May 5, 2025 • 58 mins
Title: “Recovering from Grief.” Host: David DeRose, MD, MPH. Guests: Steve and Karen Nicola, Grief Coaches and professional educators. Description: No parents are ever prepared for the death of a young child. But this is exactly what turned the world of Steve and Karen Nicola upside down. Learn how the Nicola’s came to terms with their grief—and channeled their energies into helping others do the same. For more information, visit: www.comfortfortheday.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to American, Indian and Alaska Native Living, a program
designed to educate and inspire listeners throughout Indian Country. American
Indian and Alaskan Native Living is hosted by doctor David Deroz,
a board certified specialist in both internal medicine and preventive medicine.
Doctor Deroz has a wide range of experience with native
(00:25):
health issues, and he is here today to help you
learn more about your health. Here is doctor Deroz.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Welcome to American, Indian and Alaska Native Living. I'm doctor
David Deroz. We've got an amazing show lined up for
you because it deals with something that every single one
of us deals with at sometime in our life, often
at multiple junctures in our life. We're talking about grief
today and how to go through it successfully. I've got
two folks who have spent their life a good portion
(00:53):
of their life as grief coaches speaking around the world,
Karen and Steve Nick. Great to have you guys with
us today.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Good to be here, David, Thank you, Thank you, David.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
We're happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Now. You know folks today, they know the coaching industry.
There's life coaches, there's exercise coaches, but grief coaches may
not be on people's radar screen, and they may even
be thinking, why would anybody want to be a grief coach?
It sounds like a pretty morbid business. There must be
a story behind that.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Well.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
I don't know about anybody else, but there is nothing
more satisfying for me than to be the witness of
someone who comes to see us in deep suffering and
pain and walk with them through that to healing and wholeheartedness.
To witness that transformation is so satisfying. So it's a
(01:50):
blessing to be a grief coach.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
Yeah, grief coaching is a little more hands on in
terms of people's grief. We'd spend quite a bit of
time listening to people talk about the loss of whatever
it might be. It can be more than just death.
There's many many things that happened to people that cause
them to be in grief.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
But the.
Speaker 5 (02:09):
Advantage of grief coaching on one level, It doesn't discount
therapists or counselors at any level, but it does give
us ability to give them more hands on activities and
strategies they can use to interact with their own grief. So,
when we finished with a session, they have some tools
in their grief toolkit that they can take home and
begin to use right away.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
So tell us about your story, because I know you
have a pretty dramatic story the two of you that
really engaged you in this field.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Go ahead.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
When your firstborn three and a half year old son
dies of leukemia, our world changed, our lives changed. We
had quite a journey even getting to his three and
a half year mark. When he was diagnosed at h
two of leukemia, we found ourselves in great distress in that,
(03:04):
first of all, our son is now seriously diagnosed, but
the consequences of the timing of all that left us homeless, jobless, insuranceless,
and another baby number two ready to arrive in about
four weeks from his diagnosis. So it was a cascade
(03:25):
of circumstances in our life that were really overwhelming. And
I know for Steve and myself there is no one
else to lean on too but God, and lean into
that presence of the one who loves us most is
(03:46):
with us in all of this.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
We were so thankful.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
We had just made a I had just finished a
teaching career up in Alaska, and we just moved to Montana.
So We were in Building's, Montana when our son was
initially diagnos with acute lymphasific.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Leukemia, and.
Speaker 5 (04:04):
That move allowed us to be very flexible as to
where we could go immediately for his healthcare. There wasn't
the pediatric oncology pediatric cancer facilities in Alaska at that time.
This was in the early eighties, so allowed us.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
To be able to hop on a plane.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
The very day that we found out from the pediatricians
there in Billings, Montana, we flew out to Sacramento. On
the very next day, we found ourselves at Stamford's Children's
Hospital in Palo Alto, California, and that began a journey
of a lot of stress, to be honest, And yet
in the midst of it all, we saw other families
(04:42):
in that pediatric unit with all the children that all
had different types of cancers and little bald heads, lots
of kids hooked up to ivs for their chemo or whatever.
But the thing that we noticed right away was that
the people who didn't have something bigger than themselves, you know,
(05:02):
to lean on or to lean into, we're quite agitated,
quite depressed, very morose, and really just kind of we're
just surviving from moment a moment. Karen and I unfortunately
had each other there, but we also had, you know,
our our lean too was God, and a lot of
people that were there began to see that that was
(05:24):
made a difference in the in our peacefulness about it.
Did we feel all you see peacefulness? No, we're not
saying we did it totally right at all, but we
certainly learned to lean into the fact that these were
some things that we couldn't change.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Yeah, So one by one we found the miracle, I
guess you can call it, of supplying for all of
those needs. Dawson went into remission, Steve was hired on
a job, We received state insurance for our son's medical
in medical expenses. Our daughter was born a week late.
(06:00):
We were able to relocate in a little house in
northern California, new Era pediatric office that specialized in hematology
and child cancers, and we lived a happy, wonderful life
for another year and a half.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
So, I mean, it's remarkable your story. I mean, the
agony that you went through. I mean, basically it sounds
like pretty much losing everything or you know, you're looking
at the possibility of losing a child, you've lost a job,
you've lost your support network as far as friends. And
it's obvious to those of us listening that you know
(06:37):
faith was a big stabilizing factor of faith in a
creator and God. Many of my listeners can resonate with that.
Others may not. They may say, well, I have a
different perspective on spirituality. And I know you, folks, having
walked this journey now for so many years with so
many people, you walk with people regardless of what their
faith and spiritual background is. But we're listening attentively because
(07:00):
I know your story is still unfolding as you're telling
it to us. So your boy went into remission for
better than a year, is that right?
Speaker 5 (07:10):
About about a year and a half, David, he was
in full remission, and then we took him in for
routine blood tests at the pediatric pediatrician's office, and then
they sent it in for testing just as they usually
did on a quarterly basis, and we got the dreaded
phone call that he had relapsed.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
He was in remission.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
He relapsed, and generally with a child of his nature,
he was so sick when he started his chemo regime
that he wasn't a good candidate to hold on to
his remission, and if you fell out, the possibility of
him maintaining his second remission was very small. So the
oncologist told us, you know, whatever you two decide will
(07:52):
support you. Well, anybody that's listening in the medical field
knows that what an oncologist tells you, whatever you decide,
will support you. You know that they done all that
they can do. And so we uh the second diagnosis
was probably more traumatic to us, possibly than the first,
and at that point.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
We had to make some hard decisions.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
Do we try to do we still try to reenact
more strong of chemotherapy, you know, what do we do?
And we did try for a little while, but it
was we realized that this was not the right way
to go, and so we simply stopped all therapy at
that point, gave him some basic medicines to keep him comfortable,
and then we said, you know, this is we've.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Done the best that we can do with what we
know humanly. And that was in January, and.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
We had a lot of a lot of conversations with
lots of people about what we could do.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
There was talk about doing bone.
Speaker 5 (08:44):
Marrow transplants, but in that was in nineteen eighty five,
and bow Marew Transplants for children was very much in
its infancy at that point, and the risks were just
too high to put a little guy like our son
through and we decided against that. And so what happened
at that point, Honey, Well.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
We've lived one day at a time, very grateful. It
was an interesting transition when you know your child is
going to die. At least for me, when I knew
that Dawson was going to die, every moment is precious,
every day is precious. And I thought of people who
(09:25):
would say goodbye to their children for school and they
had no idea that they would not see them again,
in that in the rest of the life because of
some accident that would happen. In today's case, I'm shooting
at a school, you know, any of these kinds of
tragedies that take place around us in our lives. But
I knew that there would be a day where I
(09:48):
wouldn't have my son with me, and so I just
lived to the best I could fully each of those days.
I did experience a phenomminal encounter with forgiveness, in that
I don't think that there's a parent alive who would
say that they were a perfect, flawless parent, who would say, oh,
(10:12):
I have not one regret or I don't have any
second guesses or I wished or could have, would have
should have done something differently. I believe every one of
us know that we mishapped, we made mistakes, We did
things arrently. We sometimes did things on purpose that were
(10:34):
not best for us or our children, and those carrying
that into our grief after death is such a heavy burden,
it's phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
So it's as if you were blaming yourself for your
son's death to some extent, or was it something bigger
than that?
Speaker 4 (10:55):
Oh, that's pretty big to blame yourself.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I'm not minimizing that, but I mean, because you know,
we speak about guilt and all, but sometimes there's other issues,
I mean emotional issues or things with a three and
a half year old, I mean, that's going to be
different than if it was someone eighteen or twenty, is
what I'm getting at.
Speaker 5 (11:18):
What what with the initial diagnosis, David, we when you
hear that you know, we believe your son has leukemia,
you do do a quite.
Speaker 6 (11:28):
A lengthy inventory inventory back here head, What did we
do because he was he was not old enough to
have had any unhealthy lifestyle choicest that point, you know,
because it was there things that we ate, things that
we did, or whatever that influenced him to have this.
And for a long time, and I know, even as
(11:50):
a man, I thought, Man, I've really failed my son.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
I've I should have kept him from getting cancer. Many
men feel that.
Speaker 5 (11:56):
Way when their child is taken from them from whatever,
for whatever reason, under whatever circumstances. But because we're just
kind of wired that way as men. Particularly women feel
that way too, but men feel, you know, we're wired
to protect and to provide. When we can't protect and
provide for our children, particularly, but also for our wives
(12:18):
and extended family. We can many times feel like we're
a failure, that we let our family down. And I
felt that for a long time, and I had to
come to the conclusion finally that we were doing the
best we could at that time, and that we were
not knowingly responsible for his getting neikmia. And we live
on planet Earth. Planet Earth is not a safe place
(12:41):
to live news and you can find that anywhere in
the world right now. There's flooding and fires and tornadoes
and earthquakes. So we realized that our address is planet Earth,
so there's so so many environmental factors that could have
affected his and we still don't. You know, obviously, I
don't have a cure for it today after all these years.
(13:02):
So that was a really big thing to be, you know,
to have that initial diagnosis, a second diagnosis and realize
this is it, and so we had to just simply
let it be.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
So I know, Karen, you were wanting to go in
the direction of forgiveness, and the reason why I asked
that initial question was because often we talk about forgiveness
and relationships, it does involve, you know, that strongly that
relational aspect or some kind of you know, rift sometimes
in relationships. But I'm also reading between the lines that
(13:35):
a lot of that forgiveness has to do with forgiving oneself.
So we're definitely interested in exploring that because I heard
a couple of presentations that the two of you recently gave,
and I know that was one of the big keys
that you feel that often people don't go through grief
well because they don't handle this forgiveness piece particularly well.
(13:57):
Did I hear that correctly?
