The loss of a child is an unimaginable reality for parents everywhere. For those who experience this sudden pain and grief, losing a child can also cause feelings of shame and failure. To shed light on this experience and share resources for bereaved parents, today we're joined by Grief and Clinical Trauma professional Dr. Nyasha Grayman. Dr. Grayman has over 20 years of clinical experience working with African Americans as an independently licensed LCPC in the state of Maryland.
During our conversation, Dr. Grayman shares ways for parents to honor their child after their passing, strategies for community members to show up for bereaved parents, and how traumatic grief symptoms can show up differently in Black women.
About the Podcast
The Therapy for Black Girls Podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.
Resources & Announcements
We're having our 1st Live Podcast Event on Friday, April 12, 2024 at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta, GA. Pre-sale tickets are now available and can be purchased at therapyforblackgirls.com/liveshow. Use code 'Therapy' to enter.
Visit our Amazon Store for all the books mentioned on the podcast.
Grab your copy of Sisterhood Heals.
Where to Find Dr. Grayman
Postpartum Support International Directory
Therapy For Black Girls Directory
Stay Connected
Is there a topic you'd like covered on the podcast? Submit it at therapyforblackgirls.com/mailbox.
If you're looking for a therapist in your area, check out the directory at https://www.therapyforblackgirls.com/directory.
Take the info from the podcast to the next level by joining us in the Therapy for Black Girls Sister Circle community.therapyforblackgirls.com
Grab your copy of our guided affirmation and other TBG Merch at therapyforblackgirls.com/shop.
The hashtag for the podcast is #TBGinSession.
Make sure to follow us on social media:
Twitter: @therapy4bgirls
Instagram: @therapyforblackgirls
Facebook: @therapyforblackgirls
Our Production Team
Executive Producers: Dennison Bradford & Maya Cole Howard
Producers: Fredia Lucas & Ellice Ellis
Production Intern: Zariah Taylor
Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, doctor Joy hard and Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or to find a therapist in your area, visit our website at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. While I hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much for joining me for session three forty eight of the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast. We'll get right into our conversation after a word from our sponsors. The loss of a child is often an unimaginable reality for parents everywhere. For those who experience the sudden pain and grief, losing a child can also cause feelings of shame and failure. To shed light on this experience, as well as share resources for bereaved parents, I'm joined today by grief and clinical trauma professional doctor Niosha Graymon. Doctor Graymond has over twenty years of clinical experience working with African Americans as an independently licensed LCPC in the state of Maryland. In twenty twenty, she founded a boutique traumatic grief counseling practice specifically for Black women working through bereavement. In our conversation, doctor Graymond shares ways for parents to honor their child after their passing, strategies for community men members to show up for berief parents other than the typical I'm here for you if you need me, and how traumatic grief symptoms can show up differently in Black women. If something resonates with you while enjoying our conversation, please share with us on social media using the hashtag TBG in session or join us over in the sister Circle to talk more about the episode. You can join us at community dot therapy for Blackgirls dot com. Here's our conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today, doctor Graeman.
No, thank you for having me, Doctor joy. I'm a big fan of your work in the podcast.
Thank you so much, so I'm curious to hear a little bit more about your practice. Can you tell me what is traumatic grief and why you decided to send you your practice in this HM.
So, traumatic grief is a response to losing someone. In this sense, I'm thinking about death of a person. I know there are many ways that people can experience grief, but my practice focuses exclusively on death of an individual. So it's a response to that permanent physical rupture that maps on to what we know are symptoms of traumatic stress. And those symptoms can manifest in multiple dimensions of our experience. They can manifest in physical symptoms such as heart palpitations, difficulties, sleeping, nightmares. They can manifest in perceptual disturbances like flashbacks. They can manifest in cognitive disturbances like ruminating thoughts and thoughts of not wanting to be here anymore, and self harm. And so my practice focuses on working and companioning black women who've experienced a loss and are exhibiting traumatic grief symptoms.
