Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / The Grief Teacher (Part 1 of 2)

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The Grief Teacher (Part 1 of 2) · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Welcome to System Speak, a podcast about Complex Trauma and Dissociation. It's our story, our learning, and the ideas we've been working with as they've unfolded over time. Earlier episodes give context for where we are now, and current episodes may engage more advanced material, harder content, or reference earlier conversations. A few things to remember as you listen. The podcast is education, reflection, and storytelling.
• 0:41
  It's not therapy, and listening doesn't create a relationship. Although I am a therapist, I am not in that role here, and nothing that I share is individualized clinical advice. Every system, every internal world, all of your own stories are all different and you take up your own shape. What we share about ours won't translate directly to yours. It isn't meant to.
• 1:06
  We're all different, and all of our stories matter. As always, take care of yourself during and after listening, and we are so glad you're here. Hello. Hello. Hi.
• 1:35
  Hello. How are you?
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: I'm okay. I am doing okay.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. I'm so glad to see you.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: I'm glad to see you. It's good to see your face. You look lovely and happy.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm I'm free and good, and that is good.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: That is good. That is good. Yay for you for doing what you needed to do.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. Thank you. Where do you even wanna start today? First, do you have any questions for me? Then do you wanna just do your thing?
• 2:16
  Do you wanna talk about your connection with me? What where do you want to
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: start? I don't really care where we start. I do know a lot about grief, but for the most part, I kind of know about grief at this point in my life based woven through my own experience with losing. So, I can talk about, like, components of grief and then a little bit about how that might have played out for me or what played out for me and how that's very common because it did hurt my feelings over and over again to, know that what I was experiencing and books and videos and everything. You know?
• 2:58
  I wasn't discovering anything new. I was just discovering it for the first time, so it was new to me. Know?
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: So I had a lot of my moments. Yeah. We can talk if you wanna start with saying, you know, we've known each other our whole lives and blah blah blah. That's fine. However you wanna do it.
• 3:18
  I'm pretty easy. Found your English teacher once some time ago and listened to them, and it was like you probably edited some of my comments out of there because I do tend to go off on things. So you can feel free to manage.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Excellent. Excellent stuff.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Uh-huh. Yeah. I think I'm good whenever you are. Do you have questions?
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. I love that you said we've known each other our whole lives because it sure feels feels like it.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: It does. Well, you were I mean, I was older, but you were young when I met you first, like, or 14, 14 maybe.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't even know. I know it was eighth grade, and you were teaching my brother in seventh grade.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So he was probably 12, 13, and you were 13, 14. Probably 13 again. Wow. Yeah.
• 4:05
  I know. I know. You need to come see me sometime.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Well, yes. Are you are you, like, under stay at home orders, or does that not include you today?
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: What are stay at home orders? What's happening?
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: There's a fire somewhere.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, no. There's always fires everywhere. And so, no, we don't stay home, and we don't get evacuated unless, you know, it's our particular order place. So, no, I there isn't there are just there's always fires. You know?
• 4:37
  It's like it's like growing up in Oklahoma with the tornadoes. Everybody goes out on the street to watch for them. You know? You don't really believe anything's gonna happen to you until it does. The fires are a little I do live in a high fire zone.
• 4:52
  I live in the mountains, so I live canyon. And canyons draw a quirky group of people to live in them. There are some strange people here, but good. A lot of people own peacock. And so, anyway but it's a fun place to live and it's really pretty.
• 5:10
  It's in a national forest. So so, yeah, I am in a fire zone. So and the two years before I moved here, they had a big fire here and lost about 19 homes. So, didn't get close. I'm in Lower Canyon.
• 5:27
  It was mostly in Upper Canyon, but everyone had to evacuate. So people here are, like, really on edge when anything gets close. They're on all on high alert because they have a lot of trauma from the first fire. Yeah. So I hope I don't get to ever have to live through that.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: It's brutal. I responded to the fire in Chico and up there in Paradise, which then became a documentary on Netflix. So that was wild to have worked with all of those people and then seen the documentary.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's funny. Yeah.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Okay. So I am not a fan of grief. You have become familiar with grief. And also, we even got to this conversation because the therapist passed away and connect we connected. You you contacted me to let me know.
• 6:22
  How do you want to explain between eighth grade and that?
