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Grief Uncovered with AnnE O'Neil · Finding New Waters

0:00
I think anytime I think about grief, I can't think about I
0:03
can't not think about spirituality and just the
0:07
connections and stuff there. So just kind of opening that
0:09
conversation. What do you think about that?
0:11
Well as I said earlier that is one of the commonalities between
0:15
the two in the recovery. I think what I have learned and
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I am an Interfaith Minister and a spiritual counselor as well.
0:24
Is it is very important to give space as to what spirituality
0:30
She is to each and every person, a lot of times I will say, it
0:34
may be nature and maybe this it may be that, but I I agree with
0:39
you that fundamentally is important.
0:41
But I also think it's really, really important to have a broad
0:45
swath as to what it could be. Alright, great.
1:13
Well, thank you for joining us on this new episode of finding
1:16
new Waters. And today, we have any O'Neill.
1:19
NE, thank you so much for joining us today.
1:21
Thank you for having me here. Sure.
1:23
And we also have just the maclennan executive director
1:26
here at new Waters. And today, we're going to be
1:29
talking about any area of expertise in grief and its
1:33
relationship to substance use disorders.
1:36
Thanks so much for being with us here today and just want to open
1:40
up like with this idea of what is the connection between grief?
1:44
And how did you get interested in this topic of grief?
1:48
So personally, I got forced into this topic of grief.
1:52
I came from a family that squelched grief like a lot of
1:56
families do. And when I was 25 and my mother
1:59
died and there was no service, she had spent seven and a half
2:03
weeks in intensive care, and then she passed and we were
2:07
expected to go on as though nothing had happened, and there
2:09
was no opportunity. Your process and know, and even
2:13
prior to that, there had been a few other instances, where, you
2:16
know, like no to group not, not okay, but that was really the
2:20
Capstone. And at that time, I myself was
2:23
already, drinking, is a lot of my family did, and that
2:27
definitely escalated it to a new level.
2:30
So, I personally saw the link between grief and substance use,
2:34
but I didn't think about it, much until many, many, many
2:38
years even decades later. When I was It as Anna hospital
2:42
as a Chaplain and I had a grief counseling background and one of
2:47
the substance use counselors found that out and said, boy,
2:50
are we going to put you to use? And I started working with a lot
2:53
of the people individually there and what I was really struck by
2:57
was how many of them had said that nobody had ever talked to
3:01
them about? And these were people a lot who
3:04
had been in and out of a lot of treatment centers and there just
3:08
wasn't the room for talking about the loss.
3:10
And You know, the topics that often go with it too, like for
3:14
Need for forgiveness, for themselves.
3:16
Need for forgiveness, for others, a spiritual connection
3:20
with people on the other side. A lot of people find that they
3:24
can find a higher power by first linking to ancestors that they
3:30
knew so it really opened my eyes to what feels to me still.
3:37
I think it's getting better but still feels to me like a kind of
3:41
missing element most places around recovery and that's
3:46
pretty sure the any it's weird. That grief is so common, but
3:53
also so on, so foreign and unknown to us, and I think a lot
3:58
of our viewers and listeners, might not even know how to think
4:02
about the word grief. So just just to help people get
4:06
caught up when we're talking about grief, or when you talk
4:09
about grief, how do you help patients understand what grief
4:13
is? So, there are two different
4:17
levels to that The standard response is it's the normal
4:21
reaction to significant loss. And I also often taken take
4:27
people to Francis Weller's a young and therapists that I've
4:31
done some studying with and he has a book called wild edge of
4:34
Sorrow, which is an absolutely beautiful book and he identifies
4:38
their as being five gates to grief.
4:40
The first gate is everything. We love, we will lose.
4:43
So that's what our society traditionally thinks of as
4:47
grief. It's loss of Of loved ones, loss
4:49
of jobs loss of Health that kind of thing.
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So that's the first thing. The second thing that he he
4:55
calls gate to is grief for the parts of us that have not known
5:00
love and that includes a lot of Shame and a lot of people in
5:06
recovery can really relate to that.
5:08
So it's great for the parts of us that have not known love from
5:11
others, or from ourselves. And then the third gate to grief
5:15
is grief for the world, living, the world that we live in today.
5:18
With what, you know, societies like and what's happening to
5:22
Mother Nature and everything. A lot of Us carry that day in
5:26
and day out, and it's kind of background noise, but it's not,
5:28
you know, not to be dismissed by any stretch, the fourth gate.
5:33
He calls grief for the part for the things that we needed and
5:37
did not receive and he especially talks about that
5:40
being at the soul level. So the acknowledgement of who we
5:43
are as a person, you know, not being seen not, being heard, not
5:47
being valued. You for the gifts and what we're
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bringing and then the fifth is ancestral grief.
5:52
So it's what are we carrying it from our family lineage?
5:56
So I often introduce people to all five of those Gates because
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I find it opens up the mind as to what grief is and sometimes
6:07
even though it feels big at that point in time, it can help to
6:10
feel a little more approachable to hmm.
