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It's OK to Not Be OK: How to Support Yourself + Others Through Grief with Psychotherapist Megan Devine · QUESTION EVERYTHING

0:00
Speaker 1: The following podcast is a Dear media production.
0:06
Speaker 2: Big things happen when you're pretty, pretty bold, pretty clever,
0:11
Speaker 2: pretty strong.
0:12
Speaker 3: I'm Danielle Robe and each week my guests and I
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Speaker 3: have conversations that put a new spin on pretty. This
0:20
Speaker 3: is pretty smart.
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Speaker 2: Nobody wants to talk about grief, to just be talked
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Speaker 2: out of it. Grief is really just love. It's all
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Speaker 2: the love you want to give but cannot. All that
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Speaker 2: unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes,
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Speaker 2: the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part
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Speaker 2: of your chest. Grief is just love with no place
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Speaker 2: to go. Jamie Anderson, a British producer and writer, wrote
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Speaker 2: those words. It's hard for me to say them without
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Speaker 2: getting a lump in my throat. Grief sucks. It feels
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Speaker 2: like an eviction from your life that you can never
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Speaker 2: get back.
1:00
Speaker 4: And there's so many different kinds of loss.
1:02
Speaker 2: There's heartbreak, there's someone you love passing, there's grieving a
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Speaker 2: dream you once had. Loss is something that everyone goes through.
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Speaker 2: It's a common thread between all of us, and still
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Speaker 2: it feels so lonely. A few years ago I was
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Speaker 2: heartbroken and I found Megan divine on Instagram, and I
1:19
Speaker 2: found so much acceptance in her writing. She's a psychotherapist
1:23
Speaker 2: and author of the best selling book It's Okay that
1:25
Speaker 2: You're Not Okay. She knows about grief all too well. Megan,
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Speaker 2: you are a grief expert, and I was sad to
1:36
Speaker 2: learn that your expertise came from personal experience. You lost
1:41
Speaker 2: your partner Matt in two thousand and nine. Do you
1:45
Speaker 2: mind sharing how you lost him and what that experience
1:48
Speaker 2: was like?
1:49
Speaker 1: Sure? So in two thousand and nine, I was a
1:52
Speaker 1: psychotherapist in private practice, did a lot of grief work
1:56
Speaker 1: in that practice, just a lot of grief and trauma
1:59
Speaker 1: and hartshet in the world. And I tell this part
2:03
Speaker 1: of the story before I jump into what happened to that,
2:05
Speaker 1: because it sort of situates it in time. Right. So,
2:08
Speaker 1: I was in private practice doing a lot of really
2:10
Speaker 1: good work, and I was tired. I was burned out
2:13
Speaker 1: sitting in an office and listening. And the plan was
2:16
Speaker 1: that I was going to close my practice and Matt
2:18
Speaker 1: was going to take over financial support of our family
2:20
Speaker 1: so that I could figure out what I wanted to
2:22
Speaker 1: do next. We were literally sitting in a pizza place
2:25
Speaker 1: the night before he died, and I was saying that
2:27
Speaker 1: I was tired of being in the pain business and
2:29
Speaker 1: I needed a break. And then the next morning we
2:33
Speaker 1: went out for a air quotes here a quick dip
2:36
Speaker 1: in our home river, and the river was flooded that day,
2:39
Speaker 1: but you couldn't tell from the surface. Matt was an
2:42
Speaker 1: amazing athlete, really skilled in the natural world, hiking and
2:46
Speaker 1: swimming and all of the things. And he went into
2:50
Speaker 1: the river that day for a swim, and I'm not
2:54
Speaker 1: entirely sure what happened. He might have gotten caught in
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Speaker 1: some reads or got his footstuck, and the current I
3:00
Speaker 1: was really really strong and expect him under. When I
3:03
Speaker 1: realized what was happening, I ran into the water to
3:05
Speaker 1: try to save him, and our dog ran in after me,
3:09
Speaker 1: thinking that we were playing, and the dog and I
3:12
Speaker 1: were actually carried three miles down the river before we
3:15
Speaker 1: got spit out on the shore. And then it was
3:18
Speaker 1: another couple of hours once the rescue teams arrived trying
3:21
Speaker 1: to find Matt in the water, and they eventually found
3:25
Speaker 1: him after draining the river, tangled in some reads, just
3:28
Speaker 1: about six yards from when he first went in. So
3:33
Speaker 1: that experience and Matt was just a couple months shy
3:37
Speaker 1: of his fortyth birthday. I was thirty thirty seven, I
3:41
Speaker 1: think thirty seven or thirty eight, and I wasn't any
3:45
Speaker 1: stranger to loss, like in my own personal life and
3:48
Speaker 1: certainly in my professional life. But having my partner die
3:53
Speaker 1: in such a shocking way at such a young age
3:56
Speaker 1: was you know, it really opened up a whirl of
4:01
Speaker 1: loss and suffering that I didn't know existed, and so
4:06
Speaker 1: much of what I knew about grief and loss felt
4:08
Speaker 1: like utter trash when that happened.
4:11
Speaker 4: What do you mean by that it felt different when
4:13
Speaker 4: it was you.
4:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it felt different when it was me.
4:18
Speaker 1: I sometimes say that, you know. Soon after Matt said,
4:20
Speaker 1: I wanted to call all of my clients and apologize
4:24
Speaker 1: for being full of shit.
4:25
Speaker 5: And it's not that I did bad work, but it's
4:28
Speaker 5: sort of like, you know, you understand it differently from
4:31
Speaker 5: the other side, and a loss of this magnitude wasn't
4:35
Speaker 5: something that I had experienced before.
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Speaker 1: Now I know I did good work with my clients.
4:39
Speaker 1: I actually went back to a couple of them a
4:41
Speaker 1: couple of years after.
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Speaker 6: Mad died to sort of check that out, Like, was
4:44
Speaker 6: I bad at this But that sort of out of order,
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Speaker 6: atypical death was not something that I usually saw in
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Speaker 6: my practice, and it wasn't something certainly that I had
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Speaker 6: experienced before.
