Hey, friends, it's me Megan Divine, host of Hereafter with Megan Divine. Season two is coming up soon. It'll be here before you know it. But in the meantime, while you're waiting, I wanted to introduce you to a couple of shows I think you're going to like. You might even get some new favorite podcasts out of it. So give these episodes a listen and stay tuned for the announcement of the launch of season two coming soon. See you soon, friends. Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of You Need Therapy. My name is Kat and today we have a special special guest with us. We have Amy Brown. Say Hi, Hi, I'm super special, super special. Amy has not been on You Need Therapy before, but I have been on her podcast for Things with Amy Brown and her podcast that she does with Lisa ham Outweigh before and we thought it was about time she comes over here. Yeah. No, it's definitely time. Yeah. I'm excited to be on. And I know that our topic is a little bit I don't know that I describe it as exciting, but I am, I guess honored to be on You Need Therapy. I know so many people that love this podcast. I am one of them, so just happy to join you in this conversation. Well, thank you. Before we get going, I want to remind you guys that this is a podcast that is hosted by a therapist, but what it is not is actual therapy. And what I hope is that this podcast is a spearhead or something that helps move you into that space if that's what you feel like you need. But want to stay up top before we get going, because we were going to talk about something that's a little bit more serious today. That this is not a substitute, but it is an addition and a bonus. So without any more waiting, let's talk about what we're going to talk about today. We are going to be tackling grief. I'm trying to say it with you for a dramatic effect, but okay. So the thing is, grief is a very serious subject and we're gonna obviously take it super seriously and talk about it and the realities of it. But at the same time, I like to take an approach where things are manageable. So you might hear us laughing, you might hear us telling stories that feel good. You might it might be confusing. This isn't supposed to be a Debbie Downer episode. This is supposed to be a helpful episode. So thank you for that intro because that got me feeling well, calm okay, so I will go ahead and stay up top. I would not consider myself an expert when it comes to grief in general as a therapist. And it's funny because when I started as a private practice therapist, you have to kind of think about what it is that you want to specialize, how you want to market yourself, all of that. And I remember saying like, I can do a lot of things, but one thing I know I cannot do and I don't want to do is grief work. Why because it's hard. Well, yes, yes it's it's hard, and a lot of things are hard, but it's hard in a different way because how you treat grief is not fixing us a problem. You can't solve grief. It can't be fixed. And a lot of grief work is just being in it with somebody. I just feel like, even as a therapist, for you sitting with people in whatever they're going through that day, I don't know how y'all do it. And you walk away and kind of have to shut it off because for me, I feel like just the weight of all of that would be on me all the time because people are going through a lot of things and you're the one You're you're taking that in, right, says a therapist. Through this a whole another topic. But there has to be something you do to kind of, you know, leave it at work, like compartmentalize it or to an extent. I think there's ways to practice that, and that is part of this because as a therapist you have to build it up some kind of armor to be able to withstand the fact that there are people that are gonna be coming into your office that just feel awful and there's nothing you can do to change that. Right, That is grief. For a lot of times, there's nothing we can do to take the pain away, and actually that would be probably doing them a disservice. For me, I know personally, I found out later why that grief was so hard. But I'm a seven on the iniogram, and if anybody is familiar, what we like to do is avoid pain, and so grief work forces me to be present with it. It's like my worst nightmare. Now I have worked on that sense and what I have found is there was not a way for me to avoid doing grief work. There was no way as a therapist I could say I don't do that. Now let's say I don't want to work with O c D. I can do that, but there's absolutely no way to avoid if I'm going to be a therapist to avoid working with grief. Yeah. I feel like people are grieving things all the time, and it's such a wide variety of things you can grieve. And if you're if you have a client, there's someone that you're working with, like one week, they might not be experiencing grief, but something can happen in an instant and the next time they see you, they have grief. And I'm like, you're just like I can't do that well, right, And So I think that has to do with what we think grief is. So let's just start with that, Okay. I want to hear from you, like what you know grief, what you know it to be now and what you might have known it to be or believe it to be in your past, Like, just as you how would you define what grief is? I feel like grieving is the loss of well in my experience, with grief, it represents the loss of something. That's when I have grieved. I don't know if that's accurate, but it doesn't have to be the loss of life necessarily, although I've grieved that I've lost my mom and my dad, but I wanted to, you know, be pregnant in birth children. I never lost any children, never experienced a miscarriage. I now am an adoptive mom and I love my children. But I did have to grieve that I'm not going to ever carry a baby. So that was a loss of yeah, not a person, but in a dream or an experience that I thought I was going to have. So there's been a loss of certain opportunities I thought I was going to have that went away, a loss of friendships. People are physically still here on earth, but you kind of things change, life changes, people move, situations change. So I feel like that's what it is for me. Yeah, I would say grief is like either the loss or the death of something. It doesn't have to be exactly what you said. It doesn't have to be a human being or like an animal. It is literally anything that you lose you can have, You can and will have a grieving process through and I don't know why. For a long time, I didn't acknowledge that because I had never lost somebody super significant that I wouldn't have expected. I felt like I hadn't really grieved a lot in my life. And then that quickly changed. And I think that also brings in this idea that I know I had to work through. And I want to hear you two of this comparative grief. And I say that because anybody who's listening, you might not have lost somebody significant in your life, but you might have gone through a lot of really really really really really tough stuff. And I think it's important to acknowledge that you might have grieved through that, or you might need to grieve through that. So I'm curious about is have there been moments in your life and maybe you think about it in hindsight, but have there been moments in your life when you're looking back now and you're like, oh, wow, that was a grieving process. But I didn't know that. I didn't allow myself to actually allow that to be a huge deal because well, I think there's stuff from my childhood that clearly I didn't know. I wasn't given the tools, and I you know, my dad left when I was nine, and I feel like, as an adult, parts of me have had to go back and grieve my childhood a little bit. Okay, that's actually a really good point, and I've done that word. I've gone back and did some even brain spotting to work through some of that. But I didn't realize that that