Latest / Turning Grief into Growth: The Journey of Transformation / Episode #46-Audri Beugelsdijk

Transcript

Episode #46-Audri Beugelsdijk · Turning Grief into Growth: The Journey of Transformation

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to this episode of Turning Grief into Growth: The Journey of Transformation.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: This is a podcast that's hosted by Greg Jacobs and Don Lipstein.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning, Don.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
0:10
SPEAKER_00: I thought instead of doing our normal banter about your walk around your lighthouse on your island, which is actually a water tower, uh, that we would talk about today's date.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: Uh, today is October 22nd.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily a different special date and time, but we are 11 months out, sir, uh, from doing our first podcast, which was actually November 20th of 2025.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: And this is episode number 46.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: And uh it hit me yesterday because I was talking to a friend of mine who I hadn't seen uh probably in eight to 10 months, and he was asking how the podcast was going because he's the one that showed me how to edit the podcast, to download the software.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: And I was thinking back about uh the summer of 2024.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: Me and uh my wife and him and his wife were sitting on my back deck talking about how I could move forward with my grief journey and helping others.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: And they had said, Have you ever thought about doing a podcast?
1:06
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Yeah, I have, but I have no idea where to start or what to do or anything.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: And it just kind of simmered.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: And I would say, probably about that time or before for you, you also had people telling you the same thing, and you were thinking the same thing.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: So I think it's kind of wild how we came together on this, and uh, we have beat the odds from most people getting past five episodes, 10 episodes, 20 episodes, because most uh peter out at that point and uh they do not uh continue on.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: So kudos to you, Donald Lipstein, for episode number 46.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's a big deal.
1:43
SPEAKER_02: Kudos to both of us.
1:44
SPEAKER_02: Um it is, but I can't say kudos to me.
1:48
SPEAKER_02: And to our listeners.
1:49
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, uh I was, I swear it's probably was three years uh I had people in my ear, uh, people that I knew well, and they said, Don, you need to do a podcast.
2:03
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, yeah, I don't think so.
2:05
SPEAKER_02: It's just not, it didn't feel right to me.
2:07
SPEAKER_02: Um, but then I started thinking about if I were to do one, who would I want to do it with?
2:13
SPEAKER_02: And um and you popped up.
2:17
SPEAKER_02: So um I count that as an honor.
2:21
SPEAKER_02: Worked out nice.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, and we're of the older generation, you're even older than I am, and I say that with all due respect.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: With all due respect.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, but uh the first podcast I'd ever heard was Joe Rogan interviewing President Trump, and I want to say it was like September or October of 2024.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: And to that point, I never heard a podcast, I'd never listened, I didn't know what they were, how to access them.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, so for our listeners, I would just say that if this is new to you, it's okay.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: Don't call it a podcast, just go to our YouTube and uh watch that.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: I think that people have seen YouTube for years.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it doesn't have to be on Spotify or Apple iTunes or whatever platform.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but we want to thank you, like you said, Don.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: Uh thank our listeners uh for listening.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: So without further ado, um, I am going to jump into uh letting Audrey, our guest today, uh, introduce herself.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: But Don, did you want to say a few words before that?
3:17
SPEAKER_02: Uh yes, I do.
3:19
SPEAKER_02: So um, you know, I came to I met Audrey in 2015.
3:25
SPEAKER_02: Uh she had been she had worked at TAPS years uh before uh but uh she rejoined uh the team and uh I reported to her.
3:38
SPEAKER_02: Um and uh it was it was pretty nice to to have her there um and to just uh you know have some uh direction and guidance uh because I think at the time that she joined we were kind of um floating around not sure exactly which direction we were headed.
4:02
SPEAKER_02: In any case, uh Audrey provided that for us.
4:07
SPEAKER_02: She is now, if I'm not mistaken, and you can correct me, Audrey, but I know that you are in the um development um uh team.
4:17
SPEAKER_02: You're on the development team of TAPS.
4:20
SPEAKER_02: And uh and you have been there uh how many years total?
4:26
SPEAKER_01: I've been on the development team for almost two years, and before that, uh as you said, back to 2015 working in our survivor services with direct care of survivors.
4:38
SPEAKER_02: And and you did and before your first stint at TAPS, um, what were you doing then?
4:44
SPEAKER_01: I I was pretty much doing all of it.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: Uh at that time we had an executive director and Bonnie who was deployed to Iraq, and me.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: So I was carrying the pager.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: I'm dating myself a little bit way back when carrying the pager and um answering the helpline, doing the peer mentor program, uh, connecting people across the country.