6:15
It's interesting, you know, to back up a minute you were
6:17
talking about how it seems like people just don't give enough
6:22
attention to to grief right or address it enough and I wonder
6:26
just what your opinion about that is or what's your thoughts
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around? Why is it that there's not
6:30
enough attention? Because I think it's because it
6:33
is such a big emotion, that most people don't know how to sit
6:36
with it. No.
6:37
Most people. It's scary there.
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I've talked to many, many people that are like, if I go To this,
6:44
I'm not sure that I can come out and, you know, in that instance,
6:49
I talked about the fact of this strength of the psyche and the
6:52
soul in that, you know, they will protect you, they will take
6:57
you only as far as you can go. And that's an important thing to
7:02
give people comfort with, but a lot of people feel like it can
7:05
get so overwhelming and to edit, you know, in the background,
7:10
it's our society telling us things like you got to keep busy
7:13
keeping Busy old, take care of it and all that other kind of
7:15
thing. So it's a societal pressure as
7:19
well. But I think it's really
7:20
important to just be aware that that exists.
7:25
And that is going to be the background noise, but the truth
7:28
of healing from brief. Is it takes a deep dive, you're
7:32
really takes a deep dive. There's a quotes not related to
7:36
grief directly, but in general for Maya Angelou that I love
7:40
that I often use around this, and it's, she says, I will be
7:44
affected by things that happen to me, but I refuse to be
7:48
reduced by them. Mmm.
7:50
And I use that as an invitation to people.
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I say, you know, like short-term you are going to be reduced by
7:56
Grace, but we want to work together to make sure that
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long-term you don't have to be reduced by grief and that
8:02
includes things like you don't have to turn to substances and a
8:05
whole lot of people turn to substances.
8:07
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
8:09
Yeah. What a piggyback off that point
8:11
any? There's five.
8:13
Gates. Yeah, I think everyone, I know
8:19
has a lot of those gays in their lives, solutely.
8:22
Absolute, I would also say none of them would say that these are
8:27
active problems for them. Well, you know, there's a lot of
8:32
times where people are thinking that I'm fine.
8:37
I'm fine. I'm fine, right?
8:39
But if you really want to have a rich full life, you kind of need
8:43
to sit with. I wonder how that might impact
8:46
me. Yeah.
8:47
You know, I it may not. I may be able to get through my
8:51
day just fine if knowing that there is a part of my heart that
8:56
is not being fed. Yeah.
8:59
But How much richer could my life be and quite frankly.
9:04
Again, when come when dealing with substance use and addiction
9:08
issues, right? You never know when they're
9:12
going to creep up when you push in that kind of stuff off to the
9:15
side, not having healed from them.
9:18
Hmm, may catch up to you at any point in time.
9:21
That's what I'm curious. Is that What do you see that
9:25
happen? In reality where people are just
9:29
loaded with grief but they're unaware.
9:34
Absolutely, absolutely. So can you tell us about a story
9:39
or a time where you've helped someone find it, see it and take
9:45
stock of what is done. I think.
9:52
Client, I worked with recently is a good example.
9:56
Someone dealing with their own health issues and very much in
10:02
the oh, but I found out that it's not going to be all that
10:05
bad. So I'm just going to move
10:07
forward and one of the things as a social worker is I'm trying to
10:13
think of a of the word so people's right to decide where
10:19
they are. You know, I Don't push, I'll
10:22
tell him. Yeah, I'll fight on me.
10:24
Thank you. And I and I don't push and she
10:30
opted. Otherwise, but I did introduce
10:34
her to the fact that there does seem to be a little part of her
10:40
that does realize that it would be helpful to look at the fear
10:44
that she's experiencing around death.
10:46
Hmm. And And to look at if there's a
10:51
way to kind of make friends with it.
10:54
So, to your point about the, everybody being loaded with it,
10:57
though, to another thing there Francis Weller, often talks
11:00
about is the fact that, you know, we usually think as a
11:04
society whether we're in grief or not, and he talks about the
11:08
fact, the reality that we're living in is everyone in our
11:11
society, is in grief every day. It's a matter of how close are
11:15
you dancing with it? And I think that really helps
11:18
one My friends talked about the who's also a grief counselor,
11:21
talked about, the fact that after her sister died, she said,
11:24
you know, those days when people were black, armbands they made
11:29
sense, you know, we knew to be a little bit more careful with
11:34
them. That there might be a little bit
11:36
more emotion involved and they might be a little more volatile
11:40
or they might need a little bit more and when we were walking
11:43
down the streets, that was known.
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Hmm. And, you know, now we go by and
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we don't know. What grief, everybody's carrying
11:51
and yet they're being impacted by it and our relationships with
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them or being impacted by. Absolutely.
11:56
Yeah. We talked a lot about recovery,
11:59
as a journey. Hmm.