was the thing where once you're an adult and you realize and you look back and you kind of I wish I had had this mom and this dad and this family intact, and I would look around and see all my friends and their parents still married and still together, and you know, their dad didn't leave and their mom didn't have to go to work, and not that that's everybody's circumstances, but in my house, my mom didn't work at all and she was stay at home mom. And then at nine, my dad left and everything changed and my mom went to work full time and she was now a single parent and she was very busy. So I kind of feel like I lost my dad, but I also lost my mom in a different way, the different kind of mom that I had, So I didn't realize all the different ways in which that affected me and how I am the way that I am about certain things. But I had to almost accept that. But it is like I had to grieve my idea of what I thought my childhood was is. And I think it was healthy for me to go back and do that at forty years old, to go back and like understand that that's what happened and that's okay. And then I think that I dealt with my mom's death. That was the first time I ever lost somebody that I was super close to. I didn't have grandparents on my dad's side. I had a grandma. I remember she died when I was eighteen. I remember being really sad about that, and I felt close to her, but we weren't like super duper close. But my mom that was losing a best friend, and I didn't know how to do it. Okay, I didn't know. So there's a lot in that that I would love to unpack. Their one I will say, I think what you're talking about is the finding the awareness, so then you can go back in your childhood to grieve something that you didn't know that you essentially lost. But once you do that, then you can actually be in your present and accept and move forward in your present with what you have, and I think that makes a big difference in people those lives. But also I'm more interested in right now after hearing that is, you had a really complicated grief story with your mom because she was sick for a really long time. Yeah, she had cancer for two years and my sister and I were primary caregivers. Yeah, and you're single. Yeah, and that's I guess for some people it's normal, But it's also not normal because you're in this like anticipatory grief stage, right, so you don't really know what's going to happen, but you're also preparing for multiple things to happen. And so there's your grieving something while your mom is here. Oh yeah, you're in denial, while some you know, denials of one of the stages of grief. But it's like, so I feel like you can even be in that. After after I lost her, I was like, no, this isn't real. She's not really gone. But even when we were my sister and I were talking about this the other day, like even when our mom was in hospice, which at the time I didn't even know what hospice was, and I was I mean, this was not I was an adult. I was thirty three years old, so this was two thousand fourteen, and they they're sitting me and my sister down at the hospice place, and they're explaining what's going to happen, and in our minds though, we were like, oh, but we're not going to be here for a while, like she's gonna get better and then we're gonna go home. Like I didn't realize hospice was like end of life, like palliative care, like at this point, we're just keeping her comfortable until her body says it's time. And it's almost like we couldn't see that. We were completely blind to what they were saying. And they literally gave us a pamphlet that walked us through all of the steps that my mom was likely going to be experiencing the next several days. And even with that, we were like, oh, yeah, I mean, but yeah, we'll get her home and she's going to be fine. Looking back, it was so wild, and I almost I got to walk through that with a friend a couple of weeks ago, where they called to just get my advice on it because they were given similar type news. I was thankful that I was in a way able to prepare them for something that I wasn't properly prepared for, and I was bill to give them that sort of that heads up because then when it happens, you're kind of just like hit over the head and you're like, oh, that's what they were trying to say. So there's times where her cancer would go away and we were hopeful, and then it would return and it metastasized, and then we're like, oh, okay, now what does this mean? And so yeah, there's with any illness like that that can be life threatening. It's a roller coaster well, because the anticipatory grief is grieving something before it happens. But the thing is, even though you're grieving while your mom's here, that does not shorten the grief after. And so I think that's a really confusing thing for a lot of people. And that's something I think that people do in a protection sense, and we do that with all kinds of things. We like anticipate bad things happening to us and try to move through all these stages, whether or not we know it's conscious or not, and subconsciously we're thinking this is going to help us get through it faster. On the other side. In reality, it doesn't that means you're grieving twice. I don't think that you can help it. I don't think there's a way to stop it. But I do want to you mention the stages of grief. I want to talk about them. And one thing I will say about denial, which I think is exactly what you're talking about, is I find denial as a tool. Essentially, it's like a good thing. I don't know that people understand that, and they might you might be thinking, like what are you talking about, like denying reality, Like how is that a good thing? But it's also a way that I think our brains in the world and nature and the divine allows us to only understand and know as much as we can handle in that moment. So and in a way like, yes, our brains can be protecting us, like from a lot of pain that's ahead, and like you will accept what actually is reality when you're ready and able to accept that. And I think a lot of times people want to push people through these denial stages and it's like you can't, like you just have to let it happen. But that sounds like exactly what was going on when you, like, we had these pamphlets they said what was going to happen, but we didn't like actually recognize that. Well, I feel like they were gentle in their explanation too. They could have been a little more aggressive. And that's why when you know, my friend was faced, So then I'm glad you said that everybody's grief it's different and their grieving process is different, right, so when my friend called for advice again, any time like that also gives you an opportunity to use what you went through for good and comfort to somebody else, because it's like, at the end of the day, none of us want to go through anything alone. So anytime you've been through a difficult season, whatever it may be, when someone else you know might be going through something similar and you can come alongside them, like that helps give some purpose and you know, and meaning to what you went through. And we're all in this wild journey here and we've all got different stories. But you know when you have a friend that somehow might need you in a way that you've experienced before. But I in no way wanted to, yeah, like step in and be like, well here, don't go into denial. But I think I was able to offer him something that I wish I would have had at the time. And whether his his glasses, his goggles, like whatever you want to call him, whatever, whatever filter he puts it through, that's going to be up to you know, my friend. But yeah, I mean, you're right. I never thought of it as as a way of protection and that when I was good and ready, then my body would allow me my brain and my heart would allow me to like realize, Yeah, I hadn't thought of that. Well. I think that that framework is helpful