5:04
SPEAKER_01: So I was I was kind of it while Bonnie was out.
5:07
SPEAKER_02: Oh wow, so that's way back, way back, way back.
5:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 2002 and three.
5:12
SPEAKER_01: It's it's been a minute.
5:15
SPEAKER_02: So why don't you tell us um about yourself?
5:18
SPEAKER_02: What brought you to this place, what brought you to TAPS with you know, and just share with uh our listeners why you do the work you do.
5:29
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: I you know, I was active duty in the Navy back uh when I joined TAPS.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: Never could have anticipated that TAPS would be a part of my future.
5:39
SPEAKER_01: I didn't even know that it existed at that time.
5:42
SPEAKER_01: But I was married to another sailor and uh we were both active duty.
5:47
SPEAKER_01: But really soon after we got married, uh we got married in December of '96.
5:52
SPEAKER_01: We had an eight-day honeymoon, and then he went back to his ship in San Diego and went out in the Pacific to prep for deployment.
6:00
SPEAKER_01: And he went overboard and was lost at sea.
6:04
SPEAKER_01: So we we'd only been married 10 weeks and four days at that time.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: And you know, the casualty officer who came to notify me gave me a a pamphlet that had tabs information on it.
6:17
SPEAKER_01: And on the third day after Jason was gone and they had called off the search for him and declared him deceased, I was just left with it.
6:25
SPEAKER_01: And they had the heaviness of it.
6:27
SPEAKER_01: And I honestly, Don, I thought it was gonna kill me.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: I thought the grief was gonna kill me.
6:31
SPEAKER_01: Um I just happened, I looked over and saw it sitting on my desk on that third day and just a knee-jerk reaction.
6:39
SPEAKER_01: I saw a number, saw the folded flag first, which is what drew me, I drew my eye.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: And um, we hadn't even had the service at that point.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: I hadn't even received the folded flag, but it's such a universal symbol of military loss that um it drew me.
6:53
SPEAKER_01: So I picked up the phone and called, and that was my my personal entry point into connecting with TAPS and receiving that gear.
7:01
SPEAKER_01: Um, as a 24-year-old widow, I it was the first person that I met who was also a widow.
7:08
SPEAKER_02: It's it's kind of interesting um because that uh brochure um did the same thing uh for me.
7:17
SPEAKER_02: Uh and me and my casualty officer left this a whole pamphlet of I mean, there was all kinds of things in it.
7:26
SPEAKER_02: And he said, when you get a chance, you know, take a look, and you don't have to do it right now.
7:31
SPEAKER_02: And I saw this um and it wasn't the folded flag that he got me, but it was remember the life.
7:41
SPEAKER_02: Um share the celebrate the life.
7:46
SPEAKER_02: Um boy, it's been a while.
7:48
SPEAKER_02: Celebrate the life, uh share the journey.
7:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah and um what what was the other thing?
7:56
SPEAKER_01: Remember the love, celebrate the life, share the journey.
8:00
SPEAKER_02: Right.
8:00
SPEAKER_02: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
8:02
SPEAKER_02: But that when I saw that, I was like, that's what I wanna do.
8:07
SPEAKER_02: That's what I want to do for Josh.
8:09
SPEAKER_02: Um to uh you know, remember the love for sure.
8:13
SPEAKER_02: I I was never gonna I knew I wasn't ever gonna forget that.
8:17
SPEAKER_02: Um celebrate the life and share the journey.
8:20
SPEAKER_02: And I didn't know what that meant at that time.
8:24
SPEAKER_02: But connecting with others um and which taps does such a great job uh really um struck me as and I learned that oh, share the journey, okay, connecting with others.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: That's actually something I I thought a lot about even in that first conversation.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: I I know I purged everything that was happening, but toward the end of the conversation, I remember saying if nothing else good comes from Jason's death, this will be something I can use in the future to help somebody else.
8:57
SPEAKER_01: And that'll just that'll have to be good enough.
8:59
SPEAKER_01: So I I felt even then on day three that that his death would have to mean something, that it couldn't be in vain.
9:06
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't know how that would look.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know what that would look like.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: But I was certain that there had to be something purposeful to come out of it.