Speaker 4 (14:00):
Absolutely did, David. And that's where for me It is
the big thing. It is where our grief transitions from
a hurtful and stuck cycle into something so much better
for us.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
We have to talk more about this, and I know
you guys have some great resources that my listeners are
going to be excited to learn about, but we have
to step away just briefly. I'm talking to Karen and
Steve Nicola. They are grief coaches, grief educators. We're going
to talk about some of their resources and some amazing
things that can help you, whether you're able to engage
(14:41):
with them after this program or not. Some practical strategies
coming up next after these important messages.
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(15:14):
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We'll be right back after this.
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But these are stressful.
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Once I was approved, the USDA's Farm Service Agency.
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Helped me get the credit I needed.
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Now I don't have to sell, and I can pass
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Contact your local USDA Service Center or visit www.
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Dot FSA dot USDA dot gov.
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Speaker 1 (17:29):
You're listening to doctor David Deurouse on American, Indian and
Alaska Native Living. Your comments and questions are welcome. Call
now at one eight hundred seven seven five hope, that's
one eight hundred seven seven five four six seventy three.
Here again is doctor Deuroz.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Welcome back to American, Indian and Alaska Native Living. I'm
doctor David Durose. I'm with the Nicholas, Steve and Karen.
They are our guests helping us to deal with this
universal topic of grief and grieving. And as Steve you
pointed out earlier, it's not just death that causes us
to grieve. Maybe before we get into the topic too
(18:08):
much more, If some folks are thinking, well, hey, I
don't know why they're talking to me. I'm in my twenties,
I'm not even married. How am I going to lose anything?
Cast the picture a little bit more broadly. For those
who are tuning in today.
Speaker 5 (18:21):
Well, I imagine that probably every person that's in earshot
of this has had some kind of loss in their life.
It may have been that their puppy died when they
were when it was small, it got hit, their kiddy died,
grandma or grandpa died unexpectedly, or maybe they were planning
on it. Maybe a classmate at school, his mother died
(18:43):
of cancer, her father died of cancer, her brother died
from an accident. Where we live here in northern California,
tens of thousands of people have lost their homes in
the last ten years due to fire, a huge It's
very traumatic over on the East Coast right now. People
are losing their homes, their livelihood due to flooding. Tremendous
(19:04):
amount of grief with that, particularly when you lose a home,
because when a person is in shock and grief, the
natural place you want to go to grief is where
your house your house, and when the very thing that
you were going to go to grieve over is gone,
because it's what was lost that complicates it even more.
(19:25):
But there's a lot of more subtle things you want
to talk about. Some of the more maybe unrecognized areas
of grief cares well.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
There's when relationships end for a variety of reasons, or
when your health declines and your abilities are no longer
the same as they used to be. Sometimes the loss
of a job or even retirement is that we grieve
deeply over. So there are many, many life experiences that
are overlooked as something that needs just to stop, pause,
(19:55):
pay attention, and let's let ourself grief.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (19:59):
Another thing that I don't want to mention to your
audience because I realize we have a diverse cultural listenership
here as with most radio stations. But what we've learned
in our short years of doing this is that everybody
will grieve. You cannot choose not to grieve when you've
had a major tragedy.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
It's like for us men.
Speaker 5 (20:20):
I used to say every man maintains his car, okay
ors motorcycler's boat. Now it may mean that he never
changes his oil, He never checks the air in the tire,
he never looks for the transmission fluid. He just drives
it until it dies. That's his maintenance program, you see.
Or the guy that checks his oil and changes it
every two thousand miles and checks the tires every time
(20:41):
he gets in it, that's the guy at the other
end of the spectrum. But what we have realized, no
matter what a person's ethnic culture background is, whether it's
a Native American, if it's a Hispanic, whether it's African American,
whether it's Asian, whether it's Angle, whether it's South American
(21:02):
or European, what the common thing that we find that
binds all of us together is, no matter how we
express it outwardly, we all feel it deeply inside of ourselves.
And we have to recognize that every one of us
still carries a sense of loss, a sense of sadness,
a sense of mourning, and so when that happens, we
(21:26):
may show it differently, and there's no right or wrong
to that, but we just have to give each other
space to realize that not everybody is going to express
or look the same way. When two people from two
different cultures could lose a wife. Let's say two men.
One man may not show any emotion whatsoever. The other
man may show a tremendous amount of sadness of countenance.
(21:46):
He's crying, he's morose for a long time. Neither one
of those are necessarily wrong, but they are both still
feeling that probably equally inside Karen.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
I know we want to come back to this topic
of forgiven this and how this plays in to all
of these losses, so kind of help us to understand
that connection. And we've already gotten this idea that often
we blame ourselves when bad things happen. Is this a
big part of the challenge in grieving?
Speaker 4 (22:14):
It is a big part of the challenge in grieving
because we know, if we're honest, what we've swept under
the rugs, what we've stuffed in the back mental closets
of our hearts and minds, and we carry that weight
of that subconsciously, if not consciously, And there is a
(22:34):
remedy for that weight. There is a freedom for that weight,
and it is called forgiveness. To forgive ourselves, to recognize
that I don't have to hold onto this pain any longer. Now,
coming from a paradigm that I trust that God is
(22:54):
my originator of this forgiveness, that it's nothing I could
have rigend on my own, but in God's supreme creatorship,
he creates the capacity to recreate by forgiving. Now, that's
an action of trust or faith that what he has
(23:18):
provided is absolutely available because it comes forth from from
His source, not from mine. That is huge for me.
That was a huge turning point for me to be
forgiven of my mommy mistakes. I had well, I had
said and done things out of impatience and unkindness, and
(23:42):
things that I had regretted, as I think anybody has
in a relationship. If only I'd said or if only
I had done. And in many cases it's just a
simple matter of writing an apology letter to the person
who has died, taking responsibility. I did these things, and
(24:02):
I am so sorry it hurts you. I apologize, and
that in itself is a cleansing and a freeing. It's
no longer secrets locked away in our hearts and minds.
It has now been released. And even if the person
that has died, or the job we have left, or
(24:22):
the relationship that's ended in divorce, it's not intended so
much for that individual to see, hear, or read as
it is for us to let go of it, to
claim it, and to say I apologize, I own it,
and that is very, very powerful.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
As I listened to your presentations recently, you're at a
big conference sharing some of these concepts, it seemed like
one of the barriers that got in the way of
successfully navigating grief, if we can use that terminology, was anger.
I'm wondering if you can speak to that a bit.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
Well, that was the area of David that I experienced.
If Karen had some at some point, but nowhere near
the long term, long term, yeah, that.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
I experienced.
Speaker 5 (25:14):
As I mentioned earlier, we men really feel deeply when
someone we loved close to us gets very you know,
is injured, or gets very sick, or dies. And in
my case, I felt like I had failed my son
and my definition of and what happens. That's it's a
it's it's a tension that I somehow failed as a man,
(25:36):
as a father, as a husband, as a human being,
you know. And those are natural things. I've heard many
men that I worked with over the years express the
same thing. I let my family down, I let my
child down, I let my wife down. I didn't realize
she was so sick. She was sicker than I thought
she was. And if I just if I just told
my son to not go in the car, you know
(25:57):
that time I'm talking about someone else, if I just
held them back for just two more seconds, he wouldn't
have gotten hit or whatever. And so we men feel
that we've lost to control. And my definition, there's many
many definitions of anger, but for me, it's a loss
of control of people and circumstances and or circumstances.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
So in my case, and.
Speaker 5 (26:19):
With a lot of men, we couldn't control that our
child got sick, or our wife got sick, or our
family member got sick, nor could we keep them from dying.
And we're so used to being in control, and so
when we're out of control, think about when someone cuts
you off in traffic, or does something that harms your house,
or they say something derogatory about a family member. We
(26:41):
can't control the words that come out of their mouth
many times, and so we feel frustration and anger. And
that's what happens a lot with people in grief is
they couldn't particularly men, is that we couldn't control whatever
happened to our loved one who died.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
And so.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
Unless we can identify that the anger initially is not
a problem, it's hanging on to it. And for me,
I'd have to admit that I realized that I was
angry that I couldn't control the death of my son
for almost twenty years.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Well, and even though.
Speaker 5 (27:16):
I come from a Christian context and I have a
belief in God, my humanists still wouldn't turn loose of
the fact that somehow I had let my child down.
And so I decided I was just going to be
kind of a slow burn.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
So is the essence of anger you're trying to blame someone,
whether it's yourself or someone else for the problem and
take something out on them. Is that the essence of it?
Speaker 4 (27:41):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (27:41):
I would that would work. My anger was mostly self directed, Karen,
was that because this lady that's sitting next to me
was the recipient of that for a long long time.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
I like what you asked, David, because in Steve's case,
it was self blame. Then his anger went inward to
towards himself and the things he would say about himself
and the lack of patience with himself. It was very
painful to witness that in my husband.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
That's not what she signed up for to get married.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Well, none of us do, but life seems to throw
all these detours in our way. If we want to
put it mildly, you guys have an amazing experience, but
you haven't just well stayed stuck in the place that
you struggled with Steve, you're talking about your anger. We're
going to talk in the next segment about how you
(28:35):
came through that and how both of you have channeled
some of this energy and some of this experience into
helping literally thousands upon thousands of people. I'm David Deroz,
my guest today Karen and Steve Nikola. We're going to
be talking more with them practical things that can help
you in whatever area of grief you're facing. Got a
lot more coming up in the second half of our show.
(28:57):
Please stay by.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
American, Indian and Alaska Native Living will continue in a moment.
If you have questions or comments about today's pre recorded broadcast,
please contact us on the web at AIA n L
dot org or call one eight hundred seven seven five hope.
That's one eight hundred seven seven five four six seventy three.
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Speaker 13 (29:56):
Unlike other health concerns, mental illness is not always easy
to see. Depression won't show up on an eye chart,
and you can't measure it on your bathroom scale. Sorting
out a mental health concern is not something to attempt
on your own. You won't find a bipolar disorder by
looking at a thermometer. Like many other health conditions, help
(30:19):
from mental illness takes professional diagnosis and treatment. Anxiety won't
just go away under a stick on bandage, so the
sooner you seek treatment the better. If you or a
loved one has a mental health concern, don't go it alone.
Find out what to do. For twenty four hour free
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(30:42):
and sixty six y two help. Learn more at SAMSEID
dot gov slash support. That's sam HSA dot gov slash support.
Speaker 14 (30:55):
Using math taught me everything about freedom, only not I
you think it taught me how easy it is to
lose your freedom. If you think meth is taking control
of you, ask for help. You have the power to
be truly free. I know I'm yon and I'm free
from meth.