in grief in general, because what I believe for myself about grief is I want to get out of it as fast as possible. This would be me ten years ago if I needed to go to therapy for grief work, I would go to my therapist and I'd be like, Hey, this is what's going on. I need to know what I need to do to get to the other side of this. I need some steps, I need some tools, I need some tips. I need you to tell me what to do to feel better. And that's what I would want. Reality is, that's not possible for anybody to do that. There's no protocol. There's stages of grief, but and I want to. I let's talk about them, because I think that is something that in the general public gets the most misconstrued about what grief is and and and what the stages are. Because I don't know if you knew this, I might have said this to you already, but the stages of grief were not created originally for grieving other people's stuff or other things in your life. The stages of grief were originated to help people understand the process of coming to terms with their own death, like your own, like mine, And they ended up being adapted to grief in general because people are doing it anyway. So the people that created them, Elizabeth Coobler Ross was the person that originated this, and then in man name David Kessler ended up working with her and writing a couple of books with her, and then they wrote the book on Grief and Grieving Together that took the stages of grief for your own death and adapted them to grief in general. They're the same stages, but I do think it's important to talk about them because what I thought they were is not what they were. I thought that these were the stages, and I laughed because I don't know if I just wasn't paying attention or is it taught to me wrong in school? But I remember the stages being like, Okay, these are the things that you do, and this is what you need to look at, and this is how it happens, and then you're done. And the reality is the stages are just descriptions of what you might experience. That's right. Some people might hit every stage, some people might hit it in a totally different order than they're in. Some people might only hit one of the five or seven or how many there are. And then, honestly, you're never done. You're never done grieving. That's what That's the first thing you have to accept is that it's just not something that you fix. So I wonder for you knowing that grief is never done and it's never something that I'm going to get to the end. There's not a finish line in grief work. What is that like for you in some of the grief you've experienced. I feel like knowing that now and knowing it well because I've done a lot of work lately. It actually it's sort of is relief in a way. It's like, oh, wow, I have permission to live with this, it's hard, Like, I don't. I wish I didn't have to live with this, right, I don't. I don't want this as part of my story because it's sad, like you know, I would rather have my mom and my dad here. But the fact that it's known and told to us by experts that like, sorry, it's then it's like for me, it's a little bit freeing of like, Okay, I'm not messed up. I'm not crazy because I'm feeling certain of things like I would think at some point I should have been over some stuff with my mom, right, and I felt like it's some of my behaviors after my mom died, I felt a little bit crazy. I felt like I'm just not handling this right. But back to your point of like, well, no, my brain and my body and my heart like I was doing the best that I could to survive in that moment. I was because that's when my eating disorder returned, and that's what my body knew in that moment I needed to survive that. Again, I don't. I don't want that to be everybody's story. I hate that it was part of mine. To me, it was very confusing, But now I see because that was something I had used earlier in life. That was where my brain went like, oh, okay, I know how to take care of you. Right now, we're going to numb out with this. So I have grace for myself and that I'm not angry that that's what happened. I'm actually like, okay, cool. That was part of my journey to get where I am. But then there was different things throughout my mom's death, and as time would go by that I kept thinking like, Okay, I shouldn't be why am I sad today? I shouldn't be feeling this like I've done this, this and this, But where I am differently with losing my dad this year and all the work that I put into it, and I think how I've matured in a way with how it books, and then hearing all this permission, Yes, that grieve never ends. Like I don't feel that pressure on myself like I did with my mom to like have it figured out, hit the different stages, if that's what you want to call them, and not that I was ever going by checklist with my mom, but I did feel odd how some days I would just get super sad. And now with my dad I'm like, wow, Okay, if I get super sad, like, that's okay. I'm allowed to be super sad today. If I was triggered by something that really reminded me of my dad and made me really sad, that's all right. There's nothing wrong with me. That doesn't mean I'm broken. I feel like you're looking at me weird. I'm not. I think that's really cool, But that's what That's what it's done for me is knowing that it never had it can't get fixed for me. I don't know. If you would have told me this with my mom, I probably would have been overwhelmed, and I'm like, no, no, we need to fix this. I need to grieve my mom, do all the things like whatever we need to do. And then now I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm still doing the proper things to try to heal from the pain, but in a way, I'm no longer trying to numb it out. I'm no longer trying to expedite the process. I'm no longer, you know, trying to get to the finish line. Because I know there isn't a finish line doesn't mean there's not work to be done by any means there's work, but the pressure is off. It kind of for me has I feel a little bit more relief in grieving my dad than I did with my mom. It's two very different situations that are, you know, seven years apart. When I think the weird look you're getting from me is really my brain is so different than yours. And when I hear that there is no end in grief, and this is probably very tightly attached to the reason why I never wanted to work with it as a therapist is it doesn't always make me feel better. It pisces me off. I am frustrated. Why would that make you mad? Because I don't want this right? But you don't have it every day. I mean some people might. I mean I don't, but like it's it's it comes and goes. But yeah, I have felt and I understand the fact that grief looks different as you move further away from what you're grieving. But it pisces me off that there is not something I can do to make this go away, Because in most areas of my life, there is something I can do, and there is a way for me to not totally erase this thing. But I have more power and control over fixing whatever it is that needs to be fixed. And I do not like being told that there's nothing I can do, and I do not like having to just oh, okay, you have to. It's you're relearning. Grief is relearning how to live your life with just different circumstances. Right, you're carrying it with you. It's always with you. And that's why I guess there is something you can do for the grief, right, but you're not. It's always going to be there. I recently had a grief expert on my podcast, Megan Divine, and she described it with the metaphor of like a backpack that has all of these just different life situations that are happening, and some big grief ones might be like sharp objects that are coming out of the backpack. And you still have the backpack, but you might have to reposition it sometimes while on your journey. So that's not poking you on the side, but the but the sharp object in the backpack your grief. It's