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Speaker 1: And the things that we say to people when they're
4:58
Speaker 1: in great pain, I mean, I was never one for
5:01
Speaker 1: cliches or platitudes or simplistic, trite things anyway, but being
5:07
Speaker 1: on the receiving end of things, like, you know, everything
5:10
Speaker 1: happens as it's supposed to you, your life is going
5:12
Speaker 1: to become even more beautiful than it was before. Like
5:15
Speaker 1: what a bullshit thing to say to somebody who's partner
5:17
Speaker 1: just drowned, or whose baby just died, or you know,
5:20
Speaker 1: any of these losses that we sustain as part of
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Speaker 1: being human. They landed more sharply than they did before
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Speaker 1: Matt died, and they made me angrier than they did
5:31
Speaker 1: before Matt died. And it's not just wasn't just sort
5:34
Speaker 1: of the friends, the family members, and the casual acquaintances
5:37
Speaker 1: who really tried hard to sort of quote unquote cheer
5:40
Speaker 1: me up after Matt died, but the clinicians. You know,
5:44
Speaker 1: I lived in a pretty small city at that time,
5:46
Speaker 1: and I knew a lot of the clinicians, and most
5:49
Speaker 1: of them felt like it was their job to get
5:53
Speaker 1: me out of the negative emotional state of grief as
5:55
Speaker 1: quickly as possible. There were some therapists that I met
6:00
Speaker 1: who sort of had this deer in the headlights look
6:02
Speaker 1: when I walked in the door and told the story.
6:04
Speaker 1: They had never encountered loss of that magnitude, and they
6:06
Speaker 1: were completely at a loss, no pun intended for how
6:11
Speaker 1: to respond to me. I met briefly with the self
6:14
Speaker 1: described mindfulness expert in the state where I was living,
6:17
Speaker 1: and he actually told me that his parents had died
6:21
Speaker 1: a few years before. They were in their nineties and
6:23
Speaker 1: he sat in meditation with them every morning. So what
6:26
Speaker 1: was my problem? I could still talk to mat as
6:28
Speaker 1: much as I wanted to in meditation and it would
6:30
Speaker 1: be just as good, if not better.
6:32
Speaker 2: Like, really, I'm so glad you brought this up, because
6:37
Speaker 2: I feel like we need a new language for pain.
6:40
Speaker 2: You wrote something that really struck me. You said some
6:43
Speaker 2: things cannot be fixed, they can only be carried. And
6:47
Speaker 2: the comments that you shared with us are really hurtful,
6:51
Speaker 2: and when you are in grief, they're triggering. What is
6:54
Speaker 2: a supportive response to somebody in grief.
6:58
Speaker 4: I'll share with you quickly.
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Speaker 2: One of my best friends from growing up, her mother
7:01
Speaker 2: passed away last week. And I have studied and read
7:07
Speaker 2: and interviewed people about this topic. And when her mom
7:12
Speaker 2: passed away, I was frozen. I didn't know what to say.
7:18
Speaker 2: It's a weird.
7:18
Speaker 4: Thing that happens to humans.
7:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I do this for a living and
7:24
Speaker 1: I still freeze. Right, So one, don't beat yourself up
7:29
Speaker 1: for not knowing what to say.
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Speaker 4: Thank you.
7:31
Speaker 1: Even being an expert in the field of what to say,
7:35
Speaker 1: it's still really daunting. Really, it's really daunting. So I
7:39
Speaker 1: think there's a few things going on when you're right,
7:41
Speaker 1: we do need a new language to talk about pain, right,
7:45
Speaker 1: and not just pain and grief related to death, but
7:47
Speaker 1: all the ways that it's hard to be human. Right.
7:50
Speaker 1: How do we talk about baby loss? How do we
7:53
Speaker 1: talk about chronic illness or disability? How do we talk
7:56
Speaker 1: about systemic racism? How do we talk about misogyny? Like?
7:59
Speaker 1: These are all conversations about pain, and we don't know
8:03
Speaker 1: how to talk about any of them. We've got this
8:06
Speaker 1: idea that pain and grief are problems to be solved,
8:11
Speaker 1: and our job is to get somebody out of those
8:14
Speaker 1: experiences as fast as possible. Now, whether that is sort
8:17
Speaker 1: of snarky nefarious intent, right, dismissing somebody's experience, telling them
8:23
Speaker 1: to suck it up, it's not that bad, other people
8:25
Speaker 1: have it worse, or from a sort of kind hearted
8:28
Speaker 1: good intention spot we still want to take somebody's pain
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Speaker 1: away from them, We want to make it better. I
8:35
Speaker 1: think what happens is that that part of our brain
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Speaker 1: that says, like, oh my gosh, they're in pain. I
8:40
Speaker 1: need to make them feel better is at odds with
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Speaker 1: a deeper knowledge that I think we all have that
8:46
Speaker 1: we know we can't make something like this better for somebody.
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Speaker 1: You can't undead someone. You can't put somebody back into
8:54
Speaker 1: a fully functional body when an illness or an injury
8:57
Speaker 1: has changed that capacity for them. We can't prepare this stuff.
9:02
Speaker 1: So I think we've got sort of a war situation
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Speaker 1: internally where we want to take people's pain away from them,
9:08
Speaker 1: but we know we can't actually do that. And the
9:10
Speaker 1: dissonance between those two makes us feel really helpless and
9:14
Speaker 1: really awkward, right it does.
9:16
Speaker 2: And Yeah, I can't help but think that we just
9:19
Speaker 2: need witnesses to our pins.
9:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we can solve a lot of the
9:25
Speaker 1: awkwardness by embracing the awkwardness. Right. So I responded to
9:29
Speaker 1: your story about not knowing what to say to your
9:31
Speaker 1: friend by saying, I never know what to say. Right.
9:34
Speaker 1: What's different I think for me, because I do this
9:37
Speaker 1: all the time, is I'm okay to lead with not knowing.
9:42
Speaker 1: I am more comfortable being uncomfortable, and I'm pretty good
9:46
Speaker 1: at being awkward very often. What people ask me for
9:49
Speaker 1: is like a very specific script to say in this situation. Okay,
9:52
Speaker 1: but how about in this situation? How about in this situation?