So I'm curious, actual agreement. Is there a difference between traumatic grief symptoms. This is, I guess, the typical kind of grief reaction.
I think.
So when I think about reactions to grief, I actually liken them to different stages of hospitalization, if you will, So you think about the highest level of care would be an intensive care unit, and then below that would be a regular inpatient unit, and then below that outpatient care. When I think about traumatic grief, I think of someone at the highest level of care. Their symptoms of distress are really acute, and they're in need of a lot of supportive services. Now that phase may last for a short period of time, a few weeks, a few months, up to a couple of years, and beyond that, some people may say that you're then stepping into what is called prolonged grief. I don't know how I feel about that, but that's how I differentiate traumatic grief response from a common grief response. Seventy percent of people with I'll not experience a traumatic grief response, but about thirty percent of the population will experience it. And that percentage increases when the death is sudden, in particular, when it's violent, when the grief is disenfranchised, maybe not acknowledged by the society. These are all things that can increase the likelihood that you're going to have a traumatic grief response.
Thank you so much for sharing that. Are there other things that kind of would indicate a response that is considered traumatic grief?
Oh?
Sure.
In addition to the flashbacks, nightmares, thoughts of not wanting to be here, self harm, gastrointestinal issues, really heightened sense of hypervigilance, increased sense of worry. So where your baseline is this varies person to person, but thinking about your baseline of worry and your baseline of vigilance, that that is significantly increase, a substantial increase in clingingness, behaviors, wrong impulse to discuss the loss in an indiscriminate way. So just I'm at the car wash and I'm talking about the loss with people I don't know, and also conversely a really strong urge to avoid discussion of the loss, or some additional indicators that someone might be experiencing traumatic grief. But really what I would look for are those physiological and those perceptual disturbances such as flashbacks and the ideas of maybe like feeling dissociated from your body, like the world is a fantasy kind of world, or like you're detached and floating above yourself. And then the physiological symptoms such as nightmares, disturbances, those are some of the key things that I'm looking for.
And you mentioned that your practice is primarily with black women who are experiencing traumatic grief in your work or in the research. Is there anything that you can share about how traumatic grief either looks different differently for Black women or how we might be disproportionately impacted by traumatic grief.
Ah, that's a really good question. I don't know if we're disproportionately impacted by traumatic grief, but I could hypothesize that we might be because our exposure to trauma within the general population tends to be high along the lines of race. Some of the ways that I think intersects with Black women's experience uniquely is that we're carrying this superwoman complex of really being long suffering and holding things together. And the idea that we could be impacted by traumatic grief, I think is one that can be difficult for us to accept and then related to that, difficult for us to consider as an experience where we should reach out for help.
Yeah, because that definitely is where my mind when you know, I think Black women, because of this superwoman's syndrome and lots of other reasons, I think, we often have a time stopping to acknowledge anything difficult, and so we know even typical grief can be hard I think for us to access. So I'm thinking traumatic grief, like, Okay, what does this even look like in black women? And it sounds like it's some of the same kinds of concerns. Yeah, absolutely, So what would you say are some of the most common misconceptions about grief and grieving?
Probably most popular is the idea that there are five stages of grief that gets brought up as a myth that Koobler Ross developed the five stages through naturalistic observation of people who were dying from a terminal illness, and her theory was really designed to capture that phenomenological experience of dying. I think related to that, another misperception about grief is that Koobler Ross's stages have no validity. So those experiences that she captures, they are real, it's just that they don't emerge in a linear, stage wise fashion. They may come up all at the same time, there may be a regression, you may not experience some of those symptoms. So I think that in our effort to bust the myth that grief follows a linear stage, we've thrown out the good with kind of like the perfect, and that there is utility and thinking about these different types of experiences. I do think that most of the people I work with have experiences of denial and experiences of shock and bargaining and some kind of acceptance and integration at some point. They just I don't think they follow into a neat stage pattern.
