Latest / Turning Grief into Growth: The Journey of Transformation / Episode #20-Ben Harris

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Episode #20-Ben Harris · 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 Lipsteam.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, good day.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: Don, how art thou uh this morning?
0:11
SPEAKER_00: That's my old English, my King James version of uh language this morning.
0:16
SPEAKER_02: How art thou?
0:18
SPEAKER_02: Um this morning, and and we decided a long time ago that not everyone not everyone's listening in the morning, even though I do.
0:27
SPEAKER_02: I it's on on Thursdays.
0:30
SPEAKER_02: I look forward to our episode dropping, and I I put my earbuds on and go on a walk and listen to the episode that just dropped.
0:39
SPEAKER_02: Um, so anyway, good day to you.
0:41
SPEAKER_02: Uh, good day to our listeners, and and I'm uh I'm excited about our guests.
0:48
SPEAKER_02: Should I just go ahead and dig in and by all means, dig in.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Introduce our guest, Ben Harris.
0:54
SPEAKER_02: All right.
0:55
SPEAKER_02: Well, besides being someone who I consider a good friend, since we met in 2012 um at a conference that we uh were sitting on a a panel uh talking about our losses to uh what could have been thousands of um military higher-ups at the DOD uh VA conference on suicide prevention in 2012.
1:27
SPEAKER_02: Um and he's impressed me uh ever since.
1:32
SPEAKER_02: Um so Ben Ben knows grief in a deeply personal way.
1:39
SPEAKER_02: Uh beginning in 2001.
1:42
SPEAKER_02: He lost three of his five immediate family members, his father and both of his younger brothers, over the span of just a decade.
1:52
SPEAKER_02: Through those losses, Ben discovered the importance of caring for his own well-being, learning to extend himself grace, and lean into the power of peer support.
2:05
SPEAKER_02: Today he is the co-founder of Sibling Strong Retreats, soon evolving into the Sibling Strong Initiative, which helps adults who have lost a brother or sister find connection, healing, and community.
2:19
SPEAKER_02: And you can learn more at siblingstrong.online.
2:26
SPEAKER_02: Um welcome, Ben.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Don.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: It's always a pleasure to see you.
2:31
SPEAKER_01: I'm excited for our conversation today.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: And it's a pleasure to uh to have just met you this morning, Greg.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, I feel the same way.
2:40
SPEAKER_01: Thank both you gentlemen.
2:41
SPEAKER_02: Um if you wouldn't mind, just um could you just give us a little background?
2:50
SPEAKER_02: Um, I know I you know talked a little bit about it in your introduction, but uh just a little bit more about your grief and uh and what uh what has yeah, what's been the most profound uh piece of that?
3:09
SPEAKER_01: The most profound piece of my grief.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: I'll I'll start with a little bit of context.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: So I'm a I'm a Georgia-grown gentleman.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: I was raised in South Georgia.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: I live in Decatur now, part of the Metro Atlanta area, but growing up in South Georgia, it was me and my three brothers and my mom and my dad.
3:29
SPEAKER_01: And my parents had a furniture store, so I so we grew up in the family business um working alongside and uh learning alongside our parents.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: I had a very close relationship with my dad.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: Um he was a mentor, um, a confidant, uh best friend, but always a father first and foremost.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: Um I moved from South Georgia up to Atlanta to go to college um way back in last millennium, 1999.
4:08
SPEAKER_01: And uh unfortunately, while I was in my junior year um at Emory University, my dad passed on.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: As you mentioned, that was my first of three losses that happened in 2001.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: Um dad died of a heart attack, and it was a sudden and traumatic loss for everyone in our family.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: Dad had been a bedrock and a pillar of support for all of us.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, to give a kind of a little bit more of a synopsis, like following his death, my little brother Christopher, um, who was my other best friend and another confidant, he really struggled um with drugs and alcohol and went down a path over the four years and one week to a day that he lived following Dad's death.
5:12
SPEAKER_01: Christopher died November 17th, 2005, uh, to a drug overdose.
5:22
SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, I was involved in each of these funerals and the preparations, but uh maybe less so as dad's because I was I was a kid, I was only 20 years old when dad died.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: Um when Chris died, I was a little bit older, 24.
5:42
SPEAKER_01: And I helped pull together some of the arrangements for the services um and managed a lot of that.
5:50
SPEAKER_01: Um then following Christopher's death, my little brother Michael, um he was eight years younger than me.
