
I remember reading this book called The Red Fern Grows, which
is ostensibly about children, but it's also about dogs.
(09:12):
And one of the dogs dies a kind of violent death in the book.
And people, the kids came in these little, you know, 9 and 10
year olds were like, Oh my God, the dog and the axe and the
terrible thing. And I remember sitting there
being like, you know, the equivalent of like a high school
Stoner, like with my feet on thedesk, like dogs, like dogs don't
even matter, like adults can't even keep kids safe.
(09:36):
And I just remember feeling one,and this is a hallmark of
trauma, feeling very different than every other kid that was
there, feeling very separate from what looked like the the
rest of my cohort. And also just having really
intense feelings and not really understanding why.
And because it had happened in the community that I, my parents
(09:58):
ultimately lived there. But at that time, we were just
summer, we were just people who went there in the summer.
When I pivoted to go back to school, nobody knew anything
about this. They're, they weren't part of
the community that was impacted.And so it was alternately the
most significant and terrible thing that had ever happened to
my whole family and my whole town and also not significant
(10:18):
enough to even mention to my teachers or the school.
And I don't blame my parents, bythe way.
I mean, they were much younger when this happened to my family
than I am now. They navigated it in that way
that you did in the 80s, which is like, don't talk to, you
know, kids about hard things. That makes it worse.
But so that trauma then sort of set like, I hate.
(10:39):
I never took risks. I never took risks as a child
because I understood that, like,you could just be doing a normal
thing and your sibling could dieor you could die.
I lived in constant fear that myoldest sibling, my older
sibling, my older brother Pat, Ijust lived in constant fear of
him dying because he was around the age of that kid.
(11:01):
And then when I made attachments, they were either
kind of like really lightweight,like I don't really care about
you that much, or I'm going to die without you, which is what
that therapist sort of picked upon.
You're a jaded Gen. Xer.
I mean, but not because you're aGen. extra, but because, I mean,
I can hear it. I can hear man.
(11:22):
You. You must have been.
Yeah. That must have been hard to.
So. So now juxtapose that versus
grief. Trauma can Can trauma lead to
grief? Yeah.
So I define grief as the energy that's created in your body on
account of loss. So it's just like the natural
reaction, the way that like, youknow, you have energy inside
your body when you're hungry, you can feel it.
(11:43):
So grief is the energy that's created inside your system
naturally on account of your loss.
And so for some people that might feel like panic and for
other people that might feel like deeply spiritual or
religious. But it, it, it is an energy that
we end up sort of having inside of us.
And our culture prefers if we push it down.
(12:04):
Like we get like maybe 3 to 5 days and then it's like, are you
still on that note of feeling sad and hard?
Get over. It yeah.
So the trauma, the trauma is theevent.
Traumatized is the meaning. And grief is the energetic, the
noun that's inside your body. And grieving is the verb of
moving that energy through your system.
(12:25):
And grieving is the thing that most people don't know how to
do. So I stood in front of this big
audience of therapist last Marchand just said, can anyone tell
me what grieving is aside from crying?
And these are therapists. And it was like 90 seconds of
crickets before somebody said, like, well, also it can show up
(12:46):
as anger. And I was like, yeah, it can.
And we kind of got the ball rolling.
But the reality is we think of grief as something we're trying
to avoid. Like, if you've experienced
loss, it kind of makes you a loser.
And we just don't make room for it.
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(13:09):
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(13:30):
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meawisdom.com/midlife Book. This is a a tough episode for me
because I I am somebody who likes to outrun my emotions and,
and actually to be quite honest though in the last few days I've
been in sort of a sad place for some reasons I may not go into.
(13:52):
But I think the fear I have is if I really surrender to grief,
I will go down that well and I don't know where it's going to
take me. And I lost 5 male friends to
suicide between 2008 and 2010. And I had some suicide ideations
like I do not want to grieve because it's dangerous.
(14:15):
And yet the other side of it is if I don't grieve, I store it in
my body and it becomes cancer. Guess what?
Chip has cancer. So I'm not saying that's the
only reason I have cancer, but but it is certainly your body
keeps score as as has been said.So tell me a little bit more
about what you've learned about grief over the past few years as
(14:36):
you moved from trauma, because that was your specialty before.
Is that right? And you've you've written books
about trauma. Yeah.
How many books have you written?So I've I have two published and
two more that will be coming out. 1 is a novel, which is just
crazy because I've written a memoir and I've written a
clinical book. Can anyone tell me?
(14:56):
And what I would say is they're both at the intersection of
trauma. So when I wrote about my my
memoir is really about my personal experience with PTSD
after my mother died. So my dad died in 2017 and he
had cancer. That diagnosis, it was sort of
like from, you know, the day of his diagnosis to his death was
(15:18):
about a year and a week, which is exactly what the doctors told
us to expect. And I had what kind of?
Cancer. He, it was small cell cancer,
not, it didn't have a specific origin, but so it's like lung
cancer and it's a, it's a death sentence when you discover small
cell cancer and they kind of, they have a sense of the
trajectory and it's pretty set. So my dad was one of those
(15:40):
people who was able to sort of, you know, participate in his own
death. And I, I really chose to be in
it with him. And his death was very sad and
very hard. And I did some therapy around it
and I was able to sort of like Iwas on a horse.
I went down the path, I stayed on my horse.
(16:00):
But it was a difficult ride. And I still navigate, you know,
my dad's death. I still miss him when I see
things that he would have loved or books or TV shows.
I wish I could call him, but it didn't traumatize me.
When my mom died two years later, I was on vacation with
her. She'd had an illness that we all
sort of were calling a stomach bug.
She went to sleep and she didn'twake up.
(16:22):
And I was with her in her house.And I, I want to tell the
audience this because they, I think it's important.
My mother had seen all six of her kids in that week, which is
extraordinary. We live all over the place.
She had visited her brother, which she only sees once a year.
The day before she died, she drove to her friend, who was a
Monsignor to get a blessing. She was deeply religious.
(16:42):
She died with her rosary in her hand, wearing her favorite
pyjamas in her bed. And it was my husband.
Yeah. I don't know if she knew.
I mean, she may have known. I don't know if she knew what I
would. The reason I tell that story is
her death was not traumatizing. Her death wasn't the trauma.
Her death was beautiful. What it did to me was the was
(17:06):
what was traumatizing. I was not aware how oriented my
life was to checking in with her.
It had gotten much worse or it Ihad relapsed as they described
it, because when my mom experienced the death of that
teenager, she felt incredibly guilty because she had been on
(17:28):
the beach that day. I didn't feel guilty really as a
nine year old, but my mom didn'tand she had flashbacks and there
was no real treatment. EMDR hadn't been invented yet.
And I did a lot of trying to sort of backstop for her as a
nine year old. I did a lot of cleaning and
organizing and listening to makesure she made it to bed.
I did the same thing after my dad died, and I didn't even
(17:49):
notice that I did it. I was checking in.
I was making sure she had what she needed when her refrigerator
broke. I was trying to manage that
system from DC, even though she was on Cape Cod.
And when she died, I-1 felt unbelievable.
The very first thing that that happened.
So I was driving to pick up my godson.
I had this sensation of water breaking.
(18:10):
I was so so viscerally that I looked down to expecting to see
wet. And when I.
It was it was unlike any other experience I've ever had in my
life. And when I looked up, I saw the
word she died. So I knew my mother had died
before and he, you know, I knew she was dead.
I called my husband. He was back at our house.
And I said, have you seen my momtoday?
(18:32):
And he said no. And I was like, I think she
died. And so I had this sort of
knowing and then when he told me, I immediately, the very
first thought I had was it's your fault, Megan, that she
died. You should have done something
different, which is really standard for grievers.
We have these. If only I why didn't I?
(18:53):
I wish I should have ruminationsthat can occur And they really,
when they occur and they don't go away and they don't listen
and they get they really are an indication that you are unwell.
It becomes sort of like an OCD thought.
So I had this meta of knowing that this was bad, that this was
happening to me because that's what I treat people for.
(19:15):
And knowing that it was getting more and more intense and sort
of seeing the writing on the wall, like my central nervous
system is not lessening in its intensity in, in feeling
overwhelmed and ultimately having to call a colleague and
say, I am not OK. I've thrown, I came down into my
basement to exercise because it's important to move grief
(19:35):
through the body and threw my back out so significantly.
I had bruises for four months onmy shins out of the I couldn't
get off the basement floor. It's like that standard kind of
Liz Gilbert story of everything falls apart.
Then I called my colleague and she said, I know, you know, what
you have to do. And what I had to do was check
myself into the same inpatient facility that I had sent my most
(19:56):
intense clients, the ones who were really, really unwell.
And people say I didn't have a, you know, I couldn't fall apart
because I had three kids. I had three kids.
They were little. And I couldn't get off the floor
of the basement. So I ended up checking myself
into an inpatient facility whereif you think of what your
college schedule look like, that's what my treatment
(20:19):
schedule look like. I was doing equine therapy, I
was doing sound therapy, I was doing movement therapy.
And I was there for just under amonth.
And when I came out of that, I was like a woman possessed
because one, I felt like I needed to apologize to my
clients. I felt like it was like they had
been describing France all this time.
(20:40):
And I had been like, sure, I sawa movie about France and this
was going to France. Like, oh, this is what salted
butter is. This is what you were trying to
tell me. And two, I really felt like,
wow, our culture does not get this.
They have no, there's no space. There's no room.
And we just as you just described, I mean, you have had
a lot of loss in a short period of time.
(21:02):
And that is part of how we become overwhelmed.
And that does put us at risk of being traumatized the way I was.
But there's so much that we can do to create a personalized
daily practice that we don't do.And we know it from neuroscience
and we know it from the trauma modalities that can set us up to
heal rather than to kind of go down.
(21:26):
And when I came out of treatment, I was like, Oh my
God, we, we lie and we minimize and we do that because we're so
afraid of this. And what I do to your point
about being afraid is I teach the neuroscience and the
bioscience. Everyone has the same fear that
you do, which is if I let myselfgo there, I'm going to
(21:46):
essentially lose my mind. I will lose myself to grief, but
we have this thing called the vagus nerve, and the vagus nerve
is a superhighway that sends messages.
And just to be clear, just to beclear, this is not about having
nerve in Las Vegas. The Vegas is spelled VAGU.
S and. Explain what the vagus?
(22:07):
Nerve. Yeah.
So the vagus nerve is part it's it is the superhighway that
essentially is the mind body connection.
It's part of our parasympatheticnervous system.
We have two, we have two, an activation system and a calming
system inside our brain that likes homeostasis.
So they, they, they kind of liketurn the hot water on and then
(22:27):
the cold water on to get tepid. That's the job.
And when you are too much in distress, the vagus nerve, when
you are too activated in your sympathetic system, the
parasympathetic nervous system, which houses this vagus nerve
that connects your brain down into your body, turns on.
And it will, when you're crying too hard, do exactly what it
(22:49):
does for infants. When it develops at four months
old, it will send you to sleep. So when we let babies cry it out
at four months, it's because that's when the vagus nerve
fully forms, and it allows us toactivate this sense of
exhaustion and cooling down and calming down.
So we have about 11 to 13 minutes of real distress inside
(23:13):
our system before the vagus nerve says that's enough.
That's too energetically exhausting.
We're going to let you rest now,and then you fall asleep.