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: Just I don't know. We can just say, you know, our past kept, you know, aligning on and off throughout the years in ways we didn't expect.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: I think that it's really a powerful thing. It has been a powerful thing for me in that there were so many ways my life did not have a constancy, but you were one of those constants and not because either of us were trying. It just kept happening. Yeah.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It is I don't know if since you did have that earlier part, I don't know if we wanna go into all the stuff about the bad therapist and all of that. Just
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We've talked about, I think, in the English teacher episodes. I haven't listened to them in a long time, but we had a really in-depth conversation about how some of that overlapped and our stories wove together and what that was like.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So we are friends now. I mean, I just kinda have a line that I say that
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: I'm about as out on all the things as we can get at this point.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Well, we wanna move to a happier topic of grief.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Grief sounds great.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: Grief is great.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: I think so on my end, what happened is that you contacted me, that that particular therapist we talked about already in the English teacher episodes Yes. That she had passed away, you let me know that. I sort of went through a couple days of that's weird and also behind me and then really I think that that's all there was of that. I don't think there's more for me to process or even focus on other than it initiated our conversation because of course it did.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: I was really I was kind of interested to see how it would play out for me if it played out differently than I thought it would, you know, because it's been, what, fifteen years since I separated from her or more by now. Well, it was 2010. I know that. 2000 no. It was 2008.
• 8:40
  I know that. So it's been a lot of years, you know, since I haven't had anything to do with her or anything. And so, yeah, 2008. So I kinda wondered how it would play out for me, like, if I started feeling some stuff. But really it for you know, when I found out, I was kinda like, well, I'm sorry for her kids because I know they were all close, and I really liked her kids.
• 9:06
  Briefly wondered if I should reach out to the kids in some way, but very quickly. That was a very fleeting fleeting moment. Moment.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Oh, the impact on me was very similar in that sort of braced for it, but but it just was. It was more like, okay. So that's dumb. What the conversation gave us to a chance to do, though, was catch up and connect and tell our stories and what has been happening in life. And we each had different adventures to share.
• 9:44
  But you have become the grief expert. What do you what do you want to say about that?
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I I am not the grief expert. Although, I think, really maybe anyone who goes has the, you know, life throws them the situation where they go into deep grief. I kind of think that anyone that follows that and lets that grief lead from me, I think they kind of become an expert in ways. And like I was telling you earlier, discover things on their own that grief experts have known, you know, and write about and talk about.
• 10:32
  But it's just such such a powerful experience to discover it on your own. And then maybe later find out, oh, that's something that everybody experiences, which kind of confirms for you, you know, that you were doing the normal right things, you know. Although, I mean, everyone talks about how in grief there is no correct way to do it and that all the decisions that need to be made you can make in your way, in your time, and when you're ready. And so I found that it's something that I have certain levels of control over, but also I had no over it. It is probably and you'll understand this because you know me, but you'll understand that I like to kinda have my life in control and my ducks in a row and know and be able to predict what's gonna happen.
• 11:41
  And I do a pretty good job at that. Although it's probably also an illusion, but it's what I choose to live in. It's your illusion. I I am a person that's pretty disorganized and those kinds of things. So I like to know what's happening, and I like to figure that out.
• 12:04
  It may have been the one the first time in my life, and I was 62 when I experienced my first year of grief, my first great grief, it might have been the first time in my life that I realized I can't control this. I just have to go where it goes and kind of hold on and do the best I can and figure it out as I go. And that was an overwhelming experience for me in itself until I realized it and then I was just like, okay I can't do this. The only other thing I can liken it to is the second child I had when I was in childbirth. Our doctor left the hospital for a while not thinking that she was going to be born for a while and then she was born like ten minutes after he left and we did not get him back and they called the emergency room to send a doctor up, but the emergency room was overwhelmed and didn't have any way.
• 13:10
  So, you know, it was like I remember thinking your my body took over and I'm gonna have this baby whether it's a doctor here or not. So the nurse and my husband got themselves ready to, you know, do that without a doctor and it all worked out fine, you know. I mean, because your body does take over and just do it. And that was the only other time I really thought that I had this life experience where I was out of control. I mean, I was not in charge.
• 13:40
  That time my body was in charge. This time my heart, my body, my mind, everything, was no longer in charge, which was, a bit unnerving for me until I could just lean into it. I I will have to say, yeah, I did touch on that at 62, I had my first big loss. I am very fortunate in that. At the time of that was in 2022, and my parents were both in their nineties, still alive.
• 14:14
  My dad has passed away passed away, in '24, but my mom, you know, is still alive. So I had not even even experienced that normal those normal deaths that people my age usually have. So I just hadn't. And so my first experience got to be my husband of forty years. And that was a lot.