always still there, but how are you going to position the backpack to carry it with you? She's really good. She actually came out with a grief journal that's literally called how to carry what can't be fixed, which is the grief. So I need to get the journey to do again. I've said the seventeen times we're going to talk about the stages, and I want to mention them. But I also think it's important to tie in and pull in the other things that people might be grieving, because I think that it's a lot of times death is focused on and I'm sitting here thinking about, well, what am I and what am I grieving right now? Like what actually am I mad about? And I think about things like life stages or or things that you thought were going to happen in your life, like you said, like getting pregnant it or maybe for you it's getting married at a certain time, maybe to be a divorce. It could be yeah, it could be a career or a job that you can be anything. And I think it's important to mention those things because what I see happening over and over and over again in my life with friends, in my own life, and then with clients is the comparative suffering part comes back in and we're not out of grief. Things that aren't really big and huge, like little T versus big T traumas like we're allowed to be sad and affected by big tea traumas, but little tea traumas I should be okay when in reality one thing that I do believe and it's like weird to think about it, like I don't know, it makes my brain like do like some kind of weird gymnastics. But the fact is, nobody's grief feelings really, but nobody's griefs specifically is ever going to be worse than the grief that you're going to feel in your life because you don't feel other people's grief but you don't, Yeah, you don't make sense feel other people is anything. It's almost like when you think about colors, like we all think we see the same color, but we really have no idea what each person is seeing. It doesn't that blow your mind? Like I could see the shade of blue over there in that painting and the shade of blue I'm seeing. I mean, I guess we could talk about it and you're saying you see blue too, but different, right, So yeah, I get it. It does when you think too. That's why I'd prefer not to think about it too much, But yeah, it is. It's a you'll never know just like you, you'll never know what colors people are really saying. You're never gonna know what anybody is feeling about anything, And there's no point, there's literally no point in comparing your grief with somebody else's. There's no point in it because they're never going to feel your stuff, and you're never going to feel yours, but you are going to feel yours. So if you want that healing, you have to acknowledge the fact that whatever it is that you're struggling within this moment is real and depending on the different little teas and big teeth that we have in our life for taking it through those filters where someone might be grieving something like the same thing may happen to you that happens to me, and we might be grieving a totally different based on our life experiences and something might not really affect me as bad as it's affecting you. But then, yeah, I guess I'm just reiterating that, like all of our feelings are so relative because we're I mean even in like my husband and I are in therapy together and it's like certain things that come up when we're in there. I don't get it, but he's literally some of it. It's because it's going through a filter of like five year old been or if he doesn't understand what I'm doing, it's going through nine year old Amy. And it's just when when you look at it that way, then you suddenly have like compassion. I have a question for you. Yeah, going through the death of a parent with your sister. I want to know what that has been like, because you are two different people. Oh yeah, No, my sister is well. I mean, this is just very She's representative of body, keeps the score like, she keeps things in and processes and such a deep inner level. She's so inside of herself at all times that that even makes sense. But like after my dad died, she was hospitalized. I think I think it's fine, it's fine. She's about to have her own TV show, shout Out, which is really weird and random and like completely not my sister at all. In fact, that might be part of what hospitalized her, because I think she has so much anxiety. And the last time this happened, I think was in two thousand eighteen, when my dad was in the hospital for surgery and he was supposed to be in and out three to five days and ended up being an I c U for six weeks. And because again our parents were single. My dad had just gotten divorced, like for the fourth time, so he didn't have a wife at this time. He had a girlfriend, but you know, she was just a girlfriend. But so my sister and I felt like the primary carrier virgiat again and it was so stressful. I mean, it was beyond and she was hospitalized back then, but and then it happened again after he died, but she was laying in bed and she literally felt like she was having a heart attack. She woke her husband up in the middle of night and she's like, take me to the hospital. I'm having a heart attack. She told me she knew that it was super serious because she was like, well, let's put clothes on, and she's like, no, get in the car. She's like, I would never go anywhere in my pajamas, Like that's how urgent it was to get there. And they got there and she thought she was having a heart attack. She told them I'm having a heart attack and they're like, well, okay, no, you're not. She's having an anxiety attack. And she was like, well, are you sure. No, I think there's something going on with my heart. And they're like, well, we we put some you know, anxiety meds in your drip and you're doing better now, right, And she's like, yeah, I know better or not. Everything's fine. But that's just a small example. Have we processed differently? Like that was her body because she was less. Yes, like she just I don't know why I was saying, she's inside of herself, but she internalized so much. Yeah, I feel like she's comfortable talking with me, Like, I don't know what it is, but I think she has more worrying up inside of her that she leads on because she does seem like she's got it all together, you know, which being like the little sister, it's kind of like you always do think your sister has it all together, and then you learned she doesn't, and you're like, what what that's a while I hear the first time her husband told me she like threw a cereal bowl at him, I was like, what, I get it. Yeah she did, she did. She admitted it later, But I'm like, my sister, the angel, the perfect Christie, she threw a cereal at you? Would you do? But now I get it? Like I've been there to where I've like I've you know, thrown stuff, yeah, slammed milk. But we're just very, very different. But yeah, we both lost our dad and it looked I was struggling in other ways, but like she was having anxiety text well, and I think that's so important to hear because we're so different. Well, and that just solidifies the fact that there is no right way to do grief. Right. I could look at it like, oh my gosh, did I not love my dad as much? Because I'm I'm not waking up in the middle of night having a heart attack, like what's wrong with me? But and also people that don't want to talk about it when you're like why don't you want to talk about it? Do not care? And it's like no, their way of handling and processing in their stages are going to look different. And that doesn't mean that they don't feel the same deepness or loss as you. That just means it looks different, which ends up being like I don't know the statistic on this, but I do know that parents who agree with a child have a much higher divorce rate because of that, because grief can look so different and two people and it becomes like are you not