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Speaker 1: And the thing is is you don't need a script
9:57
Speaker 1: for every potential situation. I think this is more adopting
10:01
Speaker 1: an approach remembering that in the face of any kind
10:05
Speaker 1: of pain or hardship, your job is not to remove
10:08
Speaker 1: that pain. It is not your responsibility to cheer somebody
10:12
Speaker 1: up or to make them feel better. As a supportive person,
10:15
Speaker 1: whether personally or professionally, your job is to let somebody
10:18
Speaker 1: feel heard and supported inside whatever's going on. So exactly
10:21
Speaker 1: what you just said, right, the action there is to
10:25
Speaker 1: be a witness and to let somebody feel like you
10:28
Speaker 1: hear the truth of their own experience and you're not
10:30
Speaker 1: going to try to take it away from them. That
10:32
Speaker 1: goes against our programming. So it's tricky, but that's sort
10:35
Speaker 1: of the one rule to remember is that it is
10:37
Speaker 1: not your job to take somebody's creep away from them.
10:41
Speaker 1: It is your job to help them feel supported inside it.
10:44
Speaker 2: So it's almost like trusting your own instincts to say
10:47
Speaker 2: what you really want to say, Like this feels like
10:49
Speaker 2: a nightmare. I'm so sorry.
10:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's okay to sell to tell the truth, right, yeah,
10:55
Speaker 1: So leading with awkwardness too, write like when I don't
10:59
Speaker 1: know what to say, I will come out with like
11:02
Speaker 1: I do this for a living, and I have no
11:03
Speaker 1: idea what's help to say to you? Right, I'm here
11:06
Speaker 1: and this sounds incredibly impossible. Here are three things that
11:10
Speaker 1: I might do to sort of come up underneath you
11:12
Speaker 1: to give you some support. I can come walk the dog,
11:15
Speaker 1: I can come take the trash out. I can drive
11:17
Speaker 1: you to your doctor's appointment. Would any of those things
11:19
Speaker 1: feel helpful? Right?
11:22
Speaker 4: That feels like an active thing to offer exactly.
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Speaker 1: It's like when we step out of that impossible situation
11:29
Speaker 1: of trying to fix the situation for somebody, fix the emotions,
11:33
Speaker 1: fix the experience for somebody. It becomes much more simple
11:37
Speaker 1: to say things that are useful, and it becomes much
11:40
Speaker 1: easier to offer tangible ways to give support. Mirroring somebody's
11:44
Speaker 1: feelings back to them, right, is a really powerful supportive
11:48
Speaker 1: thing to do. Very often what we do is say
11:50
Speaker 1: call me if you need anything.
11:52
Speaker 4: Right, But it puts the burden on them.
11:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it puts the burden on the person who's
11:59
Speaker 1: in the most distress at that time. But there's also
12:01
Speaker 1: something to realize here. So in the best of times,
12:05
Speaker 1: how often do you need a little bit of help
12:08
Speaker 1: with something and feel like you can reach out to
12:10
Speaker 1: a friend and say, hey, can you come over this
12:12
Speaker 1: afternoon and help me, like level this bookcase? Because I can't. Like,
12:16
Speaker 1: most people, even in the best of situations, have a
12:19
Speaker 1: hard time reaching out and asking for help. Right, that
12:22
Speaker 1: is just a normal thing. So we put somebody going
12:24
Speaker 1: through a really, really difficult time and ask them to
12:27
Speaker 1: do something that is hard in the best of times, Yeah,
12:31
Speaker 1: that's kind of impossible.
12:33
Speaker 2: Well, speaking of asking, I heard Glennon Doyle say this
12:37
Speaker 2: one time, and it always stuck with me that curiosity
12:40
Speaker 2: has no place in grief. I wanted to unpack it
12:43
Speaker 2: with you. Yeah, because I.
12:45
Speaker 1: Wonder what she meant by that.
12:47
Speaker 2: I think she meant like, if somebody because there's different
12:49
Speaker 2: types of grief, right, there's a loss of a person,
12:53
Speaker 2: but there's also a loss of a relationship or a
12:56
Speaker 2: heartbreak or a dream. And I think she meant like,
12:59
Speaker 2: if somebody going through a divorce, it's not really your
13:02
Speaker 2: you don't really need to know details.
13:04
Speaker 1: Oh okay, So I think we have a couple of
13:07
Speaker 1: different definitions of curiosity. So nosiness has no place in grief. Oh.
13:11
Speaker 2: I like that because I was gonna say the curiosity aspect.
13:15
Speaker 2: I really love asking people for stories about their loved ones,
13:19
Speaker 2: and I think it makes them feel good and I
13:22
Speaker 2: like hearing them.
13:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, And I you know, curiosity is a
13:26
Speaker 1: really powerful word to me. We very often make assumptions
13:30
Speaker 1: and presumptions, and that's just human nature, right, It's what
13:33
Speaker 1: we do. We make assumptions about what other people are
13:37
Speaker 1: struggling with, and then we try to solve those imagined
13:39
Speaker 1: problems for them, right, Like, oh, I am you know
13:42
Speaker 1: if your partner guys, Oh, I must met. I imagine
13:44
Speaker 1: that you are so incredibly lonely and you're worried that
13:46
Speaker 1: you'll never find anybody else again. So I'm going to
13:48
Speaker 1: remind you every single day that you're going to meet
13:51
Speaker 1: the best person ever and you're going to have this
13:53
Speaker 1: wonderful new husband. Like people said that stuff to me
13:56
Speaker 1: on the night of that's funeral, that wasn't a problem
13:59
Speaker 1: I was having in that moment, worrying about who the
14:01
Speaker 1: next one would be, right, Right, So we make a
14:04
Speaker 1: lot of assumptions. Curiosity is a much better response to
14:08
Speaker 1: anybody's personal life, right, Like I imagine if this for me,
14:12
Speaker 1: I would be really worried about X, Y and Z.
14:15
Speaker 1: What's that like for you?
14:17
Speaker 5: Right?