Speaker 15 (31:13):
If you or someone you know is struggling with meth,
call one eight hundred sixty six two help for twenty
four hour free and confidential treatment referral. Learn more at
SAMHSA dot gov slash meth.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
You're listening to doctor David Deurouse on American Indian and
Alaska Native Living. Your comments and questions are welcome. Call
now at one eight hundred seven seventy five, Hope. That's
one eight hundred seven seven five four six seventy three.
Here again is doctor DeRose.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Welcome back to the second half of today's edition of
American Indian and Alaska Native Living. I'm doctor David Deurose,
Steven Karen Nicola, my guests. Today we're speaking about grief.
It's a universal experience all of us deal with loss.
We've talked about some of the many forms that loss
can take and some of the common challenges that we
have dealing with anger, negotiating forgiveness. Steve, when we stepped away,
(32:13):
you'd been talking about both you and Karen talking about
how difficult it was for you to have lost your
young son and the anger that you had. As Karen
described it from her perspective, it seemed like it was
anger mostly originally directed it yourself, but I gathered it
then became manifest in how you dealt in other relationships.
(32:35):
How did you get through that?
Speaker 5 (32:36):
We lot's a really good question, David, and I want
to also preface this that this anger and loss, grief,
losses can come. Think of the people who are still
angry about losing a job, or losing about the unfairness
of our house being swept away or burned down, or
any number of losses. Anger can be associated with that,
because again we can't control that that took place. We
(32:59):
found there was just a couple things that were very helpful.
To kind of put an mcap on this would be
to say that one of the things I had to
learn to do was to ask for help It's not
an unmanly thing to ask to admit that I needed help.
You know, we men nowadays we think if we go
to YouTube and ask how do I tune my car up?
Work that we think we're pretty smart. But when it
(33:20):
comes to the most complex thing in the world is
our mind and our emotions, and we think that somehow
we can handle that on our own. We really need
the help of someone outside of ourselves, whether it's a
fellow grief coach, a grief therapist, or a belief in God.
I believe that helps us through our grief experience. And
knowing that, at least from my contact God never was
(33:43):
angry with me for being angry with him and being
angry with the world around me. I didn't know his heart.
I didn't know his actual thoughts toward MAJORA and my
time of loss as well as I could have. Years
have given me a different perspective on that. I'm thankful
to know that anger doesn't have to be my experience
on an ongoing basis. I can turn that over to God.
(34:05):
I can turn it over to someone else that can
hear me out and give me some feedback and some perspective,
and I can move forward and move out of that
grief experience onto in that anger experience, onto something more
healing and more positive.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Excellent, Karen, you dealt, no doubt with some anger too,
but maybe in a different way.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
Yes, it was a different way. I chose to do
what had been working for me from day one, which
was to put my stuff on paper. And I have
a vivid memory of one day being very angry at
our by then two year old daughter girl, and she
wasn't taking a nap, and I needed her to take
(34:48):
a nap because I needed some rest, and I was
very impatient with her. Anyway, I'm at three or four
attempts to put her into bed, and she kept popping up.
Finally I just screamed at her and told her to
stay in bed, and I went to room and closed
the door and started to put my anger on paper,
and I wrote and wrote and wrote how angry I
was at Joanna. Then I said, oh, no, I'm not
(35:08):
angry at Joanna. I'm really angry at Dawson for dying
and leaving me with these horrible feelings. No, no, no,
I wrote and wrote and wrote, and no, I wasn't
angry at Dawson. Was angry at Steve for leaving me
and him going off to work. And I continued to
put that on paper and then realized, no, I'm not
angry at Steve. I'm really angry at God. And there
(35:30):
I could just let my anger go sit because all
I knew was that God was bigger than my anger
and who could do with it what I needed him
to do with it. So my mode of operating was
to use pencil and paper, and that's what actually formulated
(35:53):
the book, Comfort for the Day, Living Through the Seasons
of Grief.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Well, tell us a little bit about this, because I
know a lot of folks have been a fitted from
that book. Years ago. You and I Karen talked about
the book on air. It's been out I think what
maybe thirty years or more?
Speaker 4 (36:09):
Am I remembering that right from nineteen ninety one. Yes,
there was a brief little period of time, maybe two
or three years, where it was at the bottom of
the list, but then we republished and here we go again.
So Comfort for the Day, Living Through the Seasons of
Grief is not our story. So it's not a book
about us and our son and our grief and our
(36:31):
healing of that. But it is the result of the
healing that took place in my life, and that result
we're combined two things. Sage wisdom that came out of
scripture that was extremely applicable to my broken heart, and
(36:52):
then the opportunity to embrace that wisdom and align it
with my broken heart and interact with it on paper.
So I didn't have a therapist at the time, I
didn't have a grief coach. I mean this was forty
years ago, well, and so I just poured my heart
(37:12):
on paper. I poured my questions out on paper. And
today we're learning that this is actually a viable strategy
that science is validating and it's so exciting.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
So we want to talk more about this particular strategy.
But before we do, if someone is saying, hey, I'm
already tracking with Karen and Steve, and I want to
get a copy of this book Comfort for the Day.
Is there one good place to go? Do you guys
have a website? Is that a good place?
Speaker 5 (37:43):
We do, well, the best place to go to obtain
a copy, and we have it both.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
In English and in Spanish.
Speaker 5 (37:50):
Now nice Comfort for the Day Living through the Seasons
of Grief can be found on our website, which is
Comfort for the Day dot com.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Now this is too easy, a Comfort for fry dot
com dot com. Okay, So, and if I go there,
I can pick up the book. How about if I
don't want the book? Can I get anything else there
that would help me?
Speaker 5 (38:12):
Oh my, I let care and tell you a couple
of the other There's lots of other resources on there too.
And to find the book though, you'll just need to
click on the little tab that says store and then
it'll take you take care of you from there. We're
having a very very nice little special in our books
right now, so people are saving getting them for less
than what we would sell them to a bookstore for.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Oh wow, that is a very good deal.
Speaker 4 (38:33):
It's a very good special. So Comfort for the Day
dot Com services and provides resources for both the griever
and their supportive friends. So you might not be in
a loss and grief experience right now, but you might
know somebody who is so. At our website, there are
(38:54):
blogs for supportive friends, and there are blogs for those
who are grieving. Wonderful resources to scroll through, things that
speak to holiday seasons for both the grievers and supportive friends,
unique and common experiences that grievers have. So yes, that's
a really great resource to go to. At our store,
(39:17):
we also supply what we call cards that comfort, and
those are not your typical sympathy cards. These are cards
that actually acknowledge what someone is experiencing through the death
of a spouse, or the death of a child, or
the death of a parent, or an anniversary of some kind,
(39:39):
or even weeks or months later when everybody else is forgotten.
How wonderful to get a card that acknowledges that you're
still grieving.
Speaker 5 (39:49):
The nice thing about the cards are that Karen wrote
the text on them.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Okay, very good. Well, now, the most recent connection I
had with you, folks was through some meetings that you
were doing, your holding workshops and other presentations, and I
gathered that this is not a strange setting for you
that you, folks travel, you do events for communities, for
faith communities, other groups. Is that something that someone can
(40:15):
also connect with you through the comfortfothday dot com website.
Speaker 4 (40:20):
Absolutely, there's a page to leave your comment and we
receive several requests a year for would you please come
speak to our organization? And it's fine if it's a
faith based organization. It's fine if it's a business organization.
Speaker 5 (40:35):
Just next week we'll be speaking to a whole staff
of a rather large funeral home conglomerate here in the
Sacramento area, northern California. Karen has spoken to a large
community down in Austin, Texas that provides healthcare for all
the county employees of the state of Texas. We find,
just on a financial level, outside of the area of
(40:58):
feelings and grief and things unresolved grief or unattended to
grief can cost businesses and corporations well over one hundred
billion dollars a year. Well, people come to work because
they because they have to, but maybe their mind they've
set their bodies on so they can't. They don't lose
a job, but they they are more at risk of
getting injured or making mistakes or calling in sick. And
(41:21):
so that's how businesses lose so much because of this.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
So tribal entity, tribal corporation, non native employer, I mean,
anybody basically could benefit from paying attention to this topic,
whether they engage with you, folks or with someone else.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
Right factly, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Well, we want to come back to something that you
were speaking about that tied in with your book. Karen
and you were speaking about writing, and one of the
things that I picked up on in your recent conference
was this fact that when you ask people to write,
you recognize somewhere into this that some people were looking
at this as kind of an onerous task, something they
(41:59):
couldn't do. Tell us a little bit more about that,
because I'm sure there are people now hearing, yeah, writing
that may have worked for Karen, but that won't work
for me. Talk to us a little bit more about
that topic.
Speaker 4 (42:08):
And I love those people, because the real deal of
it is is that we tell our clients please stop writing.
I don't want you to write. Writing is an academic experience,
and for most of us, that academic experience was not pleasant,
and so our natural, conscious and subconscious response to that
(42:31):
is to shut down. It's like I didn't like language
arts class when I was in high school or elementary school.
To ask me to write, I don't remember all the
rules of writing. I'm not going to get the sentence
right or the punctuation right. So write it from the
get go. I tell my clients please stop writing. I
don't want you to write. So if you notice I've
(42:52):
referred to it as putting my stuff on paper.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Tell us the difference.
Speaker 4 (42:57):
The big difference is one is therapeutic and healing and
the other one is academic. And if I'm in deep pain,
my pain is messy, it's disorganized, it's chaoti, it's unpredictable.
It has nothing to do with the rules of the
written language.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
So if I'm looking at someone who's following your counsel,
I'm going to look at them and saying they're writing.
But you would tell me, no, they're just putting stuff
down on paper. You want to de emphasize the fact
that they have to make sense or anything. Am I
getting the message?
Speaker 4 (43:29):
You're getting the message. So we've created a new word
for it. It's called piesop or pie stopping, and it
means simply just put your stuff on paper p ysop.
Because everybody has stuff. We all have this random chaoti,
crazy processes that are going on in our heart and
(43:51):
our mind, and it can feel like it's just endless,
going round and round and round. And so there's a
way to funnel it outside of our bodies and experience
the relief, the release, the healing, because it creates space
for the calm and the peace to come behind it.
(44:18):
Whereas if we just hold all of that inside of
our minds and hearts, it will make our body sick.
Speaker 5 (44:25):
So pie shopping, David is like think of a large,
overinflated balloon that's about ready to pop, and we don't
want it to pop all at once when it comes
to our emotions, because then that can come out as
anger or inappropriately, So pie stopping putting yourself on paper,
Just think of putting a little pin sticking little pins
in that balloon and letting it let out air at
(44:46):
a measured release, so it's not something that happens all
at once. It's interesting that this is nothing new.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Wow, I'm getting the idea. I think my folks tuning
in are as well. I know you guys have a
whole bunch of other very practical insights. We've just got
one segment left, but in that last segment, I know
we've got a lot of ground to cover. If you're
tuning in today, you're listening to Karen and Steve Nicola.