6:01
SPEAKER_01: Um wonderful man of intelligence and wit and service, he decided to uh follow me up to Emory University and then he dropped out in his after following his sophomore year.
6:16
SPEAKER_01: He wanted to be of service to our country.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: So he joined the U.S.
6:21
SPEAKER_01: Marine Corps.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: And uh long story short, I'm happy to expound on any of these stories in length here, but um he came home from Afghanistan.
6:32
SPEAKER_01: He served with 2-8 Echo Company, America's Battalion, uh as a machine gunner in Sangan Valley, Hellman Province and served honorably.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: He was according to his uh commanders, um one hell of a combat marine.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: But he came home with the invisible wounds of war, and we lost Michael to suicide February 6, 2012.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: So between uh November 10th, 2001 and just over 10 years later, um, February 6th, 2012, I lost three of my five immediate family members.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, Ben, uh you said that you would be happy to expound on uh any of those.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: I think it's an interesting concept because, oh my, there is so much in between those bookends.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and I just uh I don't know you, uh, but I just sense and feel the deep um resounding grief that's that's lingers, that's there.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: It's not that we don't grow in our our our trek, our journey, whatever word you want to put on it, but it'll always be with us.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's interesting because you covered um kind of three different major gamuts of loss uh right there.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh when you look at a heart attack you know due to illness, when you look at drug overdose, which we see you know is a huge pandemic uh here in the US, and as well as the mental health uh aspect of suicide.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: So there's there's just really kind of um what you gave us as a rapper, I fully acknowledge and understand there's a lot more uh in there.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: Um how let me ask you this.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: How do you cope with so much loss?
8:31
SPEAKER_00: Like I lost my dad in 2017, but I wasn't raised by my dad.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: My parents got divorced when I was 10 months old.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: Got to know my dad later in life, um, but I never shed a tear when my dad died.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: So there's a different type of relationship there than you obviously had with your father.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: Um, the only other major loss that I've had is my son, which is enough in and of itself.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: Um, but to lose your dad and your two brothers, uh, and was Christopher he was older than you?
9:00
SPEAKER_00: No, Christopher and Michael were both younger.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: They're both younger.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:04
SPEAKER_01: Gentleman back here as well.
9:06
SPEAKER_01: Very nice.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: Uh look at that.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: Me and Christopher.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: Nice.
9:13
SPEAKER_02: So how do you for for those that um are listening to us on Spotify and and uh Apple, uh Ben just shared uh two photos with us.
9:24
SPEAKER_02: Uh so if you if you're interested in seeing them, you can uh view it on YouTube.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: Good call out.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: And if you're listening on Spotify, it might be smart.
9:34
SPEAKER_01: I've been told I have a face for radio before.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: That's uh that's that's my line.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: That's what I use.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: So, Ben, how do you how do you cope?
9:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that's a loaded question.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: It's not a quick question to answer, but you have three major losses over a span of 10 years.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, how do you survive and how do you learn to thrive again?
9:58
SPEAKER_01: Well, I've coped differently with each of them.
10:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, I will say that when dad died from months afterward, I didn't know how to how to move forward in any way, shape, or form.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: When I felt myself feeling any happiness whatsoever, I would um feel guilt stricken for having any happiness, any joy.
10:29
SPEAKER_01: How can I feel this way?
10:30
SPEAKER_01: My dad, my hero, my best friend has just died so and so months ago.
10:35
SPEAKER_01: And I realized at some point I had an epiphany that we're not meant to endlessly suffer.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: We'll grieve and we'll carry our grief with us.
10:45
SPEAKER_01: But our soul, our spirit, our body, our mind, whatever you prefer to think of it as, we need those moments of joy and of levity.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: And when those break through, that's a healthy, happy, positive thing.
11:01
SPEAKER_02: You you can you can have both, right?
11:04
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
11:05
SPEAKER_02: We we can be grieving and and still find joy and still find uh laughter and and still be very deep in our grief.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I didn't notice at the time as I've learned more about loss and grief.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: I've learned that's there's this dual process model of grief where you kind of dip into your your grief work, you dip into the the feelings, you dip into the and and then at other times you kind of maybe don't quite avoid it, but you focus on other things, and it's not as present with you.
11:39
SPEAKER_01: And so it took a long time at right after dad's death for me to first learn that lesson, that grief is not just endless suffering.
11:50
SPEAKER_01: I mean a whole complex array of emotions and experiences to it.