14:17
Speaker 1: Or I was a wreck when my dog died. If
14:22
Speaker 1: you're talking to somebody whose dog died, it's okay to
14:23
Speaker 1: say I was a wreck when my person's dog when
14:25
Speaker 1: my dog died. It's not okay if their sister died
14:27
Speaker 1: and you compare that to your dog. But that's a
14:29
Speaker 1: whole other story. But that, like, I want to know
14:32
Speaker 1: what it's like to be you, Or you can even
14:35
Speaker 1: like marry your awkwardness with your curiosity and say I
14:39
Speaker 1: have no idea what you need right now? I wonder
14:42
Speaker 1: like how's your sleep? Or you mentioned asking questions about
14:46
Speaker 1: their person, right, Like, curiosity in that direction is also
14:49
Speaker 1: really lovely. Right, I didn't get a chance to meet
14:53
Speaker 1: your daughter before she died. What was your favorite thing
14:56
Speaker 1: about her? Opening with curiosity is a really lovely, respectable
15:00
Speaker 1: thing to do. Now, nosiness nosiness is different, but they
15:05
Speaker 1: can sound the same whether something is curiosity based or nosiness.
15:11
Speaker 1: It's the receiver that gets to decide whether it's curiosity
15:14
Speaker 1: or nosiness. So somebody can come up to me and
15:17
Speaker 1: ask me for details about Matt's death. That could be
15:22
Speaker 1: I'm really curious, like tell me the story of this,
15:24
Speaker 1: But it can also be sort of trauma tire kicking
15:27
Speaker 1: and being nosy. So we can even take one step
15:31
Speaker 1: back and go to consent and permission before we go
15:35
Speaker 1: to whether it's curiosity or it's nosiness. Right, I would
15:39
Speaker 1: love to be a safe place for you to talk
15:41
Speaker 1: about the details of that day. If that feels good
15:45
Speaker 1: to you, Would it be helpful for me to sort
15:47
Speaker 1: of ask you some questions about it so you can
15:49
Speaker 1: talk about.
15:49
Speaker 4: It, right, really really different?
15:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we're talking about letting people decide where
15:57
Speaker 1: that line is for them, right there, was a time,
16:00
Speaker 1: probably a good long time period soon after Matt died
16:03
Speaker 1: that I wanted to tell the story to everyone everyone, Right,
16:08
Speaker 1: that window of possibly oversharing began to close, and I
16:14
Speaker 1: no longer wanted to be able to give details, right,
16:16
Speaker 1: Like the pro dice section of the grocery store is
16:18
Speaker 1: not an appropriate time for a neighbor's friend of a
16:21
Speaker 1: friend's sister who heard about the accident to ask me
16:24
Speaker 1: for details to which she has no right, right. So
16:29
Speaker 1: I mean it's being human is complicated. Right. On the
16:31
Speaker 1: one hand, we're saying lead with curiosity. On the other hand,
16:34
Speaker 1: we're saying, like, yeah, but don't be curious too much
16:37
Speaker 1: because that can lead to nosiness.
16:38
Speaker 4: So I like the prompt.
16:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you said, asking for consent before you ask.
16:44
Speaker 2: That feels really nice, Like I really would like to
16:47
Speaker 2: support you. Does this feel helpful?
16:49
Speaker 1: Yes? Right, that's sort of your get out of relational
16:53
Speaker 1: jail free card.
16:54
Speaker 4: Right.
16:55
Speaker 1: It sets the foundation of I'm going to respect your
16:58
Speaker 1: space and your boundaries in process. I'm not always going
17:01
Speaker 1: to be perfect, but this is what I lead with.
17:03
Speaker 1: That is a cue to a grieving person or somebody
17:07
Speaker 1: who's struggling with something that you aren't going to just
17:10
Speaker 1: come in and railroad their life.
17:13
Speaker 2: I read something you wrote called grief hijacking. Can you
17:18
Speaker 2: elaborate for us, because I know you kind of mention
17:21
Speaker 2: it with the dog I did.
17:23
Speaker 1: I did. This is a good place to come back
17:25
Speaker 1: to clarify what I was talking about with Dougs. So
17:27
Speaker 1: one of the things that happens very often. So if
17:29
Speaker 1: you I'm going to give you an example again from
17:32
Speaker 1: my life. So Matt and I had a lot of
17:33
Speaker 1: social friends in common acquaintances and closer friends, and oh
17:37
Speaker 1: my gosh, so there was one person every single time
17:40
Speaker 1: I saw them told me that her divorce was just
17:44
Speaker 1: the same as Matt's death and just proceeded to tell
17:47
Speaker 1: me all about how terrible her divorce was and that
17:49
Speaker 1: she just needed to go dancing, and if I just
17:51
Speaker 1: would go dancing with her, I would feel so much
17:53
Speaker 1: better about Matt's death. Like, okay, one, divorce is not
17:57
Speaker 1: the same as death, and like this sort of general
18:00
Speaker 1: your own personal experience as the be all, end all
18:03
Speaker 1: medicine to the world, like not doubting that going dancing
18:06
Speaker 1: helped her navigate her divorce. Going dancing is not something
18:10
Speaker 1: that was going to work for me. So we have
18:11
Speaker 1: this again, very human tendency like, oh my god, yeah,
18:16
Speaker 1: we have this very human tendency to confirmation bias, right,
18:20
Speaker 1: like we believe that what we do is the same
18:23
Speaker 1: for everybody else. So one thing that was incorrect for
18:25
Speaker 1: her was like deciding that what she needed was exactly
18:29
Speaker 1: what I needed. The other thing, though, with that grief
18:32
Speaker 1: hijacking is it's sort of a like standard impulse response
18:38
Speaker 1: that when you see somebody in some kind of pain,
18:40
Speaker 1: you want to tell them, You want to show them
18:42
Speaker 1: that you relate and that you understand, And the way
18:45
Speaker 1: that we normally do that is by launching into our
18:47
Speaker 1: own story of grief. It doesn't really work for the
18:51
Speaker 1: grieving person. What they hear is, oh, now we're talking
18:54
Speaker 1: about you.