9:16
SPEAKER_02: You know, turning turn turning the tragedy into something positive.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: It's it's interesting to me, and and I'm very careful in saying this terminology, understanding that Jason was lost at sea.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: So no pun intended or anything with this verbiage.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I I say a lot uh to people, hey, I'm just throwing you a life preserver.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: Um, because I I do feel like um, and I use this analogy a lot as far as that uh I feel lost at sea.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: Um felt lost at sea uh when I first started my journey.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: And um you're going under the water, you're trying to catch your breath.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: And whenever you made the comment at the beginning, you're like, yeah, I thought I was going to die and that this was going to kill me.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a very par for the course feeling and thought for anybody who's grieving uh a loved one that they were close with.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: And I say close with because there are a lot of complex situations out there.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think the level of your grief depends on the level of your relationship with that loved one.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I I think that that brochure for you uh was um indirectly somebody tossing you uh the life preserver.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't necessarily have to be a personal invite to a meeting or a grief share or whatever.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: Um, but uh it's it's interesting to me the different uh tools and resources and invites uh that people get.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: And and you could have very easily glossed over that, and then you know, a couple of days later something else would have happened.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I do think it's touch points along the way that we continue to have uh with people that are grieving.
10:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she decided to grab on to that life preserver um and and made the choice.
11:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, a lot of people I think a lot of people suffer in silence, they suffer in isolation.
11:08
SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's difficult to latch on to something that can feel hopeful and it also feels burdensome.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people carry such a weight that they can't share that burden with others.
11:21
SPEAKER_01: And you know, my my faith is extremely important to me, and and I internalize this idea that we share the burdens of others.
11:28
SPEAKER_01: And um, although there were some people I had a really hard time letting be there for me, I had a hard time letting my mom and my sister, who love me more than they love their next breath, I couldn't let them see me hurt because seeing the look on their face when they saw me hurting made me hurt worse.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: So the people I wound up leaning on were actually the people who really surprised me, not the people I would have anticipated.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, we've had other spouses on.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh, Rebecca Melani uh comes to mind of somebody we've had on as a guest who uh lost her husband at a young age into their marriage.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: Um so hearing that you're 24 years old, and I'm sure all the thoughts had to go through your mind as far as like the rest of my uh heritage, my future, everything is ruined.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: This has put a dark blot and blot, you know, black spot on my uh you know, future going forward.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: Will I ever love again?
12:25
SPEAKER_00: Not putting words in your mouth, but um, you know, how did you overcome a lot of that uh anticipatory uh black darkness of what the future might hold versus like the name of this podcast, Turning Grief into Growth?
12:41
SPEAKER_00: How did you just really turn that around for yourself?
12:44
SPEAKER_01: No, I that's such a great question.
12:46
SPEAKER_01: I I've always been a person who can see a silver lining in a dark cloud.
12:53
SPEAKER_01: So the glass has always been kind of half full.
12:56
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to find that in a situation like my husband dying.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I I just I remember very clearly uh within weeks of him dying, saying to myself, this is not the end of my life.
13:11
SPEAKER_01: I there was no question in my mind that I wanted to be a mom.
13:14
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't want to have a non-traditional motherhood.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: I didn't want to find other ways outside of a marriage to have a child.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: And so in my mind, it was not a matter of whether or not I would piece my life back together.
13:28
SPEAKER_01: It was when that would happen.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't, I wasn't looking for it, I wasn't, I wasn't rushing to try to create it.
13:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I I just knew that that's something that I wanted in my life.
13:39
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know how I was going to get there.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: Now that part was pretty daunting.
13:43
SPEAKER_01: And and the part that was also scary was that even though I knew I wanted that and I wanted to put things back together in my life, I also looked in the mirror and the trajectory that I thought I was on suddenly didn't make sense to me because I went from a person who loved being in uniform and saw a life in uniform to suddenly I don't recognize who I am looking at myself in the mirror, my face looks different, I can't smile, my joy is gone.
14:11
SPEAKER_01: I I'm a singer, I stopped singing for a solid year, not a single note came out of my mouth.
14:16
SPEAKER_01: So everything about me felt different.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: So I didn't know what the future would look like or that I could even recognize myself in relationship with other people.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: So everything changed.
14:27
SPEAKER_01: Globally, everything changed.
14:30
SPEAKER_01: Um, it wasn't just his death, it was the fallout of so many secondary and tertiary losses, including my own personality that I wasn't sure would come back.
14:40
SPEAKER_01: I just knew I knew that something would be different in the future and that it had to be a matter of time and that I was just gonna trust that that was true.