• 14:43
  He had had a lot of health issues, as you know, over the years and they just kind of compounded at the end. He was a type one diabetic. In 2013, he had had a kidney transplant, which preceded by that was three and a half years of home hemodialysis that the two of us did at home every night for three and a half years. Then he got on his way to being listed for a kidney. He had to have a triple bypass.
• 15:17
  And so he had a heart condition. He had the diabetes. He had a kidney that at the time of his death was, over 10 years old, which they can last a long time. But then the thing that got him was in January '22, he in late January, he was diagnosed with cancer. And we started the treatments and everything, and his body just could not there was too much, and there it his body just could not handle the cancer or the treatments.
• 15:47
  And so he died at the end of March, so, like, two months after that.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah. He when I think of him, he's really one of the first safe male figures I had in my life. And I've never forgotten that. He was so kind and generous with space.
• 16:09
  Like, I spent so much time at your house, and I am I am so grateful. I am so grateful. He was just so gentle with me and patient and funny and all the things.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Just rolled with it, with everything. Yeah. And and that's really the way he is. I at his memorial service that we went back to Oklahoma for, which, by the way, was the best party I have ever thrown in my life. I didn't want a memorial or anything, but I told him, you know.
• 16:44
  And he was like, if you and a sister, if you all really think you need to do something, please just do something I wouldn't hate. You know? So we had a memorial at the Oklahoma Hall of Music Hall of Fame. It's amazing. Yes.
• 16:58
  And it was just very fun. Good food, good music, good stories. And that night I realized too as I was sitting there and listening to people tell stories, I realized that there were seven or eight men there who considered their best friend. And you know that just speaks really highly. And I know sometimes we try to, we kind of, the people that we loved we kind of go into this place of while they were saints, our memories, you know, take away any bad parts and everything.
• 17:36
  And I try not to do that, but the truth is realistically, was just a very good person and probably one of the best people I will ever know. And, so I was very fortunate to get to spend that many years with him. I would like to say that during all of those forty years I was very well aware that I was in partnership with the kindest person in the world. But no, I wasn't always. I didn't always keep that in the forefront because, you know, life.
• 18:05
  But yeah, was a good marriage. So to preface that and to get a little bit of I gave a little bit of information about his death. I think one of the first things I want to talk about was that without knowing it, I did some very good things right when he died that I didn't realize were such strong things for me to do. But I put them in place as the organizer that I am. I put them in place just briefly thinking what do I need.
• 18:39
  What do I need? When he passed away that morning, I remember in my haze thinking what do I need? And my sister and my kids were here with me. He was home on hospice for four days and they were with me, and they were with us when he passed away. And, and it was lovely.
• 19:01
  I mean, it was sacred. It was beautiful. It was we should all hope to get that kind of death. When it got bad, it was quick and then everyone he would want to be there was there and he was surrounded by love and it went fast for him. One thing that I realized that I know now that people as they're dying many times go through, if they're coherent enough to know what's going on at that time, is he came he went into hospice when he made the decision at the hospital.
• 19:37
  His thoughts were what he said to me out loud was, I'm not I'm not ready. It's not been enough time. I didn't expect this. I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this.
• 19:50
  And after two and a half days home on hospice, he said to me, Don't tell anyone, but I just really want this to be over. I just really need to get through this. And that gave me such peace of mind that he still wasn't fighting and he wasn't in that place of I don't want to do this. And, but the things I did right right after his passing, everybody asked you what you need and what do you want to do. And I knew sister was there and she was going to stay a few more days.
• 20:26
  She had been there a week or more with us, and she was gonna stay a few more days. And so I told my sister to come as her sister was leaving. They overlapped for a day and got to see each other. And my sister was here for two weeks and, kids in and out. But because they had to go back to work and everything faster than I did.
• 20:51
  And my sister was here for two weeks, and then I had told her I want her to take me back to Texas with her after I feel like I we've spent enough time here. And she did. And then my best friend Kelly was asking me what I needed, and she I told her I wanted her I just told people to do things, that I wanted her to fly to El Paso and drive me back to my home. And that a friend that every time she comes to visit, she wants to do a project at my house, which is wonderful. I don't reciprocate that part of the friendship.
• 21:29
  I don't do that when I go to her house, but she always wants to. And we had talked about paint for a couple of years, painting my kitchen cabinets in this house. And I had already only been in three and a half years. And so I said, I want you to come bring me back here and stay for a couple weeks, and I want to paint our kitchen cabinets. And she said, okay.