Generally speaking, I'm not. There are people for whom they
become psychotic and they get unwell, but the general
population has a vagus nerve that takes some care with it.
So this is sort of like if you're driving on a mountain Rd.
(23:36):
At night and it's scary, you know, the vagus nerve is are the
guardrails that make sure that you don't drive off the road.
Yes. And what's so important and I
think has been missing in some ways from the grief conversation
is talking to people about what a full body experience is.
(23:59):
You know, people, I've had many people say grief is too
personal, you can't teach it. But if you go at it almost from
a human biology perspective, theway that you would teach a
class, you know, a 6th grade class on health, there's plenty
that we can teach you about the 12 systems that are in your body
and how they're impacted by quote UN quote, stress.
(24:19):
There's a lot that's been studied about stress.
But when you actually say to somebody, what is the stress,
it's always they're getting divorced, they're having
financial problems, they're having a health issue, someone
just died. All of those are losses.
They're all loss. These people come to MEAI mean
these are these are many of the transitions that happen in
(24:41):
midlife. So that, I mean, when I, when I
first heard of you, you all, I was like, wow, we are having the
same conversation. It's like you're coming through
the door and I'm coming through the window.
You know, I think what happens to folks is they then get
diagnosed with anxiety or they can they get diagnosed with
depression, which they fit the diagnostics right?
(25:01):
Like, oh, you've been sad for more than, you know, six weeks,
but you know, that's depression.But when you look at what's
driving the depression, the depression is your sister died.
You can treat the depression, but the depression really is a
symptom and, and what we need tohave our practices around.
How do we honor the grief experience?
And you all at MEA do this gorgeously.
(25:25):
I mean, I, I was lucky enough todo a workshop with you and Pico
Iyer and it was not about grief yet the conversation had so much
transition. And with every life transition,
there is loss. Every single transition we go
through, we're moving towards something, but we're also moving
away from something. And there's no reason not to be
(25:45):
able to acknowledge that other than we generally don't practice
it. So when kids are graduating from
high school, I always encourage their family to say, what are
you excited about? Like, where are you going to
college and what are you? And what is going to be tough to
leave behind in your community? Just to acknowledge that every
time we have a loss of some kind, it means that there is a
(26:10):
transition happening for us. Sometimes we're leaning towards
the transition. Oh, I'm so excited to be moving.
Sometimes we're really more oriented toward the loss.
I can't believe this. My marriage has ended.
But we need a practice so that we can acknowledge, you know,
where we are and then how to kind of attend to the energy.
If it's more anxious, attend to it that way.
(26:32):
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(26:54):
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wholenewlighttakethepathfinderquiz@meawisdom.com/quizSo you've talked about grieving
practices and let's let's now put the shoe on the other foot.
You're now a 23 year old comes in to meet with you just like
you did all those years ago, andyou can identify pretty quickly
(27:18):
that there's something behind the fact that they feel listless
or or angry. What are the kinds of practices
as a therapist that you can helpa client with when they have
unresolved grief? When, when someone comes in, I
(27:39):
think one of the first things that that I am holding is what
is the story that they tell themselves about what, what has
happened to them? Sometimes updating the narrative
and helping them see that they're that, that the way that
they're telling the story, the way that they're experiencing
the story is putting sort of a limit around there.
And you all talk about this, buthaving some curiosity, being
(28:02):
able when your brain is in really deep trauma, curiosity is
turned down. Like if, if a bear ran into my
office right now, you don't wantme to be curious.
You want me to like run and you,you know, and, and white and all
those things. But when someone is processing a
loss, there's all this sort of metacognition.
And a lot of what they're doing is they are predicting the same
(28:25):
level of calamity that they're feeling in the present moment,
which is based on the thing that's already happened.
Somebody broke up with them and then they're predicting it into
the future. So when we're when I'm talking
about grief practices, I have a model that I use which has 6
core components to it called thegrief mentor method.
And I just lay it out and say, look, these are the six areas
(28:47):
that people normally have to kind of focus on.
Let's pick one. Will you be just a, just a quick
note, will you be actually goingthrough those in the work that
you're leading? So just so everybody knows,
Megan will be leading a workshopFebruary 1st through the 5th
called Moving Through Loss from Grief to Grounded Renewal at our
Santa Fe campus. You're welcome.
(29:09):
If you want to go through them really briefly now.
But obviously if anybody's goingthrough grief, first of all, if
anybody's going through like severe grief, please dial 911 if
you have any kind of suicide ideation.
But let's let's go through this for a moment because it sounds
like this, this methodology you have is part of the practice.
So what what happened for me is when I came out of treatment, I
(29:31):
had this like my hair was on fire.
I was like, Oh my God, I'm, I have been as a, as a very well
trained trauma therapist, traumatherapy really is first about
stabilizing symptoms. People need to get back to work.
They can't be having nightmares,they can't be having panic
attacks. They can't be collapsing.
They, they have a life they haveto lead.
So really we're stabilizing the trauma and then we're getting
(29:55):
into the nugget of the story, which for most people, they've
already, they have already livedthrough.
You were mugged, but you've already survived with grief.
Grief is more complicated because grief, Mary Frances
O'Connor, who's a grief researcher, says it's the It's
akin to going to bed and coming down in the morning and somebody
rearranged all the furniture in your house, and you're going to
(30:17):
stumble around kind of in the dark for a while trying to
figure out how to be in your very in your own home.
And so grief is everything aboutwhat you're doing moving forward
is is touched. And so it's not just about you
need to be able to regulate yourpanic when you're driving, it's
(30:38):
at any point during the day, youmay feel a deep pain because
your brother died. And how are you going to
navigate that in the moment? What's the meaning you're going
to make of it going forward? How are you going to connect to
others? One of the things that happens
for grievers is, like I said about that breakup that I was
going through, they feel grievers feel really, really
(30:58):
isolated. They don't just feel alone.
Alone is you're not with people,Isolated is your cut off from
people. Everybody else has a normal life
and you're not in one. And so when we're doing a grief
practice, really I built it because every griever I've ever
met walks through my door seven days later because that's what
insurance will cover. I see you today and then I get
(31:20):
to see you 7 days from now. And they have been white
knuckling and desperate because their symptoms are so hard to
bear. And and other than the hour that
they get with me, there's not a lot that is there to help
support. Maybe a podcast that helps them
or watching ATV show or one conversation.
Crying help. I mean just like it.
Does yes. I mean, crying is a beautiful
(31:43):
way of regulating your nervous system.
So if you think about dysregulation, crying exhausts
you. I am so bad at it.
I I'm so bad at crying. I mean, I need to watch for me
to cry. I have to be on a plane watching
a schmaltzy movie or the underdog has to win a sports
event. I know what and I there's a
couple movies I can watch if I like.
OK, I need to cry, right? Now what's your go to?
(32:05):
You got to tell me A. Peruvian film called an Undertow
I. Don't know, Livia, I'm ready
instead, no. One knows it.
It's a it beautiful. I have a whole list of movies
that I give people that I'm likethese.
Any one of these might help you.As an aside, what's on the list?
(32:28):
I don't have it in front of me, but there are some standard
movies so, and these will be a little bit older because I'm 51,
but Terms of Endearment is always on people's list.
Field of Dreams is always on people's list, Old Yeller,
Marley and me. So anytime a dog dies, that gets
people. There's a movie with Casey
Affleck where what is it called?It's based on a book but it came
(32:52):
up a lot. His children die in the in the
movie. There's a movie called Shadow
Lands which is about CS Lewis and that is another one where
it's like Deborah Winger dying of cancer and all kinds of
movies makes people cry. I have a long list of movies
that people will tell me. This really got me.
I love the Internet though because the Internet also offers
(33:14):
us like military reunions. That's a big one for people
watching family be reunited. Get people going and like you
don't have to watch 2 hours of amovie like in one split second
you can see a child child being surprised by their dad in
uniform in a school and that will really help people get into
their feelings as the kids say all.
Right, back-to-back to the six, the six pieces of technology.
(33:38):
So when I came out of treatment,I was really digging, I mean,
all day long. And my, you know, I was still
sort of stabilizing my own mental health.
I was really thinking about like, how do we create a
framework so that people can, when they leave my office, feel
like they have some plan of how to live through the week?
And I have this big white board in my office that I started
(34:02):
writing down 22 years ago. Anytime somebody said this sort
of helped my grief, I started writing it down.
Like, OK, I did it with a permanent pen the very first
time. So I kept doing it.
And it's just covered in all thethings, are you exercising,
hiking? I mean, if there's a lot on
there like drinking, it's not all good for you.
(34:23):
Knitting. All the ING words that people
use to to support themselves andtheir grief.
And then I looked at it and was like, what if we kind of
categorize this? So the first piece is that you
really have to be able to find your grief inside your body.
I work with a lot of CE OS Chip and when I am doing an
assessment of them, I throw thisone question in there, which is
(34:45):
do you go to the bathroom when you need to go to the bathroom?
And there's always like an eyebrow raised and like a little
smile. And then these very high
performing people who wake up at4:00 and run half marathons will
say like, no, I can go all day without going to the bathroom.
They say that to me with pride. But what they don't know is the
reason I'm asking is because they're letting me know how
(35:05):
disassociated they are from their body, right?
How disconnected they are. And then I know like, OK, we're
not going to be able to find theenergy of the grief right away.
It's we're going to have to sloweverything down.
So we use mindfulness for that. Just body scans and there's
energy inside your body that isn't grief, by the way.
So, so we really create sort of cluster of that and then we also
(35:26):
use some movement. So mindfulness and movement is
what M in mentor method stands for.
E is that energy idea which is are you more anxious or are you
more depressed? Because most of the time what
you'll hear is like a lavender bath is very good when you are
overwhelmed. But if you haven't gotten out of
bed for 10 days, you don't need a lavender bath.
(35:47):
You need a walk with a friend. So we teach people the
difference between the two kindsof energies and what the
interventions are. Then we talk about nutrition.
What do you put inside your body?
Because our N is. That the third one or is.
That the second one, that's NN, is nutrition and what nourishes
you. So nourishment can be your
spiritual practice. For many people, we have to talk
(36:09):
about spirituality and grief because it can take a hit or
people can go looking for it. But how you organize your
understanding of what happens after you die has to be a
conversation. And lots of therapists are not
comfortable talking about God orspirituality or religion.
You got to get comfortable because it's part of the
conversation. And then what do you eat?
OK, OK. I'm trying, I'm trying to get
(36:31):
the the you got mindfulness, energy, nutrition.
And, and nourishment has two pieces to it.
It's, it's sort of what, what art, what music, what national
parks, what is it that sustains you, that allows you to feel
like something is holding you up.
And for some people that might even be philanthropies.
So we talk about that as nourishment and we talk very
(36:53):
basically about macro nutrients because the the mind body
component, people are not aware that if they only eat the
lasagna and the banana bread that people bring them when
they're grieving the death of a loved one, they are not going to
have the macro nutrients. They need to do the sort of
neurotransmitter and hormone development to create things
(37:17):
like, you know, dopamine that that allow you to feel joy or
serotonin, which allow you to kind of feel calm.
So we talked about nutrition, not heavily, but sort of in a
basic way. And then T is that part the
translation? What is the story you're telling
yourself? And this part is so important
because every single person I work with has a narrative about
(37:41):
what they have been through or what they're going through.