11:55
SPEAKER_02: Dr.
11:56
SPEAKER_02: Alan Wolfelt uh calls what you just described as dosing.
12:00
SPEAKER_02: Like you dose your grief, you dose your your you know, your life.
12:05
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, yeah, yeah.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: You know, one of the things that's probably always helped me the most, and I'm fortunate to be my father's son in this regard, uh, but I've always been very social and trusting and willing to share of myself vulnerably with others.
12:22
SPEAKER_01: And that has, I think, saved my life.
12:27
SPEAKER_01: It's something that I come to naturally, fortunately, but I share of myself and others share with me.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: There's something um there's a concept that uh an author named Parker Palmer calls companioning.
12:44
SPEAKER_01: And it's this concept that we don't necessarily need somebody to tell us um what to do.
12:53
SPEAKER_01: We don't need somebody to try to lead us down a path of what they think we should do.
12:57
SPEAKER_01: But if somebody will sit there and in with no judgment, with no leading questions, sit there and experience whatever you are sharing with them, listening to you, um kind of walking down that road, that companionship is just as valuable as anything else.
13:17
SPEAKER_01: And so I found my way to peer support.
13:21
SPEAKER_02: And that this is what attracted me to you um as a friend is your vulnerability and authenticity.
13:30
SPEAKER_02: Uh I felt like it allowed me to trust you.
13:34
SPEAKER_02: And and um I knew that you know you were someone safe that that I could be with, and you can be with me, and we're good, you know.
13:46
SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think that's what you know that vulnerability does for our listeners.
13:54
SPEAKER_02: I feel like that creates a level of trust that is um uh especially in grief, uh, that we can just be um we we bind our bind together uh you know that connection that that you're speaking of.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, um I I think it's important to call out, Don, I have never been accused of being an introvert.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I do think that there in life we tend to compartmentalize certain people that maybe are a little quote unquote better uh at doing things.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: And I think sometimes I hear this, like in the grief world, where well, I'm not an extrovert and I can't come alongside, I don't I don't have anything to offer or share, and I'm not as open talking with.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: Some of the best companioning people that I have had come alongside me were introverts.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think it's important to call out because it has nothing to do with your personality, it has nothing to do with whether you're an extrovert or introvert.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: There isn't a comfort level there that you need to have, but authenticity and vulnerability is my middle name.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, that is, you know, Ben, to your point, that is what has caused me to survive.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: What I have had to learn, and I'll I'll throw out the caution to our listeners, um, because people, I would say, especially men, want to be fixers.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and I don't think that is necessarily owned by a certain gender.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I do think that I have had to really caution myself on the advice giving or this is the way you should do it.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: Um, companioning is literally as simple as the gift of presence.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: It's coming alongside, being there.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: And um, when somebody says, Well, how did you handle this?
15:48
SPEAKER_00: You could say, Well, this is what I did on this certain date, but then it changed on this one.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: So it worked for me that that year, the next year it didn't.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: It might work for you.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: Um, but what I've heard from others is they also try to do this or that, but never to impose yourself on others.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: So I I think that's uh that's a really good the companioning.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: We just we need so much more of that because we talk about peer support all the time.
16:15
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Craig.
16:16
SPEAKER_01: And uh one thing I also want to make absolutely crystal clear is that while we talk about some of the things that did end up working for me and some of the lessons I learned, um, peer support being one of them, um, a companioning presence of others being one of them, you know.
16:38
SPEAKER_01: I did not find my way to those things gracefully or easily or necessarily quickly.
16:43
SPEAKER_01: I did and I want to stress there is no right way or wrong way to grieve.
16:50
SPEAKER_01: There are more sustainable and less sustainable practices for your health.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: But I'm the last one to tell anybody that they should or shouldn't be doing anything in their grief.
17:01
SPEAKER_01: Because I I'll be honest, I mean, I was I was drinking a lot in early days of some of these losses, things that aren't the healthiest, that aren't sustainable.
17:13
SPEAKER_01: Um but it's important to, I think, call out not just the when you say the things that helped me cope, I don't think of it as bad and um good coping mechanisms.
17:25
SPEAKER_01: I think of it as sustainable and unsustainable ones.
17:28
SPEAKER_02: I I love how you put that because that's um and and I've I think I'm gonna be changing my uh verbiage because I have uh always called it either healthy or unhealthy choices that we make to you know move through our grief.