12:02
And you're talking about how when you had a huge loss you're
12:07
drinking increased key. Tell us a little bit about how
12:12
you see grief and addiction going together and what do they
12:16
do to each other? Well, Well, I'm so I have both
12:22
experiences. I have the experience of having
12:25
lost someone close to me and having increased my drinking and
12:29
then my husband also died. When I had about five years
12:33
sober so that was my okay. I'm going to need to learn how
12:37
to do this differently. If I'm going to stay sober so I
12:40
really do Vin to what were the feelings that were coming up and
12:44
all this other kind of today and are out of that came.
12:49
The way that I work with people, in a very general sense, I
12:53
started this model called here, which I stand which stands for
12:57
he'll explore refine emerge. And when I first started it, I
13:02
expected it to be much more much more linear and much more
13:08
condensed. And now I use it in a very
13:11
general sense but basically, what has to happen first after a
13:15
loss is we need to dive into the healing.
13:17
There's physical emotional. A tional spiritual relational,
13:22
everything is impacted by it and we need to really look at what
13:26
what needs to be healed from that.
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But after that happens for a while, people start to get into
13:31
a state of exploration, knowing that they're not going to be
13:35
stay the same from who they were.
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So how do I want this to impact me?
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How do I want it to affect who I am today?
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And after that, exploration comes a period of refinement.
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About, what do you want to keep? And what do you do not want to
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keep? And then kind of emerge into the
13:54
beingness of a new person. You know, one thing I talk about
13:58
a lot with the notion of both grief and Recovery, they are by
14:04
far and away, the hardest things that people will have to go
14:07
through in their lifetime. But they are also the biggest
14:10
opportunities people have for True transformation.
14:13
Hmm. And I think that's an important
14:16
hope to hold out for people. Absolutely.
14:19
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm thinking you were
14:23
talking about the the five gates.
14:25
I can't remember the words that you use, but the fourth one,
14:28
essentially things that we didn't receive that.
14:30
We that we needed and we didn't get essentially, and I think dr.
14:34
Hong could speak to this too. So a lot of the work that we do,
14:37
I think work that we've all probably done, right?
14:40
But we do an assessment process here where we're able to really
14:44
do a deep dive with people, in the psychological psychiatric
14:47
and physical kind of front and I think dr.
14:50
Hung would I agree with me more times than not.
14:53
It's really interesting to work with people and bring to their
14:58
awareness sometimes that they're not even aware of all of these
15:01
things that they needed in their past.
15:05
Or currently that they just never really got and they often
15:09
dismiss it with. Oh, that's silly, that stupid.
15:12
I don't really think that. Yeah, yeah.
15:13
Or that, that's not trauma. And interesting.
15:16
I feel like I'm learning something or having my
15:17
perspective shift because I've always thought of that, as like,
15:21
Like trauma, but I'm really refreshing to also kind of see
15:24
that is as grief, which is really nice to just have that
15:28
different perspective. But but yeah, I think that
15:31
that's huge. And I think most people probably
15:34
struggle with that in some way or another right things that
15:36
maybe they needed and just absolutely.
15:38
And that's a lot of work that I do with people is around their
15:42
needs and identifying them and particularly working with people
15:46
in the healing process after a loss, aye.
15:51
Invite them to think about all of the roles and talking about
15:55
loss of a loved one. All of the roles that a person
15:58
played in their life and What needs were filled from that and
16:04
help them to see that those needs still exist.
16:08
And they will, of course, never be filled in the exact same way
16:11
and that is something to be grieved and paid attention to
16:14
and everything else, but it's also important to look at.
16:17
How are those needs going to be met?
16:18
Otherwise, you know, When when a partner dies there also you know
16:24
your travel buddy, your your financial companion, and and all
16:29
of those needs are very real and unfortunately, it's not stuff.
16:35
That's looked at often and it's really important because it
16:38
impacts somebody's life to the very core level.
16:41
Absolutely? Yeah, absolutely.
16:43
Yeah. But what, how painful and
16:45
complicated it is denial is totally natural.
16:49
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of our clients
16:53
family members would say that they know that their loved one
16:58
is in total denial of this huge loss that they've had and
17:03
they're using alcohol to just cover the pain up just numb
17:07
numb, the emotional pain of that huge loss and they've asked him
17:12
to go for help. They've asked them to process
17:14
it, get into it and they can't, or they want.
17:18
Hmm. Have you ever been in?
17:21
Situation, where someone someone came into your office, and you
17:25
help them help them. Have the courage to take that
17:29
step into that tough work. One of the things that I used
17:32
with the group's at the hospital, a lot that that open
17:36
people's eyes. I think, is I talked about this
17:39
similarities between grief and early recovery that in both
17:45
instances? You know, the rug has been
17:47
pulled out from them. They don't know who they are,
17:49
they don't know what's next. They don't know.
17:51
They're going to get there. They don't know if they even
17:53
care if they get there or not. Yeah.
17:55
So that's a huge thing. Physical symptoms are all over
17:59
the place. Emotional emotions are up and
18:01
down, and sideways and relationships are up in the air
18:04
and all this other kind of stuff.