14:48
SPEAKER_02: So can you talk about that path for you?
14:51
SPEAKER_02: Like what what's that path look like?
14:54
SPEAKER_01: Well putting it back together.
14:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:57
SPEAKER_01: You know, when when Jason died, everybody retreated from me.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: You know, the address book gets rewritten, and you know, I the people I thought would be there for me just evaporated.
15:10
SPEAKER_01: Um I went to work and all the people who worked with me, many of whom also knew Jason because we had gone through training together.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: I day one, when I walked back in the door, I I I was already starting to be fearful that I was going to forget him.
15:25
SPEAKER_01: And I went up to one of my shipmates and I I said, he and he knows Jason, and I said, uh, tell me everything that you can remember about Jason.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: And he said, he was a good guy.
15:35
SPEAKER_01: And he turned around and walked away.
15:37
SPEAKER_01: And unbeknownst to me, my division had called everyone together and said, Don't talk to her about it because their assumption was acknowledging it was going to make it worse.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: And so I became isolated.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: Well, it turns out the one person, the one person who was not willing to let me flail and be in isolation was one shipmate who was a friend and was already a friend before, and he was there for me.
16:06
SPEAKER_01: And I I distinctly remember the moment where everything changed in our relationship, and he became more than a friend, and we were standing outside our works, our work building, and it was snowing, and I was crying, and he wasn't running away.
16:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I thought he's he feels like my person, somebody that I can trust, somebody that can lean on.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: And over time that developed into love.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: And and then he was gone on leave.
16:33
SPEAKER_01: And while he was gone, I realized I felt his absence really deeply.
16:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, and it became something I wasn't expecting.
16:41
SPEAKER_01: And we wound up getting married and having three beautiful children.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: And you got married, had three beautiful children all in five second span.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: There's so much more there.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: You know, so you talk about the death of your personality, um, and unsure what that would look like.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: And I I look at this podcast, and Don, you might disagree with me, and that's okay.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: Just once, don't do it twice.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, but the whole aspect of, you know, this is like a public service announcement for us.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: This is like education for people.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: Um, and we learn every single time we do this.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: So it's not like we're the experts in the room.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: But I do find that if we can help educate people, and this is one of those topics as far as the disappearing act.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, I was reading something yesterday about grief, and it was talking about people disappearing in the room and those that you know were real close to you.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: And I'll never forget uh a good close friend of mine.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: I ran into him at Walmart probably two weeks after David died.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: And he he saw me coming down the aisle and he turned the other way and walked away.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: And I hollered after him.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: And I said, What are you doing?
17:47
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Man, I just didn't know what to say.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: And same age as me, had the same amount of kids as me.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: His son had deployed in the army the same time as David.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: And and you know, you try to show grace, but at the same time, you want to smack him upside the head when you talk about the contact list changing.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, so there are things I would say and personalities that do change that don't come back.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh, like you for singing, for example, you couldn't do it for a year, but yet, you know, you were able to sing again.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: I used to hunt and fish, and uh that has gone away, and I'm okay with it uh going away.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: I don't feel the desire because now I take my phone and I walk three miles every day and I snap pictures of wildlife out there.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: So I'd much rather do that.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: So talk to us a little bit about your personality uh changing, but did it come back?
18:36
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm an extrovert to the hilt, but I'm very much more introverted in certain certain areas now uh than I ever was.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: Does does my question make sense?
18:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think so.
18:45
SPEAKER_01: And and I and I think that uh the majority of people think that you're either an introvert or an extrovert.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: In reality, 70% of the population are ambiverts, which is situationally one or the other.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: Um, I I found like you, I'm generally an extrovert.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: I my my mom will tell you I've never met a stranger uh since I was a toddler.
19:09
SPEAKER_01: I have never met a stranger.
19:11
SPEAKER_01: Um, everybody was just a friend I hadn't met yet.
19:13
SPEAKER_01: I was accustomed to being a person who was a go-to for friends and people around me.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: Even even at 14, my my sister shared a clip, uh a picture of me from a yearbook, and I had forgotten this.
19:27
SPEAKER_01: But even at 14, I helped stand up a peer support group at my high school before peer support was even a book that people were talking about.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it's always been important to me.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: What majorly changed for me was, and that I couldn't have anticipated, is that I suddenly began having anxiety attacks anytime someone would talk to me about something that wasn't just really light and surface.