Yeah, and I think, you know, especially when people are grieving, Like I think why those stages have become so popular is that it offers a little bit of structure to what feels like chaos, right and absolutely, but I wonder what it's then like talking with it's about the phases they'll go through and this idea that eventually grief will go away, because I think people think, like once you hit stage five, like okay, I'm kind of in the clear, but you're saying that it is much more kind of in and out and it abbs and flows.
Yeah. Yeah.
An activity that I typically do with clients is the Big Knot of Grief activity. And if you google this, you'll find it like a ball of grief and it looks like a ball of rubber bands and it has all of those so called stages that google rolls talks about in addition to other experiences that are common with grief, and it shows that they're all tangled together, and so I might ask a client to identify which of these experiences they're having now and do that at different points in time during our work together, so that they have a visual representation of the ways in which their symptoms and their experience have been flow, and appreciation for the messiness of grief and that that is normalized, and that they shouldn't feel that they do need to follow these steps in that there is a right way to do grief.
They are either on the right track or on the wrong track.
Are there any other activities that you find yourself doing pretty often with clients, Oh.
Sure, plenty.
Another is that I have a card deck that I created of scripture broken down into scriptures focusing on hope and scriptures that focus on limitation. A lot of the women that I work with are practicing Christians and their women of faith, and I think one of the liabilities in our experience this actually maps on to your question about the ways in which the experience of grief can be unique for black women. The majority of us still in this country identify as Christian and identify as religious, and I think that within our religious community there can be a lot of pressure to focus on and optimism and everything happens for a reason, and kind of things that people in a cliche way say map onto a spiritual bypass approach. And it is valuable to introduce or reintroduce or reinforce for clients that a lot of our sacred writings actually speak to suffering within the human condition. So an activity that I might do with a client is have them go through the card deck and separate the deck into scriptures related to hope, scriptures related to limitation, especially at the beginning of our work together, when stress tends to be most acute, ask a client to draw a card from the lamentation deck, or I may ask them to split the deck into familiar scripture and unfamiliar scripture, because another thing that happens is that some of the scriptures become so wrote in terms of our memory, we're not really taking it in, We're not really sitting with that word, and so it can be helpful to focus on a fresh word that is less familiar. And so that's another way that I might use a card deck, and that's something that I typically do.
Thank you for that, so you. Mention and traumetic grief can often happen as it relates to like a sudden death or a death that has been violent. And I know we want to talk today a little bit about losing a child, which I think is often sudden, one of the most unimaginable things I think we experience as parents. Can you talk a little bit about what that process looks like when you're working with a client who has lost a child.
Yeah, So first I'll share that I'm coming to that work both as a trained clinician and also as a bereaved mother. I myself lost an infant after three weeks, and I won't tell the whole story of that, but just want your listeners to know that. So, in my experience, the first thing that we're working on together is calming the sympathetic nervous system that in my experience, the black women who come to see me are highly distressed, highly emotion we disregulated, and are exhibiting a number of the symptoms that I described as being symptoms of traumatic stress.
So sleep disturbances, nightmares.