• 21:51
  So what I did is I had set up for myself six weeks of not being alone, of not driving, of not having to make decisions. Someone was here that did all of those things for me. And for a month between my sister being here and taking me back to Texas with her for that month, I was sedentary. I slept late every day. I took a nap every afternoon, and I went to bed early.
• 22:18
  And when I was out, I, I was in such a daze that people put food and drink in front of me, and I ate it and drank fluids, and then I went back to bed. I mean, I really was doing very little. But that was a month and when she came and got me back to our home and we decided to start painting, I realized I still couldn't make decisions. She would say, paint this black. Now paint this gray.
• 22:47
  She would just give me jobs to do and the easier jobs. She didn't have me calling in cabinets or anything. But she would just and what I realized that did is it still put me in a place to be in that heavy, heavy fog that comes after right after grief. I was still in that heavy, heavy fog, but that project started me moving and it started me having to be up, you know, and I didn't sleep this late in the morning. I didn't always take a nap in the afternoon.
• 23:18
  I mean, it started preparing my body to come back to life. And I am very grateful and I have no idea how I knew that's what I needed, but it's what I did. So I think I want to tell you about some of the things I took a few notes. Some of the things I lost in my grief. I lost from that were not concentrated to read, and I have been an English teacher and a huge reader.
• 23:51
  And I could no longer read except for information about grief. I could read that. I couldn't paint. I love to paint, and it could be a lovely distraction that I could go into, but I was unable to do it. I I had for about eight years, I had been practicing on a daily basis transcendental meditation, and I could no longer meditate.
• 24:16
  I lost evenings because I didn't like them any longer without Joe around. So I kinda started a habit that I'm trying to just come out of now of going to bed very early. And and here's just a weird little one. I lost making the bed because always, for many, many years, made the bed together, and I could not handle making the bed without him. Another interesting thing that came up that I that happened right at the beginning.
• 24:53
  It's probably my first decision I made that was so positive for me, and I made it without thinking was the first night after he passed away, I had to go to my room. I hadn't slept for four days, but I knew I had to go to our bedroom and get into that bed and go to sleep. And I went in and I looked at that bed, and I thought, I can't I don't know how to do that because when I wake up in the night or in the morning, I'm gonna look over and his side of the bed is gonna be empty. And I don't think I can handle that. All my other rooms, because I had visitors, were filled with other people sleeping in them.
• 25:31
  And so what I decided to do was I decided to play a trick on my brain and I decided to sleep on his side of the bed. Then when I woke up, this is silly, but when I woke up in the middle of the night or in the morning and I looked across the bed, would go, oh, that side of the bed is empty. And then I would go, well, of course it is. That's my side of the bed and I'm not sleeping there. And that was just the weirdest thing.
• 25:59
  Wow. It helped me. And that helped me realize that my brain is gonna do funny things and I'm gonna have to work with that. And then within a couple of months, there was a book published called The Grieving Brain. And it it was by Mary O'Connor.
• 26:21
  And it's called The Grieving Brain, The Surprising Science science of how we learn from love and loss. And it was incredible being a teacher. I love brain research and how people learn. And so this was very interesting to me. And for me, it would be a it would be a book I would put on anyone's grief reading list if anyone out there is just making such a list.
• 26:49
  But, what it did for me was it helped me know what was actually going on in my head that one, I was normal. This happens to people when they grieve and now we have science to back that up. But also to me that just gave me a calm and a reassurance that this is how my body and my brain reacts with this and so this is fine and I'm gonna roll with that. One of the things that really stuck to me with me was that I know your brain creates loops all the time of how to do things and how to bring things up that you know. And one of the some of the loops that it creates, I think I have a line here that I love from it, that the brain is always trying to solve problems.
• 27:38
  And, if the brain is trying to solve a problem when it's faced with the absence of the most important person in our life. Learning to live in a world with the absence of someone you love deeply, who is ingrained in your understanding of the world. This means that for your brain, your loved one is simultaneously gone and also everlasting. And you are walking through two worlds at the same time.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: I know. Isn't that amazing? And it gave this great example of, you know, when you up in the middle of the night and you have to walk to the kitchen or you walk somewhere in your house and it's dark and your body just kind of has memorized how your house is put together and so you you're, you know, you you walk through it. But then if someone when you went to sleep that night came in and rearranged your furniture, you would be walking in a place things you didn't know. Your living room would be in the wrong play your your dining table would be in the wrong place.