19:51
SPEAKER_01: So I was talking with a shipmate one day, a girl I was stationed with, and she was telling me about a surgery she was going to be having.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: And I had familiarity with that because I had gone through that surgery.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: Ordinarily, I would have stood there with her, held that space, let her ask me questions, we would have gone back and forth.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: And when I when she said that to me, my very first uh reaction was an anxiety attack.
20:16
SPEAKER_01: My heart started racing, and um, and I just looked at her and I said, I'm sorry, I can't talk to you right now.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: And I turned around and walked away.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: So that was extremely unlike me.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I judged myself too.
20:28
SPEAKER_01: I I thought, what is wrong with you?
20:31
SPEAKER_01: Get a grip.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: Why can't you?
20:33
SPEAKER_01: Why are you suddenly having anxiety attacks um and you can't handle this?
20:37
SPEAKER_01: So I thought I was afraid that I would suddenly no longer be able to even talk to people.
20:43
SPEAKER_01: That was highly unusual for me.
20:46
SPEAKER_01: And it and it made me isolate as well.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: I became more introverted because I was also fearful that I was going to continue having these anxiety attacks every time I tried to be in public and interact with people.
20:57
SPEAKER_01: And and then from that, I felt like every single person I met, I needed to, upon the extension of the handshake, I needed to let them know what had happened in my life because I was so different.
21:09
SPEAKER_01: They didn't know they were making a very muted version of me, but I knew they were meeting a muted version of me.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, everything everything changed.
21:18
SPEAKER_01: And it was, it took so much time for that to come back.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, but ultimately I I decided to leave the Navy because I changed so much that I needed to go figure out how that could happen, how how something like a death could so dramatically alter a person's thought processes and and social fabric.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: And so I I left the Navy after four years and went to study psychology.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: So I could really, so I could try to figure myself out.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: That that slowly began to my personality, slowly began to to come back after that.
21:56
SPEAKER_01: And but but I think that there are some pieces that didn't fully that.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Pieces that are more sensitive to the plight of others, that are more sensitive to people who are isolating, the people who are vulnerable to um to being undiscovered or invisible in spaces.
22:13
SPEAKER_01: I suddenly realized that I was that wallflower.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: I was the person who was trying to shrink back.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: And then I began suddenly to see other people and their invisibility.
22:24
SPEAKER_01: It's one thing to feel lonely, right?
22:27
SPEAKER_01: But it's an entirely other thing to feel lonely when you're surrounded by a group of people.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: The expectation should be that you're not lonely because there are people everywhere.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: Um so I suddenly saw people in a different light.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: And I was really desperate to make sure that no one else felt isolated and invisible.
22:44
SPEAKER_02: Greg and I, Greg and I have talked about uh many times over the course of this podcast, um how like before he says before David and after David, before Josh and after Josh.
23:00
SPEAKER_02: And it's um I mean we do change, right?
23:04
SPEAKER_02: Like the grief changes us, and we may never be the person that we were before.
23:11
SPEAKER_02: In fact, I know I'm not, and and I never will be.
23:14
SPEAKER_02: Um I feel like I'm a better version of myself, uh, but because of the grief that I have grown through.
23:22
SPEAKER_02: Um and uh you know, you I feel like you're talking about compassion.
23:30
SPEAKER_02: Um your compassion for other people has you know probably um grown uh immensely, as as has mine and I'm sure Greg's too.
23:41
SPEAKER_02: Um we also talk about grief in that it's not just the loss of life.
23:49
SPEAKER_02: And I know you and I had a conversation the other day.
23:53
SPEAKER_02: Um and can you tell me because I I feel like uh leaving the Navy um was can you talk about that?
24:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, when I when I joined the Navy, I I thought in in my mind I was going to be the first female chief of naval operations.
24:13
SPEAKER_01: Nobody was more gung ho than me.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: And losing that, even though it was a choice that I made to leave, I was choosing something that that I felt I had no choice but to pursue because I needed to understand what happened inside me.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: And yet making the choice to leave, it it really felt like I was cutting off a part of my body.
24:38
SPEAKER_01: Taking my uniform off was extremely difficult.
24:42
SPEAKER_01: I it was a major loss of identity to the degree that to the degree that I I went to work one day, I was read out of my clearance and took my uniform off.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: All the people that I had worked with knew me by name.