And I see many people who they're loss is happening in
real time. Their mother has dementia, their
dad is dying of cancer. They're caring for, you know,
their marriage is ending. So it's not in the past.
But when we have an event that is happening in real time or in
the past, our bodies are reacting to that sense of threat
(38:05):
and that pain. And when you say and how do you
think you'll feel on Monday, thepeople say bad.
I think I'm going to feel bad onMonday also.
And So what can happen if you tell your story in a certain way
as you begin to predict kind of no good in the future.
And so we we really kind of pullthat apart and we teach people
(38:25):
with some writing prompts how to, how to talk about that.
And then O is the O part is getting outside.
It's literally allowing your central nervous system to be
regulated by nature. And we have all these videos for
folks that can't get outside. We have all kinds of ways to
sort of adapt it. But we we have, there's so much
neuroscience that really it's beyond what our bodies can do on
(38:49):
our on our own. We need to Co regulate with
other people. We need to Co regulate with the
trees. And also, you're going to
probably have to go outside yourcurrent network of people
because they know you as the person you were right before
your loss. And it's it's your people are
good people, but they don't all make it to the other side with
you. People lose friends in the grief
(39:10):
process the same way you lose friends when you, you know,
change jobs or graduate. And then R is rituals and rest
rituals where everybody wants tostart.
Everybody wants to start with. I made meaning from this
terrible event by creating a charity or a GoFundMe, or I
wrote this book or I, we, we want to, or this is how I honor
(39:31):
my son with this legacy. And some people are able to
start that right in the beginning.
Many people need some time to let their loss marinate before
they're able to figure it out. So we talk about ritual and, and
it's a rich conversation. You can have grievers talk about
that together, but we also talk about rest when you are
grieving. It is a totally novel
(39:54):
experience, like actual newness.And our body is really built to
avoid novelty because it's energetically expensive.
But we can't avoid it. There's nothing to, you know,
fight against or flee. You're just in it.
And it literally dehydrates you and exhausts your cells need to
be regenerated. And I know many people that do
(40:15):
not sleep well and are not able to stop.
Rushing and trying to avoid. So we actually teach a a series
of rest practices and have people build them into their
day. And it spells mentor.
And it spells mentor. Look at that.
I actually dreamt. So one of the books that I
wrote, I dreamt the mentor method.
(40:37):
My team was coming to town. I was really thinking before I
went to bed and I woke up in themiddle of the night and I, it
was like that scene from A Beautiful Mind.
I wrote all kinds of things on apiece of paper.
And I was like, wait a minute, it's trying to tell me
something. And I didn't even notice that I
had written mentor down. And then when you came in the
next morning, I was like, oh, look, there's a mnemonic here
that's going to help people remember.
(40:58):
So when I train folks in this, sometimes it's just an hour long
lecture, sometimes it's a five day long clinical training for
therapists. But even in an hour long
lecture, people can remember what mentor stands for.
So they can walk out of that hour long lecture and say like,
OK, I just need to find a mindfulness practice this week
or I just need to get outside for a walk this week.
(41:19):
And it does this thing which is so beautiful, which is it
empowers people to believe that they can grieve, but they can do
the process that everybody says they can't do.
It's the one thing everyone says.
I don't know how to live throughthis.
Do you, do you think that people, is there a spike in
grief in midlife or is it sort of just OK or is it more
(41:42):
distributed throughout one's life?
No, I think I mean again, when Iwhen I first started talking to
y'all at Mei was like, Oh my God, these are my people.
I work almost almost strictly with people in their sort of mid
40s up until their mid 60s. That's what my clients look
like. And what I say is they sort of
have like a post it note pack oflosses, some of which they've
(42:04):
been caring for a really long time and some of which are, you
know, new. Like they, you know, the number
of people I know that lost theirjob at 48 is really
extraordinary. And it can take a whole year.
Especially in Washington, DC, where you're, where you're
based, where I. Mean a lot of people.
A lot of people have been losingtheir jobs.
So you see as a rough town for loss right now.
(42:26):
But, but I think if it's not a death, people are not always
aware that they're grieving. They don't always mark the loss.
And this happens also in companies.
You know, you'll lose the entireSan Francisco office, 1200
people fired yesterday. Your best friend works in the
San Francisco office. You were going to go to a
conference and and you're supposed to go back to work
(42:48):
tomorrow as if nothing happened.And so there's a lot of that
where it's like, well, nobody died and it's not that big a
deal. And I don't feel entitled.
And so I just don't do it. I don't cry.
I don't sit and and connect to the energy.
I don't think of it the way I would think about hunger, which
is just like something that's part of my everyday experience.
(43:10):
And then it stays inside your system, kind of like a splinter.
And what I find for people in their midlife is that those
splinters start to come to the surface.
They start to make themselves known.
You suddenly have more than you can carry.
You've been estranged from your sister since you were 25.
Your dad just died. You're thinking about getting
(43:32):
divorced or married. You need to move.
And all of those things togetherinside the system are, are too
much. But a lot of people in midlife
are doing that. They're really taking stock of
their friendships and their relationships and, and is their
work meaningful? And do they, I mean, I've spoken
to you about this. Do they want to live where they
live? You know, what are we doing now,
(43:53):
right? What are we doing now?
And so it doesn't have to be a death.
It can be something like your kids leaving for college and
suddenly you're feeling the lossand you're feeling that identity
confusion. And without sort of a cohort of
people who who know, who know who have been through it and can
do something other than get together and drink wine, that
(44:16):
not that that's a bad thing, butit shouldn't be the only thing.
You know, people can feel reallystuck.
Like I just have to hold this hard feeling.
And there is science that tells us when we hold those hard
feelings, things like throwing your back out happen, or IBS
happens or, you know, down the line, autoimmune disorders
happen. What are the three most frequent
(44:40):
ways that you see unprocessed grief show up in a potential
client? That's a great question.
So the so the questions I ask people are how's your sleep?
I think sleep is the is one of the biggest keys overreactivity.
So do you get mad? Do you feel hurt?
Do you feel separate overreactivity?
(45:01):
Can't we blame that on being Irish American?
Absolutely. I mean, look, most of us are
blaming it on something and not aware that it is, you know, our
central nervous system is kind of ringing a little bit like a
bell. And so things hurt.
They we and and a lot of us willhave a metacognition about it.
We'll be like, God, I shouldn't be this upset about this, but I
(45:22):
am. That happens.
So they're sleep and then they're, you know, their sense
of overreactivity are sort of like the two key.
And then I always ask, there's 12 systems in the body.
And I do a quick scan, you know,how are your skin and your nails
and your hair? Your integumentary system is a
system. People will say, you know what's
weird? I think my hair might be falling
(45:43):
out. It's like, oh, OK, how's your
digestive tract? Oh, Megan, it's funny that you
asked that. You know, like, oh, I, you know,
I put on a few pounds. And there is this other, you
know, women in their 50s are also going through menopause.
So there is also this hormonal component, but but there's a,
you know, the symptoms of grief are identical to the symptoms of
(46:03):
menopause, except in menopause you have hot flashes.
So, so on the other side of grief, processing the grief can
mean both improvement in all kinds of things in your body and
your emotions and maybe even joy.
Because it feels like one of thethings that you know, so many
things in life where if you're not willing to experience the
(46:25):
negative side, you're not going to be able to experience the
positive side. And do you see that as part of
the upside of processing the grief is, is actually people
feeling an unbridled joy that they haven't felt in decades?
Yeah, although I would never, ever tell someone that, right.
Like they're in my office and they're broken hearted and
(46:45):
they're never going to, you know, what they say to me is I'm
never going to get remarried. I'm, I'm not going to try to
work in this sector again. I know I'm not.
I'm never going to have a good high holiday again.
And what I say is I utterly believe you.
I believe that you will not. And also there is a really
strong part of me that feels like you will.
(47:06):
And then I just want to offer that to you like a little piece
of hope because I've been doing this a long time.
I have my own personal experience.
So your truth is real. It's never going to happen.
And there's a future out there where it's totally possible.
So I never say to people like, oh, but it will be so beautiful
when you process your grief. But I will tell them I, you
(47:27):
know, part of what my team has is we, we we host this book
festival in LA called the Grief Tastic Book Festival.
And brunch, it's on November 21st this year.
Yeah. It's my necklace.
It's my necklace. Grief Tastic.
And what we collect, there are grief experts, but also people
who have lived through untenableloss.
And we put them on panels. Mothers who lost children, you
(47:49):
know, people who lost van fulls of family all at once, multiple
homes burned in the fires, just unbearable experiences of loss.
And you can see those people sitand laugh on a panel.
They will tell you that they experienced joy at their child's
wedding. They will tell you that they
knew they would never get remarried while they're
introducing you to their new husband.
And that kind of hope is really critical because we can't see
(48:14):
our way forward. Our brain is compromised, Our
body is compromised. And there's a part of us that
doesn't even want to try becauseit's too much to lose.
But but the reality is most people do survive untenable loss
all the time. And they say if people say, oh I
could never survive through that, that phrase makes me
insane. None of us can survive.
We become people who can survive.
(48:36):
I can't lift 50 lbs over my head.
But if I had to, I would figure out how to build the muscles to
do it. I would.
And that's what grievers do. And then when you're when you
are early in loss and you are solost in your whole, you can't
find your compass points to stand in front of someone who
not only lived through that story, but published a book
about that story and is willing to talk about that story that
(48:58):
becomes, you know, you're north for a little while.
And I do actually believe that one of the most extraordinary
things in my life was my mother's death and the lessons
that I learned from it. The thing I am the most proud of
in my entire life is checking myself into an inpatient
facility. Before you met me, I had no
(49:18):
ambitions to write books, to talk on national stages, to have
a podcast, to run a book festival.
None of those things were even. It would They weren't secret
ambitions that I just wasn't tapped into.
They did not exist. My life took a hard left turn,
as many people do in midlife, and I am grateful.
I am so grateful to who I am right now.
(49:40):
I feel, and you and I have spoken about this, such deep and
profound purpose in the work that I'm doing.
It's, it's unbelievable. You, you experienced MEA as a a
compadre or camadre a student, and now you're going to be
teaching this workshop in February.
Just give, give for those who are not who are listening or
(50:01):
watching and have not experienced MEA.
You know I'm driving without a license.
You have a license. You're a licensed therapist.
I'm some, you know, you know, snake oil salesman who doesn't
know a thing about psychology. No, that's not.
True, but new because I lost friends to suicide in midlife
and new because I went through my dark night of the ego in
(50:21):
midlife, and new because antidepressant use is at its
peak in midlife. That there needed to be a
program. But just tell a little bit about
your impression of MEA and and alittle bit about what you'll be
doing in the workshop. Well, I think there's several
things that are extraordinary. I really do think that MEA has
(50:41):
your your spirit infused in it, which is that we are lifelong
learners and that, and that thatlearning isn't always pretty and
easy and that we actually need to do that in community.
So I think primarily the thing that is the biggest, most
immediate relief, other than thefact that this the campuses are
so beautiful. I mean, they are physically just
(51:04):
stunning and so relaxing and your staff says things like, you
know, let me get that for you. You just sit here, you just
receive. I mean, it is, it really is a
culture that you can feel and itwas hard to leave.
But the the idea idea being you don't have to know everything.
We can sit here and get curious together.