sad? How how could you move on? Or like you need to move on when the reality is both people need to have their own process right, and both people just need to learn how to carry their backpacks they do. I mean the position of the backpack, Mike, look a little different, right, kind of like in junior high. When I was in sixth grade, it was really cool to wear your backpack on, like the front. Did you have to do that in junior high. I'm older than you, Cat, I thought you were going to say, on one shoulder. Now we did that. There was a season where um, I'm sure it was cool on one shoulder. Then it was like you were in the front. That was at a very special school. And then you know, you were a double strap on the back. But I mean, yeah, so all that to say, like, however you carry it? And then how can you if you do have a partner or you know, a sibling or someone that you're walking through the grief process, look like, how can you best support the person and not you know, judge the person for not doing it the way you're doing it too, because it's hard. And then sometimes there's a significant other that's on the other side of it, Like I remember my husband being like, I don't even know what to do. I don't know how to help you. I don't know how to be here for you. Being the person trying to help someone through the grief can be really hard to and sometimes we don't really know what to say or do, and we don't want to say or do the wrong thing, so we just don't really do you know when And I think I think most of the time, when it comes down to it, what somebody can do is just be present and be there. Like there's there's nothing to say. There's not the right thing to say to somebody. There's nothing you can say in somebody scrief that's going to make it better and all. And I'm thinking about this and like breakups, but when you're going through a breakup with somebody and and your friend or somebody is around and they're trying to make you, they're trying to make you feel better. One that's not really the move. You can't make somebody feel better. But also a lot of things that people know to say are just really annoying. Right, So when people we are going through a breakup, things I've heard is you deserve better than him. It's like I don't care what I deserve, that's what I wanted, or a note in death. A lot of times people will say, well they're in a better place. Well, sometimes like I don't want them to be in a better place. I want them to be here. And so I think a lot of times we search for what we can do or what we can say to somebody to help them, but really the thing that those people need is just your presence. We the grievers, need to be able to speak and just be heard. That's it. There's you. No, I agree. I mean that's good advice because sometimes I think we need to be reminded of that, me included, because there's like there's nothing you can say. Going back to Megan Divine, the grief expert, she had lost her husband at like thirty three, unexpected, completely blindsided by it, and that so many people, because she was young, they're like, oh my gosh, like you're you're going to meet somebody else and and then it's going to be fine. And she's like, I'm paraphrasing what she said, but basically took me where She's like, shut up, Like why why? Why suddenly are you already trying to move me on to somebody else and everything's gonna be fine. Yes, Oh my gosh, let's can we talk about that first second? Okay, because in the stages, the stages are denial, anger, bargainings. I know I've been teasing them. I just say them again. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and then there's a bonus stage we'll talk about in the second. What you're talking about, though, is this depression stage. And I have a new found love for the depression stage of grief because I've always looked at that part. And when we say depression and grief, we're not talking about clinical depression. We're talking about like deep sadness. Right. Well, most of the time when somebody is sad, we want to cheer them up. That's what we want to do. But what we have to look at in in grief is people are usually in that stage because they have lost something. They always are in that stage because they have lost something that it was very important to them. But at the same time, people are looking at you being sad or somebody being depressed or not being able to get a bed or whatever as unnatural, and we need to get you out of that. We need to move you out of that. But isn't it weird? Wouldn't it be weird if you did not experience a level of deep sadness after losing something very important to you. Yeah? Right, So we have that is it's such a simple but important distinction when we are looking at the sadness when it comes to grief and we want to get people out of it, what we're pane is this is not right, when in reality it is right. It is right for you to be sad. It is so right for you to be sad. I will credit this to Elizabeth Coogler Ross and David Kessler, who wrote the book on Grief and Grieving. I believe that just like denial helps and protects you, so does this depression. And what the sadness and the deep, the deep sadness and grief does is it essentially is shutting down your nervous system inside of your body and like kind of like lowering all of that so that you can adapt to whatever it is in your life that you actually cannot handle. Right now, you can't handle it yet. So if I were just to be my vibrant, bright, shiny person, blah blah blah going about the world. I would not be able to handle this new shift in my life, and so my my body slows me down so I can adapt to this new shift. And once I've adapted, then I will move out of that stage. Does that make sense? It does? I mean, and the slowing down might look different for every buddy the You know, I think I was able to get out of bed after losing my dad, but I honestly just wanted to lay around a lot at night. Being alone at night was hard for me. Just some different family circumstances led to like my husband wasn't always with me, my sister, my family had come in town, they had all left, and then my friend Mary came and stayed with me. And I remember going to bed one night being like, I don't want to lay here, but I don't really want to talk, I don't really want to do anything, but I would just go lay and watch nine, O, two and O for you know, hours. So your body is adjusting. That was okay. So part of you might feel like, oh, this is weird or why I shouldn't be doing this, or I don't understand, but I don't know, but I needed that, and I remember texting her, calling her she was upstairs in my house and like can you may be downstairs and just watched and I don't know with me, And so she came down and we laid and we watched that, and then I went through there's a lot of seasons and episodes of nine O two and oh in case you did not know, on Hulu, the original nineties version, and I went through that. It took me like two or three months, but there was something something about it that helped me. I feel like that was almost a little bit of depression in that way, no offense. Dylan and Kelly and Brenda, like it was soothing to me right, Like it was something where I was able to just be there and not think but allowed me to rest. It was soothing and you needed that in order for you to move back into your life. And going back to what you're saying about Megan being like, why are you trying to push me through this? Why are you trying to make me feel better? Like I think that's what we get really confused and grief. It's like the goal is not to make me okay with what happened. In grief, you will maybe never probably never be okay with what happened. No, it's that's not it. So the goal is how do I adapt to this new life? Like, how do I learn how to live this new life? And that goes to this the acceptance stage of grief. Now I will say these aren't going to happen in the order