18:55
Speaker 2: Well, they're already so depleted, they're exhausted, and it's like,
18:59
Speaker 2: I don't have the capacity to hear about your pain exactly.
19:03
Speaker 1: And that's even true for people who share the same
19:05
Speaker 1: kind of loss. So like, you know, if your sister dies,
19:10
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily have the bandwidth to then listen to
19:12
Speaker 1: somebody whose sister died four years ago who comes in,
19:15
Speaker 1: I know just how you feel because my sister died
19:17
Speaker 1: four years ago, and let me tell you all about it. Right,
19:20
Speaker 1: that is not the time or the place to launch
19:22
Speaker 1: into your own story, but that is sort of how
19:24
Speaker 1: we have learned to relate and connect. And I can
19:27
Speaker 1: already hear the complaints and the yes, but's coming. It
19:32
Speaker 1: can actually be really comforting to connect with somebody who
19:35
Speaker 1: has shared a similar kind of loss. But we go
19:38
Speaker 1: back to our foundation of consent and permission. Right, you
19:42
Speaker 1: can allude to the fact that you have traveled in
19:45
Speaker 1: similar realms of hell without taking over the whole conversation.
19:48
Speaker 1: So what that might look like if you and I.
19:51
Speaker 1: If I meet you and your sister died and I
19:53
Speaker 1: have had a similar loss sister or sibling or just
19:58
Speaker 1: somebody really important, It's okay for me to say, you know,
20:02
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry that happened to you. It's really difficult.
20:05
Speaker 1: I have experienced some pretty intense loss myself in the past,
20:09
Speaker 1: and I'm happy to answer questions for you if you
20:11
Speaker 1: want to, like ask if certain things are normal, or
20:14
Speaker 1: if you're crazy or whatever. I'm not going to push
20:17
Speaker 1: that on you, but I do want you to know
20:18
Speaker 1: that I'm perfectly happy to talk about it if you'd like, right, beautiful.
20:22
Speaker 1: I didn't even say that very well, but the sentiment
20:25
Speaker 1: is in there. I have information that you might find
20:28
Speaker 1: supportive and useful. You let me know if you want it.
20:32
Speaker 2: I think my biggest takeaway so far from our conversation
20:35
Speaker 2: is that nobody wants to talk about grief if you're
20:38
Speaker 2: going to try to talk them out of it.
20:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and this is true, like it's getting better,
20:45
Speaker 1: it's getting better out there. But when I used to
20:47
Speaker 1: several years ago, when I first started pitching media outlets
20:50
Speaker 1: to talk about grief, people would say, nobody wants to
20:52
Speaker 1: talk about grief. Nobody's going to read it, nobody's going
20:54
Speaker 1: to watch it, nobody's going to listen to it. And
20:55
Speaker 1: I'm like, if you are going to talk about grief
20:58
Speaker 1: in the ways that we've been talking about it for
20:59
Speaker 1: the last sixty years, you're right, no one wants to
21:01
Speaker 1: talk about it. But if you start opening spaces where
21:05
Speaker 1: it is okay to be in pain, nobody's going to
21:07
Speaker 1: dismiss or judge you or correct you for it, then
21:10
Speaker 1: everyone wants to talk about it. So when we talk
21:12
Speaker 1: about grief hijacking, I think this is a really great
21:15
Speaker 1: point to bring up. Is that because we sort of
21:17
Speaker 1: have a gag order on talking about grief, people are
21:20
Speaker 1: carrying around stories that still need to be told. So
21:23
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, we're talking about grief, now, let me
21:25
Speaker 1: tell you everything that I've ever carried. Everyone is carrying
21:29
Speaker 1: a story of loss that they need a place to
21:31
Speaker 1: say out loud. One of the problems with the way
21:34
Speaker 1: that we have culturally historically responded to grief is to
21:37
Speaker 1: dismiss it, silence it, shush it, put it away, which
21:40
Speaker 1: means everybody has a story to tell. Right. The answer
21:43
Speaker 1: is not that you know, every time somebody says out,
21:46
Speaker 1: you come in with your own ouch. But this is
21:48
Speaker 1: about creating communities and creating spaces where it is okay
21:51
Speaker 1: to tell the truth about your own experience, so that
21:54
Speaker 1: there's not such a backlog that's looking for an out
21:57
Speaker 1: anywhere it possibly.
21:58
Speaker 2: Can, and so it doesn't come out in places or
22:02
Speaker 2: ways that don't feel comfortable for people. I read a
22:07
Speaker 2: beautiful piece in The Atlantic a few weeks ago. Two
22:10
Speaker 2: parents lost their son in nine to eleven, and the
22:14
Speaker 2: writer wrote something that I just can't get out of
22:17
Speaker 2: my mind.
22:18
Speaker 4: She said.
22:18
Speaker 2: A therapist told the parents, imagine that you're all at
22:21
Speaker 2: the top of a mountain. But you all have broken bones,
22:23
Speaker 2: so you can't help each other. You each have to
22:25
Speaker 2: find your own way down. And another therapist said, but
22:30
Speaker 2: that suggests everyone will make it down. Some people never
22:33
Speaker 2: get down the mountain at all.
22:35
Speaker 1: I love that article. Love. Did you read it? Also?
22:40
Speaker 1: I did? And I loved that because it says two things. One,
22:44
Speaker 1: you can't when you are devastated. It's very difficult, but
22:48
Speaker 1: not impossible, to help others who are devastated, right, because
22:52
Speaker 1: everything is broken. You can't help the other person who's
22:54
Speaker 1: broken because you can't move yourself. The other thing that
22:58
Speaker 1: I love is that second line that you did, which
23:00
Speaker 1: almost nobody talks about. Not everybody gets down that mountain.
23:05
Speaker 1: Not everybody gets down that mountain. There is this pervasive
23:08
Speaker 1: myth in Western culture that terrible things happened to you,
23:12
Speaker 1: and you transform, you become even better than you were before. Right,
23:16
Speaker 1: that you have to return to your baseline of happiness. Basically,
23:20
Speaker 1: everything happens for a reason, even the terrible things. You
23:23
Speaker 1: know that term transformation porn that comes from the disability community,
23:27
Speaker 1: that everything.