We can share some stories. We can do that with emotional
(51:24):
safety. But the communion of people
together in the sacred conversation is really needed
right now. We did this thing during COVID
and I don't blame anybody, but we did it globally, which was we
all just agreed it was fine to go home and close the door and
connect over computer. And actually the neuroscientists
(51:47):
know better than this. We know that it is wholly and
spiritually different to be in the physical presence of other
people. So coming to a workshop where
you sit in a circle, you know, there's dancing and there's
delicious food, all of that allows your central nervous
system to sort of just release. I slept so well while I was
(52:11):
there. And you can you can dip into
conversation, you can come out of conversation.
But the I think also the crowd of people that are that are
joining there are joining with areally curious inquisitive mind
and they really are carrying something.
They are on the precipice of wanting a pivot or a shift.
(52:33):
And to me that the grief mentor method, that's what it's built
for. It's not built for when you've
been thrown overboard and you'rejust trying not to drown.
It's really how are we going to how are we going to help you get
back to living when you can't see what that life is going to
be yet? And it's small increments.
So, so to me, the thing that is the strongest is the community
(52:56):
of people that you have built. And I have been to lots of
treatment centers and, you know,yoga retreat centers.
And I really think MEA appeals to a group of people that intend
on getting something out of, of that weekend that they can get
that series of four or five daysthat they can take with them
(53:16):
that is going that they're goingto hang their hat on as a hook
and check in on every day. The other thing is you guys have
this alumni community. We had our alumni call today and
I'm a new alum, but they're, there were people in my cohort
who, you know, they went on extra vacations and they get
together once a year with their MEA community.
It's extraordinary. Yes, yes, yes, we it's, it's A,
(53:39):
and we have 56 regional chat around the world.
And so there's these opportunities to connect to the
chapter. Last question, last question is
this. If you could have a wisdom
bumper sticker that actually hasyour finger wisdom fingerprints
on it based upon maybe an originstory and that wisdom bumper
sticker is a piece of advice or wisdom you would want the the
(54:00):
world to know. What would that be?
I think about this a lot, 'causeI to my own Instagram, right?
And so it's like, what's the world's best bumper sticker?
But but really, I am in this moment right now, which is it's
OK not to know. Yeah, that's wisdom.
Yeah, it's really OK not to know.
And and if you don't know now, that doesn't mean you're not
(54:22):
going to know. It just means that's where you
are. You know the cloud, you're
you're in the river and you're floating.
But the clouds have come. And so it feels it's OK not to
know. You don't have to know
everything. That's why we need other people.
There are other people who know some things and you can bring
them close. And then at some point you will
deepen into some knowing that. That is the thing that I think I
(54:46):
think there is no way to be in the experience of becoming and
know your whole way through you.There has to be some fumbling
around in the dark, in the in the messy middle and the murky
in order to become the person who says I've integrated that
lesson for myself. And it feels like you, that's
what you've lived the last few years.
(55:08):
You know, I'm serious. If you had met me five years ago
and said like Megan, you're going to be on chips podcast,
you're going to be talking aboutthese books you're going to be
talking about, I would have saidlike you, there must be another
Megan in the room, but I do. I do think our truths are things
that we live our way into. It's that real key quote, right?
To, to be, you know, unafraid ofthe things that are dark in your
(55:33):
heart. I, I'm not getting the line
right, but but that, that, that idea that we live our lives into
the answers. I think the structure at MEA is
something that provides people with a handrail that they, that
they really need. And I, I mean, honestly, I've
said this to you before. It's such a generosity of your
own heart experiences that you what you have built for other
(55:56):
people to benefit from. And to me, I think that is I
think that's what all of us want, is for our hard thing to
have more meaning than just being hard.
Thank you, Megan. Thank you, Chip.
It was so good to see you. I I appreciate the fact that on
this podcast, we can have experts come in and give very
(56:20):
practical advice. One of the things I loved, you
know, of my three things I lovedon this particular episode was
the I talk about the vagus nerve.
Google it. And you know, I when I had my
flat line experience years ago, initially they thought it was a
vasovagal reaction, which is means you literally can your
heart when you're in a state of distress, your whole system can
(56:45):
shut down. As it turns out, it was an
allergic reaction to an antibiotic.
But vasovagal is something that happens when you're so
overwhelmed with distress. And the fact that the vagus
nerve is there as a parasympathetic response to when
you're actually going through distress can give you some
comfort that for as I said to toMegan, my biggest worry about
(57:08):
really allowing myself to grieveat times is like how bad it
could get. And so the vagus nerve is meant
to be this guardrails, you know,on a mountain Rd. that helps you
to know that if it if you reallyget that distress, your body
actually knows how to actually modulate and regulate that
distress. Secondly, I'm just going to like
(57:29):
do a shout out for Carrie Cardinali, who is our chief
content officer. She's the one who who coined the
term TQ transitional intelligence or transitional
quotient. One of the things that I think
that Megan alluded to, but we didn't really get into it was
this idea that there are these three stages of any transition
(57:49):
we can grief. You don't have to have a huge
loss to have a, a sense of grief.
You can be in the midst of a transition and those 3 stages
are the ending of something, themessy middle and the beginning
of something. You can actually read about this
at the bottom footer of the MEA website, meawisdom.com.
There is actually a free resource called The Anatomy of a
Transition. So understanding that when
(58:12):
you're going through a transition, you need to actually
look for rituals to, to, for theending of something.
And the second stage is messy metal.
The third stage is being the beginning of something.
And there's other things you cando during those stages.
But I think what Megan talked about was the idea of when
something's ending, how are you,How are you processing the
(58:33):
ending of it? And in our case at MEA, we, we
try to help people to understandhow do you ritualize it either
by yourself or collectively. So I would just say for those
who want to understand transitions a little bit more
and understand how do you end something and do it in a way
that can feel comfortable to you.
Check out the anatomy of a transition on the MEA website.
(58:54):
Then finally, you know, I, I have to, to highlight and
illuminate the mentor, the griefmentor method that is specific
to, to Megan's book work and her, her, her content.
There were six stages, mindfulness of the first piece,
the part I liked there was not just being mindful, but actually
(59:15):
looking for the grief in your body because the, the, it can be
actually stored there. Sometimes breathing, breath work
can be really helpful for this doing holotropic breathing.
And I've done that before where I get my body going in such a
cycle of, of my breathing that Iliterally start to cry and maybe
like really tremble because of that.
(59:36):
And then the, the grief is able to sort of start to be being
released from the body. Secondly, that energy, the idea
of like, where is the energy? Thirdly, nourishment, both what
is it that nourishes you? Art or music or things that you
could use as nourishing? And then how are you, how are
you feeding your body and it with nutrition?
(59:57):
The 4th is the translation. What story are you telling
yourself? And is it, is that a story that
you're stuck in that is keeping you in that grieving in a, in a
place of grief as opposed to processing the grief?
Finally #5 and 6 outside, being outside your central nervous
system is not just regulated by your vagus nerve, but it's also
(01:00:18):
regulated by nature. And being in nature is actually
quite good for it. And then finally the rituals and
the rest. And you know, as I said earlier,
with sometimes with the ending, you need to actually have a
ritual to say I'm this is the line of demarcation of the past.
So a lot of good information there.
I mean, for those of you who have never experienced grief,
(01:00:39):
the first question you might askyourself is, are you storing
that grief in your body and thatthere has been some grief or are
you just good at processing it? And good for you if you are.
But grief is a fact of life. And on the other side of grief
can be an awful lot of joy. So if you are somebody who is
find yourself overly reactive, angry, maybe flatline in terms
(01:01:06):
of your emotions, you, you, you don't get very high, you don't
get very low. Explore the idea of grief and
maybe explore Megan's workshop here at the Santa Fe campus in
February. Thanks so much for joining.
We'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to The
Midlife Chrysalis. This show is produced by Midlife
Media. If you enjoyed this episode,
(01:01:27):
help us spread the word by subscribing and leaving a review
on your favorite platform.
I define grief as the energy that's created in your body on
account of loss. And so for some people that
might feel like panic and for other people that might feel
like deeply spiritual or religious.
But it, it is an energy that we end up sort of having inside of
us. And our culture prefers if we
push it down. Like we get like maybe 3 to 5
days and then it's like, are youstill on that note of feeling
(00:24):
sad and hard? Welcome to the Midlife Chrysalis
Podcast with Chip Conley, where we explore how midlife isn't a
crisis, but a chrysalis, a time of profound transformation that
can lead to the most meaningful chapter of your life.
Well, I'm excited about this onetoday.
(00:46):
First of all, it's Chip Conley, a midlife chrysalis.
This episode is really meant to be practical.
We have some incredibly famous people on this podcast.
I'm really honored that they join us.
And often they're telling us about their life.
But we don't have a lot of therapists on this podcast.
And today we have a therapist who's not only been an MEA alum,
(01:07):
but they are actually going to be teaching at MEA this upcoming
winter at our Santa Fe campus. Megan Reardon Jarvis is somebody
who found her groove in midlife around age like late 40s.
She's a mother, she has three kids.
She's, you know, she was a therapist, but she was doing it
part time. And, and then at some point she
(01:29):
realized that her specially in trauma was now starting to shift
to especially in, in grieving and learning how to help people
find grieving practices. It was very personal for herself
and she tells a a quite a personal story about her own
grieving. And then she has now written a
(01:50):
couple books and has two more books coming out soon.
And she has a, you know, a wholegrief festival and she's become
sort of a big time person in the, the grief world.
So I think you're going to find this to be a very practical and
applicable episode, especially if you're somebody like me who
(02:11):
tries to run from their their emotions.
So I hope you enjoy it, Megan. It's so good to have you here.
So for a lot of us, grief is something we don't want to talk
about, nor do we want to talk about trauma.
(02:32):
So I wanted, I want you to give us your personal story that has
LED you to being one of the world's leading experts on these
topics. And what and and then also a
little bit about how your point of view on that is a little baby
different than some other folks out there?
Well, first of all, thank you somuch for having me.
(02:54):
It's so good to see you and I amreally excited to be talking
particularly to you and the MEA community about my experience
with grief because I feel like we match up in that idea that
over time you end up sort of having a different experience
than the one that you thought you were starting when you went
(03:16):
to Graduate School and when you.So I have, I live in Washington
DCI have been a trauma therapistspecializing in grief and loss
for 22 years. I had a small private practice.
I have a bunch of kids, three kids, and it was just a perfect
match, the grief, my picking to be a grief specialist really had
(03:39):
to do with an early childhood experience, someone that I call
a cousin beloved to my family drown when I was nine years old.
And I think most people in healing professions have some
hard story that they work to heal themselves.
So that was my experience. I went to therapy in my early
20s, had a lot of self consciousness, a lot of
(04:04):
reactivity that I felt like my peers didn't have.
And in that very first therapy session, I was there because of
a breakup. I had gone through the world's
worst breakup, but I really genuinely felt like I wasn't
recovering the way I had seen other people recover.
I thought my breakup at that time was the world's worst
breakup. We do catastrophize when we're
(04:25):
young. It is one of the things that we
get better at as we get older iswe don't catastrophize quite as
much. But.
True. Well, the and and the more you
live through, the more you realize that you can live
through. But at that time, I really
didn't think I was going to livethrough this breakup.
I was so deeply attached to thisperson.
He was. I had sort of assigned all my
hopes and dreams to this relationship.
It was the first real relationship that I was in.