Flashbacks, very high levels of anxiety, feelings of being outside of the body. And so the first concern is regulation and trying to help clients to ground and then that sense, we're doing what most best practices for trauma treatment would recommend. We are working on breath work and paste breathing and alternate nostril breathing, and I'm teaching clients those different activities in the session and then asking them to practice it outside of the session. In an effort to regulate the system, I'm likely to recommend a number of nature therapeutic interventions. I also have a nature journal that I give to all of my clients, and they have different exercises to do in nature that facilitate mindfulness and a sense of grounding, and we might introduce that in the session as well. So I may be working with the client virtually. My practice is completely virtual, and I may be here in this office as I am with you now and have an assigned outdoor space for the client to go to for the session. The entire session may take place at that location. So, for example, I'm physically located in the Baltimore metropolitan area, we have a place called Lake Roland that might be familiar to my clients, or depending where they are in the state, I'm going to identify outdoor spaces that are within the vicinity of where they live. Or work, and I may assign them to go to that space for the session, and we might select one of the activities, a mindfulness activity relating to noticing all of one primary color that you see in nature and count the number of times that you see it, just to kind of focus that monkey mind that can emerge when you're highly distressed. So it's a concentration exercise. You're getting into the fresh air, which can be energizing. It's known to reduce anxiety and symptoms of depression. So that's what we're working on first, and then thinking about the different types of symptoms that come up with traumatic grief. We're working our way down what I would consider kind of like a scale. So at the top of that would be the physiological symptoms, and we're concentrating on that. Then we're concentrating on the perceptual symptoms, the emotional and cognitive symptoms, and then also the social symptoms. But when a client is coming in and sleep disturbance and nightmares is part of their presentation, that's going to take priority, and so things like the nature therapy interventions, the breath work interventions, those are all actually designed to work to facilitate stabilizing sleep hygiene.
Yeah, because we know you can't do very many of the other things that you're talking about if you're too exhausted or not sleeping will exactly you know, And I would imagine that one of the things that will often come up with clients, especially if a child has died in like an accident or like a sid's death, or is the experience of feeling guilty. Can you talk a little bit about how you might work with a client to manage some of those symptoms.
Yeah, So I think one thing that's unique about the loss of an infant or a child. It will bring up the same reactions as any sudden loss. But I think with the loss of a child, what becomes unique and nuanced, especially for a parent, is the idea that somehow you failed in your role, your primary role of protecting the child. Thinking about Maslow's hierarchy needs, the very lowest level is the idea of safety and security and meeting someone's physiological needs. Well, if your child dies, you can internalize a sense of failure to have met that basic need, and so that becomes I think long term work, and while I offer short term experience about eighteen sessions that are designed to stabilize the nervous system. That identity work really ends up being a long term project, possibly multi years.
It could go on and on.
It's open ended because you're really then talking about a renegotiation of an identity and a processing of an important role that you feel you did not live up to.
I appreciate you shanting that. It sounds like it's much more long term work. That's nothing you're really gonna address in successions, so to speak, more from our conversation after the break. So, something else that I think can complicate this picture is if there are other siblings in the home, right, so then you may be grieving as a parent, but also tending to your other kids who may also be grieving. Can you talk a little bit about any advice or suggestions you'd have for parents who might be navigating that kind of a dynamic.
Yes. Absolutely.
I think it's important to remember that the surviving children will process grief in different ways at different stages of development, and so you should not think of this as a one and done kind of experience, even for a child. So in the same way that successions probably aren't going to do it for someone experiencing traumatic grief and reno goo ciating an identity. In that sense, the same is true for a child, but my recommendation would be to look for resources that are specifically targeting children. There are a number of counseling centers that specifically offer grief camps for children, and that may be a one day grief camp experience, some have overnight camps, some may have programs that exist over multiple months. And so looking at developmental supports that you can marshal together for your child I think is really important as you continue to navigate your own grief, and that may be in an individual kind of capacity with a therapist. There are family therapists who can work with the whole family and have that expertise where everybody is navigating grief together as a unit. A family may prefer to separate out or may prefer to do a combination of both. That I I think it's really important to keep in mind that again, what your child needs is going to vary at different stages, and the way that they process and metabolize their experiences of grief are going to be different at different stages, and so one thing I would recommend is not as a parent not overreacting to any one way the grief is man sifesting in the child, but reinforcing the normalization of the experience, and then also having them get support with peers and professionals who are specifically trained to work with children and grief. I am not one, but I would recommend connecting with.
One doctor Greeman.
You mentioned normalizing that grief can look lots of different ways, and I think we hear that often. But is there anything that would be more of a concern, either as a parent of other siblings or for your own experience right as a person who's grieving, Any symptoms or things that might be a heightened in terms of a grief reaction.