23:28
Speaker 4: I haven't heard that. What is that?
23:30
Speaker 1: Oh, transformation porn? Oh, it's fantastic. I wish I knew
23:33
Speaker 1: the name of the activist who coined it, but if
23:35
Speaker 1: you search, you'll be able to find it. They're in
23:37
Speaker 1: the disability community, So transformation porn is like, you know,
23:41
Speaker 1: they lost both legs in a tragic accident, but they've
23:44
Speaker 1: come back with these titanium cheetah legs and now they're
23:48
Speaker 1: living the life they always dreamed of having. God oh
23:52
Speaker 1: right to the transformational soul and music. This idea that
23:56
Speaker 1: the only correct way to respond to loss is by
24:01
Speaker 1: coming back bigger, better and stronger than before, And we
24:03
Speaker 1: love that meritive right. It's not that you can't use
24:09
Speaker 1: the hardships that you encounter to make a beautiful life
24:12
Speaker 1: for yourself, make a powerful life for yourself. That's not
24:14
Speaker 1: what we're saying. But what's tricky is that that doesn't
24:19
Speaker 1: leave us space to talk about the people who turn
24:22
Speaker 1: to drugs and alcohol because of their losses, because of
24:27
Speaker 1: the pain that they currently live in. That doesn't leave
24:29
Speaker 1: space for the people who die by suicide because of
24:32
Speaker 1: the pain in their lives. Not everybody transforms the shit
24:36
Speaker 1: that happens to them into something Hallmark movie working. How
24:39
Speaker 1: are we going to talk about that? Right, like that
24:41
Speaker 1: is a unattainable ideal, And it also like that whole
24:46
Speaker 1: transformation narrative teaches us that that is the only acceptable
24:50
Speaker 1: outcome for loss, So that reinforces what we started talking
24:52
Speaker 1: about at the top here of we think our job
24:55
Speaker 1: is to cheer somebody up and get them through all
24:58
Speaker 1: the difficulties of life as quickly as possible so that
25:00
Speaker 1: they can get to the mountaintop. Right That insistence on
25:04
Speaker 1: coming back bigger, better than ever before does a disservice
25:09
Speaker 1: to the grieving person. Yeah, and it does a deep
25:12
Speaker 1: disservice to the people who truly want to be supportive,
25:14
Speaker 1: because your job is not to get to that moment,
25:19
Speaker 1: right Your job is to sit there beside the gaping
25:23
Speaker 1: hole that just opened in the world and stay there.
25:27
Speaker 2: We've mentioned the word normal a few times, and when
25:31
Speaker 2: I've felt grief myself or spoken to people in grief,
25:35
Speaker 2: there's this persistent thought of will I ever feel normal again?
25:39
Speaker 2: Will I feel like myself again? I guess this is
25:43
Speaker 2: a two part question. One is there something to that
25:47
Speaker 2: can we feel like ourselves again? And then also how
25:50
Speaker 2: do you deal with things when you're in grief and
25:53
Speaker 2: everyone else is acting normal, and you're like, my whole
25:57
Speaker 2: world has just been turned upside down.
25:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's take that one first, right, So we're
26:01
Speaker 1: talking about dissonance, okay, total nerd alert. There is an
26:05
Speaker 1: episode of Star Trek Deep Space nine where the captain
26:11
Speaker 1: and Dax are both on the same planet, but they
26:13
Speaker 1: both see very different worlds. So one of them sees
26:16
Speaker 1: the nightmare and the other one sees this beautiful, idyllic
26:19
Speaker 1: thing and they don't understand each other because they're in
26:22
Speaker 1: different worlds at the same time. That's what it's like
26:25
Speaker 1: to be a greeting person, right. You are standing in
26:28
Speaker 1: your own healthscape, but for everybody else it looks normal
26:32
Speaker 1: and beautiful. It's recognizing that everybody is standing in their
26:36
Speaker 1: own healthscape and we don't see it. This is one
26:38
Speaker 1: of the real challenges when you're going through a loss.
26:40
Speaker 1: Even if friends and family were super supportive for the
26:43
Speaker 1: first couple of months, if you've got really stellar friends
26:45
Speaker 1: for the first year, and then everybody sort of goes
26:48
Speaker 1: back to normal because they have intact lives to go
26:50
Speaker 1: back to. When you see somebody six months after your
26:53
Speaker 1: mom dies and they say, oh, that's still bothering you,
26:56
Speaker 1: it's because they're not sitting next to the vacancy of
26:59
Speaker 1: your mom every second of every single day. We like
27:01
Speaker 1: to say that time heals all wounds. Wrong, but one
27:04
Speaker 1: of the things that gets softer with time is the
27:07
Speaker 1: noise of that dissonance between worlds.
27:10
Speaker 5: Right.
27:11
Speaker 1: It never goes away, right, but that does get gentler
27:15
Speaker 1: and less noisy. But that is one of the really
27:18
Speaker 1: big pain points for grieving people. People in the chronic
27:23
Speaker 1: illness and injury communities, like that difference between your world
27:26
Speaker 1: and what you see as the rest of the world.
27:28
Speaker 1: That's a really hard chasm.
27:30
Speaker 4: It is right there.
27:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then will I ever feel like myself again?
27:36
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a really big question, and I
27:39
Speaker 1: think some of this depends on how much of your
27:43
Speaker 1: world view was destroyed with the loss. This is one
27:46
Speaker 1: of the real challenges for out of order or atypical loss,
27:50
Speaker 1: things that are really the sort of random, sudden, unexpected atypical. Right,
27:55
Speaker 1: if your child was struck and killed in a crosswalk
28:00
Speaker 1: going to school, the whole world becomes unsafe. Right, will
28:03
Speaker 1: you ever feel like a normal person crossing the street
28:07
Speaker 1: and not thinking about how dangerous it is? I don't know.