(04:46):
So I went to this therapy session only because an A sort
of elder in my office, I was working in social policy at the
time, kind of passed me a name, right, and said, you should go
see this person. I felt really deeply ashamed
that I needed to go to therapy. And I went in and cried for the
50 minutes and said to the therapist, you know, I'm not,
(05:07):
how am I ever going to get over this and my life will never be
good again. And we get right to the 50
minute hour and she says, just out of curiosity, did anything
bad ever happen in your childhood?
And I am crushed if I'm crushed because I'm like, oh, this woman
was not paying attention. This is not about blaming my
family or my siblings. This is about a breakup.
(05:29):
And so I said no. I said no nothing.
I had a really wonderful childhood, five brothers and
sisters, you know, loving family.
And I left, and I was like, damn, I'm going to have to find
somebody else. Or maybe therapy doesn't work.
And by the time I'd gotten back to my house, this person was in
Georgetown. I got back to my house in
Capitol Hill, and I was like, well, actually, you know what?
(05:50):
When I was 9, Chris drowned and we were all there at the beach
and, you know, my mom had PTSD and we never talked about it
again. I had literally tucked it away
so tightly that I didn't think it had any impact.
And so then I was deeply curious, like, oh, maybe this
lady is actually super smart andintuitive, right?
So I go back and I'm like, hey, so I lied.
(06:13):
I didn't mean to lie, but no one's ever asked me this before.
And I've literally never spoken about it since I was a child.
This is a thing that happened. And she was just this very
effusive and easygoing woman. And she said, yeah, no, I knew.
I knew something had happened. And then she sort of unfolded
the trauma story for me and saidloss, early childhood loss, has
(06:39):
been sort of a North star in theway in which you've experienced
the rest of the world. So Fast forward, I went to
therapy, I went to social work, school, I became a therapist.
I trained in everything I could get my hands on.
And because grief is something we avoid, there are not a lot of
grief training. So instead I took trauma
trainings because the loss of someone is a trauma.
(07:01):
What would you how would you define the difference between
trauma and grief? A trauma is an event or a series
of events that is negative and some therapists would say
overwhelming to your central nervous system.
So your brain, your spinal cord,and a lot of people don't know
your optic nerve is part of yourbrain.
So it overwhelms you. It's too much information.
(07:22):
And so that could be you thoughtyou were going to die.
It could just be you got deeply confused and felt really afraid.
But a trauma is a bad event. COVID was a trauma.
The importance of this, though, is that Trump, not all traumas
leave people traumatized. COVID for some people, no
question, it was a trauma. But for some people that was the
(07:44):
best, you know, they were livingtheir Oprah best life in COVID.
So really traumatized is the part that's the most
significant, which is traumatized is what is the
meaning your system makes of thebad event.
What do you think your meaning was from that 9 year old event?
Was it to not was it to not talkabout the things that were most
(08:06):
troubling in one's life and, andto just stuff it?
I mean, what? What does a traumatized person
tend to do? Without particularly with
childhood trauma, which again, can be like a signal event, or
it can be a, it can be a long term series of, you know, it
could be everything from my dad never hugged me and I needed to
be hugged or you know, the terrible things that can happen
(08:27):
to kids in their life. What happens is you begin to
live your life with that meaningas though it is a truth.
So for me the thing I knew at 9 was adults didn't keep kids
safe. After my parents died I went
through all of their things and sorted through their house which
was really horrible and also a deep honor.
(08:49):
And one of the things I found was my my mother had kept my
report cards from I was going into 4th grade.
And the report card said things like Megan is a bright but angry
child. And I remember, and I write
about this in my memoir, end of the hour.
I remember reading this book called The Red Fern Grows, which
is ostensibly about children, but it's also about dogs.
(09:12):
And one of the dogs dies a kind of violent death in the book.
And people, the kids came in these little, you know, 9 and 10
year olds were like, Oh my God, the dog and the axe and the
terrible thing. And I remember sitting there
being like, you know, the equivalent of like a high school
Stoner, like with my feet on thedesk, like dogs, like dogs don't
even matter, like adults can't even keep kids safe.
(09:36):
And I just remember feeling one,and this is a hallmark of
trauma, feeling very different than every other kid that was
there, feeling very separate from what looked like the the
rest of my cohort. And also just having really
intense feelings and not really understanding why.
And because it had happened in the community that I, my parents
(09:58):
ultimately lived there. But at that time, we were just
summer, we were just people who went there in the summer.
When I pivoted to go back to school, nobody knew anything
about this. They're, they weren't part of
the community that was impacted.And so it was alternately the
most significant and terrible thing that had ever happened to
my whole family and my whole town and also not significant
(10:18):
enough to even mention to my teachers or the school.
And I don't blame my parents, bythe way.
I mean, they were much younger when this happened to my family
than I am now. They navigated it in that way
that you did in the 80s, which is like, don't talk to, you
know, kids about hard things. That makes it worse.
But so that trauma then sort of set like, I hate.
(10:39):
I never took risks. I never took risks as a child
because I understood that, like,you could just be doing a normal
thing and your sibling could dieor you could die.
I lived in constant fear that myoldest sibling, my older
sibling, my older brother Pat, Ijust lived in constant fear of
him dying because he was around the age of that kid.
(11:01):
And then when I made attachments, they were either
kind of like really lightweight,like I don't really care about
you that much, or I'm going to die without you, which is what
that therapist sort of picked upon.
You're a jaded Gen. Xer.
I mean, but not because you're aGen. extra, but because, I mean,
I can hear it. I can hear man.
(11:22):
You. You must have been.
Yeah. That must have been hard to.
So. So now juxtapose that versus
grief. Trauma can Can trauma lead to
grief? Yeah.
So I define grief as the energy that's created in your body on
account of loss. So it's just like the natural
reaction, the way that like, youknow, you have energy inside
your body when you're hungry, you can feel it.
(11:43):
So grief is the energy that's created inside your system
naturally on account of your loss.
And so for some people that might feel like panic and for
other people that might feel like deeply spiritual or
religious. But it, it, it is an energy that
we end up sort of having inside of us.
And our culture prefers if we push it down.
(12:04):
Like we get like maybe 3 to 5 days and then it's like, are you
still on that note of feeling sad and hard?
Get over. It yeah.
So the trauma, the trauma is theevent.
Traumatized is the meaning. And grief is the energetic, the
noun that's inside your body. And grieving is the verb of
moving that energy through your system.
(12:25):
And grieving is the thing that most people don't know how to
do. So I stood in front of this big
audience of therapist last Marchand just said, can anyone tell
me what grieving is aside from crying?
And these are therapists. And it was like 90 seconds of
crickets before somebody said, like, well, also it can show up
(12:46):
as anger. And I was like, yeah, it can.
And we kind of got the ball rolling.
But the reality is we think of grief as something we're trying
to avoid. Like, if you've experienced
loss, it kind of makes you a loser.
And we just don't make room for it.
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(13:09):
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meawisdom.com/midlife Book. This is a a tough episode for me
because I I am somebody who likes to outrun my emotions and,
and actually to be quite honest though in the last few days I've
been in sort of a sad place for some reasons I may not go into.
(13:52):
But I think the fear I have is if I really surrender to grief,
I will go down that well and I don't know where it's going to
take me. And I lost 5 male friends to
suicide between 2008 and 2010. And I had some suicide ideations
like I do not want to grieve because it's dangerous.
(14:15):
And yet the other side of it is if I don't grieve, I store it in
my body and it becomes cancer. Guess what?
Chip has cancer. So I'm not saying that's the
only reason I have cancer, but but it is certainly your body
keeps score as as has been said.So tell me a little bit more
about what you've learned about grief over the past few years as
(14:36):
you moved from trauma, because that was your specialty before.
Is that right? And you've you've written books
about trauma. Yeah.
How many books have you written?So I've I have two published and
two more that will be coming out. 1 is a novel, which is just
crazy because I've written a memoir and I've written a
clinical book. Can anyone tell me?
(14:56):
And what I would say is they're both at the intersection of
trauma. So when I wrote about my my
memoir is really about my personal experience with PTSD
after my mother died. So my dad died in 2017 and he
had cancer. That diagnosis, it was sort of
like from, you know, the day of his diagnosis to his death was
(15:18):
about a year and a week, which is exactly what the doctors told
us to expect. And I had what kind of?
Cancer. He, it was small cell cancer,
not, it didn't have a specific origin, but so it's like lung
cancer and it's a, it's a death sentence when you discover small
cell cancer and they kind of, they have a sense of the
trajectory and it's pretty set. So my dad was one of those
(15:40):
people who was able to sort of, you know, participate in his own
death. And I, I really chose to be in
it with him. And his death was very sad and
very hard. And I did some therapy around it
and I was able to sort of like Iwas on a horse.
I went down the path, I stayed on my horse.
(16:00):
But it was a difficult ride. And I still navigate, you know,
my dad's death. I still miss him when I see
things that he would have loved or books or TV shows.
I wish I could call him, but it didn't traumatize me.
When my mom died two years later, I was on vacation with
her. She'd had an illness that we all
sort of were calling a stomach bug.
She went to sleep and she didn'twake up.
(16:22):
And I was with her in her house.And I, I want to tell the
audience this because they, I think it's important.
My mother had seen all six of her kids in that week, which is
extraordinary. We live all over the place.
She had visited her brother, which she only sees once a year.
The day before she died, she drove to her friend, who was a
Monsignor to get a blessing. She was deeply religious.
(16:42):
She died with her rosary in her hand, wearing her favorite
pyjamas in her bed. And it was my husband.
Yeah. I don't know if she knew.
I mean, she may have known. I don't know if she knew what I
would. The reason I tell that story is
her death was not traumatizing. Her death wasn't the trauma.
Her death was beautiful. What it did to me was the was
(17:06):
what was traumatizing. I was not aware how oriented my
life was to checking in with her.
It had gotten much worse or it Ihad relapsed as they described
it, because when my mom experienced the death of that
teenager, she felt incredibly guilty because she had been on
(17:28):
the beach that day. I didn't feel guilty really as a
nine year old, but my mom didn'tand she had flashbacks and there
was no real treatment. EMDR hadn't been invented yet.
And I did a lot of trying to sort of backstop for her as a
nine year old. I did a lot of cleaning and
organizing and listening to makesure she made it to bed.
I did the same thing after my dad died, and I didn't even
(17:49):
notice that I did it. I was checking in.
I was making sure she had what she needed when her refrigerator
broke. I was trying to manage that
system from DC, even though she was on Cape Cod.
And when she died, I-1 felt unbelievable.
The very first thing that that happened.
So I was driving to pick up my godson.
I had this sensation of water breaking.
(18:10):
I was so so viscerally that I looked down to expecting to see
wet. And when I.
It was it was unlike any other experience I've ever had in my
life. And when I looked up, I saw the
word she died. So I knew my mother had died
before and he, you know, I knew she was dead.
I called my husband. He was back at our house.
And I said, have you seen my momtoday?
(18:32):
And he said no. And I was like, I think she
died. And so I had this sort of
knowing and then when he told me, I immediately, the very
first thought I had was it's your fault, Megan, that she
died. You should have done something
different, which is really standard for grievers.
We have these. If only I why didn't I?
(18:53):
I wish I should have ruminationsthat can occur And they really,
when they occur and they don't go away and they don't listen
and they get they really are an indication that you are unwell.
It becomes sort of like an OCD thought.