I think again those trauma reactions for an adult, for sure. With a child, I would think about increased manifestations of anxiety, some of the same reactions nightmares would be concerning. Talk of not wanting to be here anymore. Talk of suicide obviously is always concerning both for the child and for the parents. And at the same time, my approach is minimal institutionalization, and I think a lot of therapists as soon as they catch wind of any sense or thought of self harm or not wanting to be here, their own anxiety kicks in, and there can be kind of a heightened like the highest level of intervention that I see you, intervention which may not be necessary, but again that is dependent on the therapists and dependent on the families comfort level. But I would recommend finding therapists who have some comfort and experience and training in working with people who are having thoughts of not wanting to be here or self harm and not necessarily jump immediately to institutionalization.
You know something else I didn't answer you, doctor agreement that I'm curious about you because this is your focus. I would imagine that you are likely seeing clients on a cadence that is not just week to week, right, if you're kind of managing some of this distress. Can you talk a little bit about how your practice might look different than somebody who's not focused on traumatic grief.
Yes, absolutely so, again, thinking about kind of those three levels of intervention that icee you in patient and outpatient, I consider my practice the entry point is that I see you most intensive.
So when I'm.
First working with clients, we're working together every day during the week, five days, and that again is in service of trying to regulate that nervous system which has really gone hey why, And so we're spending a lot of intensive time together. And then we tie trait down to four days a week and then three days a week, and around the three days a week mark, we check in and see if the client wants to stay at three days a week, which some.
May for a little while, or if they.
Feel ready to even go down to two days a week and then to traditional once a week therapy. But I would say, in my experience, best practices of working with someone who is experiencing a cute stress such as that would be a more intense and more frequent kind of relationship.
So is there a way that the grief looks different if you lose a child as an infant versus losing a thirteen year old child?
There is, I mean, grief reactions are as unique as a fingerprint, and so what that looks like. I don't think I could even generalize around differences of an infant versus thirteen versus your twenty year old son who died by suicide. They're all sudden and traumatic deaths, and in some sense, they're all disenfranchised deaths, deaths that kind of put you outside the social expectations of our communities. And so at every stage it's a death that can increase sense of isolation, which makes everything more difficult. And they all also share that they're considered off time deaths, so off time in terms of the natural life cycle. And then beyond that, I think it's very unique. So the idea of is it more difficult to experience the death of a child who was never actually birthed into the world, So a death of a child in uteral, the death of a child who's born still, death to sids, death to fatal illness, a cancer, a car accident at sixteen, death by suicide. I don't think we can say, but they're all off time, they're all sudden, and they all tend to lead to a sense of disenfranchisement and a heightened sense of isolation in the experience.
So something else we know that often happens after the death of a chow is that this puts a significant strain on the relationship between the parents. Can you talk a little bit about how you work with clients in your practice around navigating this as a couple or as a family.
Yeah, so I work exclusively with Black women and individual therapy. I do not work with couples. I don't work with the partners, and I don't work with whole families. But that doesn't mean that the whole family does not end up being part of the treatment and the experience when individual is a part of an entire family system, and so that comes in. I think that my approach going into my work with an individual who's part of a couple is that this is going to be hard, and I am going to help you to navigate this with your partner. I definitely do not have separation of the couple in mind at all, even as I know what the literature says about how this kind of loss can devastate a couple. I do not go in with that mindset. But we're talking about what the woman in the partnership needs, and we're focusing on getting her needs met and not being responsible for getting her partners needs met. We do talk about resources that may be useful to the partner. Again, if they want couple's therapy, I can recommend a couple's therapists, but very clear that I only work with the individual, and so we're talking about ways to communicate with each other to continue to try and spend quality time with each other during what we would call like a grief break, that we need to take breaks sometimes during this process, and how they can do that together as a couple, thinking of different ways. I'm a big proponent of psycho education through podcasts such as Therapy for Black Girls along with others. I may give that to a client to share with their partner as a homework assignment and have them have a discussion about that and see how they receive that information. Some education if we're talking about cis hetero couple, some psycho education about stereotypical ways in which men may express their grief differently, which again stereotypically tends to on to more action oriented, more doing less of the talk, therapy, emotional processing, and when that does happen, it tends to happen more. Through doing so, there is a minimization of blaming each other and kind of like a reality checking of expectations of the way someone should and should not show up in the relationship.