• 28:49
  Your sofas would be in the wrong place. And your brain just wouldn't know what to do because everything was disrupted in it. And that's what happens. That was an example they gave. And that's what happens when you're trying to deal with a great loss is that everything seems wrong to your brain.
• 29:11
  And so it's constantly having to say to itself something's wrong, something's wrong, high alert. And then it's also working and working and working overtime to try to fix the problem. Because the truth is you do still expect many times to walk into the living room. And I know that if he wasn't around the house, if he wasn't on the in the living room on the sofa, he was usually I could find him on the back porch in one of the chairs at our table on the back porch reading, sitting out there and reading. And I would go there, you know, because my brain knew that he was not in the living room, so let's look outside because that's probably where he is.
• 29:56
  And when he was never there, my brain would have to catch up with me and and say, oh, yeah. It's not any of those places anymore. So your brain is constantly having to create this new, like, virtual map. And until you have enough experiences that you've changed that virtual map, and now your brain begins to know who is not there. You know?
• 30:24
  He's he's not gonna be there, and we do other things now. So that's kind of Wow. A thing that really set me on a course of being fascinated with grief. I really pretty early on because that book came out probably about two months and it was the first thing I was able to read and concentrate on. And so I just kind of scooped it up and I had I still miss reading.
• 30:54
  I'm not back to the level of reading I did before, but I was able to read books on Grief because I became so fascinated, kind of, and that's the book that started me with that. But
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: I think it's such a good example of the balance of it too, because grief is, the big feelings are so right brained. So to find something on the same topic, left brain, is like someone turning on the lights for a minute so you can find your way around the furniture.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And you know, when they started having a lot of brain research, like in the nineties or something, In teaching, I kind of just couldn't get enough of reading brain research. And it was because as a teacher, I always felt like I was doing things right. But what I had to do was learn from my students and how they performed with things and how they took things in. I was having to learn from them am I doing things right and course correct according to my students.
• 32:03
  And all of a sudden then I had brain research to say, oh that's why that works because that's how our brain That's how our brain works and that's how our brain takes in information, new information and connects it to what we already know. And so that was so illuminating to me as a teacher. And then I got to have that experience again as a 62 year old person going through deep grief for the first time.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: That's amazing.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I thought it was amazing. And I thought, wow. The universe really sent me that at the right time. That book was published just at the right time.
• 32:43
  But your brain doesn't just zap back into normal. And I don't really I laugh about this now. It wasn't funny in the midst of it, but three times in the first the first two months that I was alone at home, that Kelly had left and my kids had had to be back at work and nobody was staying with me or anything. And I was starting to kind of slowly go back to my own job. In those two months, three times I went to urgent care.
• 33:18
  I drove my I drove myself to urgent care because I kept falling. Oh my. Falling badly. And, I had to have stitches in my head three times in two months. And, so the first time I fell out in my yard, I was in my little cactus rock garden trying to get weeds out and everything and I just fell and literally face planted and had cactus pieces, little thorns in my face and, dirt and imprints of rocks on my face.
• 33:58
  And I realized that I had a bad cut on kind of my chin right next to my lower lip and went in, washed it, looked at it, thought, yeah. I'm gonna have to get stitches. So I slapped an ice pack on and drove myself to urgent care and waited in the room and then got seen by a doctor. And she she said she's very kind and she said, okay, where this is and everything, this is gonna hurt a little bit. I am gonna give you a shot.
• 34:27
  That's gonna hurt a little bit, you know, to numb it. But do you have anyone out in the waiting room that you want to come back here with you while we do this? Of course, I burst I burst into tears and just said I mean, I was already shaken up by that fall, but I was just like, no. I don't. You know, I don't have anyone waiting room.
• 34:47
  My husband died two months ago, and he would be here. And, you it's nighttime and I didn't wanna call my kids, know, and so I just slept on an ice pack and came and she was like, okay. Okay. And, I'm I'm so sorry and everything. And they talked to me about how brave I was, like I was a six year old, but they I was so appreciative of that.
• 35:09
  And so they put the stitches on and sent me home and there we go. A week later, when it was the day they told me to come back to get those stitches out, I fell walking in. I tripped walking into my dentist office. Oh, no. They had yeah.
• 35:26
  They had a bench inside the door, and I fell and busted my forehead on that bench.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: Everywhere. They took me and took care of me and wanted to make sure I wasn't gonna sue them or anything. And they gave me an ice pack, and I did not have my dentist appointment that day. But I drove myself straight to the same urgent care, and they took one set of stitches out while they put the next one in.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Yes. And it was the same doctor, and she was so kind again. And what I didn't know she did until a therapist that's at that hospital walked in the door. They called a therapist the therapist, which was very sweet because they were just concerned, you know, that she knew my story then. So a therapist came in to see me after I got my stitches before they let me go just to make sure I had support, you know, that I was either seeing someone or I was in group support.