So I had this meta of knowing that this was bad, that this was
happening to me because that's what I treat people for.
(19:15):
And knowing that it was getting more and more intense and sort
of seeing the writing on the wall, like my central nervous
system is not lessening in its intensity in, in feeling
overwhelmed and ultimately having to call a colleague and
say, I am not OK. I've thrown, I came down into my
basement to exercise because it's important to move grief
(19:35):
through the body and threw my back out so significantly.
I had bruises for four months onmy shins out of the I couldn't
get off the basement floor. It's like that standard kind of
Liz Gilbert story of everything falls apart.
Then I called my colleague and she said, I know, you know, what
you have to do. And what I had to do was check
myself into the same inpatient facility that I had sent my most
(19:56):
intense clients, the ones who were really, really unwell.
And people say I didn't have a, you know, I couldn't fall apart
because I had three kids. I had three kids.
They were little. And I couldn't get off the floor
of the basement. So I ended up checking myself
into an inpatient facility whereif you think of what your
college schedule look like, that's what my treatment
(20:19):
schedule look like. I was doing equine therapy, I
was doing sound therapy, I was doing movement therapy.
And I was there for just under amonth.
And when I came out of that, I was like a woman possessed
because one, I felt like I needed to apologize to my
clients. I felt like it was like they had
been describing France all this time.
(20:40):
And I had been like, sure, I sawa movie about France and this
was going to France. Like, oh, this is what salted
butter is. This is what you were trying to
tell me. And two, I really felt like,
wow, our culture does not get this.
They have no, there's no space. There's no room.
And we just as you just described, I mean, you have had
a lot of loss in a short period of time.
(21:02):
And that is part of how we become overwhelmed.
And that does put us at risk of being traumatized the way I was.
But there's so much that we can do to create a personalized
daily practice that we don't do.And we know it from neuroscience
and we know it from the trauma modalities that can set us up to
heal rather than to kind of go down.
(21:26):
And when I came out of treatment, I was like, Oh my
God, we, we lie and we minimize and we do that because we're so
afraid of this. And what I do to your point
about being afraid is I teach the neuroscience and the
bioscience. Everyone has the same fear that
you do, which is if I let myselfgo there, I'm going to
(21:46):
essentially lose my mind. I will lose myself to grief, but
we have this thing called the vagus nerve, and the vagus nerve
is a superhighway that sends messages.
And just to be clear, just to beclear, this is not about having
nerve in Las Vegas. The Vegas is spelled VAGU.
S and. Explain what the vagus?
(22:07):
Nerve. Yeah.
So the vagus nerve is part it's it is the superhighway that
essentially is the mind body connection.
It's part of our parasympatheticnervous system.
We have two, we have two, an activation system and a calming
system inside our brain that likes homeostasis.
So they, they, they kind of liketurn the hot water on and then
(22:27):
the cold water on to get tepid. That's the job.
And when you are too much in distress, the vagus nerve, when
you are too activated in your sympathetic system, the
parasympathetic nervous system, which houses this vagus nerve
that connects your brain down into your body, turns on.
And it will, when you're crying too hard, do exactly what it
(22:49):
does for infants. When it develops at four months
old, it will send you to sleep. So when we let babies cry it out
at four months, it's because that's when the vagus nerve
fully forms, and it allows us toactivate this sense of
exhaustion and cooling down and calming down.
So we have about 11 to 13 minutes of real distress inside
(23:13):
our system before the vagus nerve says that's enough.
That's too energetically exhausting.
We're going to let you rest now,and then you fall asleep.
Generally speaking, I'm not. There are people for whom they
become psychotic and they get unwell, but the general
population has a vagus nerve that takes some care with it.
So this is sort of like if you're driving on a mountain Rd.
(23:36):
At night and it's scary, you know, the vagus nerve is are the
guardrails that make sure that you don't drive off the road.
Yes. And what's so important and I
think has been missing in some ways from the grief conversation
is talking to people about what a full body experience is.
(23:59):
You know, people, I've had many people say grief is too
personal, you can't teach it. But if you go at it almost from
a human biology perspective, theway that you would teach a
class, you know, a 6th grade class on health, there's plenty
that we can teach you about the 12 systems that are in your body
and how they're impacted by quote UN quote, stress.
(24:19):
There's a lot that's been studied about stress.
But when you actually say to somebody, what is the stress,
it's always they're getting divorced, they're having
financial problems, they're having a health issue, someone
just died. All of those are losses.
They're all loss. These people come to MEAI mean
these are these are many of the transitions that happen in
(24:41):
midlife. So that, I mean, when I, when I
first heard of you, you all, I was like, wow, we are having the
same conversation. It's like you're coming through
the door and I'm coming through the window.
You know, I think what happens to folks is they then get
diagnosed with anxiety or they can they get diagnosed with
depression, which they fit the diagnostics right?
(25:01):
Like, oh, you've been sad for more than, you know, six weeks,
but you know, that's depression.But when you look at what's
driving the depression, the depression is your sister died.
You can treat the depression, but the depression really is a
symptom and, and what we need tohave our practices around.
How do we honor the grief experience?
And you all at MEA do this gorgeously.
(25:25):
I mean, I, I was lucky enough todo a workshop with you and Pico
Iyer and it was not about grief yet the conversation had so much
transition. And with every life transition,
there is loss. Every single transition we go
through, we're moving towards something, but we're also moving
away from something. And there's no reason not to be
(25:45):
able to acknowledge that other than we generally don't practice
it. So when kids are graduating from
high school, I always encourage their family to say, what are
you excited about? Like, where are you going to
college and what are you? And what is going to be tough to
leave behind in your community? Just to acknowledge that every
time we have a loss of some kind, it means that there is a
(26:10):
transition happening for us. Sometimes we're leaning towards
the transition. Oh, I'm so excited to be moving.
Sometimes we're really more oriented toward the loss.
I can't believe this. My marriage has ended.
But we need a practice so that we can acknowledge, you know,
where we are and then how to kind of attend to the energy.
If it's more anxious, attend to it that way.
(26:32):
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Our free Midlife Pathfinder quizhelps you discover which of
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(26:54):
might help you see your journey in a whole
wholenewlighttakethepathfinderquiz@meawisdom.com/quizSo you've talked about grieving
practices and let's let's now put the shoe on the other foot.
You're now a 23 year old comes in to meet with you just like
you did all those years ago, andyou can identify pretty quickly
(27:18):
that there's something behind the fact that they feel listless
or or angry. What are the kinds of practices
as a therapist that you can helpa client with when they have
unresolved grief? When, when someone comes in, I
(27:39):
think one of the first things that that I am holding is what
is the story that they tell themselves about what, what has
happened to them? Sometimes updating the narrative
and helping them see that they're that, that the way that
they're telling the story, the way that they're experiencing
the story is putting sort of a limit around there.
And you all talk about this, buthaving some curiosity, being
(28:02):
able when your brain is in really deep trauma, curiosity is
turned down. Like if, if a bear ran into my
office right now, you don't wantme to be curious.
You want me to like run and you,you know, and, and white and all
those things. But when someone is processing a
loss, there's all this sort of metacognition.
And a lot of what they're doing is they are predicting the same
(28:25):
level of calamity that they're feeling in the present moment,
which is based on the thing that's already happened.
Somebody broke up with them and then they're predicting it into
the future. So when we're when I'm talking
about grief practices, I have a model that I use which has 6
core components to it called thegrief mentor method.
And I just lay it out and say, look, these are the six areas
(28:47):
that people normally have to kind of focus on.
Let's pick one. Will you be just a, just a quick
note, will you be actually goingthrough those in the work that
you're leading? So just so everybody knows,
Megan will be leading a workshopFebruary 1st through the 5th
called Moving Through Loss from Grief to Grounded Renewal at our
Santa Fe campus. You're welcome.
(29:09):
If you want to go through them really briefly now.
But obviously if anybody's goingthrough grief, first of all, if
anybody's going through like severe grief, please dial 911 if
you have any kind of suicide ideation.
But let's let's go through this for a moment because it sounds
like this, this methodology you have is part of the practice.
So what what happened for me is when I came out of treatment, I
(29:31):
had this like my hair was on fire.
I was like, Oh my God, I'm, I have been as a, as a very well
trained trauma therapist, traumatherapy really is first about
stabilizing symptoms. People need to get back to work.
They can't be having nightmares,they can't be having panic
attacks. They can't be collapsing.
They, they have a life they haveto lead.
So really we're stabilizing the trauma and then we're getting
(29:55):
into the nugget of the story, which for most people, they've
already, they have already livedthrough.
You were mugged, but you've already survived with grief.
Grief is more complicated because grief, Mary Frances
O'Connor, who's a grief researcher, says it's the It's
akin to going to bed and coming down in the morning and somebody
rearranged all the furniture in your house, and you're going to
(30:17):
stumble around kind of in the dark for a while trying to
figure out how to be in your very in your own home.
And so grief is everything aboutwhat you're doing moving forward
is is touched. And so it's not just about you
need to be able to regulate yourpanic when you're driving, it's
(30:38):
at any point during the day, youmay feel a deep pain because
your brother died. And how are you going to
navigate that in the moment? What's the meaning you're going
to make of it going forward? How are you going to connect to
others? One of the things that happens
for grievers is, like I said about that breakup that I was
going through, they feel grievers feel really, really
(30:58):
isolated. They don't just feel alone.
Alone is you're not with people,Isolated is your cut off from
people. Everybody else has a normal life
and you're not in one. And so when we're doing a grief
practice, really I built it because every griever I've ever
met walks through my door seven days later because that's what
insurance will cover. I see you today and then I get
(31:20):
to see you 7 days from now. And they have been white
knuckling and desperate because their symptoms are so hard to
bear. And and other than the hour that
they get with me, there's not a lot that is there to help
support. Maybe a podcast that helps them
or watching ATV show or one conversation.
Crying help. I mean just like it.
Does yes. I mean, crying is a beautiful
(31:43):
way of regulating your nervous system.
So if you think about dysregulation, crying exhausts
you. I am so bad at it.
I I'm so bad at crying. I mean, I need to watch for me
to cry. I have to be on a plane watching
a schmaltzy movie or the underdog has to win a sports
event. I know what and I there's a
couple movies I can watch if I like.
OK, I need to cry, right? Now what's your go to?
(32:05):
You got to tell me A. Peruvian film called an Undertow
I. Don't know, Livia, I'm ready
instead, no. One knows it.
It's a it beautiful. I have a whole list of movies
that I give people that I'm likethese.
Any one of these might help you.As an aside, what's on the list?
(32:28):
I don't have it in front of me, but there are some standard
movies so, and these will be a little bit older because I'm 51,
but Terms of Endearment is always on people's list.
Field of Dreams is always on people's list, Old Yeller,
Marley and me. So anytime a dog dies, that gets
people. There's a movie with Casey
Affleck where what is it called?It's based on a book but it came
(32:52):
up a lot. His children die in the in the
movie. There's a movie called Shadow
Lands which is about CS Lewis and that is another one where
it's like Deborah Winger dying of cancer and all kinds of
movies makes people cry. I have a long list of movies
that people will tell me. This really got me.
I love the Internet though because the Internet also offers
(33:14):
us like military reunions. That's a big one for people
watching family be reunited. Get people going and like you
don't have to watch 2 hours of amovie like in one split second
you can see a child child being surprised by their dad in
uniform in a school and that will really help people get into
their feelings as the kids say all.