Thank you for that.
So we know that one of the hard parts of I think processing grief is the special moments, right, so holidays and birthdays that come up after the loved one is no longer there. Can you talk a little bit about navigating that about the child's, Dick's birthday or the next holiday season.
Yeah, I take that on a case by case basis that I approach that individually because everyone has a different reaction. Oftentimes, the anticipation leading up to the actual day is more anxiety provoking than the actual day, is what clients report back. So you know, when we know that something is coming up, we will bring that up and start to explore how you're feeling about it. Are there any special things you want to do, ways that you want to engage in ritual remembrance. I do talk about the value of ritual that it's a way to make meaning, it's a way to focus our attention. It serves as a container for a therapeutic process. But maybe the client is not interested in that, and that's okay.
As well.
A parallel goal of traumatic grief therapy or grief therapy that's not traumatic, is this reinvestigation and reconsolidation of who you are in the world and how you are going to move through the world. There's also always like a parallel existential project that's happening with the therapy. So, how do you feel about holidays now? Maybe that's changed altogether. Maybe you want to do something completely different, create a new type of holiday, do something special at the holiday, have an empty chair. If a client is looking for ideas, I have plenty of ideas of things that they could try, and may ask if any of them feel like they resonate with you, they feel like something you would do organically or feel true to you. Do you want to just go in the room that day and hide under the covers.
That's okay too.
Just letting people know that there's no one right way to do this. We can explore different ways that people have done it and have said that it's been helpful, and ultimately you are the driver. You're in charge of this journey. I may recommend if people are going to someone else's home, take separate cars so that if you feel like you want to leave early, you can leave and not feel like you're trapped at the home. If you're talking about going with your partner, have a signal you guys have come up with that they know, okay, it's time for us to go. But just thinking about different ways to take care of yourself and what that could look like, because one artifact of grief is that we have a lot of cognitive fog. So some of these things seem very obvious to us even as we're talking, and they may seem obvious to listeners who are not in the.
Throes of acute grief.
But when you're in the throes of it, things that are very obvious when your mind is clear, are completely not on your radar. So it can be as simple as just bringing up possibilities that someone is just not able to generate on their own in that particular moment in time.
You know, you mentioned the word disenfranchised several times act agreement, and I'm wondering what suggestions you would have for support people outside of the family who has lost a loved one to make a less disenfranchised. Right, So, how can we kind of remove some of the shame or stigma related to like the loss of a child and really support a family that's struggling.
Yeah, I think we've come such a long way from when I went through my own traumatic loss experience, and social media has been a saving grace in this sense. So on Instagram, there are a number of accounts that are specifically dedicated to all manners of laws and grief, and those are ways that you can feel less isolated following those accounts. This didn't exist when I was going through my experience, but now we have help texts, which started out as grief texts, and that is incredibly valuable. I buy that for all of my own loved ones in my community who are experiencing a loss, and I also recommend it for my clients because one benefit of the help text subscription is that you can send the link to two to four people within your network and help text will give them recommendations on how to support you, which is amazing because one thing that people always say when they are witnessing a loved one going through the stress of grief is I don't know what to say, I don't know what to do, and that can be true for someone who even.
Does his work. This is true for myself.
When the person is close to to you, it is a different situation from when you're working with someone who has one.
Degree of separation.