I'm doctor David Derou's more practical counsel. In our final
(45:15):
segment about dealing with grief successfully. Stay tuned.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Today's broadcast has been pre recorded. However, if you have
questions about today's show or would like further information, please
call one eight hundred seven to seven to five hope.
That's one eight hundred seven seven five four six seventy three.
We'll be right back after this.
Speaker 16 (45:41):
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(46:02):
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Visit stop texts, Stop rex dot org.
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A message brought to you by the National Highway Traffic
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Speaker 11 (46:40):
What is a number story?
Speaker 14 (46:42):
My number story started with fear and lack of support,
and it has led me to be there for others.
Speaker 11 (46:47):
A number story begins in our childhood with aces adverse
childhood experiences.
Speaker 8 (46:53):
My number story begins with the separation from my father
and the emotional abandonment from my mother and leads to
me being a role model to not only myself well
but those around me by becoming a person that wasn't
there for me.
Speaker 11 (47:03):
Aces are so common two thirds of us have one.
Speaker 9 (47:06):
My number story begins with drug abuse and homelessness and
leads to realizing that I can live life by my
own standards.
Speaker 11 (47:13):
A study found the more aces, the more likely we
may experience a host of serious health effects, physical and mental.
But that doesn't need to be the case. Your race
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Where it leads is up to you.
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My number story begins with years of emotional abuse and
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Take control of where your number story leads at numberstory
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Speaker 1 (47:44):
You're listening to doctor David Derouse on American, Indian and
Alaska Native Living. Your comments and questions are welcome. Call
now at one eight hundred seven seven five hope, that's
one eight hundred seven seven five four six seventy three.
Here again is doctor Derouse.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Welcome back for our final segment of today's edition of American,
Indian and Alaska Native Living. I'm doctor David Deurose, Stephen
Karen Nicol. They've been talking with us about their work
as grief coaches, growing out of their own lived experience
helping people on this journey. Stephen Karen. As we were
speaking at the break, we were talking about putting things
(48:23):
on paper, and our minds went to kind of a
common author that has inspired all of us, speaking about
King David, who wrote those Psalms. Some of our listeners
actually know that we do a weekly study on the
Book of Psalms, so for those who relate to that
genre of writing of written expression. We've been doing this
(48:46):
for over a year on Tuesday nights. So if you're
hearing about it for the first time and you're one
of our listeners, you can simply go to Timeless Healing
Insights dot org and you can look at our weekly series.
We call it Healing Insights from the Psalms. You're welcome
to join us and take part in the dialogue. I'm
mentioning that now, Steve and Karen, I'm taking boy. You
(49:06):
know you guys would be great to be guest teachers
sometime on that program if you ever free at five
pm Pacific on a Tuesday night. Do you think we
might be able to get you behind a microphone and
lead out in one of our.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
Sessions, Honored, that sounds like okay.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
I don't usually ask people on the spot when they're
on air, but thanks for letting all our listeners know
that they can look forward to engaging with you on
that platform. We'd love to Well, we got to come
back to this aspect of writing, and you know the
connection with King David. Of course, many of the psalms,
you know, they're described as psalms of lament, and he's
speaking about some pretty negative things. Steve, as we were
speaking off area, you notice though, that those psalms often
(49:46):
don't end the same way they start. Tell us a
little bit about that well.
Speaker 5 (49:49):
As interesting as we've started reading through more, not every song,
but particularly the psalms that David wrote because the songs
were written by several different authors, but particularly the ones
that David wrote. Many of them, not all of them,
but many of them begin with a rant David is upset.
Why did the heathen? Or why are they prospering? Why
are they raging against me? And I'm having to hiden
(50:10):
And it was a lot of these were written down
when he was on the run from Saul. But as
you read through a psalm, you'll see that there is
a transmutation of thought from angry, frustrated to more of
just You can almost it's like a child who's been
crying in your arms and they finally just take that
one big and they make a sigh, and they just
(50:32):
nuzzle in your neck and they just rest. And I
just sense David just kind of just falling into, as
it worth, the arms of God and just resting and
leaving it up to him. And Karen has found particularly
that putting stuff on paper is so healing.
Speaker 3 (50:47):
I've used it with many of my male clients.
Speaker 5 (50:50):
They are using the terminology now piestopping, and they find
it to be so helpful to be able just to
get all that stuff that's inside of him. And it
is different when we talk, the words come out and
go right back in our ears. But when we put
stuff on paper, it comes out of our body, as
it were, out of our thoughts, and right onto paper
it stays there.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
Well, now, talk to us about this fear, because I
know a lot of people. They say, if I put
stuff down on paper, someone's going to see that, or
I don't want anyone to know what I'm feeling. Can
you help allay those anxieties?
Speaker 4 (51:24):
Oh, totally. I had one mother who kept her comfort
for the Day book, which provides for a lot of
pie stopping in there between the mattress and box springs
of her bed so her kids would never find it.
I've had others who will pie stop and then put
what they put on paper through a paper shredder and
shredded and it's gone. One of the activities that includes
(51:46):
forgiveness is a pie stopping activity to forgive someone who
has hurt or wounded us, and that goes in the
fire and burns to ash.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
Now. I know we define this pie sop, but folks,
if they didn't catch that description, this is an acronym.
It's an abbreviation for five words. Give us those again
in case someone has lost this and they said, what
does this piece help us?
Speaker 13 (52:14):
Again?
Speaker 4 (52:15):
Absolutely absolutely, PEA is for put your why stuff on paper?
P y soo, p put your story, put your stuff
on paper.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
PI sop okay. And we got the message. Now it's
just getting it out. You can burn it, you can
put it under your mattress, no one has to see it.
It's just getting this these emotions out. So we've talked
about some critical things. We've talked about forgiveness, we've talked
about dealing with anger, We've talked about putting things on paper.
(52:49):
Are those some of the major tools in the toolkit
for resolving or or kind of navigating the seasons of
grief or are there some other things that we need
to get out on the table before we close this show.
Speaker 5 (53:02):
David, I'm glad you mentioned that we work as grief coaches,
and we're not here to put in a plug for ourselves.
We're saying we are simply so overwhelmed. So often when
we're done with a session with people who are struggling
in this area, and we ask ourselves, from the nature
of the conversations that we're having with these grieving individuals,
(53:24):
how do most of the people in the world get
through their grief experience without some extra help. I can't
perform appendectomy on myself. I can't do heart surgery. I
can't set my own broken bones. I need the help
of an expert outside of myself. We can do that
for people. We work via Zoom around around the world.
But our tlee for people is, don't try to do
(53:46):
this alone. You can. Ninety nine percent of the time.
It may feel like it's gone away. It's just like
a splinter, it just goes underground, but it's just their infestors.
You need the help in ninety nine percent of the
cases needs someone to help walk you through it and
help you come to a positive conclusion. And so that
would be our plea to people as we're finishing up here,
(54:08):
is to we're happy to work with people via zoom
or on the phone nationwide. Let us know and we'll
help you find somebody in your area that's gifted in
helping people in grief. But please please don't try to
if you're in deep grief and feeling depressed and anxious,
you don't have to do that. And if you healing
from grief does not mean that you stop loving or
(54:30):
stop feeling or stop remembering. It just simply means you
can live a healthy, fulfilled life while still missing and
grieving over the person who's died. Those are not and
tithical to each other.
Speaker 2 (54:42):
So one more time. You guys have several times given
us your website. Maybe I shouldn't say one more time.
Maybe we try to stick it in a few times.
But if someone does want to connect with you, they
want to read the blogs, they want to get a
copy of your book, contact you.
Speaker 4 (54:54):
What's the website, comfort forthday dot com.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
Okay, we're just writing it all out.
Speaker 4 (55:00):
Just one word, comfort forthday dot com.
Speaker 2 (55:03):
Okay, so we've got the website. Now we've got to
touch on one other thing because I know, having you know,
gone through my training both as a physician, I've been
involved with faith communities over the years, and there was this, oh,
this approach to grief where they used to tell us
that you go through these stages and ultimately, you know,
(55:25):
the grief is resolved. This doesn't ever seem to be
the case though. I Mean, someone comes to an anniversary
or something happens and the grief seems to arise again.
Is there really a process where you get to a
certain point and you never have to deal with it again.
Speaker 4 (55:40):
Well, I think as long as we love, we will
always have pinnacles of sorrow and sadness for whatever has
been lost in our lives. So that's the nature of love.
But we can do that in a more healthy and
healing way, or a less healthy and destructive way. And
(56:01):
so when we look at grief as something that enriches
our lives makes us a better human being instead of
something to be afraid of and to run from and
to hide from, that really changes things for us. And
so as we look into the future of our lives
(56:21):
with anniversaries and birthdays and holidays and all kinds of
things that would typically trigger a wave of some kind
of emotional response, we can engage with that with a
much healthier perspective. And one of the strongest things that
we recommend to our clients and work through with them
(56:42):
is when they're anticipating one of these anniversaries or what
I call first dates, is that we make a specific
plan on purpose, intentional to remember, to create a meal,
to create an event that is all about remembering in
a healthy and healan way rather than a destructive way.
Speaker 2 (57:03):
I love this. So instead of when they're saying, oh, no,
you know Johnny's birthday is coming up here in a
few weeks. Instead of dreading that, you start looking forward
to it and do something special. I think that's tremendous.
Speaker 5 (57:15):
Steve David just real quickly along. I started wanting to
answer your first question about stages of grief. We don't
ascribe to the five stages of grief for a person
who is still alive. If you gave one of your
patients a terminal diagnosis you have pancreatic cancer and you
probably have a year to live, that person very likely
would go through your shock, denial, anger, acceptance, bargaining, and
(57:41):
then bargaining and acceptance, and then they die. And that's
the experience of a person who has been given a
terminal diagnosis. But the people who are left behind, it
doesn't go linear. It's all over the map. And so
when we realize that it's not to do list to
check off, Oh I'm over my anxiety or over my anger,
(58:03):
I'm over my bargaining, those are things that will not
work that way.
Speaker 2 (58:08):
Thanks so much for clarifying that. Listen, you guys have
been great. I know you have such a wealth of
experience we can only tap into a little of it.
Thanks for sharing your own personal story and your commitment
to helping others. I've jotted down your website. I've got
simply comfort for theday dot com. I've got that.
Speaker 3 (58:24):
Correct, correct.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
Hopefully a lot of folks will reach out to you
and take advantage of your resources. Thanks so much to
both of You'd love.
Speaker 4 (58:30):
To hear bro Thank you, David. This has been delightful.
Speaker 2 (58:33):
Thank you, David, and to each one of you our listeners,
thank you so much for joining us for today's show.