24:58
SPEAKER_01: And a week later, when we were transitioning from that duty station to the next one, and my husband was uh, now that I'm remarried, you know, my husband was continuing the service at another command.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: All the same people that we all worked together with wrote around the outside of the frame of this frame picture that they gave him when he was leaving.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: Good luck to the Ari.
25:19
SPEAKER_01: Good luck to you and your wife.
25:20
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: I was reduced, I wasn't even a person by name that they knew, even though they knew me.
25:25
SPEAKER_01: So I was reduced to a label.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: And so I definitely felt like I was losing myself.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: Plus, I, you know, the only way I was able to get through Jason's memorial service was wearing my uniform.
25:37
SPEAKER_01: And it and and it I drew so much strength.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: I even I even did a TEDx talk about drawing strength from the threads because I stood there and I and my back was straightened and I felt like I could, I felt more stoic, like I can get through this because I drew that strength from my uniform.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: So to lose that, it it felt like another death, even though it was a death by choice, you know, to to walk away from it.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, I wrote a couple things down.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh for you, um, remarrying and being a parent, it was not if, but when and how.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, because really it was a matter of timing and who and you know how you're going to go about that, which I found very interesting um and very optimistic uh outlook.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: And then you had also said that people evaporate uh around you.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: And I want to talk just real quick on the lonely aspect that you talked about, because you you talked about how you were surrounded by people but still lonely.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: And that's a phenomena that a lot of people don't talk about or don't understand.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, I am lonely a lot of times.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I work from home and it's just me and the two dogs and a cat here.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I just I wait eagerly for my wife, my daughter, my son to come home, you know, from work.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I try to get out and have coffees and things like that.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: But my point is is you can be surrounded by people, but still lonely.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a lot of the internal work that you have to do in order to not uh live in that pit of despair, if that makes sense.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then and then the last thing I wrote down that you didn't necessarily say that I just wanted to kind of touch on is uh we we talk about grief in the past tense a lot.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think it's dangerous.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: I really do.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: I and I challenge myself on this.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: This is something I've been evaluating.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: I know we're very careful not to talk too much about religion and politics on this podcast, but I would say that we've had a lot of people on that have talked about their faith journey, and there's this interesting kind of caveat when you're looking at the aspect of they gravitate towards God whenever they need him and need something, but when things are going well, they choose not to and they don't need him anymore.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of times it's the same way in our grief journey where we might gravitate towards um peer support groups, we might gravitate towards a grief share or a compassionate friends or a taps conference or whatever it might be in the type of grief we're going through.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: But then whenever we feel like, okay, maybe the screws of pressure are off us, we don't need that anymore, and I'm done.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: And I would just say that Don and I are big on talking about the mourning phase is not necessarily a six month and then it's over.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: You can still mourn and have those moments five years, ten years, twenty years out.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: It's not going to be an ongoing weeping, you know, continuous phase.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: But our grief journey is there for life.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: And I would just say how healthy it is for people to keep that in mind that we need to continually be talking about our loved one, continually be working on our grief journey because it's not past tense.
28:51
SPEAKER_02: I I would agree with you, except and and I am going to.
28:58
SPEAKER_02: That's okay, please do.
28:59
SPEAKER_02: There there are people that you know decide that they want to move on with their lives, and and that uh grief is not going to be a part of of their life.
29:13
SPEAKER_02: And and I I they're okay, that's okay if that's what they choose to do.
29:19
SPEAKER_02: Um there's nothing wrong.
29:21
SPEAKER_02: I don't see the danger, I guess you use the word dangerous, and I don't see the danger in that.
29:27
SPEAKER_02: Um I you know, yes, in my mind, uh, and for me, grief will always be there.
29:35
SPEAKER_02: It's always going to be a part of my life, but it has changed dramatically.
29:39
SPEAKER_02: And and there I feel like there's active grief.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's what I was gonna say.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: We we've talked about active versus inactive.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: So I totally agree with you on that.
29:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so so and and the people that are not um, you know, maybe not thinking that they're grieving at all, um, they they may be just inactively grieving.
30:02
SPEAKER_02: Correct.
30:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, and and and they may very well be grieving, they're just not publicly grieving, right?
30:09
SPEAKER_01: They're not grieving in a way that's visible to other people, but internally, we all have these conversations where we are changing and growing with our experience of grief over time.
30:20
SPEAKER_01: I I think back on, you know, Jason is coming up on well, March 5th will be 30 years that he's been gone.
30:30
SPEAKER_01: And at the 15-year mark, I remember being at a TAPS event where suddenly it occurred to me to ask myself a question that I had never thought to ask.