• 36:34
  She had some materials about, you know, support groups within the Kaiser system and all of that. And I assured them that I had started grief therapy with a therapist and I had strong supports in my life and that I was okay and thanked them. But yeah, that's what happens when you come in twice in one week for stitches in your head after your husband dies. Oh my goodness. Yes.
• 37:04
  And then I got those stitches out. And about three weeks later, I lowered the back of my SUV, which I've done a million times, but I was standing in a weird place this time. And I cracked my, like, head open again, the top of my head. Woah. Yeah.
• 37:28
  And that one I didn't even hesitate. I just got some napkins out of my car, got in the front seat, drove to the same urgent care and had those stitches put in. Yeah, so I did that. But that therapist when she came in with my second time, she did say, you know, your brain is just in a fog, you probably know that. But what happens to people is lots of times they put the directions in GPS and they just don't listen to them and they end up in the wrong place.
• 38:05
  They decide to make a recipe that they've made a lot of times and it doesn't come out right because they didn't make it right this time. Many things that you do your whole life, you're not on autopilot with those anymore because your brain is so occupied by the grief. And that was a really good example. And now I laugh about it, but at the time it was just I mean, I kept having to call, like, my daughter and tell her, I'm going to the urgent care again because you told me that first time I had to call you every time I go. So I'm just letting you know I'm okay, but I'm at urgent care and I'm getting stitches in my head again.
• 38:47
  So, that's
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: I know. I know. So that's a real thing that your brain is preoccupied with grieving. And I also learned from the book I read, it's preoccupied with trying to create new loops for you. You know?
• 39:05
  Know? Just
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Wow. I'm and my brain now is like, okay. Hold up. I have questions.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: Of course, you do.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: I'm like looking backwards in time about what happened when my parents died and everything that unfolded after that. I'm like, oh, Yeah. I I I am I'm going to have to reflect on that.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.
• 39:35
  I do wanna stop for a minute and say that I was also very aware during this whole thing because I started joining, like, Facebook groups of people who had lost their spouse or widow groups or those kind of things. And I learned a lot on those. And, I learned a lot that I had done correctly from hearing what other people were doing and knowing, woah, that is not the best thing to do. But, I it it also just, you know, made me feel good that I was kind of in the same place as most people were. So I was right there doing grief.
• 40:13
  But I was very aware that I was I gave the term and this term is probably out there, but I think I invented it, grief privileged. That I was grief privileged. That about I think I read once about sixty three or something percent is well over fifty percent of women who fall into widowhood also fall into poverty. And I knew that I was and I was very grateful about that that I didn't have to lose my house or it wasn't gonna be an extreme hardship. I was just gonna have to readjust to one salary because and I had always been dependent on both of our salaries, but I could live on mine when we moved here in California.
• 41:00
  And so I had to readjust, but, you know, I wasn't getting letters from collection agencies because I was behind on bills and everything. And I do wanna just acknowledge that that was something there's another whole side of grief that I haven't ever had to live through. I also didn't have to live through raising small children because that's a huge thing too. And I I always wanna say, you know, I wasn't raising children, which that would have been overwhelming to figure that out at the same time to all of a sudden unexpectedly be a single parent when I wasn't ready for that emotionally, physically, you know, just in no capacity are people ready for that. So that's that's a huge, huge piece.
• 41:58
  I think my first goal for myself became was I wanted I wanted to get to a place that memories could bring me joy and they could be sweet to me because for a very long time, the memories have just hurt. They hurt really badly, even good memories. You know? I just couldn't feel joy for anymore, and that was heartbreaking to me. But from my reading and other things, I just knew that took time.
• 42:32
  And I know people say all the time, time heals all wounds. I know now it doesn't heal all of them, but it does heal some or it makes some more livable. And from the grieving brain, I've learned that that's because your brain has to go through certain loops and, phases before it has reconciled that you're not living any longer with that person in your life. And so it just takes time. And I will say that at this point in my life, I'm four years out, and I am happy.
• 43:15
  I do find joy in the memories, and I find joy in everyday life.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to us and for all of your support for the podcast, our books, and them being donated to survivors and the community. It means so much to us as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing, and healing brings hope.