Right, back-to-back to the six, the six pieces of technology.
(33:38):
So when I came out of treatment,I was really digging, I mean,
all day long. And my, you know, I was still
sort of stabilizing my own mental health.
I was really thinking about like, how do we create a
framework so that people can, when they leave my office, feel
like they have some plan of how to live through the week?
And I have this big white board in my office that I started
(34:02):
writing down 22 years ago. Anytime somebody said this sort
of helped my grief, I started writing it down.
Like, OK, I did it with a permanent pen the very first
time. So I kept doing it.
And it's just covered in all thethings, are you exercising,
hiking? I mean, if there's a lot on
there like drinking, it's not all good for you.
(34:23):
Knitting. All the ING words that people
use to to support themselves andtheir grief.
And then I looked at it and was like, what if we kind of
categorize this? So the first piece is that you
really have to be able to find your grief inside your body.
I work with a lot of CE OS Chip and when I am doing an
assessment of them, I throw thisone question in there, which is
(34:45):
do you go to the bathroom when you need to go to the bathroom?
And there's always like an eyebrow raised and like a little
smile. And then these very high
performing people who wake up at4:00 and run half marathons will
say like, no, I can go all day without going to the bathroom.
They say that to me with pride. But what they don't know is the
reason I'm asking is because they're letting me know how
(35:05):
disassociated they are from their body, right?
How disconnected they are. And then I know like, OK, we're
not going to be able to find theenergy of the grief right away.
It's we're going to have to sloweverything down.
So we use mindfulness for that. Just body scans and there's
energy inside your body that isn't grief, by the way.
So, so we really create sort of cluster of that and then we also
(35:26):
use some movement. So mindfulness and movement is
what M in mentor method stands for.
E is that energy idea which is are you more anxious or are you
more depressed? Because most of the time what
you'll hear is like a lavender bath is very good when you are
overwhelmed. But if you haven't gotten out of
bed for 10 days, you don't need a lavender bath.
(35:47):
You need a walk with a friend. So we teach people the
difference between the two kindsof energies and what the
interventions are. Then we talk about nutrition.
What do you put inside your body?
Because our N is. That the third one or is.
That the second one, that's NN, is nutrition and what nourishes
you. So nourishment can be your
spiritual practice. For many people, we have to talk
(36:09):
about spirituality and grief because it can take a hit or
people can go looking for it. But how you organize your
understanding of what happens after you die has to be a
conversation. And lots of therapists are not
comfortable talking about God orspirituality or religion.
You got to get comfortable because it's part of the
conversation. And then what do you eat?
OK, OK. I'm trying, I'm trying to get
(36:31):
the the you got mindfulness, energy, nutrition.
And, and nourishment has two pieces to it.
It's, it's sort of what, what art, what music, what national
parks, what is it that sustains you, that allows you to feel
like something is holding you up.
And for some people that might even be philanthropies.
So we talk about that as nourishment and we talk very
(36:53):
basically about macro nutrients because the the mind body
component, people are not aware that if they only eat the
lasagna and the banana bread that people bring them when
they're grieving the death of a loved one, they are not going to
have the macro nutrients. They need to do the sort of
neurotransmitter and hormone development to create things
(37:17):
like, you know, dopamine that that allow you to feel joy or
serotonin, which allow you to kind of feel calm.
So we talked about nutrition, not heavily, but sort of in a
basic way. And then T is that part the
translation? What is the story you're telling
yourself? And this part is so important
because every single person I work with has a narrative about
(37:41):
what they have been through or what they're going through.
And I see many people who they're loss is happening in
real time. Their mother has dementia, their
dad is dying of cancer. They're caring for, you know,
their marriage is ending. So it's not in the past.
But when we have an event that is happening in real time or in
the past, our bodies are reacting to that sense of threat
(38:05):
and that pain. And when you say and how do you
think you'll feel on Monday, thepeople say bad.
I think I'm going to feel bad onMonday also.
And So what can happen if you tell your story in a certain way
as you begin to predict kind of no good in the future.
And so we we really kind of pullthat apart and we teach people
(38:25):
with some writing prompts how to, how to talk about that.
And then O is the O part is getting outside.
It's literally allowing your central nervous system to be
regulated by nature. And we have all these videos for
folks that can't get outside. We have all kinds of ways to
sort of adapt it. But we we have, there's so much
neuroscience that really it's beyond what our bodies can do on
(38:49):
our on our own. We need to Co regulate with
other people. We need to Co regulate with the
trees. And also, you're going to
probably have to go outside yourcurrent network of people
because they know you as the person you were right before
your loss. And it's it's your people are
good people, but they don't all make it to the other side with
you. People lose friends in the grief
(39:10):
process the same way you lose friends when you, you know,
change jobs or graduate. And then R is rituals and rest
rituals where everybody wants tostart.
Everybody wants to start with. I made meaning from this
terrible event by creating a charity or a GoFundMe, or I
wrote this book or I, we, we want to, or this is how I honor
(39:31):
my son with this legacy. And some people are able to
start that right in the beginning.
Many people need some time to let their loss marinate before
they're able to figure it out. So we talk about ritual and, and
it's a rich conversation. You can have grievers talk about
that together, but we also talk about rest when you are
grieving. It is a totally novel
(39:54):
experience, like actual newness.And our body is really built to
avoid novelty because it's energetically expensive.
But we can't avoid it. There's nothing to, you know,
fight against or flee. You're just in it.
And it literally dehydrates you and exhausts your cells need to
be regenerated. And I know many people that do
(40:15):
not sleep well and are not able to stop.
Rushing and trying to avoid. So we actually teach a a series
of rest practices and have people build them into their
day. And it spells mentor.
And it spells mentor. Look at that.
I actually dreamt. So one of the books that I
wrote, I dreamt the mentor method.
(40:37):
My team was coming to town. I was really thinking before I
went to bed and I woke up in themiddle of the night and I, it
was like that scene from A Beautiful Mind.
I wrote all kinds of things on apiece of paper.
And I was like, wait a minute, it's trying to tell me
something. And I didn't even notice that I
had written mentor down. And then when you came in the
next morning, I was like, oh, look, there's a mnemonic here
that's going to help people remember.
(40:58):
So when I train folks in this, sometimes it's just an hour long
lecture, sometimes it's a five day long clinical training for
therapists. But even in an hour long
lecture, people can remember what mentor stands for.
So they can walk out of that hour long lecture and say like,
OK, I just need to find a mindfulness practice this week
or I just need to get outside for a walk this week.
(41:19):
And it does this thing which is so beautiful, which is it
empowers people to believe that they can grieve, but they can do
the process that everybody says they can't do.
It's the one thing everyone says.
I don't know how to live throughthis.
Do you, do you think that people, is there a spike in
grief in midlife or is it sort of just OK or is it more
(41:42):
distributed throughout one's life?
No, I think I mean again, when Iwhen I first started talking to
y'all at Mei was like, Oh my God, these are my people.
I work almost almost strictly with people in their sort of mid
40s up until their mid 60s. That's what my clients look
like. And what I say is they sort of
have like a post it note pack oflosses, some of which they've
(42:04):
been caring for a really long time and some of which are, you
know, new. Like they, you know, the number
of people I know that lost theirjob at 48 is really
extraordinary. And it can take a whole year.
Especially in Washington, DC, where you're, where you're
based, where I. Mean a lot of people.
A lot of people have been losingtheir jobs.
So you see as a rough town for loss right now.
(42:26):
But, but I think if it's not a death, people are not always
aware that they're grieving. They don't always mark the loss.
And this happens also in companies.
You know, you'll lose the entireSan Francisco office, 1200
people fired yesterday. Your best friend works in the
San Francisco office. You were going to go to a
conference and and you're supposed to go back to work
(42:48):
tomorrow as if nothing happened.And so there's a lot of that
where it's like, well, nobody died and it's not that big a
deal. And I don't feel entitled.
And so I just don't do it. I don't cry.
I don't sit and and connect to the energy.
I don't think of it the way I would think about hunger, which
is just like something that's part of my everyday experience.
(43:10):
And then it stays inside your system, kind of like a splinter.
And what I find for people in their midlife is that those
splinters start to come to the surface.
They start to make themselves known.
You suddenly have more than you can carry.
You've been estranged from your sister since you were 25.
Your dad just died. You're thinking about getting
(43:32):
divorced or married. You need to move.
And all of those things togetherinside the system are, are too
much. But a lot of people in midlife
are doing that. They're really taking stock of
their friendships and their relationships and, and is their
work meaningful? And do they, I mean, I've spoken
to you about this. Do they want to live where they
live? You know, what are we doing now,
(43:53):
right? What are we doing now?
And so it doesn't have to be a death.
It can be something like your kids leaving for college and
suddenly you're feeling the lossand you're feeling that identity
confusion. And without sort of a cohort of
people who who know, who know who have been through it and can
do something other than get together and drink wine, that
(44:16):
not that that's a bad thing, butit shouldn't be the only thing.
You know, people can feel reallystuck.
Like I just have to hold this hard feeling.
And there is science that tells us when we hold those hard
feelings, things like throwing your back out happen, or IBS
happens or, you know, down the line, autoimmune disorders
happen. What are the three most frequent
(44:40):
ways that you see unprocessed grief show up in a potential
client? That's a great question.
So the so the questions I ask people are how's your sleep?
I think sleep is the is one of the biggest keys overreactivity.
So do you get mad? Do you feel hurt?
Do you feel separate overreactivity?
(45:01):
Can't we blame that on being Irish American?
Absolutely. I mean, look, most of us are
blaming it on something and not aware that it is, you know, our
central nervous system is kind of ringing a little bit like a
bell. And so things hurt.
They we and and a lot of us willhave a metacognition about it.
We'll be like, God, I shouldn't be this upset about this, but I
(45:22):
am. That happens.
So they're sleep and then they're, you know, their sense
of overreactivity are sort of like the two key.
And then I always ask, there's 12 systems in the body.
And I do a quick scan, you know,how are your skin and your nails
and your hair? Your integumentary system is a
system. People will say, you know what's
weird? I think my hair might be falling
(45:43):
out. It's like, oh, OK, how's your
digestive tract? Oh, Megan, it's funny that you
asked that. You know, like, oh, I, you know,
I put on a few pounds. And there is this other, you
know, women in their 50s are also going through menopause.
So there is also this hormonal component, but but there's a,
you know, the symptoms of grief are identical to the symptoms of
(46:03):
menopause, except in menopause you have hot flashes.
So, so on the other side of grief, processing the grief can
mean both improvement in all kinds of things in your body and
your emotions and maybe even joy.
Because it feels like one of thethings that you know, so many
things in life where if you're not willing to experience the
(46:25):
negative side, you're not going to be able to experience the
positive side. And do you see that as part of
the upside of processing the grief is, is actually people
feeling an unbridled joy that they haven't felt in decades?
Yeah, although I would never, ever tell someone that, right.
Like they're in my office and they're broken hearted and
(46:45):
they're never going to, you know, what they say to me is I'm
never going to get remarried. I'm, I'm not going to try to
work in this sector again. I know I'm not.
I'm never going to have a good high holiday again.
And what I say is I utterly believe you.
I believe that you will not. And also there is a really
strong part of me that feels like you will.
(47:06):
And then I just want to offer that to you like a little piece
of hope because I've been doing this a long time.