28:11
Speaker 1: We lose a way of moving in the world. When
28:14
Speaker 1: people die, especially when they when they die in accidental, sudden,
28:19
Speaker 1: unexpected ways. Right, one of the conditions that contributed to
28:23
Speaker 1: that's death was heavy rainfall. Heavy rain. Now twelve years later,
28:28
Speaker 1: now it's a little bit softer. Now I can enjoy
28:30
Speaker 1: a good rainstorm. But we just came out of you know,
28:33
Speaker 1: at the time that we're talking. Now we just we're
28:35
Speaker 1: a hurricane season, right. I don't know what it would
28:38
Speaker 1: be like for me to be in an area that
28:40
Speaker 1: is flooding, because I can't look at that and not
28:43
Speaker 1: be brought back to the damage that water causes. You
28:46
Speaker 1: see what I mean. Yeah, there are some parts of
28:50
Speaker 1: previous self that are forever inaccessible. It changes your view
28:56
Speaker 1: of safety in the world, how you move through the world,
29:00
Speaker 1: you connect and relate to the world. Not good, not bad.
29:02
Speaker 1: That's just what it does. So what a lot of
29:06
Speaker 1: people grieve on top of the grief of the death
29:10
Speaker 1: of the actual person is also a trust in the world.
29:14
Speaker 2: I saw you wrote on Instagram something that I want
29:17
Speaker 2: to ask you about because a lot of people related
29:19
Speaker 2: to it. You said, my biggest fear when Matt first
29:22
Speaker 2: died was not that I would always feel this way,
29:25
Speaker 2: but that I would not always feel this way. My
29:28
Speaker 2: biggest fear, my biggest point of rage at all things unfair,
29:32
Speaker 2: was that life would resume its normal. See, so we
29:35
Speaker 2: kind of spoke about that a bit. But I thought
29:37
Speaker 2: it was interesting that you almost tell me, if I'm correct,
29:42
Speaker 2: you almost wanted to hold on to the grief because
29:44
Speaker 2: it was a piece of matt.
29:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a I love that you brought that
29:48
Speaker 1: one up. So this is a really big thing, and
29:50
Speaker 1: we remember. We think that as support of people, professionally
29:54
Speaker 1: or personally, we think that our job is to get
29:57
Speaker 1: the person out of grief as soon as possible. From
30:00
Speaker 1: a grieving person perspective, if you will use an example
30:04
Speaker 1: that I already used, if your child was struck and
30:06
Speaker 1: killed in a crosswalk on the way to school, why
30:08
Speaker 1: would you ever want life to go back to normal
30:11
Speaker 1: where you don't feel that loss every day? What does
30:15
Speaker 1: that mean about the importance of that child, that person,
30:19
Speaker 1: that relationship, If life can just move on without them? Right,
30:24
Speaker 1: there is an intensity of feeling with all of its
30:28
Speaker 1: crappy parts too. Like, don't get me wrong, early grief
30:30
Speaker 1: is fucking brutal, But there is something about the immediacy
30:35
Speaker 1: and the realness of it. Right, this is a foundational experience,
30:41
Speaker 1: and the fact that something so huge and devastating and
30:46
Speaker 1: life changing could be quote unquote left behind. It's a
30:50
Speaker 1: really horrifying idea to a lot of people. And it's
30:54
Speaker 1: not just that the intensity of emotion makes you feel
30:57
Speaker 1: more connected to the person who just died. That there's
31:00
Speaker 1: part of it, but also it's like it's it's almost
31:03
Speaker 1: it's almost rude right to the person who died that
31:07
Speaker 1: I could, you know, I remember, I remember the first
31:10
Speaker 1: time I woke up and not being dead wasn't the
31:13
Speaker 1: first thing on my mind. Now, from the outside, that
31:15
Speaker 1: seems like, wow, that's progress for me, that was terrible.
31:19
Speaker 1: What do you mean? I could think about what I
31:21
Speaker 1: was going to have for breakfast? Like, is what I'm
31:23
Speaker 1: having for breakfast more important than the fact that that's dead.
31:26
Speaker 1: Right from the outside, that doesn't even seem logical. But
31:29
Speaker 1: from the inside, it's like, how can I care about anything?
31:34
Speaker 1: And this is what happened?
31:35
Speaker 4: Can I ask you something personally? Yeah, how does your
31:38
Speaker 4: grief show up now?
31:42
Speaker 1: Good question. So we just passed the twelve year anniversary
31:46
Speaker 1: Back in July. July was brutal. I am no longer
31:53
Speaker 1: sort of thrown to the floor with the emotions of
31:57
Speaker 1: Matt's death anymore. I don't tend to have nightmares. I
32:01
Speaker 1: haven't woken myself up crying in years. There is a
32:04
Speaker 1: softness to it, and at the same time, the entire
32:09
Speaker 1: month of July this year was very emotional and very
32:12
Speaker 1: stressful and very sort of surreal. Even after twelve years,
32:17
Speaker 1: there are parts of me that don't get it right, Like,
32:21
Speaker 1: wait a minute, he's dead, are you sure? Right? Like
32:25
Speaker 1: Matt had a silvery green forward truck, And I will
32:30
Speaker 1: still once or twice a month I will see one
32:32
Speaker 1: of those trucks drive by, and I'll be like, oh, there.
32:36
Speaker 1: From a lot of perspectives, I am stuck in my grief, right,
32:40
Speaker 1: I think I'm actually doing pretty well. Right. There is
32:43
Speaker 1: a reality here that you never stop being connected to
32:47
Speaker 1: the people you love. Yeah, that relationship stays with you
32:53
Speaker 1: as long as you love that person. That's healthy and normal.
33:00
Speaker 1: The life that I have now is vastly different than
33:03
Speaker 1: a life I would have had not lived. But that
33:06
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that this life I have now, as beautiful
33:09
Speaker 1: as it is, is a fair trade for the life
33:10
Speaker 1: that could have been.
33:11
Speaker 2: There's so much trying to find meaning in nothingness with grief.
33:18
Speaker 2: There's something you do on Instagram that I love. You
33:21
Speaker 2: call it hashtag perfectly normal and grief, and you talk
33:25
Speaker 2: about things like laughing while feeling sad, changing tastes in
33:28
Speaker 2: books and music, forgetting how to read music.
33:31
Speaker 4: Even.