Hopefully it gives you some insights to help you on
your journey through grief. For all of us, I'm doctor
David Duroz, wishing you the very best of health.
Speaker 7 (58:51):
Native Voice one the Native American radio network
Welcome to American, Indian and Alaska Native Living, a program
designed to educate and inspire listeners throughout Indian Country. American
Indian and Alaskan Native Living is hosted by doctor David Deroz,
a board certified specialist in both internal medicine and preventive medicine.
Doctor Deroz has a wide range of experience with native
(00:25):
health issues, and he is here today to help you
learn more about your health. Here is doctor Deroz.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Welcome to American, Indian and Alaska Native Living. I'm doctor
David Deroz. We've got an amazing show lined up for
you because it deals with something that every single one
of us deals with at sometime in our life, often
at multiple junctures in our life. We're talking about grief
today and how to go through it successfully. I've got
two folks who have spent their life a good portion
(00:53):
of their life as grief coaches speaking around the world,
Karen and Steve Nick. Great to have you guys with
us today.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Good to be here, David, Thank you, Thank you, David.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
We're happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Now. You know folks today, they know the coaching industry.
There's life coaches, there's exercise coaches, but grief coaches may
not be on people's radar screen, and they may even
be thinking, why would anybody want to be a grief coach?
It sounds like a pretty morbid business. There must be
a story behind that.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Well.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
I don't know about anybody else, but there is nothing
more satisfying for me than to be the witness of
someone who comes to see us in deep suffering and
pain and walk with them through that to healing and wholeheartedness.
To witness that transformation is so satisfying. So it's a
(01:50):
blessing to be a grief coach.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
Yeah, grief coaching is a little more hands on in
terms of people's grief. We'd spend quite a bit of
time listening to people talk about the loss of whatever
it might be. It can be more than just death.
There's many many things that happened to people that cause
them to be in grief.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
But the.
Speaker 5 (02:09):
Advantage of grief coaching on one level, It doesn't discount
therapists or counselors at any level, but it does give
us ability to give them more hands on activities and
strategies they can use to interact with their own grief. So,
when we finished with a session, they have some tools
in their grief toolkit that they can take home and
begin to use right away.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
So tell us about your story, because I know you
have a pretty dramatic story the two of you that
really engaged you in this field.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Go ahead.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
When your firstborn three and a half year old son
dies of leukemia, our world changed, our lives changed. We
had quite a journey even getting to his three and
a half year mark. When he was diagnosed at h
two of leukemia, we found ourselves in great distress in that,
(03:04):
first of all, our son is now seriously diagnosed, but
the consequences of the timing of all that left us homeless, jobless, insuranceless,
and another baby number two ready to arrive in about
four weeks from his diagnosis. So it was a cascade
(03:25):
of circumstances in our life that were really overwhelming. And
I know for Steve and myself there is no one
else to lean on too but God, and lean into
that presence of the one who loves us most is
(03:46):
with us in all of this.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
We were so thankful.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
We had just made a I had just finished a
teaching career up in Alaska, and we just moved to Montana.
So We were in Building's, Montana when our son was
initially diagnos with acute lymphasific.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Leukemia, and.
Speaker 5 (04:04):
That move allowed us to be very flexible as to
where we could go immediately for his healthcare. There wasn't
the pediatric oncology pediatric cancer facilities in Alaska at that time.
This was in the early eighties, so allowed us.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
To be able to hop on a plane.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
The very day that we found out from the pediatricians
there in Billings, Montana, we flew out to Sacramento. On
the very next day, we found ourselves at Stamford's Children's
Hospital in Palo Alto, California, and that began a journey
of a lot of stress, to be honest, And yet
in the midst of it all, we saw other families
(04:42):
in that pediatric unit with all the children that all
had different types of cancers and little bald heads, lots
of kids hooked up to ivs for their chemo or whatever.
But the thing that we noticed right away was that
the people who didn't have something bigger than themselves, you know,
(05:02):
to lean on or to lean into, we're quite agitated,
quite depressed, very morose, and really just kind of we're
just surviving from moment a moment. Karen and I unfortunately
had each other there, but we also had, you know,
our our lean too was God, and a lot of
people that were there began to see that that was
(05:24):
made a difference in the in our peacefulness about it.
Did we feel all you see peacefulness? No, we're not
saying we did it totally right at all, but we
certainly learned to lean into the fact that these were
some things that we couldn't change.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Yeah, So one by one we found the miracle, I
guess you can call it, of supplying for all of
those needs. Dawson went into remission, Steve was hired on
a job, We received state insurance for our son's medical
in medical expenses. Our daughter was born a week late.
(06:00):
We were able to relocate in a little house in
northern California, new Era pediatric office that specialized in hematology
and child cancers, and we lived a happy, wonderful life
for another year and a half.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
So, I mean, it's remarkable your story. I mean, the
agony that you went through. I mean, basically it sounds
like pretty much losing everything or you know, you're looking
at the possibility of losing a child, you've lost a job,
you've lost your support network as far as friends. And
it's obvious to those of us listening that you know
(06:37):
faith was a big stabilizing factor of faith in a
creator and God. Many of my listeners can resonate with that.
Others may not. They may say, well, I have a
different perspective on spirituality. And I know you, folks, having
walked this journey now for so many years with so
many people, you walk with people regardless of what their
faith and spiritual background is. But we're listening attentively because
(07:00):
I know your story is still unfolding as you're telling
it to us. So your boy went into remission for
better than a year, is that right?
Speaker 5 (07:10):
About about a year and a half, David, he was
in full remission, and then we took him in for
routine blood tests at the pediatric pediatrician's office, and then
they sent it in for testing just as they usually
did on a quarterly basis, and we got the dreaded
phone call that he had relapsed.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
He was in remission.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
He relapsed, and generally with a child of his nature,
he was so sick when he started his chemo regime
that he wasn't a good candidate to hold on to
his remission, and if you fell out, the possibility of
him maintaining his second remission was very small. So the
oncologist told us, you know, whatever you two decide will
(07:52):
support you. Well, anybody that's listening in the medical field
knows that what an oncologist tells you, whatever you decide,
will support you. You know that they done all that
they can do. And so we uh the second diagnosis
was probably more traumatic to us, possibly than the first,
and at that point.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
We had to make some hard decisions.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
Do we try to do we still try to reenact
more strong of chemotherapy, you know, what do we do?
And we did try for a little while, but it
was we realized that this was not the right way
to go, and so we simply stopped all therapy at
that point, gave him some basic medicines to keep him comfortable,
and then we said, you know, this is we've.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Done the best that we can do with what we
know humanly. And that was in January, and.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
We had a lot of a lot of conversations with
lots of people about what we could do.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
There was talk about doing bone.
Speaker 5 (08:44):
Marrow transplants, but in that was in nineteen eighty five,
and bow Marew Transplants for children was very much in
its infancy at that point, and the risks were just
too high to put a little guy like our son
through and we decided against that. And so what happened
at that point, Honey, Well.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
We've lived one day at a time, very grateful. It
was an interesting transition when you know your child is
going to die. At least for me, when I knew
that Dawson was going to die, every moment is precious,
every day is precious. And I thought of people who
(09:25):
would say goodbye to their children for school and they
had no idea that they would not see them again,
in that in the rest of the life because of
some accident that would happen. In today's case, I'm shooting
at a school, you know, any of these kinds of
tragedies that take place around us in our lives. But
I knew that there would be a day where I
(09:48):
wouldn't have my son with me, and so I just
lived to the best I could fully each of those days.
I did experience a phenomminal encounter with forgiveness, in that
I don't think that there's a parent alive who would
say that they were a perfect, flawless parent, who would say, oh,
(10:12):
I have not one regret or I don't have any
second guesses or I wished or could have, would have
should have done something differently. I believe every one of
us know that we mishapped, we made mistakes, We did
things arrently. We sometimes did things on purpose that were
(10:34):
not best for us or our children, and those carrying
that into our grief after death is such a heavy burden,
it's phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
So it's as if you were blaming yourself for your
son's death to some extent, or was it something bigger
than that?
Speaker 4 (10:55):
Oh, that's pretty big to blame yourself.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I'm not minimizing that, but I mean, because you know,
we speak about guilt and all, but sometimes there's other issues,
I mean emotional issues or things with a three and
a half year old, I mean, that's going to be
different than if it was someone eighteen or twenty, is
what I'm getting at.
Speaker 5 (11:18):
What what with the initial diagnosis, David, we when you
hear that you know, we believe your son has leukemia,
you do do a quite.
Speaker 6 (11:28):
A lengthy inventory inventory back here head, What did we
do because he was he was not old enough to
have had any unhealthy lifestyle choicest that point, you know,
because it was there things that we ate, things that
we did, or whatever that influenced him to have this.
And for a long time, and I know, even as
(11:50):
a man, I thought, Man, I've really failed my son.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
I've I should have kept him from getting cancer. Many
men feel that.
Speaker 5 (11:56):
Way when their child is taken from them from whatever,
for whatever reason, under whatever circumstances. But because we're just
kind of wired that way as men. Particularly women feel
that way too, but men feel, you know, we're wired
to protect and to provide. When we can't protect and
provide for our children, particularly, but also for our wives
(12:18):
and extended family. We can many times feel like we're
a failure, that we let our family down. And I
felt that for a long time, and I had to
come to the conclusion finally that we were doing the
best we could at that time, and that we were
not knowingly responsible for his getting neikmia. And we live
on planet Earth. Planet Earth is not a safe place
(12:41):
to live news and you can find that anywhere in
the world right now. There's flooding and fires and tornadoes
and earthquakes. So we realized that our address is planet Earth,
so there's so so many environmental factors that could have
affected his and we still don't. You know, obviously, I
don't have a cure for it today after all these years.
(13:02):
So that was a really big thing to be, you know,
to have that initial diagnosis, a second diagnosis and realize
this is it, and so we had to just simply
let it be.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
So I know, Karen, you were wanting to go in
the direction of forgiveness, and the reason why I asked
that initial question was because often we talk about forgiveness
and relationships, it does involve, you know, that strongly that
relational aspect or some kind of you know, rift sometimes
in relationships. But I'm also reading between the lines that
(13:35):
a lot of that forgiveness has to do with forgiving oneself.
So we're definitely interested in exploring that because I heard
a couple of presentations that the two of you recently gave,
and I know that was one of the big keys
that you feel that often people don't go through grief
well because they don't handle this forgiveness piece particularly well.
(13:57):
Did I hear that correctly?