18:06
When I delivered that news first to the group's, they were like,
18:10
wait a minute, why are you dumping all this?
18:13
And then I said, but the good news is healing from grief and
18:18
getting into recovery. Have a lot of similarities to Do
18:21
they have this similarities of it's one day at a time?
18:24
Because that's all you can take. They have the similarities that
18:27
spirituality can really be helpful.
18:29
And when I say spirituality, I refer to some connection to
18:33
something beyond that helps you to make some sense.
18:35
It might be nature. It might be music.
18:38
It might be a more traditional religion, whatever it is.
18:41
But it's what helps you make some sense of the universe.
18:45
It's helpful to have just a couple of people that you can
18:48
talk to that. You can that really Get what
18:51
you're going through. It's helpful to tell your story.
18:55
So there's a lot of similarities in both instances to.
18:58
So I remind them that they're not in getting into recovery and
19:05
or dealing with their healing from grief.
19:08
They're not only tackling one, they're tackling both at the
19:11
same time. Mmm-hmm makes it a little more
19:14
palatable at least. Yeah.
19:16
Absolutely. Did that answer your question?
19:18
I'm not sure if they did. I think it's great.
19:20
You're You're talking about getting people in sync with the
19:25
idea of grief, because they've heard a lot about recovery.
19:28
And you can say, okay, it's actually not that far off.
19:31
From this, this track that, you've already started to build
19:34
up for yourself. But we have people who are total
19:37
denial, right? Like it's shocking like Justin
19:41
and we work with so many clients here and we know that family of
19:47
origin trauma was was a huge contributing factor To the
19:51
development of their process or their substance that use.
19:55
And when you ask them, what was it?
19:57
Like they would say perfect. Okay.
19:59
Yeah, perfect family, not uncommon at all.
20:02
Yeah, yeah, and I think that so many of our, our clients loved
20:07
ones are just tearing their hair out.
20:10
Yeah, right. Like, how can you not see how
20:13
dysfunctional this is? How can you not see how much
20:15
pain you're carrying and what are some some ways that We can
20:21
break through like this. This Shield of denial.
20:25
Yeah, that is so powerful with a lot of our clients.
20:27
Yeah, I in that kind of instance, I turn to motivational
20:33
interviewing and the note the pointing out the distance, the
20:38
very gentle compassionate loving pointing out the dissonance and
20:43
you know, the other thing too that I think is important is the
20:46
whole notion of holding them. Them in their wholeness that
20:52
came from the spiritual counseling training that I had.
20:56
And I'm so grateful for it because I, it means that I'm a
20:59
therapist that doesn't work from the pathological standpoint.
21:02
It means that I'm holding them and their wholeness, even when
21:05
they can't see it. Yes.
21:06
So, I'm holding them in their ability to get through the grief
21:10
and their ability to see it eventually their ability to, you
21:15
know, stand up for their life. Yeah.
21:17
When they can't, possibly imagine that they even need to
21:20
This point in time, right? That makes a lot of sense,
21:24
actually, just thinking about it.
21:26
We had Sheila, Mainland visit with us and she's an
21:30
experiential therapists in Charlotte does a lot of training
21:33
and work with the on-site workshops team.
21:36
And she would say that safety is a little beginning.
21:40
Absolutely. And we talking about grief and
21:43
pain and how dangerous that feels and so many ways.
21:48
If you're not safe, absolutely, if you have a safe therapeutic
21:52
Ship. You're going to hide it and it
21:56
runs through this other thing that just ran across, which is
21:59
when we see something that doesn't make sense, we can react
22:02
to it with anger or curiosity, right?
22:05
Right. And I love your approach of
22:07
motivational interviewing because it's curiosity, right?
22:10
Tell me how that helps you tell me what you think about tell me
22:14
what you worried about can and it's just a much safer place for
22:18
people to get to know themselves better.
22:21
Yeah. I do a fair amount of ifs Parts
22:25
work to and curiosity is so key to that.
22:28
It's really interesting when somebody meets a part that
22:31
they're like I'm not sure I like this part.
22:33
What am I going to do with it? So for our non therapy.
22:38
Got it. People what is ifs?
22:40
Internal family systems. It was founded about 40 years
22:44
ago by Richard Schwartz and it is the notion that all of us
22:48
have many many parts within us and simple.
22:52
Whole thing that I often use with clients is I have a part
22:55
that wants to go to a party and I have a part that doesn't want
22:57
to go to the party. I have a part that you know, has
23:01
wonderful memories from childhood.
23:03
And I have a part that remembers that, you know, there was a lot
23:06
of neglect their to and as we start to get to know these
23:11
parts, the goal is not to banish any of them.
23:14
You know the parts of us that we don't like as well, the
23:17
judgmental and all this other kind of stuff, they all feel
23:20
like they have Nothing to offer us.
23:23
They're all rooting for us and and holding it Us in the
23:26
highest. Yeah.
23:28
And what we need to do is make the space to come from that to
23:34
understand them to accept them and to give them their space and
23:39
then we can begin to negotiate with them a little bit as
23:43
opposed to banish them, completely, right?
