Hey, friends, You know how whenever some terrible thing that affects a whole lot of people shows up in the news or on social media and somebody posts that quote from Mr Rogers about looking for the helpers in hard times, everybody post that thing. I know you've seen it. Well, what do you do when the helpers need help? Even outside of a single terrible event that sets off that Roger's meme? We're living in really hard times, which is an understatement. Everyone is going through something, losses everywhere. No one knows what to do about it or say about it. It's nerve wracking. You want so badly to make things right, even when they can't possibly turn out that way, and even if you wish someone more qualified than you might swoop in to save the day. Well, to completely twist Mr Rogers in hard times, you can't keep looking for the helpers. Sometimes you are the help and if you're going to take that on, you deserve a little guidance. You need someone to come up alongside you and help you learn what you need to know. I know this stuff feels scary and daunting and awkward and terrifying, So why should you listen to me? Well, if we're going to go someplace you don't really want to go, you should probably know who you're traveling with. So I've been a therapist for a little bit over twenty years. Before I was a therapist, I worked in social justice. I did domestic violence work and hospice work. So I have been in the trenches of being human for quite a while. In my professional life, I worked with a lot of trauma. I actually worked with a lot of physicians who came into my practice to have a place to talk about the things that they saw on the job that they didn't feel like they could talk about anywhere else. In a lot of ways, I was the therapist therapist. I've been doing it for such a long time that I got kind of tired of sitting there and listening to pain. Like I am with you in this everybody pain is a lot to listen to day after day after day after day. So I wanted to take a break, and as I spoke with my partner about it, he decided that he was gonna take over a financial sub part of our family so that I could close my practice and take a break and just wonder about what was coming next. I never got a chance to do that, though, because two days after that conversation, Matt died in an accident. I closed my practice. I never wanted to talk about this ship again. Even with everything that I knew as a darn good therapist, everything that I thought I knew completely evaporated. The day that he died. I wanted to go back to all of my clients and apologize for being so bad at this little side note on this one. I did actually go back and talk to my clients to check out how bad or not bad I was, and they all gave me really great validation and reflection that I was very good at my job even then. But the thing that really stuck with me is the ways that I was trained to show up for people in pain. Sometimes those tools were great. There are some things in life that do really well with in four optimism right, or gratitude or changing your thoughts. The tools that we learn as clinicians and as providers have really really good applications, but they do not work for every part of human life. They don't. And the things that people said to me in the days and weeks and months after Matt died mostly well intentioned. Some people are just jerks. We're not going to talk about them, but the well intentioned things that people said to me felt so cruel. The night of Matt's funeral, somebody came up to me and said, you're so young and so pretty. My biggest hope is that you'll get married again really soon and get back out there into life. He'd been dead for two days. He was thirty nine. We say the weirdest ship to each other. Back then, nobody really talked about pain. It's weird to think about. But even back then, so we're talking two thousand nine, sort of Internet dark ages here, but even blogs weren't quite a thing yet. They were starting, but they weren't really a thing. So going out there and looking for grief support, most of what I found assumed that I was in my nineties because nobody's partners die in their thirties, or it assumed that I had a very specific religious foundation, which didn't work for me. There were very very few places where people were telling the actual truth about their lives. I came back into this work because I didn't want more people to enter into the world of grief or hardship or struggle and find the things that I found. I want you all when life goes sideways, to have skilled care around you in the whole range, from the first responders to the doctors, to the specialists, to the nurses, to the hospice workers, to the person at the gas station when you stop to get gas on the way to the funeral. I want everybody knowing that there's nothing wrong with you for being in pain when life goes sideways, When your life goes horribly wrong, I want you to have skilled hands to hold you up. We can't stop life from going horribly wrong. It's gonna do what it's gonna do. We got to talk about that. We can't keep ignoring the reality of being alive. If what we want is a world where there is kindness and support for us in our times of need, then we need to start practicing these tools that feel really scary and having conversations that feel awkward and weird and daunting. But we can do this. Talking about this stuff is actually the way forward. I mean, look at it like this, like I'm not talking about this stuff is really awkward. It's the elephant in the room, right. What are you supposed to say to your sister who just lost their baby. What are you supposed to say to that relative that you see in the holiday season and you know something bad happened, but you're not sure if you should bring it up. Not talking about it is awkward. Talking about it is also awkward. If awkward is non negotiable, then let's choose the path of awkward that has the best chance of leading to something awesome. Relationships and care for each other that actually feels good in a really terrible time. We can't take somebody's pain away from them, but we can make their suffering much much reduced if we show up with some skills and some awkwardness. And that's what we're gonna do here together. We're going to talk about weird and daunting and awkward stuff. We're gonna take your questions about how you show up, whether that's on the job as a health care provider or a therapist, or it's as somebody who's trying to be a good friend going through something terrible. We're gonna talk about all that stuff together, because the more you talk about it, the easier it gets. I know it feels weird, I know it feels daunting. I will never ask you to do anything that I have not done myself. It's gonna be fun and weird.