Speaker 4 (14:00):
Absolutely did, David. And that's where for me It is
the big thing. It is where our grief transitions from
a hurtful and stuck cycle into something so much better
for us.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
We have to talk more about this, and I know
you guys have some great resources that my listeners are
going to be excited to learn about, but we have
to step away just briefly. I'm talking to Karen and
Steve Nicola. They are grief coaches, grief educators. We're going
to talk about some of their resources and some amazing
things that can help you, whether you're able to engage
(14:41):
with them after this program or not. Some practical strategies
coming up next after these important messages.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
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reach out to us on the web at aia n
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Living Again aia n L dot org, or you can
(15:14):
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We'll be right back after this.
Speaker 7 (15:25):
We are strong, we are resilient, and we will get
through this together.
Speaker 8 (15:30):
But these are stressful.
Speaker 7 (15:31):
Times, and it's important to also practice good self care.
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(15:53):
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Speaker 9 (15:56):
When Jim died, I wondered if I would be able
to keep the phone. Then I heard about the USDA's
Loan Program for Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranters. Is for
women and minorities who may be having trouble getting credit.
Once I was approved, the USDA's Farm Service Agency.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Helped me get the credit I needed.
Speaker 9 (16:12):
Now I don't have to sell, and I can pass
the farm down to my kids the way Jim's dad
passed it down to him. I know he'd like that.
Speaker 5 (16:19):
Contact your local USDA Service Center or visit www.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Dot FSA dot USDA dot gov.
Speaker 10 (16:26):
Social Security is with you through life's journey from birth
to retirement. As your life changes year to year, so
do your needs.
Speaker 11 (16:34):
For over eighty.
Speaker 10 (16:35):
Years, social Security has helped to meet your needs and
is committed to improving access to the services that make
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Today.
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You can verify your earnings, estimate your future benefits, apply
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(17:08):
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Security Securing today and tomorrow. See what you can do
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Speaker 1 (17:29):
You're listening to doctor David Deurouse on American, Indian and
Alaska Native Living. Your comments and questions are welcome. Call
now at one eight hundred seven seven five hope, that's
one eight hundred seven seven five four six seventy three.
Here again is doctor Deuroz.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Welcome back to American, Indian and Alaska Native Living. I'm
doctor David Durose. I'm with the Nicholas, Steve and Karen.
They are our guests helping us to deal with this
universal topic of grief and grieving. And as Steve you
pointed out earlier, it's not just death that causes us
to grieve. Maybe before we get into the topic too
(18:08):
much more, If some folks are thinking, well, hey, I
don't know why they're talking to me. I'm in my twenties,
I'm not even married. How am I going to lose anything?
Cast the picture a little bit more broadly. For those
who are tuning in today.
Speaker 5 (18:21):
Well, I imagine that probably every person that's in earshot
of this has had some kind of loss in their life.
It may have been that their puppy died when they
were when it was small, it got hit, their kiddy died,
grandma or grandpa died unexpectedly, or maybe they were planning
on it. Maybe a classmate at school, his mother died
(18:43):
of cancer, her father died of cancer, her brother died
from an accident. Where we live here in northern California,
tens of thousands of people have lost their homes in
the last ten years due to fire, a huge It's
very traumatic over on the East Coast right now. People
are losing their homes, their livelihood due to flooding. Tremendous
(19:04):
amount of grief with that, particularly when you lose a home,
because when a person is in shock and grief, the
natural place you want to go to grief is where
your house your house, and when the very thing that
you were going to go to grieve over is gone,
because it's what was lost that complicates it even more.
(19:25):
But there's a lot of more subtle things you want
to talk about. Some of the more maybe unrecognized areas
of grief cares well.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
There's when relationships end for a variety of reasons, or
when your health declines and your abilities are no longer
the same as they used to be. Sometimes the loss
of a job or even retirement is that we grieve
deeply over. So there are many, many life experiences that
are overlooked as something that needs just to stop, pause,
(19:55):
pay attention, and let's let ourself grief.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (19:59):
Another thing that I don't want to mention to your
audience because I realize we have a diverse cultural listenership
here as with most radio stations. But what we've learned
in our short years of doing this is that everybody
will grieve. You cannot choose not to grieve when you've
had a major tragedy.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
It's like for us men.
Speaker 5 (20:20):
I used to say every man maintains his car, okay
ors motorcycler's boat. Now it may mean that he never
changes his oil, He never checks the air in the tire,
he never looks for the transmission fluid. He just drives
it until it dies. That's his maintenance program, you see.
Or the guy that checks his oil and changes it
every two thousand miles and checks the tires every time
(20:41):
he gets in it, that's the guy at the other
end of the spectrum. But what we have realized, no
matter what a person's ethnic culture background is, whether it's
a Native American, if it's a Hispanic, whether it's African American,
whether it's Asian, whether it's Angle, whether it's South American
(21:02):
or European, what the common thing that we find that
binds all of us together is, no matter how we
express it outwardly, we all feel it deeply inside of ourselves.
And we have to recognize that every one of us
still carries a sense of loss, a sense of sadness,
a sense of mourning, and so when that happens, we
(21:26):
may show it differently, and there's no right or wrong
to that, but we just have to give each other
space to realize that not everybody is going to express
or look the same way. When two people from two
different cultures could lose a wife. Let's say two men.
One man may not show any emotion whatsoever. The other
man may show a tremendous amount of sadness of countenance.
(21:46):
He's crying, he's morose for a long time. Neither one
of those are necessarily wrong, but they are both still
feeling that probably equally inside Karen.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
I know we want to come back to this topic
of forgiven this and how this plays in to all
of these losses, so kind of help us to understand
that connection. And we've already gotten this idea that often
we blame ourselves when bad things happen. Is this a
big part of the challenge in grieving?
Speaker 4 (22:14):
It is a big part of the challenge in grieving
because we know, if we're honest, what we've swept under
the rugs, what we've stuffed in the back mental closets
of our hearts and minds, and we carry that weight
of that subconsciously, if not consciously, And there is a
(22:34):
remedy for that weight. There is a freedom for that weight,
and it is called forgiveness. To forgive ourselves, to recognize
that I don't have to hold onto this pain any longer. Now,
coming from a paradigm that I trust that God is
(22:54):
my originator of this forgiveness, that it's nothing I could
have rigend on my own, but in God's supreme creatorship,
he creates the capacity to recreate by forgiving. Now, that's
an action of trust or faith that what he has
(23:18):
provided is absolutely available because it comes forth from from
His source, not from mine. That is huge for me.
That was a huge turning point for me to be
forgiven of my mommy mistakes. I had well, I had
said and done things out of impatience and unkindness, and
(23:42):
things that I had regretted, as I think anybody has
in a relationship. If only I'd said or if only
I had done. And in many cases it's just a
simple matter of writing an apology letter to the person
who has died, taking responsibility. I did these things, and
(24:02):
I am so sorry it hurts you. I apologize, and
that in itself is a cleansing and a freeing. It's
no longer secrets locked away in our hearts and minds.
It has now been released. And even if the person
that has died, or the job we have left, or
(24:22):
the relationship that's ended in divorce, it's not intended so
much for that individual to see, hear, or read as
it is for us to let go of it, to
claim it, and to say I apologize, I own it,
and that is very, very powerful.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
As I listened to your presentations recently, you're at a
big conference sharing some of these concepts, it seemed like
one of the barriers that got in the way of
successfully navigating grief, if we can use that terminology, was anger.
I'm wondering if you can speak to that a bit.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
Well, that was the area of David that I experienced.
If Karen had some at some point, but nowhere near
the long term, long term, yeah, that.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
I experienced.
Speaker 5 (25:14):
As I mentioned earlier, we men really feel deeply when
someone we loved close to us gets very you know,
is injured, or gets very sick, or dies. And in
my case, I felt like I had failed my son
and my definition of and what happens. That's it's a
it's it's a tension that I somehow failed as a man,
(25:36):
as a father, as a husband, as a human being,
you know. And those are natural things. I've heard many
men that I worked with over the years express the
same thing. I let my family down, I let my
child down, I let my wife down. I didn't realize
she was so sick. She was sicker than I thought
she was. And if I just if I just told
my son to not go in the car, you know
(25:57):
that time I'm talking about someone else, if I just
held them back for just two more seconds, he wouldn't
have gotten hit or whatever. And so we men feel
that we've lost to control. And my definition, there's many
many definitions of anger, but for me, it's a loss
of control of people and circumstances and or circumstances.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
So in my case, and.
Speaker 5 (26:19):
With a lot of men, we couldn't control that our
child got sick, or our wife got sick, or our
family member got sick, nor could we keep them from dying.
And we're so used to being in control, and so
when we're out of control, think about when someone cuts
you off in traffic, or does something that harms your house,
or they say something derogatory about a family member. We
(26:41):
can't control the words that come out of their mouth
many times, and so we feel frustration and anger. And
that's what happens a lot with people in grief is
they couldn't particularly men, is that we couldn't control whatever
happened to our loved one who died.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
And so.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
Unless we can identify that the anger initially is not
a problem, it's hanging on to it. And for me,
I'd have to admit that I realized that I was
angry that I couldn't control the death of my son
for almost twenty years.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Well, and even though.
Speaker 5 (27:16):
I come from a Christian context and I have a
belief in God, my humanists still wouldn't turn loose of
the fact that somehow I had let my child down.
And so I decided I was just going to be
kind of a slow burn.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
So is the essence of anger you're trying to blame someone,
whether it's yourself or someone else for the problem and
take something out on them. Is that the essence of it?
Speaker 4 (27:41):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (27:41):
I would that would work. My anger was mostly self directed, Karen,
was that because this lady that's sitting next to me
was the recipient of that for a long long time.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
I like what you asked, David, because in Steve's case,
it was self blame. Then his anger went inward to
towards himself and the things he would say about himself
and the lack of patience with himself. It was very
painful to witness that in my husband.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
That's not what she signed up for to get married.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Well, none of us do, but life seems to throw
all these detours in our way. If we want to
put it mildly, you guys have an amazing experience, but
you haven't just well stayed stuck in the place that
you struggled with Steve, you're talking about your anger. We're
going to talk in the next segment about how you
(28:35):
came through that and how both of you have channeled
some of this energy and some of this experience into
helping literally thousands upon thousands of people. I'm David Deroz,
my guest today Karen and Steve Nikola. We're going to
be talking more with them practical things that can help
you in whatever area of grief you're facing. Got a
lot more coming up in the second half of our show.
(28:57):
Please stay by.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
American, Indian and Alaska Native Living will continue in a moment.
If you have questions or comments about today's pre recorded broadcast,
please contact us on the web at AIA n L
dot org or call one eight hundred seven seven five hope.
That's one eight hundred seven seven five four six seventy three.