that I said them necessarily. But when we move into this acceptance stage, I think a lot of people have this like unconscious like push to not go there because they think that like acceptance means I'm okay with what happened, Acceptance means that that doesn't bother me anymore. When I don't think that's what acceptance is for you? What is acceptance? I feel like I've reached acceptance, but I'm also now in the middle of melrose place. That's what it means for me. That's exactly it means. I finished I don't you know, and now I'm I'm well acceptance. So the other thing, right, still dealing with stuff, You're still dealing with other thing with it. Yeah, but even even with my dad, I mean my dad had just moved into my house the day before he went to the hospital all and he was supposed to live with me in my mind for several years, like we were moving him in here to be a part of our life, and he was gonna be with us, and they were gonna be very precious years and he was gonna be able to hang out with my kids. And you know, again I had to grieve the loss of that dream and expectation with the loss of his physical body. But I just set him up in this room and then he had like this episode he fell. I was there for the whole thing, like we were, you know, every time I walk in my entryway, like I picture him like laying there and we call us, calling the ambulance, like it was. It was very traumatic episode where I'm laying with my dad, my husband's calling nine on one. He was loaded up in the ambulance and when they were about to shut the door, I couldn't go with him because of COVID And he was like, I love you, He's like, and I was like, I'll see you tomorrow. I'll see you tomorrow, and he was like, okay. I'm like I'm sure, I'll pick you up, bring you home, Like this is just a normal thing. He's been in all the hospital since his surgery in two thousand eighteen, and I never I never talked to my dad again. I got I was updated the next morning that he was on life support and he'd been intubated and he's on machines and so but even then that you know, that denial grouped in. Like I would call my sister, I'm like, you better fly to town. We have another half further and half sister for my dad's first marriage. And I was like, y'all better come to town. But but I mean, I'm sure everything's gonna be fine. But the doctors saying, y'allo probably come to down. So back to what I was saying about my that happening in my house is like almost like walking through my house sometimes as a trigger passing that room where he was like, I'm already redecorating things because it's either like I either invest a little bit in some new paint and pillows or something, or I need to move because it was so just awful here for a while for me. But I mean, how I can't just like move. So now I'm actively having to do things to help me. I'm still carrying this backpack, right, but me buying a few new pieces of furniture and adding some paint and even and pops of color because my house is very black and white. But now that vibe is changing because I'm realizing, like I'm changing, things are happening to me, and I want little pops of joy in my house now. But that's me adjusting my backpack. That's me like being like, this is my house and now I need to figure out how to survive in my house. And those are little things that I'm doing. But it's very now. I can remember the original question back to the acceptance, like, I have accepted it. I think it's where I was going. But welcome to my rabbit hole. Sorry that needed to all be said. But but yeah, I think I've accepted it. But I but I still encounter daily things where I'm like, oh, yes, acceptance doesn't mean it doesn't affect you. Accept right, So that's why now the reality of what has happened or what I'm in, that's all acceptance is now. I think it's super important in worthwhile to say that later there has been an addition of another stage of grief which doesn't get talked about as much, and that is the meaning making stage. And what I think is really interesting is what I know about this stage being developed is David Kessler wanted to add this after he went through an experience of losing a son and he was this like grief expert and thought to himself, these aren't cutting it. This isn't describing everything that I am going through, and this isn't describing everything that I need. And there's there's something else missing that we haven't actually put language too. And it was this meaning making stage. And I love this. It's probably if I had it. I mean I did go on like a rampage of how I Love depression or the stage of treasure. But I love this stage as well because it has been probably one of the most helpful in my own life. Now when I say meaning making, what comes to your mind about what that would actually look like. Well, I feel like with my mom and I have probably a different story than I would have had if if I wasn't on the Bobby Bones Show or didn't have the platform that I have because with her cancer journey, we were a bull to turn it into a whole movement, and it was while she was alive. But she had a prayer at the chapel and at M. D Anderson, which is not Cancer Hospital in Houston one day when the cancer had returned for the third time, and she said, Lord used this for good. It wasn't like Lord held me. It was the most selfless prayer ever. And I feel like in a way because we've created this whole Pimp and Joy line and we have shirts and hats and sweatshirts and beanies and all kinds of things that of the proceeds go to whatever cause we're supporting at the time. And pim and joys all about choosing joy for yourself and spreading joy to others, but not in a like toxic positivity way, because my mom definitely we had very non joyful days, but her overall theme throughout her journey was joy and like mostly spreading it to others, especially at the hospital. If she would see them there alone or something, she would always compliment their outfit or whatever. And it's shocking how many people are at the hospital alone, Like breaks my heart. They have to go through like your treatments and like not. But I mean it's a lot, I get it. And if people have jobs like I mean, luckily my sister and I were able to tag team and always be there and my mom's friends and even my dad, even though they were divorced, he stepped in and helped. So my mom was never an appointment alone, but anyway, because she was about the joy. Like my sister and I even got Joy tattooed on our wrists and our mom's handwriting, joy was like our word. So through that Pimp and Joy being born for me, that's an answer to her prayer. Like every time a Pimp and Joy shirt or hat or whatever is sold or I see one someone wearing it, because there's thousands and thousands and thousands, like over two million dollars has been donated to various causes because my mom had cancer and because my mom died. Now I would rather have my mom here, don't get me wrong, but all the good that has come from that because we've chosen to make it something that has given that meaning. But I get not everybody has that type of thing, and I know that if I didn't have that platform, it would look very different. But I still feel like you can find meeting no matter what. Because even with my dad, it wasn't like something as big as Pimp and Joy, But because of what we were able to do with my mom, we did a cabe Winnow T for my dad and he would always say that he was fluent in Spanish and ca bo just means like that's good and like everything he would say, It's like you would tell him if you're like, hey, I'm cat, I'm a therapist and da da da, he'd be like, okay, when no, tell me more. And so we put it on a T and it was like, you know, my dad grew up in rural Texas and wouldn't have had an education if it wasn't for scholarships. So we formed a scholarship fund in my dad's name, and all the money goes to that scholarship fund. And I think, you