23:46
Yeah, yeah, great. Thanks for that.
23:48
I like that. If she Asian, I think there's a
23:51
lot of that that has to go on, right?
23:53
Well recovery is nothing but a lot of negotiation.
23:56
Yeah. Negotiation with ourselves
23:59
negotiation with other reason exactly.
24:02
Yeah, absolutely families. Yes, yeah, yeah.
24:06
Well, if someone negotiates and says well why do I have to stop
24:11
drinking? If I want to do this group or
24:14
Kent, can I keep drinking and keep working with you Annie on
24:18
Grief? What would you say to a quiet?
24:21
I would, it would, it would depend upon the client quite
24:26
frankly. There are some clients that I
24:28
work with, with harm reduction, first, and I suggest that look
24:34
at how they may be harming themselves, or putting
24:37
themselves or loved ones in danger and if they want to start
24:42
from a Harm reduction standpoint and they feel capable of doing
24:46
that. I may very well start some great
24:49
work with them if just to get a sense as to whether or not where
24:53
they really are. There are others that I would
24:57
probably just outright say, no, but it really is up to the
25:02
individual. But what's going on with the
25:04
individual client, but like, I have become a huge fan of harm
25:08
reduction and I think that's a it's open.
25:13
Opening of the door to a lot of people here.
25:15
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
25:17
And by that, you mean, we're going to take the good that we
25:21
can get safely. And so if, if total sobriety
25:26
right now is not an option and we can still safely.
25:28
Do some grief work? Will go for that.
25:30
Yes. But rule of thumb years?
25:33
It sounds like most of the time you're saying sobriety first.
25:37
Yeah. Well, mostly because I don't
25:40
think I don't think it's possible to really do deep grief
25:46
work. When you're in mind, Altered
25:49
States rights, a good chunk of your life just not being able to
25:52
connect truly emotional, right? Yeah.
25:54
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The the defenses are still a
25:58
little too strong at that point in time.
26:01
Yeah. Can you fully recover from
26:05
substance use, without during the grief work?
26:08
It's very question. That is a good question.
26:10
I I suppose it depends upon the losses that you've experienced
26:20
in your life. Say, you're in your early
26:24
twenties and you've had a relatively mild substance use
26:28
career. So far, you may be able to, but
26:31
if you've been using pretty heavy and hard for for a decade
26:35
or so, you have probably had enough grief instances from that
26:40
alone, the number of people at the rehab that I worked with
26:44
that had, you know, been shooting up with somebody who
26:46
died, right? So they have grief and Trauma at
26:48
the exact same time, right? And guilt and all sorts of other
26:52
things, then you're probably not going to be able to recover
26:55
until you do some, do some work around that definitely.
26:58
Hmm. Yeah.
27:00
I I talked about the fact that with all trauma comes grief and
27:07
with a lot of grief comes trauma, you know, if you're 95
27:11
year old grandmother died and she had lived a full life Life
27:15
and you had a good relationship. There's not going to be trauma
27:18
around that, but if you were shooting up with somebody and
27:22
they died next to you, give him some travel to work through to,
27:26
yeah, right. Yep.
27:29
Now that is 100% for sure. And you know dramatic.
27:32
I mean just using that word. I think substance use in itself.
27:35
I mean if anybody has struggled with the depths of addiction,
27:37
like in itself is traumatic, absolutely, no things.
27:41
We put ourselves through. Yeah, 100% 100%.
27:45
So I'm biased. I'd like to squeeze this into
27:48
the conversation. I think, anytime I think about
27:51
grief, I can't think about, I can't not think about
27:55
spirituality and just connections and stuff there.
27:57
So just kind of Opening that conversation up.
27:59
What do you think about them? Well, as I said earlier that is
28:03
one of the commonalities between the two in the recovery.
28:06
I think what I have learned and I am an Interfaith Minister and
28:12
a spiritual counselor as well. Is it is very important to give
28:17
space as to what spirituality is to each and every person
28:20
absolutely. A lot of times I will say it
28:23
maybe nature for you and maybe this it may be that but I agree
28:28
with You that fundamentally it's important.
28:30
But I also think it's really, really important to have a broad
28:34
swath as to what it could be. But given that, as I said,
28:39
spirituality to me, is something that has purpose and meaning
28:44
then, yes, that that is when someone has lost someone so
28:51
close to them. That is often what's missing.
28:54
And you know, David Kessler who used to work with Elisabeth,
28:57
Kubler-Ross Has written a book on this sixth stage of grief
29:02
which is finding meaning. And I think there's a lot of
29:05
validity to that that we we heal by saying, wait a minute.
29:11
I do have reason to go on. Wait a minute, it does make
29:13
sense in my own book, which is called if you want the rainbow,
29:19
welcome. The rain A Memoir of grief and
29:21
Recovery. I talked about the fact that
29:23
when I was sitting in a Sangha, it taught me to go back to my
29:27
breath and Point in time when I didn't care if I was breathing
29:30
or not. And I share that with a lot of
29:33
people because people are really quick to say I've got suicidal
29:37
but I don't care if I'm here or not completely completely
29:40
completely understandable, part of grief Absol.