I have my own personal experience.
So your truth is real. It's never going to happen.
And there's a future out there where it's totally possible.
So I never say to people like, oh, but it will be so beautiful
when you process your grief. But I will tell them I, you
(47:27):
know, part of what my team has is we, we we host this book
festival in LA called the Grief Tastic Book Festival.
And brunch, it's on November 21st this year.
Yeah. It's my necklace.
It's my necklace. Grief Tastic.
And what we collect, there are grief experts, but also people
who have lived through untenableloss.
And we put them on panels. Mothers who lost children, you
(47:49):
know, people who lost van fulls of family all at once, multiple
homes burned in the fires, just unbearable experiences of loss.
And you can see those people sitand laugh on a panel.
They will tell you that they experienced joy at their child's
wedding. They will tell you that they
knew they would never get remarried while they're
introducing you to their new husband.
And that kind of hope is really critical because we can't see
(48:14):
our way forward. Our brain is compromised, Our
body is compromised. And there's a part of us that
doesn't even want to try becauseit's too much to lose.
But but the reality is most people do survive untenable loss
all the time. And they say if people say, oh I
could never survive through that, that phrase makes me
insane. None of us can survive.
We become people who can survive.
(48:36):
I can't lift 50 lbs over my head.
But if I had to, I would figure out how to build the muscles to
do it. I would.
And that's what grievers do. And then when you're when you
are early in loss and you are solost in your whole, you can't
find your compass points to stand in front of someone who
not only lived through that story, but published a book
about that story and is willing to talk about that story that
(48:58):
becomes, you know, you're north for a little while.
And I do actually believe that one of the most extraordinary
things in my life was my mother's death and the lessons
that I learned from it. The thing I am the most proud of
in my entire life is checking myself into an inpatient
facility. Before you met me, I had no
(49:18):
ambitions to write books, to talk on national stages, to have
a podcast, to run a book festival.
None of those things were even. It would They weren't secret
ambitions that I just wasn't tapped into.
They did not exist. My life took a hard left turn,
as many people do in midlife, and I am grateful.
I am so grateful to who I am right now.
(49:40):
I feel, and you and I have spoken about this, such deep and
profound purpose in the work that I'm doing.
It's, it's unbelievable. You, you experienced MEA as a a
compadre or camadre a student, and now you're going to be
teaching this workshop in February.
Just give, give for those who are not who are listening or
(50:01):
watching and have not experienced MEA.
You know I'm driving without a license.
You have a license. You're a licensed therapist.
I'm some, you know, you know, snake oil salesman who doesn't
know a thing about psychology. No, that's not.
True, but new because I lost friends to suicide in midlife
and new because I went through my dark night of the ego in
(50:21):
midlife, and new because antidepressant use is at its
peak in midlife. That there needed to be a
program. But just tell a little bit about
your impression of MEA and and alittle bit about what you'll be
doing in the workshop. Well, I think there's several
things that are extraordinary. I really do think that MEA has
(50:41):
your your spirit infused in it, which is that we are lifelong
learners and that, and that thatlearning isn't always pretty and
easy and that we actually need to do that in community.
So I think primarily the thing that is the biggest, most
immediate relief, other than thefact that this the campuses are
so beautiful. I mean, they are physically just
(51:04):
stunning and so relaxing and your staff says things like, you
know, let me get that for you. You just sit here, you just
receive. I mean, it is, it really is a
culture that you can feel and itwas hard to leave.
But the the idea idea being you don't have to know everything.
We can sit here and get curious together.
We can share some stories. We can do that with emotional
(51:24):
safety. But the communion of people
together in the sacred conversation is really needed
right now. We did this thing during COVID
and I don't blame anybody, but we did it globally, which was we
all just agreed it was fine to go home and close the door and
connect over computer. And actually the neuroscientists
(51:47):
know better than this. We know that it is wholly and
spiritually different to be in the physical presence of other
people. So coming to a workshop where
you sit in a circle, you know, there's dancing and there's
delicious food, all of that allows your central nervous
system to sort of just release. I slept so well while I was
(52:11):
there. And you can you can dip into
conversation, you can come out of conversation.
But the I think also the crowd of people that are that are
joining there are joining with areally curious inquisitive mind
and they really are carrying something.
They are on the precipice of wanting a pivot or a shift.
(52:33):
And to me that the grief mentor method, that's what it's built
for. It's not built for when you've
been thrown overboard and you'rejust trying not to drown.
It's really how are we going to how are we going to help you get
back to living when you can't see what that life is going to
be yet? And it's small increments.
So, so to me, the thing that is the strongest is the community
(52:56):
of people that you have built. And I have been to lots of
treatment centers and, you know,yoga retreat centers.
And I really think MEA appeals to a group of people that intend
on getting something out of, of that weekend that they can get
that series of four or five daysthat they can take with them
(53:16):
that is going that they're goingto hang their hat on as a hook
and check in on every day. The other thing is you guys have
this alumni community. We had our alumni call today and
I'm a new alum, but they're, there were people in my cohort
who, you know, they went on extra vacations and they get
together once a year with their MEA community.
It's extraordinary. Yes, yes, yes, we it's, it's A,
(53:39):
and we have 56 regional chat around the world.
And so there's these opportunities to connect to the
chapter. Last question, last question is
this. If you could have a wisdom
bumper sticker that actually hasyour finger wisdom fingerprints
on it based upon maybe an originstory and that wisdom bumper
sticker is a piece of advice or wisdom you would want the the
(54:00):
world to know. What would that be?
I think about this a lot, 'causeI to my own Instagram, right?
And so it's like, what's the world's best bumper sticker?
But but really, I am in this moment right now, which is it's
OK not to know. Yeah, that's wisdom.
Yeah, it's really OK not to know.
And and if you don't know now, that doesn't mean you're not
(54:22):
going to know. It just means that's where you
are. You know the cloud, you're
you're in the river and you're floating.
But the clouds have come. And so it feels it's OK not to
know. You don't have to know
everything. That's why we need other people.
There are other people who know some things and you can bring
them close. And then at some point you will
deepen into some knowing that. That is the thing that I think I
(54:46):
think there is no way to be in the experience of becoming and
know your whole way through you.There has to be some fumbling
around in the dark, in the in the messy middle and the murky
in order to become the person who says I've integrated that
lesson for myself. And it feels like you, that's
what you've lived the last few years.
(55:08):
You know, I'm serious. If you had met me five years ago
and said like Megan, you're going to be on chips podcast,
you're going to be talking aboutthese books you're going to be
talking about, I would have saidlike you, there must be another
Megan in the room, but I do. I do think our truths are things
that we live our way into. It's that real key quote, right?
To, to be, you know, unafraid ofthe things that are dark in your
(55:33):
heart. I, I'm not getting the line
right, but but that, that, that idea that we live our lives into
the answers. I think the structure at MEA is
something that provides people with a handrail that they, that
they really need. And I, I mean, honestly, I've
said this to you before. It's such a generosity of your
own heart experiences that you what you have built for other
(55:56):
people to benefit from. And to me, I think that is I
think that's what all of us want, is for our hard thing to
have more meaning than just being hard.
Thank you, Megan. Thank you, Chip.
It was so good to see you. I I appreciate the fact that on
this podcast, we can have experts come in and give very
(56:20):
practical advice. One of the things I loved, you
know, of my three things I lovedon this particular episode was
the I talk about the vagus nerve.
Google it. And you know, I when I had my
flat line experience years ago, initially they thought it was a
vasovagal reaction, which is means you literally can your
heart when you're in a state of distress, your whole system can
(56:45):
shut down. As it turns out, it was an
allergic reaction to an antibiotic.
But vasovagal is something that happens when you're so
overwhelmed with distress. And the fact that the vagus
nerve is there as a parasympathetic response to when
you're actually going through distress can give you some
comfort that for as I said to toMegan, my biggest worry about
(57:08):
really allowing myself to grieveat times is like how bad it
could get. And so the vagus nerve is meant
to be this guardrails, you know,on a mountain Rd. that helps you
to know that if it if you reallyget that distress, your body
actually knows how to actually modulate and regulate that
distress. Secondly, I'm just going to like
(57:29):
do a shout out for Carrie Cardinali, who is our chief
content officer. She's the one who who coined the
term TQ transitional intelligence or transitional
quotient. One of the things that I think
that Megan alluded to, but we didn't really get into it was
this idea that there are these three stages of any transition
(57:49):
we can grief. You don't have to have a huge
loss to have a, a sense of grief.
You can be in the midst of a transition and those 3 stages
are the ending of something, themessy middle and the beginning
of something. You can actually read about this
at the bottom footer of the MEA website, meawisdom.com.
There is actually a free resource called The Anatomy of a
Transition. So understanding that when
(58:12):
you're going through a transition, you need to actually
look for rituals to, to, for theending of something.
And the second stage is messy metal.
The third stage is being the beginning of something.
And there's other things you cando during those stages.
But I think what Megan talked about was the idea of when
something's ending, how are you,How are you processing the
(58:33):
ending of it? And in our case at MEA, we, we
try to help people to understandhow do you ritualize it either
by yourself or collectively. So I would just say for those
who want to understand transitions a little bit more
and understand how do you end something and do it in a way
that can feel comfortable to you.
Check out the anatomy of a transition on the MEA website.
(58:54):
Then finally, you know, I, I have to, to highlight and
illuminate the mentor, the griefmentor method that is specific
to, to Megan's book work and her, her, her content.
There were six stages, mindfulness of the first piece,
the part I liked there was not just being mindful, but actually
(59:15):
looking for the grief in your body because the, the, it can be
actually stored there. Sometimes breathing, breath work
can be really helpful for this doing holotropic breathing.
And I've done that before where I get my body going in such a
cycle of, of my breathing that Iliterally start to cry and maybe
like really tremble because of that.
(59:36):
And then the, the grief is able to sort of start to be being
released from the body. Secondly, that energy, the idea
of like, where is the energy? Thirdly, nourishment, both what
is it that nourishes you? Art or music or things that you
could use as nourishing? And then how are you, how are
you feeding your body and it with nutrition?
(59:57):
The 4th is the translation. What story are you telling
yourself? And is it, is that a story that
you're stuck in that is keeping you in that grieving in a, in a
place of grief as opposed to processing the grief?
Finally #5 and 6 outside, being outside your central nervous
system is not just regulated by your vagus nerve, but it's also
(01:00:18):
regulated by nature. And being in nature is actually
quite good for it. And then finally the rituals and
the rest. And you know, as I said earlier,
with sometimes with the ending, you need to actually have a
ritual to say I'm this is the line of demarcation of the past.
So a lot of good information there.
I mean, for those of you who have never experienced grief,
(01:00:39):
the first question you might askyourself is, are you storing
that grief in your body and thatthere has been some grief or are
you just good at processing it? And good for you if you are.
But grief is a fact of life. And on the other side of grief
can be an awful lot of joy. So if you are somebody who is
find yourself overly reactive, angry, maybe flatline in terms
(01:01:06):
of your emotions, you, you, you don't get very high, you don't
get very low. Explore the idea of grief and
maybe explore Megan's workshop here at the Santa Fe campus in
February. Thanks so much for joining.
We'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to The
Midlife Chrysalis. This show is produced by Midlife
Media. If you enjoyed this episode,
(01:01:27):
help us spread the word by subscribing and leaving a review
on your favorite platform.
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