33:32
Speaker 2: How does grief rearrange our minds and our bodies?
33:35
Speaker 1: Right?
33:35
Speaker 4: It physically?
33:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, grief is a full body, full
33:39
Speaker 1: mind experience, right. It affects your emotions obviously, It also
33:44
Speaker 1: affects every system in the body. It affects memory and cognition,
33:48
Speaker 1: and it definitely affects relationships. Right. So that Perfectly Normal
33:52
Speaker 1: campaign that you mentioned that we do on social media,
33:55
Speaker 1: because we don't talk about grief, or when we do
33:59
Speaker 1: talk about it, we talk about it as something to
34:01
Speaker 1: overcome or push through or fix or you know, transform
34:05
Speaker 1: into some magical thing. Most people don't realize that what
34:08
Speaker 1: they're experiencing is normal. They think they're weird, right, So
34:11
Speaker 1: that Perfectly Normal campaign is about letting people know that
34:15
Speaker 1: whatever they're experiencing in their grief, they're not weird. They're human.
34:20
Speaker 1: So memory problems are huge in grief not being able
34:24
Speaker 1: to read or comprehend what you're reading. That is a
34:28
Speaker 1: huge thing that happens for a lot of people in grief.
34:30
Speaker 1: But they think, you know, they're losing their minds. You're
34:32
Speaker 1: not losing your minds, you're grieving. Any system in the
34:35
Speaker 1: body can be affected by stress. Now, of course there's
34:37
Speaker 1: lots of research on the effects of stress on the body, physiologically, neurologically,
34:42
Speaker 1: nervous system, all of these things. Grief is a very
34:45
Speaker 1: large form of stress. It affects digestion, sleep and what's
34:51
Speaker 1: the word that I want, awareness of space. So some
34:53
Speaker 1: people become very clumsy inside their grief. But short term
34:57
Speaker 1: memory is a really big one for people. Right like
35:01
Speaker 1: when Matt died, I had to leave myself color coded
35:04
Speaker 1: notes every day to tell myself whether I'd had the
35:06
Speaker 1: dog breakfast or not right, And sometimes I couldn't be
35:09
Speaker 1: sure if the note that I left for myself that
35:12
Speaker 1: said Boris has had breakfast was from today or from yesterday.
35:15
Speaker 1: So time and cognition like it just it's really really
35:21
Speaker 1: challenging to keep track of all that stuff. And I
35:24
Speaker 1: will say that some of those really disturbing cognitive effects
35:29
Speaker 1: can last a lot longer than you would expect. Really yeah,
35:33
Speaker 1: like years. Yeah, yeah, it really can. And you know,
35:38
Speaker 1: there's it's going to be different for everybody. Some people
35:41
Speaker 1: may not have that experience at all, Like I don't
35:43
Speaker 1: want to stay. Here are the things that you should
35:45
Speaker 1: expect in grief. It's very much I think, you know
35:47
Speaker 1: from what I've understood the way that doctor kooble Ross
35:50
Speaker 1: originally meant her five stages of grief related to somebody
35:53
Speaker 1: who had just received a terminal diagnosis. When she developed those,
35:58
Speaker 1: she was talking she was to create a normalizing experience
36:02
Speaker 1: for people who had never faced the end of their
36:04
Speaker 1: life before. So she came up with, here are some
36:07
Speaker 1: things that a lot of people feel. You don't have
36:09
Speaker 1: to feel all of them, but if you do, I
36:11
Speaker 1: just want you to know that you're normal. Of course,
36:13
Speaker 1: that got twisted and turned into a whole other thing.
36:16
Speaker 1: So when we're talking about that perfectly normal campaign inside grief,
36:20
Speaker 1: it's not that you have to feel these things, and
36:22
Speaker 1: not that you are absolutely going to feel these things.
36:25
Speaker 1: But if you are, it's normal. It's not weird, it's human. Right.
36:32
Speaker 2: That's actually why I started following you. I felt so
36:35
Speaker 2: much acceptance in your posts, So I think that's why
36:40
Speaker 2: all of your other followers one of the reasons all
36:41
Speaker 2: of your followers are connected to you as well. Yeah, okay,
36:45
Speaker 2: we do some rapid fire at the end of every interview.
36:48
Speaker 2: What is a book that changed your life? Something that
36:51
Speaker 2: you think everybody should read?
36:54
Speaker 1: A General Theory of Love. I don't remember the authors,
36:56
Speaker 1: but it's written by a couple of psychiatrists.
37:00
Speaker 2: Once in a while I get stumped and that I
37:02
Speaker 2: haven't heard of that, so I'm excited to I always
37:05
Speaker 2: get the ones that I haven't heard of. We do
37:07
Speaker 2: a pretty smart question. What would younger you not believe
37:11
Speaker 2: about your life today?
37:13
Speaker 1: I think the thing that younger me would be surprised
37:16
Speaker 1: that I don't have more animals and kind of not
37:20
Speaker 1: at all, be surprised or maybe be surprised at the
37:23
Speaker 1: ways that I have turned that advocacy into various things. Right,
37:30
Speaker 1: I think my nine year old self would be pretty
37:33
Speaker 1: psyched about my life.
37:34
Speaker 4: Actually, that's pretty cool to hear.
37:36
Speaker 2: Last question, whatever comes up first? What is the smartest
37:39
Speaker 2: decision you've ever made?
37:41
Speaker 1: Moving to la really? Yeap? Why I have spent the
37:50
Speaker 1: last twenty five years or so living in various places
37:53
Speaker 1: that did not serve me, and I kept trying to
37:56
Speaker 1: make them work and make them work, and make them work.
37:59
Speaker 1: And that is if I have regrets in my life,
38:01
Speaker 1: it is that I didn't leave places that did not
38:04
Speaker 1: feed me faster.
38:06
Speaker 2: Megan, thank you for holding space for so many of us.
38:10
Speaker 2: I hope I held space and did you justice today?
38:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, lovely job.
38:15
Speaker 5: Thank you.
38:33
Speaker 3: All right, today's a good day. To have a good day.
38:35
Speaker 3: I'll see an excell