know, you can just find different ways to kind of help keep that person alive or think about what they're passionate about. I don't know for sure if that's going to do the meaning thing for everybody, but for my family, what we've been able to do for my mom and then my dad that has helped us, well, yes, and I love those stories and I am I'm grateful for that stuff as well. And what you also said earlier that might not be as aha to you in this moment is that you also said that the experience you had going through some of that with your mom also allowed you to be more present for your friends that are going through stuff too, So that's meaning to Yeah, I feel like I'm in a weird position where we were able to do something that without the show and the platform, I wouldn't have been able to do. So I didn't want to paint it as like if someone else has a grief story, that's like, oh, shoot, well I didn't make T shirts and I didn't do this, and I didn't set up a fundraiser and we haven't donated any money. Oh no, I'm just making sure that I prefaced it with that it would have looked very different. But I still think you can find meaning in different ways, and that is absolutely a way where. Yeah, I feel like a lot of things in life that you go through you as long as you are willing to go there with other people, and if you've been given certain life experiences and you've been given the tools like to be able to to share those with others, even though yet totally sucks and it's sad what you had to go through. But yeah, that's why even why I do my podcast or even share things on the show that are personal. We get personal because we don't want I guess I'll speak for myself, don't want somebody to feel like they're alone in anything. And I may not know them. They might be listening in their car driving in Boston and I'm never going to meet them, but maybe something I said one day on their commute made them feel like, oh gosh, okay, I'm not I'm not alone in this. Yeah. And I think something that i've I'm hearing and what you're saying is the meaning making for you has not bypassed the pain part for you. There's both, and that's what I would give up, like so much. I would throw all of that out the window to have my mom back easy. And I mean I would hate to take away the money that's been donated, but I mean sorry, I would just I would rather have her back. And that's the other thing. I think a lot of people misconstrue or or don't even allow themselves to go there because they're like, oh, I don't want to silver line a tragedy or I don't want to not honor what I've lost, or and that's not what anybody is doing. I think that meaning is not is not something that we do to get over something. And when we find meaning for things, what you're not doing. What I don't hear you saying, is this was the meaning of the tragedy, this was the meaning of the death. It's you're finding meaning and what you're doing after whatever you go through, your finding meaning and whatever happens after that trauma. Because and we've talked about this before, you can be grateful for whatever growth happens in your life without being grateful for the thing that actually made you do that, growing so grateful for the growth without being grateful for the thing that made you grow. And that's I think what meaning making in grief work is a lot of times circling back to you know, at the beginning when I was talking about my childhood, I now am super thankful for the ways it shaped me into who I am, and then the path that led us on the people we met, because you know, my dad left and my mom went a different direction and made all these other friends at church, and then I mean, my sister and I wouldn't have met our husbands if that wouldn't have happened. Like there's things where you're like, oh, wow, okay, that's kind of cool how that worked out. And then we you know, my sister's got four kids and I've got two adopted kids. So and then even when you look at my dad's marriage is not working out, or you know, you never know what the outcome of something is going to be, but you look at all the good things that came from it. And I have my my half brother and my half sister, and you know they have me. They're so lucky. But I mean, if my dada had ever and my sister, and if my dad had never divorced their mom, you know, back in the sixties or you know whatever, it's weird if you think about two like if I could rewrite my story, I would add those in there, Like I don't. I wish I didn't have to go through certain breakups, and I wish I didn't have to go through a really really terrible relationship with exercise and food. And at the same time, those things have allowed me to literally do my life's work without those things. If I have not go if I did not go through any of that stuff, I don't know how I would be a therapist, because how can I sit with people when I don't even not that I have to go through everything my clients go through. But if I haven't had to like push myself and bring myself through things and acknowledge stuff myself, I wouldn't be able to sit with somebody doing that. I also wouldn't have the heart to specialize in my specialized in. You wouldn't be doing Outweigh, right, Yeah, no, and always my passion project. I love that we have Outweigh as a tool as a resource for people that might be navigating like what is a needing disorder? What is disordered eating? I don't even know? And just again having real conversations with people that are going through it or experts that know a lot about it and that can offer advice. But also I was thinking too that had I gotten pregnant when I wanted to, then I wouldn't have ever gone to Haiti, and I wouldn't have these two beautiful children from Haiti, and I wouldn't have a Spua with Mary, our company that you know makes really cool things that helps give back to our partners in Haiti. And yeah, it's like, sure our life would have gone a different route and I would never would have known this life. But I'm like, okay, there It's just kind of gives the meaning to because that season of not getting pregnant was very hard and difficult and sad. And then now I'm like, okay, yea, now now I can see some some meaning in what I went through because this is the story that was being written. And it doesn't again, it doesn't take the pain away. But some things I'm still like, oh, man, you know, I see people pregnant, or I see people breastfeeding, I'm like, well, would that be like? Or I see people like holding their little baby and like being so in love with this thing they created, and I'm like, what's that like? I won't I won't ever know that, And I said, still makes me sad. Do you a question? What is it like for you knowing that you have kids that you love and you've had these experiences working with Haiti and creating all this good and that has been such a joyful part of your life. Knowing that you have that, have there been times where you've been holding that and also holding that I don't want to sort of feeling in there for you, but holding something else that doesn't feel as good because life didn't go the way you wanted to go. Well, yeah, I mean, I think that it does hit me at different times, or like my daughter will say something like why why did you not ever get pregnant? Or what's wrong with you? Can I have a sister? Or I really want you to have a baby. Like there's just been different comments that they've made being here and being my kids. I've only been their mom three and a half years, but coming from Haiti, there's to this you are not able to get pregnant. There's this belief that like you're cursed in a way. So my daughter is implied that what did I do wrong? But that's not that's something that she just picked up from Haiti and unfortunately what some women actually live under and may honestly truly believe about themselves when really they've done nothing wrong. So I've had to sit with