Hey, friends, You know how whenever some terrible thing that affects a whole lot of people shows up in the news or on social media and somebody posts that quote from Mr Rogers about looking for the helpers in hard times, everybody post that thing. I know you've seen it. Well, what do you do when the helpers need help? Even outside of a single terrible event that sets off that Roger's meme? We're living in really hard times, which is an understatement. Everyone is going through something, losses everywhere. No one knows what to do about it or say about it. It's nerve wracking. You want so badly to make things right, even when they can't possibly turn out that way, and even if you wish someone more qualified than you might swoop in to save the day. Well, to completely twist Mr Rogers in hard times, you can't keep looking for the helpers. Sometimes you are the help and if you're going to take that on, you deserve a little guidance. You need someone to come up alongside you and help you learn what you need to know. I know this stuff feels scary and daunting and awkward and terrifying, So why should you listen to me? Well, if we're going to go someplace you don't really want to go, you should probably know who you're traveling with. So I've been a therapist for a little bit over twenty years. Before I was a therapist, I worked in social justice. I did domestic violence work and hospice work. So I have been in the trenches of being human for quite a while. In my professional life, I worked with a lot of trauma. I actually worked with a lot of physicians who came into my practice to have a place to talk about the things that they saw on the job that they didn't feel like they could talk about anywhere else. In a lot of ways, I was the therapist therapist. I've been doing it for such a long time that I got kind of tired of sitting there and listening to pain. Like I am with you in this everybody pain is a lot to listen to day after day after day after day. So I wanted to take a break, and as I spoke with my partner about it, he decided that he was gonna take over a financial sub part of our family so that I could close my practice and take a break and just wonder about what was coming next. I never got a chance to do that, though, because two days after that conversation, Matt died in an accident. I closed my practice. I never wanted to talk about this ship again. Even with everything that I knew as a darn good therapist, everything that I thought I knew completely evaporated. The day that he died. I wanted to go back to all of my clients and apologize for being so bad at this little side note on this one. I did actually go back and talk to my clients to check out how bad or not bad I was, and they all gave me really great validation and reflection that I was very good at my job even then. But the thing that really stuck with me is the ways that I was trained to show up for people in pain. Sometimes those tools were great. There are some things in life that do really well with in four optimism right, or gratitude or changing your thoughts. The tools that we learn as clinicians and as providers have really really good applications, but they do not work for every part of human life. They don't. And the things that people said to me in the days and weeks and months after Matt died mostly well intentioned. Some people are just jerks. We're not going to talk about them, but the well intentioned things that people said to me felt so cruel. The night of Matt's funeral, somebody came up to me and said, you're so young and so pretty. My biggest hope is that you'll get married again really soon and get back out there into life. He'd been dead for two days. He was thirty nine. We say the weirdest ship to each other. Back then, nobody really talked about pain. It's weird to think about. But even back then, so we're talking two thousand nine, sort of Internet dark ages here, but even blogs weren't quite a thing yet. They were starting, but they weren't really a thing. So going out there and looking for grief support, most of what I found assumed that I was in my nineties because nobody's partners die in their thirties, or it assumed that I had a very specific religious foundation, which didn't work for me. There were very very few places where people were telling the actual truth about their lives. I came back into this work because I didn't want more people to enter into the world of grief or hardship or struggle and find the things that I found. I want you all when life goes sideways, to have skilled care around you in the whole range, from the first responders to the doctors, to the specialists, to the nurses, to the hospice workers, to the person at the gas station when you stop to get gas on the way to the funeral. I want everybody knowing that there's nothing wrong with you for being in pain when life goes sideways, When your life goes horribly wrong, I want you to have skilled hands to hold you up. We can't stop life from going horribly wrong. It's gonna do what it's gonna do. We got to talk about that. We can't keep ignoring the reality of being alive. If what we want is a world where there is kindness and support for us in our times of need, then we need to start practicing these tools that feel really scary and having conversations that feel awkward and weird and daunting. But we can do this. Talking about this stuff is actually the way forward. I mean, look at it like this, like I'm not talking about this stuff is really awkward. It's the elephant in the room, right. What are you supposed to say to your sister who just lost their baby. What are you supposed to say to that relative that you see in the holiday season and you know something bad happened, but you're not sure if you should bring it up. Not talking about it is awkward. Talking about it is also awkward. If awkward is non negotiable, then let's choose the path of awkward that has the best chance of leading to something awesome. Relationships and care for each other that actually feels good in a really terrible time. We can't take somebody's pain away from them, but we can make their suffering much much reduced if we show up with some skills and some awkwardness. And that's what we're gonna do here together. We're going to talk about weird and daunting and awkward stuff. We're gonna take your questions about how you show up, whether that's on the job as a health care provider or a therapist, or it's as somebody who's trying to be a good friend going through something terrible. We're gonna talk about all that stuff together, because the more you talk about it, the easier it gets. I know it feels weird, I know it feels daunting. I will never ask you to do anything that I have not done myself. It's gonna be fun and weird.