(29:25):
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Speaker 13 (29:56):
Unlike other health concerns, mental illness is not always easy
to see. Depression won't show up on an eye chart,
and you can't measure it on your bathroom scale. Sorting
out a mental health concern is not something to attempt
on your own. You won't find a bipolar disorder by
looking at a thermometer. Like many other health conditions, help
(30:19):
from mental illness takes professional diagnosis and treatment. Anxiety won't
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(30:42):
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If you or someone you know is struggling with meth,
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Speaker 1 (31:29):
You're listening to doctor David Deurouse on American Indian and
Alaska Native Living. Your comments and questions are welcome. Call
now at one eight hundred seven seventy five, Hope. That's
one eight hundred seven seven five four six seventy three.
Here again is doctor DeRose.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Welcome back to the second half of today's edition of
American Indian and Alaska Native Living. I'm doctor David Deurose,
Steven Karen Nicola, my guests. Today we're speaking about grief.
It's a universal experience all of us deal with loss.
We've talked about some of the many forms that loss
can take and some of the common challenges that we
have dealing with anger, negotiating forgiveness. Steve, when we stepped away,
(32:13):
you'd been talking about both you and Karen talking about
how difficult it was for you to have lost your
young son and the anger that you had. As Karen
described it from her perspective, it seemed like it was
anger mostly originally directed it yourself, but I gathered it
then became manifest in how you dealt in other relationships.
(32:35):
How did you get through that?
Speaker 5 (32:36):
We lot's a really good question, David, and I want
to also preface this that this anger and loss, grief,
losses can come. Think of the people who are still
angry about losing a job, or losing about the unfairness
of our house being swept away or burned down, or
any number of losses. Anger can be associated with that,
because again we can't control that that took place. We
(32:59):
found there was just a couple things that were very helpful.
To kind of put an mcap on this would be
to say that one of the things I had to
learn to do was to ask for help It's not
an unmanly thing to ask to admit that I needed help.
You know, we men nowadays we think if we go
to YouTube and ask how do I tune my car up?
Work that we think we're pretty smart. But when it
(33:20):
comes to the most complex thing in the world is
our mind and our emotions, and we think that somehow
we can handle that on our own. We really need
the help of someone outside of ourselves, whether it's a
fellow grief coach, a grief therapist, or a belief in God.
I believe that helps us through our grief experience. And
knowing that, at least from my contact God never was
(33:43):
angry with me for being angry with him and being
angry with the world around me. I didn't know his heart.
I didn't know his actual thoughts toward MAJORA and my
time of loss as well as I could have. Years
have given me a different perspective on that. I'm thankful
to know that anger doesn't have to be my experience
on an ongoing basis. I can turn that over to God.
(34:05):
I can turn it over to someone else that can
hear me out and give me some feedback and some perspective,
and I can move forward and move out of that
grief experience onto in that anger experience, onto something more
healing and more positive.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Excellent, Karen, you dealt, no doubt with some anger too,
but maybe in a different way.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
Yes, it was a different way. I chose to do
what had been working for me from day one, which
was to put my stuff on paper. And I have
a vivid memory of one day being very angry at
our by then two year old daughter girl, and she
wasn't taking a nap, and I needed her to take
(34:48):
a nap because I needed some rest, and I was
very impatient with her. Anyway, I'm at three or four
attempts to put her into bed, and she kept popping up.
Finally I just screamed at her and told her to
stay in bed, and I went to room and closed
the door and started to put my anger on paper,
and I wrote and wrote and wrote how angry I
was at Joanna. Then I said, oh, no, I'm not
(35:08):
angry at Joanna. I'm really angry at Dawson for dying
and leaving me with these horrible feelings. No, no, no,
I wrote and wrote and wrote, and no, I wasn't
angry at Dawson. Was angry at Steve for leaving me
and him going off to work. And I continued to
put that on paper and then realized, no, I'm not
angry at Steve. I'm really angry at God. And there
(35:30):
I could just let my anger go sit because all
I knew was that God was bigger than my anger
and who could do with it what I needed him
to do with it. So my mode of operating was
to use pencil and paper, and that's what actually formulated
(35:53):
the book, Comfort for the Day, Living Through the Seasons
of Grief.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Well, tell us a little bit about this, because I
know a lot of folks have been a fitted from
that book. Years ago. You and I Karen talked about
the book on air. It's been out I think what
maybe thirty years or more?
Speaker 4 (36:09):
Am I remembering that right from nineteen ninety one. Yes,
there was a brief little period of time, maybe two
or three years, where it was at the bottom of
the list, but then we republished and here we go again.
So Comfort for the Day, Living Through the Seasons of
Grief is not our story. So it's not a book
about us and our son and our grief and our
(36:31):
healing of that. But it is the result of the
healing that took place in my life, and that result
we're combined two things. Sage wisdom that came out of
scripture that was extremely applicable to my broken heart, and
(36:52):
then the opportunity to embrace that wisdom and align it
with my broken heart and interact with it on paper.
So I didn't have a therapist at the time, I
didn't have a grief coach. I mean this was forty
years ago, well, and so I just poured my heart
(37:12):
on paper. I poured my questions out on paper. And
today we're learning that this is actually a viable strategy
that science is validating and it's so exciting.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
So we want to talk more about this particular strategy.
But before we do, if someone is saying, hey, I'm
already tracking with Karen and Steve, and I want to
get a copy of this book Comfort for the Day.
Is there one good place to go? Do you guys
have a website? Is that a good place?
Speaker 5 (37:43):
We do, well, the best place to go to obtain
a copy, and we have it both.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
In English and in Spanish.
Speaker 5 (37:50):
Now nice Comfort for the Day Living through the Seasons
of Grief can be found on our website, which is
Comfort for the Day dot com.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Now this is too easy, a Comfort for fry dot
com dot com. Okay, So, and if I go there,
I can pick up the book. How about if I
don't want the book? Can I get anything else there
that would help me?
Speaker 5 (38:12):
Oh my, I let care and tell you a couple
of the other There's lots of other resources on there too.
And to find the book though, you'll just need to
click on the little tab that says store and then
it'll take you take care of you from there. We're
having a very very nice little special in our books
right now, so people are saving getting them for less
than what we would sell them to a bookstore for.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Oh wow, that is a very good deal.
Speaker 4 (38:33):
It's a very good special. So Comfort for the Day
dot Com services and provides resources for both the griever
and their supportive friends. So you might not be in
a loss and grief experience right now, but you might
know somebody who is so. At our website, there are
(38:54):
blogs for supportive friends, and there are blogs for those
who are grieving. Wonderful resources to scroll through, things that
speak to holiday seasons for both the grievers and supportive friends,
unique and common experiences that grievers have. So yes, that's
a really great resource to go to. At our store,
(39:17):
we also supply what we call cards that comfort, and
those are not your typical sympathy cards. These are cards
that actually acknowledge what someone is experiencing through the death
of a spouse, or the death of a child, or
the death of a parent, or an anniversary of some kind,
(39:39):
or even weeks or months later when everybody else is forgotten.
How wonderful to get a card that acknowledges that you're
still grieving.
Speaker 5 (39:49):
The nice thing about the cards are that Karen wrote
the text on them.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Okay, very good. Well, now, the most recent connection I
had with you, folks was through some meetings that you
were doing, your holding workshops and other presentations, and I
gathered that this is not a strange setting for you
that you, folks travel, you do events for communities, for
faith communities, other groups. Is that something that someone can
(40:15):
also connect with you through the comfortfothday dot com website.
Speaker 4 (40:20):
Absolutely, there's a page to leave your comment and we
receive several requests a year for would you please come
speak to our organization? And it's fine if it's a
faith based organization. It's fine if it's a business organization.
Speaker 5 (40:35):
Just next week we'll be speaking to a whole staff
of a rather large funeral home conglomerate here in the
Sacramento area, northern California. Karen has spoken to a large
community down in Austin, Texas that provides healthcare for all
the county employees of the state of Texas. We find,
just on a financial level, outside of the area of
(40:58):
feelings and grief and things unresolved grief or unattended to
grief can cost businesses and corporations well over one hundred
billion dollars a year. Well, people come to work because
they because they have to, but maybe their mind they've
set their bodies on so they can't. They don't lose
a job, but they they are more at risk of
getting injured or making mistakes or calling in sick. And
(41:21):
so that's how businesses lose so much because of this.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
So tribal entity, tribal corporation, non native employer, I mean,
anybody basically could benefit from paying attention to this topic,
whether they engage with you, folks or with someone else.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
Right factly, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Well, we want to come back to something that you
were speaking about that tied in with your book. Karen
and you were speaking about writing, and one of the
things that I picked up on in your recent conference
was this fact that when you ask people to write,
you recognize somewhere into this that some people were looking
at this as kind of an onerous task, something they
(41:59):
couldn't do. Tell us a little bit more about that,
because I'm sure there are people now hearing, yeah, writing
that may have worked for Karen, but that won't work
for me. Talk to us a little bit more about
that topic.
Speaker 4 (42:08):
And I love those people, because the real deal of
it is is that we tell our clients please stop writing.
I don't want you to write. Writing is an academic experience,
and for most of us, that academic experience was not pleasant,
and so our natural, conscious and subconscious response to that
(42:31):
is to shut down. It's like I didn't like language
arts class when I was in high school or elementary school.
To ask me to write, I don't remember all the
rules of writing. I'm not going to get the sentence
right or the punctuation right. So write it from the
get go. I tell my clients please stop writing. I
don't want you to write. So if you notice I've
(42:52):
referred to it as putting my stuff on paper.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Tell us the difference.
Speaker 4 (42:57):
The big difference is one is therapeutic and healing and
the other one is academic. And if I'm in deep pain,
my pain is messy, it's disorganized, it's chaoti, it's unpredictable.
It has nothing to do with the rules of the
written language.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
So if I'm looking at someone who's following your counsel,
I'm going to look at them and saying they're writing.
But you would tell me, no, they're just putting stuff
down on paper. You want to de emphasize the fact
that they have to make sense or anything. Am I
getting the message?
Speaker 4 (43:29):
You're getting the message. So we've created a new word
for it. It's called piesop or pie stopping, and it
means simply just put your stuff on paper p ysop.
Because everybody has stuff. We all have this random chaoti,
crazy processes that are going on in our heart and
(43:51):
our mind, and it can feel like it's just endless,
going round and round and round. And so there's a
way to funnel it outside of our bodies and experience
the relief, the release, the healing, because it creates space
for the calm and the peace to come behind it.
(44:18):
Whereas if we just hold all of that inside of
our minds and hearts, it will make our body sick.