So I use that for myself as well as a reminder of ways to show up for my loved ones, and that is incredibly helpful. Every single person I have given that to or recommended that too said they loved help text, so I highly highly recommend that we have Reimagined, which is an online series that offers webinars and different kinds of virtual gatherings. RTZ Hope Return to Zero Hope is another organization that focus specifically on perinatal loss. They offer a number of free support groups for individuals and for couples and for families. Another fantastic resource. There really is a lot out there now. It's not that difficult to find, you know, maybe a one or two day conference or a retreat that is a gathering of parents who have lost children at different stages. We have a lot of options, and those are absolutely things that I share with clients as well. In addition to online forums support groups, you can have in person groups. But some people may be in a position actually where maybe their career or just the nature of their particular circumstances, they're unable to go to a support group in person, and so these other things that are both virtual and sometimes anonymous, can be additional sources of support.
Thank you so much for then. I was not aware of many of those resources, so I appreciate you sharing that with us. So you already mentioned how one of the primary symptoms related to grief is cognitive foul. Right, And I'm curious to hear your thoughts around bereavement leave at work. I feel like I've seen at most you get a whole week off depending on like your relationship to the lost loved one. Can you say a little bit more about, like how workplaces can be more supportive in terms of bereavement.
Yes, well, actually there is an organization I believe it's called Evermore and they are lobbying for a minimum twenty day bereavement leave at the workplace, So anyone who is interested in that should follow Evermore. You can follow them on Instagram and get more information on that. But with respect to workplace, I think that the more flexible that a supervisor can be, the better, and flexible with respect to scheduling. Scheduling so that the person can go see a therapist during the week and not necessarily have to see someone at night or on the weekend. When I experienced my own traumatic loss, I had amazingly supportive colleagues. I'm also a professor of psychology and a department and the thing that they gave me that was so helpful were grocery cards, because again with that brain fog, the idea of meal prep and grocery shopping, everything that we do day to day and take for granted is a big act of labor. So if you have that kind of collegial relationship at your workplace, those kind of instrumental supports can be really helpful.
And I think in addition to.
Providing structural leave, those are the kind of supports I would probably most recommend for a workplace which is a structured organizational institutional system. And so when I think about supports at a workplace, I'm not necessarily looking for advocating for my workplace to become a group therapy place or you know, a place for emotional processing. But the workplace can provide some of those instrumental supports that could make my life easier and kind of soften this journey. And it could be things like gift cards, it could be liberal relieve, a flex schedule, maybe a hybrid schedule. I would look and recommend that workplaces think in terms of structural things that they can do for clients who are experiencing berief, and especially if their official policy is the prototypical three days off.
I'm wondering. You have other suggestions that you've heard from your own experience or even from clients, of ways that friends and family can offer, maybe some of those instrumental supports that you don't even think that you might need, but that actually become really helpful.
Sure people often talk about the uselessness of the I'm here if you need me, girl, that does not work during that time. I mean you're really again, think in terms of intensive care, someone in intensive care cannot actually tell you what they need. You need to show up and meet the need. So the very basic needs of coming by or you know, calling and saying I am coming by and I am dropping off food, I am coming by and I am picking up the kids and taking them to a movie. I'm coming by and I am cleaning. If you can't do that, so many of our families are separated and dispersed across the country, in different states and in different countries. You can call services that can do that. I'm going to research a cleaning service to have someone come in and clean. I'm going to research a nanny service to have someone come, or duel a service to have someone come and take care of you for a little while. Something to give you a break so that you can step out and get some fresh air thinking about processing your own grief. That could be so you can step out, go in your car and park in an undisclosed location and scream your lungs out without having the children witness. But taking initiative is really what people who are acutely distressed need. They don't have the wherewith all necessarily to express to you what they need.
Yeah, I appreciate you offering that because I think, like you mentioned earlier, people are offering like I don't know what to say, I don't know what to do, and some of those very tangible things I think can be really helpful to people. More from our conversation after the break, So can you say a little bit about how you work with clients around honoring their child after their death, Like what kinds of things could be helpful for them to think about about how to honor the child's life.