that, which isn't an interesting thing to hear coming from your child, and then processing that. So I mean, I think, again, it's a It's something I'm always carrying and maybe maybe it pokes me. It's in my bag and it pokes me one day, but I just have to figure out how to adjust it. And the reason I ask that is because I want to know really what it might be like if anger does pop up for you, I don't. I don't have it. I don't have anger. No, I mean not, thankfully, I don't. If I do, it could be is it popping up as something else? Oh? It, it might not be. Like I guess, my curiosity was around, like do you allow yourself to have feelings of sadness or grief or whatever and also have a family that you love at the same time, Like what is that? Like? Okay, I hear what you're saying, and yeah, I do think that it's all possible because I think that's okay. Two, if I was angry about it, I think it would be okay for me to be because I wonder if a lot of people don't allow themselves to do that, because it feels like it's canceling something. Now, if I am sad about this, that means I'm not grateful for this, and that's not necessarily true, right, it doesn't. They can live together, their space for both, however you want to look at it. You kind of have to make that room for both or otherwise you're denying a feeling and then that's ultimately not going to be healthy for you because the body keeps the score. It sounds like keep into therapy, right, Like it's going to show up at some point as something else. So and maybe for me, I need to evaluate. That's why when you said, I was like, well, have I been angry? But it's showing up as something else, and I you know later it's going to come out with me like you know, throwing peanut butter across the room. I don't know, is that right? When? I think a lot of times, because I'm all for and I know you are too gratitude, And I think gratitude is an important part of our lives, like we need to pay attention to that, but I think that a lot of times what happens is we think if we have these feelings, and that means that we're not grateful. And the reality is they don't cancel each other out. We can have both. And and I can speak for myself, is I can love my life. I was thinking about this on my way here. I was like, Wow, that's such a good morning, and I'm so proud of like this office that I have and like whatever, and I like worked on some things and I felt good about and I was like, this is freaking awesome. And then I was like talking to I was texting a friend was talking to me about some boy issues, and she was talking about how her family was trying to set her up with somebody and she feels like they're just throwing on her and whatever. And my response was, I just don't think a lot of people realize that having a relationship or a significant other, refining a partner isn't always somebody's first priority. Other people can enjoy other things more. And I was processing that. I was driving my car on the way here, and I was like, that is true. And also I love my life and I do have sadness for this part and I'm not going to act like, oh, if I'm sad about this, that means that I don't like this. That's not true. I can have both of them. But that's easier, I think, said than done for a lot of people, because we don't want to be ungrateful and we want to all of that. But you can be sad and grateful, right, I mean, listen, I'm not an expert, sure, but I'm kind of thinking of like a balanced plate, right, whatever that means for different people. But I mean, we do know what a new like if I'm picturing on my plate, like a for me what a well rounded meal might look like. And maybe I'd have some meat, and maybe i'd have some potato knows, and maybe i'd have some broccoli. Broccoli is not my favorite thing on there, but it can live on the plate next to the chicken and the potatoes. Again, because I know that there's like nutrients and certain things, like I'm going to eat it, but it lives on the plate. You can cut this out. No, I like, we don't cut that out. Okay, I don't know. That was so good? Okay, fine, did you up? Yes, I was just picturing the but okay, fine. So it's like when you were saying it, I was like, how can we put this to where it's like, yes, they can live together, And it's like, yeah, I don't know. Just picture a meal where it's like you you have a favorite thing on the meal that you really love, and you have this other thing that you're probably eating just because you know, Like I mean, I'm not saying force yourself to eat something, but we talked about this on that way, like we have wisdom that tells us like you need foods that have nutrition value, that we need and so for me, it's like, yeah, you can have that all that on the plate together and it can it can exist there together, and it can be a meal and you can take a bite of each thing and it's fine. It all goes together. There's room for everything on the plate. That's what I was trying to say. You need to like trademark that no the plate. Oh but what I was going to say to back to keep bringing up Megan divine, But I really honestly did just have her on and she really is very She is a grief consultant, so this is what she does. And she talked about gratitude and grief and she said that sometimes people can try to use gratitude to get over the grief right or to you know, help them push it along. And it's like, no, I want people to stop doing that. Gratitude as a companion to your grief. And so I feel like a lot of things can just be viewed as the companion. The grief is there again, we're not getting rid of it. We're not getting rid of it. So yes, you can have certain tools and things and people and therapists and rituals and routines that are now a companion to your grief. Okay, well, I think that kind of brings us to a good closing point. Um, with your new trademark, we just leave people with the plate, yea, leave you with the plate, the grief plate. No, I'm actually going to use that with client. Really, yes, I love. Yeah, We're going to let people pick out what foods they want to play. I don't know why you did the ones that you did, but I don't need to talk about it later. Um, but thank you so much for having this conversation and being honest and talking about some of the things that you've been through in your life, because I think that is super helpful for people. I would like to encourage anybody who is kind of going through some of this themselves, which is probably everybody because we all have our own brief processes. I want to shout out the book I've been referencing again on Grief and Grieving by Elizabeth Coogler Ross and David Kessler. And then I want Amy, can you say again the name of that workbook? Oh? Yeah, so Megan div Mine. She has another book on grief as she put out a few years ago, but the most recent things she put out was a journal for grief, and I think that this is just a great tool. And it's called how to Carry What Can't be Fixed, And there's different exercises in there, and you can like take pen to paper, there's different activities that can help you process. And I don't know, I think it's very well done, so I highly recommend it. Okay, awesome, Well, thank you for that, and thank you guys for listening. If you feel so inclined and you have thirty extra seconds in your life today, we would love it if you would just scroll down to the bottom of this and give us a nice little you know rating, hopefully it's around five stars, and follow us on instead of subscribe. It's now follow button for anybody who is new to the changes that have been made on Apple, and then follow us on Instagram at You Need Therapy Podcast, I'm at cat dot de fata and Amy is at Radio Amy and I will talk to you guys on Wednesday for some couch talks if you have some grief questions and shoot him over to me at Catherine at you Need Therapy Podcast dot com. Yeah, follow me at Radioating. Just kidding. Gave one by