Speaker 5 (44:25):
So pie shopping, David is like think of a large,
overinflated balloon that's about ready to pop, and we don't
want it to pop all at once when it comes
to our emotions, because then that can come out as
anger or inappropriately, So pie stopping putting yourself on paper,
Just think of putting a little pin sticking little pins
in that balloon and letting it let out air at
(44:46):
a measured release, so it's not something that happens all
at once. It's interesting that this is nothing new.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Wow, I'm getting the idea. I think my folks tuning
in are as well. I know you guys have a
whole bunch of other very practical insights. We've just got
one segment left, but in that last segment, I know
we've got a lot of ground to cover. If you're
tuning in today, you're listening to Karen and Steve Nicola.
I'm doctor David Derou's more practical counsel. In our final
(45:15):
segment about dealing with grief successfully. Stay tuned.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Today's broadcast has been pre recorded. However, if you have
questions about today's show or would like further information, please
call one eight hundred seven to seven to five hope.
That's one eight hundred seven seven five four six seventy three.
We'll be right back after this.
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Speaker 11 (46:40):
What is a number story?
Speaker 14 (46:42):
My number story started with fear and lack of support,
and it has led me to be there for others.
Speaker 11 (46:47):
A number story begins in our childhood with aces adverse
childhood experiences.
Speaker 8 (46:53):
My number story begins with the separation from my father
and the emotional abandonment from my mother and leads to
me being a role model to not only myself well
but those around me by becoming a person that wasn't
there for me.
Speaker 11 (47:03):
Aces are so common two thirds of us have one.
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My number story begins with drug abuse and homelessness and
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Take control of where your number story leads at numberstory
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Speaker 1 (47:44):
You're listening to doctor David Derouse on American, Indian and
Alaska Native Living. Your comments and questions are welcome. Call
now at one eight hundred seven seven five hope, that's
one eight hundred seven seven five four six seventy three.
Here again is doctor Derouse.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Welcome back for our final segment of today's edition of American,
Indian and Alaska Native Living. I'm doctor David Deurose, Stephen
Karen Nicol. They've been talking with us about their work
as grief coaches, growing out of their own lived experience
helping people on this journey. Stephen Karen. As we were
speaking at the break, we were talking about putting things
(48:23):
on paper, and our minds went to kind of a
common author that has inspired all of us, speaking about
King David, who wrote those Psalms. Some of our listeners
actually know that we do a weekly study on the
Book of Psalms, so for those who relate to that
genre of writing of written expression. We've been doing this
(48:46):
for over a year on Tuesday nights. So if you're
hearing about it for the first time and you're one
of our listeners, you can simply go to Timeless Healing
Insights dot org and you can look at our weekly series.
We call it Healing Insights from the Psalms. You're welcome
to join us and take part in the dialogue. I'm
mentioning that now, Steve and Karen, I'm taking boy. You
(49:06):
know you guys would be great to be guest teachers
sometime on that program if you ever free at five
pm Pacific on a Tuesday night. Do you think we
might be able to get you behind a microphone and
lead out in one of our.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
Sessions, Honored, that sounds like okay.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
I don't usually ask people on the spot when they're
on air, but thanks for letting all our listeners know
that they can look forward to engaging with you on
that platform. We'd love to Well, we got to come
back to this aspect of writing, and you know the
connection with King David. Of course, many of the psalms,
you know, they're described as psalms of lament, and he's
speaking about some pretty negative things. Steve, as we were
speaking off area, you notice though, that those psalms often
(49:46):
don't end the same way they start. Tell us a
little bit about that well.
Speaker 5 (49:49):
As interesting as we've started reading through more, not every song,
but particularly the psalms that David wrote because the songs
were written by several different authors, but particularly the ones
that David wrote. Many of them, not all of them,
but many of them begin with a rant David is upset.
Why did the heathen? Or why are they prospering? Why
are they raging against me? And I'm having to hiden
(50:10):
And it was a lot of these were written down
when he was on the run from Saul. But as
you read through a psalm, you'll see that there is
a transmutation of thought from angry, frustrated to more of
just You can almost it's like a child who's been
crying in your arms and they finally just take that
one big and they make a sigh, and they just
(50:32):
nuzzle in your neck and they just rest. And I
just sense David just kind of just falling into, as
it worth, the arms of God and just resting and
leaving it up to him. And Karen has found particularly
that putting stuff on paper is so healing.
Speaker 3 (50:47):
I've used it with many of my male clients.
Speaker 5 (50:50):
They are using the terminology now piestopping, and they find
it to be so helpful to be able just to
get all that stuff that's inside of him. And it
is different when we talk, the words come out and
go right back in our ears. But when we put
stuff on paper, it comes out of our body, as
it were, out of our thoughts, and right onto paper
it stays there.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
Well, now, talk to us about this fear, because I
know a lot of people. They say, if I put
stuff down on paper, someone's going to see that, or
I don't want anyone to know what I'm feeling. Can
you help allay those anxieties?
Speaker 4 (51:24):
Oh, totally. I had one mother who kept her comfort
for the Day book, which provides for a lot of
pie stopping in there between the mattress and box springs
of her bed so her kids would never find it.
I've had others who will pie stop and then put
what they put on paper through a paper shredder and
shredded and it's gone. One of the activities that includes
(51:46):
forgiveness is a pie stopping activity to forgive someone who
has hurt or wounded us, and that goes in the
fire and burns to ash.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
Now. I know we define this pie sop, but folks,
if they didn't catch that description, this is an acronym.
It's an abbreviation for five words. Give us those again
in case someone has lost this and they said, what
does this piece help us?
Speaker 13 (52:14):
Again?
Speaker 4 (52:15):
Absolutely absolutely, PEA is for put your why stuff on paper?
P y soo, p put your story, put your stuff
on paper.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
PI sop okay. And we got the message. Now it's
just getting it out. You can burn it, you can
put it under your mattress, no one has to see it.
It's just getting this these emotions out. So we've talked
about some critical things. We've talked about forgiveness, we've talked
about dealing with anger, We've talked about putting things on paper.
(52:49):
Are those some of the major tools in the toolkit
for resolving or or kind of navigating the seasons of
grief or are there some other things that we need
to get out on the table before we close this show.
Speaker 5 (53:02):
David, I'm glad you mentioned that we work as grief coaches,
and we're not here to put in a plug for ourselves.
We're saying we are simply so overwhelmed. So often when
we're done with a session with people who are struggling
in this area, and we ask ourselves, from the nature
of the conversations that we're having with these grieving individuals,
(53:24):
how do most of the people in the world get
through their grief experience without some extra help. I can't
perform appendectomy on myself. I can't do heart surgery. I
can't set my own broken bones. I need the help
of an expert outside of myself. We can do that
for people. We work via Zoom around around the world.
But our tlee for people is, don't try to do
(53:46):
this alone. You can. Ninety nine percent of the time.
It may feel like it's gone away. It's just like
a splinter, it just goes underground, but it's just their infestors.
You need the help in ninety nine percent of the
cases needs someone to help walk you through it and
help you come to a positive conclusion. And so that
would be our plea to people as we're finishing up here,
(54:08):
is to we're happy to work with people via zoom
or on the phone nationwide. Let us know and we'll
help you find somebody in your area that's gifted in
helping people in grief. But please please don't try to
if you're in deep grief and feeling depressed and anxious,
you don't have to do that. And if you healing
from grief does not mean that you stop loving or
(54:30):
stop feeling or stop remembering. It just simply means you
can live a healthy, fulfilled life while still missing and
grieving over the person who's died. Those are not and
tithical to each other.
Speaker 2 (54:42):
So one more time. You guys have several times given
us your website. Maybe I shouldn't say one more time.
Maybe we try to stick it in a few times.
But if someone does want to connect with you, they
want to read the blogs, they want to get a
copy of your book, contact you.
Speaker 4 (54:54):
What's the website, comfort forthday dot com.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
Okay, we're just writing it all out.
Speaker 4 (55:00):
Just one word, comfort forthday dot com.
Speaker 2 (55:03):
Okay, so we've got the website. Now we've got to
touch on one other thing because I know, having you know,
gone through my training both as a physician, I've been
involved with faith communities over the years, and there was this, oh,
this approach to grief where they used to tell us
that you go through these stages and ultimately, you know,
(55:25):
the grief is resolved. This doesn't ever seem to be
the case though. I Mean, someone comes to an anniversary
or something happens and the grief seems to arise again.
Is there really a process where you get to a
certain point and you never have to deal with it again.
Speaker 4 (55:40):
Well, I think as long as we love, we will
always have pinnacles of sorrow and sadness for whatever has
been lost in our lives. So that's the nature of love.
But we can do that in a more healthy and
healing way, or a less healthy and destructive way. And
(56:01):
so when we look at grief as something that enriches
our lives makes us a better human being instead of
something to be afraid of and to run from and
to hide from, that really changes things for us. And
so as we look into the future of our lives
(56:21):
with anniversaries and birthdays and holidays and all kinds of
things that would typically trigger a wave of some kind
of emotional response, we can engage with that with a
much healthier perspective. And one of the strongest things that
we recommend to our clients and work through with them
(56:42):
is when they're anticipating one of these anniversaries or what
I call first dates, is that we make a specific
plan on purpose, intentional to remember, to create a meal,
to create an event that is all about remembering in
a healthy and healan way rather than a destructive way.
Speaker 2 (57:03):
I love this. So instead of when they're saying, oh, no,
you know Johnny's birthday is coming up here in a
few weeks. Instead of dreading that, you start looking forward
to it and do something special. I think that's tremendous.
Speaker 5 (57:15):
Steve David just real quickly along. I started wanting to
answer your first question about stages of grief. We don't
ascribe to the five stages of grief for a person
who is still alive. If you gave one of your
patients a terminal diagnosis you have pancreatic cancer and you
probably have a year to live, that person very likely
would go through your shock, denial, anger, acceptance, bargaining, and
(57:41):
then bargaining and acceptance, and then they die. And that's
the experience of a person who has been given a
terminal diagnosis. But the people who are left behind, it
doesn't go linear. It's all over the map. And so
when we realize that it's not to do list to
check off, Oh I'm over my anxiety or over my anger,
(58:03):
I'm over my bargaining, those are things that will not
work that way.
Speaker 2 (58:08):
Thanks so much for clarifying that. Listen, you guys have
been great. I know you have such a wealth of
experience we can only tap into a little of it.
Thanks for sharing your own personal story and your commitment
to helping others. I've jotted down your website. I've got
simply comfort for theday dot com. I've got that.
Speaker 3 (58:24):
Correct, correct.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
Hopefully a lot of folks will reach out to you
and take advantage of your resources. Thanks so much to
both of You'd love.
Speaker 4 (58:30):
To hear bro Thank you, David. This has been delightful.
Speaker 2 (58:33):
Thank you, David, and to each one of you our listeners,
thank you so much for joining us for today's show.
Hopefully it gives you some insights to help you on
your journey through grief. For all of us, I'm doctor
David Duroz, wishing you the very best of health.
Speaker 7 (58:51):
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