29:43
So yeah and so whatever it is that helps us to find that
29:47
meaning in that purpose. Mmm.
29:49
To to want to still be here. Yeah, coming to your point
29:52
Justice. I think that I have a lot of
29:56
friends and acquaintances who Use spirituality to like, skip
30:03
grief, right? Right.
30:04
Okay, with it, right? So they'll say, everything
30:08
happens for a reason. Yeah, they're in a better place.
30:11
The there aren't having now and we're just moving on.
30:15
I should be happy. Right?
30:16
Have you heard of the term spiritual bypass?
30:19
Yeah, that's exactly what that is.
30:21
And so it was coined by John. Well, wood.
30:24
And it is to use a spiritual precept to go around it.
30:28
Big emotion and it is probably grief that that happens the most
30:33
around. You're absolutely right.
30:35
And it never it never works right?
30:39
You know, my it might work for a very short period of time but
30:42
it's going to catch up to you sooner or later.
30:44
Yeah. I mean, My Heart Like feels very
30:47
like frustrated and heavy when I hear those those conversations
30:53
happen because spirituality faith Is a huge part of my life
31:00
as well. I am a firm believer that there
31:04
is a higher power and the meaning and the intent of that
31:08
higher power is woven through everything that we experience.
31:13
But I also believe that our higher power wants us to
31:18
understand things more fully and live more holistically than
31:22
this. And so like, how do you how do
31:27
you help people? People think through all the
31:31
complexities of spiritually, sacred grief process.
31:38
Well, I that's an excellent question and the note I love the
31:42
notion of the spiritually sacred and it is to talk about the
31:48
sacredness of their life. How they lived?
31:51
What their legacy is, how they impacted their life, their own
31:54
life. The person who's left behind and
31:57
from there, in the honoring, they can usually start to get in
32:04
touch with the heart a little bit more and it tends to be a
32:08
little bit less dismissive. Yeah, the whole notion, you
32:16
noticed, we spoke earlier about the, the, what I call the
32:20
invitations to solve the living. Yes.
32:23
And one of them, the last one is the invitation to embrace one's
32:28
humanity and ones mortality. T.
32:30
And the reason that that became the eighth one, which I added in
32:36
the pandemic, as I noticed, how many people were so terrified of
32:40
death? Absolutely positively terrified.
32:43
Yeah, and I am with the spiritual teachers who
32:46
basically, say if you have not embraced that you're going to
32:51
leave this world someday, you're not going to be able to fully
32:54
live on this world. Either the Buddhists use a poet
32:58
meditation. Basically, as practicing dying
33:02
to become familiar with it. And there's a lot to be said for
33:08
that and in teaching somebody how to embrace their own, it
33:12
usually helps them open the door to grief a little bit more as
33:15
well. He said more about Soulful
33:20
living, I'll try it just strikes me as being the opposite of of
33:29
how of how we ordinarily live in ways that deplete us or burn us
33:35
out. It is absolutely the opposite of
33:38
that. It's a very spacious living.
33:40
It's a very being present living that is actually the Crux of the
33:46
studying that I'm doing. With Francis Weller is the whole
33:49
notion of soul. And the way I describe Soulful
33:52
living is it is about being present being available and it's
33:58
about and I often say you can look at somebody and know when
34:03
they're having a Soulful life but it's not about how it looks
34:08
to people. Whenever we get caught in how it
34:11
looks or what the ego wants at all.
34:13
This other kind of stuff, we are completely going opposite to
34:17
Seoul and One of my own spiritual teachers at one point
34:22
in time. Kim Hughes in describes
34:24
spiritual counseling as helping people to learn to live more
34:28
from their soul and less from their ego.
34:31
And that is how I describe my work.
34:32
A lot to is just really helping people to enter understand at
34:38
their core who they are and what they want and how they want to
34:43
live their life and giving themselves permission to do.
34:46
So it takes me back. Back to a quote from Rachel
34:50
Naomi remen that I like a lot to.
34:51
That says, healing may not be so much about getting better as it
34:55
is about letting go of everything.
34:57
That's not you all of the beliefs and all of the
34:59
expectations and becoming who you really are.
35:02
And I think that's true. Definitely in the process of
35:05
recovery. And it's also true in the
35:07
process of really deeply healing from grief.
35:10
Mmm. Yeah, absolutely.
35:13
I love that. I love that idea.
35:15
Yeah. Yeah, it's true.
35:16
And I mean, I have all these thoughts.
35:18
I need to my head, right? But I think, you know,
35:21
overarching li like our society. I think we know we do a lot of
35:24
the opposite of that. Absolutely, it's about the work,
35:27
the career advancements and just like you name it, right?
35:30
Is it look like yeah? Yeah.
35:33
Exactly. Right.
35:34
I was raised in a family of them just make it look good.