30:41
SPEAKER_01: And because of that new question, it yielded a new answer.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't prepared for that.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: I thought once I passed about the five-year mark, I thought I've learned everything that I can learn about my loss, myself in relation to it, about Jason.
30:58
SPEAKER_01: All the details that I could possibly have are now clear.
31:01
SPEAKER_01: And then that moment happened and I was sucked backwards into that.
31:05
SPEAKER_01: And I like to say I was kind of on a three-year plan because it happened at 15 years, it happened at 18, happened at 21, happened at 24, and then I had a little bit of a hiatus, and now we're counting up on 30 years.
31:18
SPEAKER_01: And I have to tell you about the package that I got in the mail yesterday.
31:22
SPEAKER_01: I got a Facebook message from a man that we were stationed with in training when we first met, and he said, Look what I found.
31:34
SPEAKER_01: And he sent me a photo on Facebook of me and Jason together.
31:39
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is, you know, 30 years ago, we didn't have cell phones and we you don't have 5,000 selfies and all of this.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: So photos of us together were fairly rare.
31:49
SPEAKER_01: I have exactly, aside from our wedding photo, I have exactly one photo of us together.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: And so to have a photo of us standing side by side, and he was in civilian clothes and I was in a uniform, I don't even, I don't even have a picture of me anywhere in that particular uniform.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: And so yesterday I got that photo in the mail.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: And it took my breath away.
32:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm coming up on 30 years, and and each of these moments where that has happened, I've I've been pulled into a fresh thought that or a fresh experience that never occurred to me that I would have.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: And see, I that's my point.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: And Don, I think we're actually saying the same thing.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: Um, I I guess what I'm saying is don't be surprised when you're caught off unaware.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, when those triggering moments, when those things happen, and then you say to yourself, but I thought I was over this, or I thought I was done with the work that I need to put in, or whatever it might be.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: And it's hard to tell whether you're hitting the pause button or you're just an inactive grief, you know, at that point.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I I do believe having a daily inventory of just really evaluating oneself is crucial.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't actively grieve, you know, right now.
33:06
SPEAKER_02: So my my wife, um, my wife, you know, handles grief very differently than I do.
33:13
SPEAKER_02: And she wasn't the mother of of Josh, but um, but she's lost, you know, many people in in her life.
33:21
SPEAKER_02: And you know, she doesn't know the anniversary of the death.
33:26
SPEAKER_02: Uh, she doesn't remember you know those things.
33:29
SPEAKER_02: Uh it's not important to her.
33:31
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
33:32
SPEAKER_02: Um when I uh you know, I I just reached uh this year it was 15 years for Josh.
33:39
SPEAKER_02: And uh every year on his uh uh day of remembrance, I I chose not to really give it that much thought.
33:50
SPEAKER_02: Like I'd I would do something to honor him, but um I it wasn't the happiest day of my life, so I decided, you know, I'll celebrate his birthday.
33:59
SPEAKER_02: Uh but the day that he died, that's something that I'd you know rather kind of forget about.
34:05
SPEAKER_02: But um I have these friends that uh have been further out in their grief journey than I I am, and uh they each were telling me how they recognize the day uh of remembrance, uh which is what I call use instead of anniversary because anniversaries are are meant to be celebrated.
34:30
SPEAKER_02: Uh and so mine's a day of remembrance is how I I call that.
34:36
SPEAKER_02: And um I thought, you know, this year for the 15th, I'm gonna I'm because they said they would take the day off every year and just like give their grief, you know, attention.
34:50
SPEAKER_02: So I thought I'm gonna try that.
34:52
SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, try something different and see what happens.
34:56
SPEAKER_02: And it was heavy.
34:57
SPEAKER_02: I mean it was a heavy day.
34:59
SPEAKER_02: Um but I feel like it was something that uh was helpful too to you know to release.
35:07
SPEAKER_02: And and I think whenever I feel heaviness, I feel like, okay, there's a reason and let's look at this, let's you know, um dig in uh and embrace it rather than run away from it because I know that I'm gonna feel lighter after I do the work uh to get that, you know, get that done.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: So you know that's so scary though.
35:31
SPEAKER_01: People people are concerned that if they if they take the lid off of that can of worms, that they'll never be able to contain it again.
35:41
SPEAKER_01: And so many people avoid for that reason because it's to think that it can become something that's out of control and and people want to have control, and especially when you've had a loss, the the lack of control is is a scary thing, you know.