We do do a lot of work around legacy, leaving and remembrance. Again, it becomes personalized. I'll offer a lot of different selections. People who are nature lovers may want to plant a tree or dedicate a tree in honor of the loved one who is deceased. If you're talking about an infant or a baby, or a child, oftentimes like a children's museum will allow you to purchase a brick at the museum and the memory of the child, or a space within the museum that you can dedicate to the child. The ritual of as I was saying at a holiday of leaving an open chair for the person who has departed, I do incorporate a lot of expressive art, and so we may engage in painting. There's so many resources again out there. I was introduced to a virtual perinatal loss painting session that people could sign up for and paint something that is remembrance of the child. Jewelry making, making a craft's book, a scrap book. There are so many ways, a scholarship, a donation in honor of someone participating in March of times, many many ways, and again my job as a therapist is to introduce you to the world of those ways and see if any of them feel like something that you would want to do. It could be as seemingly simple as special walk, a quiet walk you've taken us in a special location that that's your place where you go and remember your loved one.
You know, we know that there is no timeline for grief, and I think that is a part of it that people often struggle with, is like always been two years, Like why don't I feel better? Can you offer any suggestions for anybody who might be enjoying our conversation and kind of feeling themselves still in the depths of grief, like what kinds of things might they be able to do to kind of wade through that wave so to speak.
Yeah, So, I mean I have to say, as a therapist, do not be afraid to reach out for therapy and consider investing in therapy. It can be really helpful to have someone who is connected but not in mesh, companion alongside you what you're experiencing, and even maybe to check in with a therapist to ask if they feel that what they're experiencing rises to the need or the benefit of therapy, because again going back to black women, I think that we're socialized to deny our needs and that that's an expectation both within our families and the largest society, and so we may have a little bit of a blind spot there around that. But also again, if you are really autonomous and really introverted in terms of your processing and private I think an app like help text is really helpful. If you are a year in, two years in please please please know that that is well within normal range of experiencing greed. If most grief therapists grief counselors will say minimum two years. I have heard someone who survived the death of a child by murder that it took five years before they even started to feel a little bit like themselves. And so give yourself a lot of grace and reach out to people who have been there and people who work with people who have been there to kind of give yourself a reality check on what you're experiencing. It's probably all within a normal range.
Thank you so much, doctor Greeman. I really appreciate all the insights that you've shared as well as the resources. Can you share with us how we can stay connected with you. What is your website as well as any social media channels you'd like to share?
Sure, so, I am on Instagram at Baltimore Grief and my website is Wisdom Counseling, Baltimore, LLC. And if you're looking for a pair natal loss therapists, you can find me of course or in Therapy for Black Girls directory and also Postpartum Support International their therapist directory, which not only includes therapists who specialize in postpartum depression or anxiety or psychosis, but also clinicians who specialize in peri natal loss. So if you are yourself looking for a therapist who specializes in perynatal loss, I would recommend that site.
Thank you so much. We'll be shure to include all of that in the show notes. We appreciate you, I appreciate you, and I appreciate your work. Thank you. I'm so glad doctor Graymond was able to join us today for this episode. To learn more about her and the work she's doing, visit the show notes at Therapy for Blackgirls dot Com slash Session three four eight, and don't forget to text two of your girls right now and tell them to check out the episode. If you're looking for a therapist in your area, visit our therapist directory at Therapy for Blackgirls dot Com slash directory. And if you want to continue digging into this topic or just be in community with other sisters, come on over and join us in the Sister Circle. It's our cozy corner of the Internet. Designed just for black women. You can join us at Community dot Therapy for blackgirls dot com. This episode was produced by Frida Lucas, Elise Ellis, and Zaria Taylor. Editing was done by Dennison Bradford. Thank y'all so much for joining me again this week. I look forward to continuing this conversation.
With you all real soon. Take good care. What's