35:36
Yeah. Just make it look good, right?
35:38
Yeah. Keeping up with the Joneses, you
35:40
know, whatever the exterior is as long as everybody thinks that
35:43
it's good. Then we should be good, right?
35:44
But yeah, and it's not that right?
35:46
It's not Soulful less. Okay, so my first career was
35:51
actually an advertising. I was in the Glamorous world of
35:53
the ad business. And I've had many people laugh
35:56
that I've kind of taken one one extreme to the other and looking
36:00
at social work as a middle path. But yeah, you know, I had by 30
36:05
years old, I was a VP at one of the hot New York agencies and my
36:09
I was so empty though, right? I wasn't yet so far and I was
36:12
just I worked so hard to make the outside.
36:17
Look, okay. Is the inside was just mush,
36:20
just broken and much and that's what Soulful living gets.
36:26
You is, is to start to let go of the fact that you have to work
36:30
so hard to have the outside look good and to start to pay
36:34
attention to, what does the inside need more?
36:36
You know, things like sitting with those five gates, and
36:40
really asking your question, like, how does this impact me
36:44
today? It takes it takes a certain
36:47
level. I love commitment to Seoul to
36:50
even be able to begin their right.
36:53
Absolutely. Wow.
36:54
That's awesome. But that comparison is a big
36:59
part of why people stay in their addiction.
37:02
As long as they do like the shame, the embarrassment of
37:07
admitting that you have an alcohol use disorder or you have
37:12
a Kapil disorder. It's too shameful it Compares so
37:16
poorly. Everyone else?
37:19
I just have to keep it a secret. Yeah.
37:21
Same with grief, right? No one.
37:24
No one wants to be around me when I'm crying or sad.
37:27
So I need to hide it and just just move on, mhm, right, and it
37:36
doesn't work, it doesn't know. It definitely doesn't work.
37:39
And you know first of all, the truth is we're not hiding things
37:44
as much as we think we are right now.
37:46
People usually have a better Sense of what's going on and the
37:50
reality, another one of the invitations.
37:52
Ah, I just realized that invitation, I forgot to mention
37:55
to you guys, is the invitation to connect the invitation of
37:58
really connect starting with yourself and connecting with
38:02
others. Connecting with Spirits,
38:04
connecting with nature, connecting with with ancestors,
38:09
it's only when we can start to tap in the soul that we can
38:13
truly honestly connect when we're living from the make it
38:17
look good. We're always looking over our
38:19
shoulder as to, you know, how am I looking, how am I doing
38:22
compared to this other one, right?
38:24
So yeah, isn't that crazy? Because it's like we when we
38:28
live in this world where we're going to compare ourselves to
38:31
other people were pretty much guaranteed to not get what we
38:34
actually need or want. But when we switch tracks and
38:40
say, I don't care anymore, I'm going to live for my soul.
38:44
Hmm. You're actually going to get
38:47
what you want and And I'm not to go back into this other
38:50
Paradigm, but ironically, the people that you were previously
38:54
comparing yourself to. They're probably going to
38:56
notice. Hey, like, Annie's any so much
39:00
better. These yes.
39:01
Like she smiles, like she has energy.
39:04
Yeah, I want that for myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
39:09
I weird story, but I'll tell it. Anyhow, I worked at my last job
39:17
in advertising. That's not true.
39:19
My last job in advertising before I took a year off and got
39:22
sober and then came back into advertising was at a very small
39:26
agency and it was headed by a team of two.
39:30
And one of them was an English guy with his booming accent and
39:33
I called to make him and I was a horrendous employee there and I
39:37
had bad mouth them to clients. I was drunk at lunch a lot.
39:41
I came in late because I was hungover from the night before
39:43
and blah, blah, blah. And yet I always had the
39:47
attitude of all day. Don't know what they have with
39:49
me, you know. So I called him to make it a men
39:52
tonight and I said, you know, I wanted to acknowledge that I
39:55
didn't live up to how I could have, what I should have done
39:59
here and everything and again the ink booming English accent,
40:02
he says well we all loved you on your good days and my response
40:08
was well I thank you for that and I'm happy to say I'm having
40:10
a lot more good days. That's lovely. people notice
40:19
when you start living from your soul and I was also really glad
40:22
to see that the You said when you live for your soul, you
40:29
know, I think our society can also get confused and think,
40:33
living for our self, and living for ourselves, can be a very
40:38
selfish way of doing teachers. Soulful living has got a lot of
40:42
rule, a room for being available and being of service to others
40:47
as well. One of the things that that
40:50
Frances Willard talks about is the fact that we live in a
40:54
largely at A lesson Society because we haven't been formed
40:58
to grow to, really, push to grow up.
41:01
And what adulthood really is, is about being willing to start to
41:06
take responsibility for being a member of the community and
41:09
serving the community as well. And I think that's a really
41:13
important thing to consider and you know, something that we
41:17
don't have access to when we're still using and even when we
41:22
haven't really healed our grief. Yeah, yeah.