35:57
SPEAKER_01: And you know, I want to come back, Greg, to talking about people evaporating.
36:02
SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, I think about this a lot.
36:04
SPEAKER_01: And and I think one of the conundrums of of grief is that during what is one of the darkest times of your life, there is a burden of responsibility on us to create for ourselves what we need.
36:16
SPEAKER_01: And when the people we hoped would be there run away, that can create a lot of bitterness and and resentment and that can compound our grief as well.
36:26
SPEAKER_01: And I try to help people understand that it's it's not a lack of love or care, but people lack the skills.
36:34
SPEAKER_01: You know, we're we're not taught how to have compassion necessarily for people who've experienced a death.
36:40
SPEAKER_01: We're not taught the skills of how to companion someone when they're going through a difficult time or the words to use.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: And our culture promotes a lot of cliche that winds up being hurtful for people.
36:54
SPEAKER_01: Uh, they, you know, time heals all wounds and all the phrases that that are hurtful for a person who's grieving.
37:00
SPEAKER_01: But if we can just simply relax into a space with a person, there's so much that's possible if we don't feel that we have to be responsible for changing their circumstances.
37:12
SPEAKER_01: You know, when I think back to Dr.
37:14
SPEAKER_01: Alan Wilfeld, who had developed the 11 tenets of companioning, the one that most stands out to me is that companioning is about going to the wilderness of the soul with another human being.
37:25
SPEAKER_01: It is not about feeling responsible for helping them find their way out.
37:28
SPEAKER_01: And I feel like that sense of responsibility and burden that we feel to somehow change or make better something that we can't makes us default to doing nothing.
37:39
SPEAKER_01: And that's not a lack of love, that's a lack of awareness and skill.
37:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
37:45
SPEAKER_02: So well said.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: When I'm uh reaching out to a new mentee or uh just coming alongside people, the first thing I always text them is, hey, uh brother, I'm holding the flashlight for you in this season.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: And you know, they know immediately that it's a dark season.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: I don't have to explain it or anything, it's just holding the flashlight and uh coming alongside them.
38:08
SPEAKER_00: I don't have to have the answers, I don't have to say anything, I just need to be there.
38:12
SPEAKER_02: So that's beautiful.
38:14
SPEAKER_02: Thank thank you, Audrey.
38:16
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I'm just wondering uh if you were to leave our listeners with a a pearl of wisdom, uh, what would that be?
38:27
SPEAKER_01: I I'll tell you, I I have a sticker stuck to my computer and it says seize the awkward.
38:36
SPEAKER_01: I would say, I would say seize the awkward.
38:39
SPEAKER_01: When you are going into an interaction with someone who's experienced a loss, it's going to be a challenge.
38:48
SPEAKER_01: It's anticipate that it's going to be hard in some way.
38:53
SPEAKER_01: And it may be awkward, and you may not know what to say.
38:56
SPEAKER_01: But I think if all of us had the attitude in life period that we were willing to seize awkward moments with people and hold them long enough to push through them, what happens on the other side of that is so stunningly beautiful in relationship with others.
39:14
SPEAKER_01: We have to overcome ourselves to be that light and to move and to choose to move toward people.
39:21
SPEAKER_01: And if we can't seize the awkward and overcome ourselves, the things that might otherwise be possible, stay dormant.
39:30
SPEAKER_01: And I don't I don't I don't want to live that way.
39:33
SPEAKER_02: Oftentimes that awkward could be the awkward silence.
39:36
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes that silence is so healing and helpful.
39:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agreed.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, usually I have a last word, Don.
39:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't.
39:46
SPEAKER_00: That's that's one of those drop the mic moments.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: Sees the awkward.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: Audrey, thank you so much uh for joining us.
39:53
SPEAKER_00: This has been a real treat and a pleasure, and we appreciate you sharing your journey with us and our listeners.
39:58
SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, so folks, until next time.
40:02
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to listen.
40:06
SPEAKER_00: We hope turning grief into growth spoke to your heart and becomes a part of your own journey of healing and transformation.
40:12
SPEAKER_00: If you know someone who could use a little hope, please share this episode with them.
40:17
SPEAKER_00: And don't forget to follow, like, or subscribe on your favorite platform so you don't miss what's coming next.
40:25
SPEAKER_00: Don and I can't wait to share more conversations to help you keep turning your grief into growth.
40:30
SPEAKER_00: Until next time.