41:26
Absolutely absolutely. when people say, heal your grief, How
41:37
do you chew? Ask that question.
41:39
You haven't even asked it fully but because I had many people
41:42
say I will, I will never heal from grief.
41:45
Yeah. And I think that often comes
41:47
from a misguided sense of loyalty that if healing the
41:52
grief could mean shutting the door on it, it could be never
41:54
thinking about. It could be and that's not at
41:57
all. What healing from grief is the
41:58
best description that I've ever seen was a book that I read
42:01
shortly after my husband died. It's called seven choices by
42:06
Elizabeth Harper kneeled and she talks about the fact that the
42:11
last date that she identifies as integration and it's where you
42:15
again find that purpose and meaning that we talked about
42:18
earlier that you are again able to access joy that you're able
42:23
to recognize that issue still come up in life, but they don't
42:28
have to Define you anymore and how how I often describe it to
42:31
people is like when you've lost something or someone that had
42:35
previously. SLI.
42:36
Defined you. The loss itself will Define you
42:40
for a while. But what happens that healing
42:43
from grief is it's starting to make space for other things,
42:47
starting to make space for a new people to come into your life to
42:50
new interests and that kind of thing and that that's what
42:54
healing from grief is for me. It's about being able to, you
42:59
know, get through to that emerged age and find a new
43:02
chapter for yourself. Yeah.
43:04
Yeah. So that isn't, it doesn't go
43:07
away. You find a way to incorporate it
43:09
if you will. Yeah, so Monday was my wedding
43:14
anniversary and I had a tender day, you know, it was 23 years
43:18
ago and my husband died 21 years ago and I just made space for
43:25
it. You know, I did what I needed to
43:27
do. I was able to show up, it's been
43:29
a while, but I also You know, honored him in my heart.
43:36
Sure yeah. So yeah it doesn't completely go
43:39
away but you know, should it really?
43:43
It's a large part of what defines who we've become.
43:47
I had a sponsee once asked me one of the things that guides me
43:51
is. I have a deep deep trust that
43:54
things unfold for my highest good for all of our highest good
43:59
and human egoic self. Cannot see that.
44:03
It's to the time but I do have that trust in.
44:06
Sometimes I have to remind myself of that trust and I was
44:09
having this conversation with this pain see one time and she
44:12
said, but how can you feel that way after having lost your
44:16
husband, after having had such a short time with him and without
44:20
even a second thought the words that came out of my mouth were
44:23
because of who I became, as a result of that experience of
44:27
knowing him of his illness of his death, and all of it.
44:32
And I think that's him. An important part of getting to
44:35
the other side of of anything that we face in our life is the
44:38
possibility. Of, you know, who might, I
44:42
become as a result of this. Mmm, to the good obviously.
44:47
Well, well, like you mentioned, I mean, I think especially with
44:51
addiction, right. I mean, we hear so many people,
44:53
they're struggling with substance use disorder that are
44:55
thinking or kicking the tires of recovery, so, to speak.
44:58
Exactly to your point. Like, you know that fear of like
45:01
what will I be? Yeah.
45:03
What will I do? With my time.
45:04
Who will I spend my time with? I'll be boring people.
45:09
Am I gonna do for fun? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
45:12
It's amazing. What, our mind can tell us.
45:14
You know, I remember being terrified, it was a long time
45:18
ago about the I will never have fun.
45:19
Again, I have had so much more fun and Recovery right ever had?
45:24
Yeah, yeah, but you know, we don't know what we don't know
45:28
until and that's where it's important to have people that
45:32
they can share their Orion strength and hope with us both
45:35
around recovery and around the fact that it's possible to heal
45:38
from grief and to love again and to, you know, be a part of life
45:43
again and all of that. Yeah, absolutely, wow, yeah.
45:49
Any, I thank you so much for meeting with us today, like we
45:54
said earlier, grief is something that we're all experiencing.
45:57
Absolutely. And it keeps us stuck in in our
46:02
pain. And a lot of us are stuck there
46:06
just because we don't know that there's another side to it.
46:09
So, I just feel so blessed and fortunate to hear your story.
46:13
And, and you're telling us that there is another side.
46:17
There is a Soulful life. Our future and our higher power
46:21
desires that for all of us and we can access it.
46:25
Like what we talked with wise people like yourself, when we
46:28
look for healing in a place for detox and recovery, and we meet
46:32
other people who have been on this journey.
46:35
So, there's resources are out there.
46:37
Yeah. For people.
46:38
And, and they just, but it's not every day.
46:41
We might not be aware of it, but there's resources out there and
46:44
there's hope and assault full life ahead for all of us.
46:47
Yeah. And I do just want to offer.
46:49
If anybody wants to learn more about my perspective, my website
46:52
is your soul path. That calm.
46:55
Excellent, excellent. So we will have to put a link in
46:58
the description to all the books that you've shared all the
47:02
authors and great minds that you've worked with and of course
47:06
how clients can connect to, you also left with that there.
47:09
Thank you. Thank you, honey.
47:11
Thank you.