17:46
SPEAKER_02: Um, but it it definitely sustainable or unsustainable um sounds so much better in grief.
17:56
SPEAKER_02: Um, because you're absolutely right.
17:58
SPEAKER_02: Like we need to be able to function um and feel our feelings instead of uh numbing them.
18:08
SPEAKER_02: And I'm not again like you say, you know, we're not here to tell people how they should grieve, but um, it is much more sustainable if we can feel our feelings.
18:21
SPEAKER_01: 100%.
18:22
SPEAKER_01: You gotta what do they say?
18:23
SPEAKER_01: You gotta feel it to heal it.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm not saying that you heal grief, because again, I'm not trying to uh uh I forget the word I'm looking for here, but I'm not trying to make it into a medical condition because it's not right natural cycling piece of this journey we call life.
18:41
SPEAKER_00: Well, Ben, congratulations.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you were the first person that has made me fill up my notepad uh this early in the podcast.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: So um I always sit here and take notes uh and I always write stuff down.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm having to go to page two.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh let's do it.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: So to Don's point, I I think I'm gonna really start incorporating that verbiage too, as far as sustainable and unsustainable.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: I uh come alongside a lot of men uh who have lost children.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: And um there are some uh, you know, and maybe I shouldn't use the word caustic, but I'm just gonna use it for the purposes today.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of caustic behaviors um where I see men practice avoidance.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: Uh and you had mentioned that uh when you were talking kind of your bio as far as just um putting yourself into other things, not necessarily avoidance, you said, uh, you know, doing other activities or whatever.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: And you know, there are there are when I say caustic, like if you're an alcoholic before you had a loved one die or had just an addictive personality, it's probably not a good thing to go back to that.
19:51
SPEAKER_00: However, um I have you know cautioned myself, I always put myself out there first, that um I think all of us have some addictive tendencies.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: Uh it might be workaholic, it might be pornography, it might be alcohol, it might be drugs, it might be addicted to having to have affirmation from somebody else, whatever it might be.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I do think that like a daily inventory of what is sustainable um is absolutely essential because there are certain things you do.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: Like I also, you know, tried the alcohol route.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: Now I still drink occasionally.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: I might have a beer if I go to a Mexican restaurant, or I might have a bourbon at home or something, but it's it's one-off type things.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: It's not something that um I find myself spiraling with.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: So I think that that is only for you to really be able to describe what is sustainable because it's different, you know, for everybody.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: Like I've got a lot of people I talk to, they're so proud that they haven't had a drop of alcohol.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: And for them, that's awesome, but you also can't make somebody feel guilty if they do have a beer or something occasionally.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: Um, so what is sustainable for one might not be, you know, for the other.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: 100%.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: And that's one of the interesting things that we discover about grief as well, is that much like our relationship with each person that I've lost, anyway, I'll speak for myself here.
21:18
SPEAKER_01: Much like my relationship with each person I've lost, my grief journey for each person I've lost has been very different and unique.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: And so it makes sense that the things that have helped me, the lessons I've learned have been different in between each one of those or from each one of those.
21:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, the ways I got through them, the the struggles I had were different from each one of those.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: For instance, um with Michael's death, um his suicide in February of 2012, there were a lot of factors contributing to a very difficult grief journey for me, was that one.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Expect it.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: I didn't see it coming.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: And I even made an off-handed, flippant comment to my business partner at the time that, well, last time I lost a brother, I was an asshole for a year.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: This time I'm going to try to be an asshole for only half a year.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: It was a lighthearted comment about how I thought I knew what was coming and how to.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: But I'll be honest.
22:24
SPEAKER_01: Because of perhaps the compound nature of the loss, you know, he was my third family member, because of the fact it was a suicide, because of the fact I had a father figure type role with Michael being eight years younger for a number of different reasons.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: It was a very difficult grief journey.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: And I spent several years feeling lonely and angry.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: And it took a while.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: I do believe that there's a new normal, and you don't come back to the person you were.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: You build a whole life around and including your grief and your loss.
23:15
SPEAKER_01: And that's what I had to do each time.
23:22
SPEAKER_02: Your father's uh grief or death um really affected you.
23:30
SPEAKER_02: Um and then uh Christopher dies, and then Michael, did you feel that uh through this uh the process of each of them, did you I I know you said you handled your grief differently, um but did you were you learning from like the fact that your father when he died that you know you may not have even addressed it right away?
24:03
SPEAKER_02: It hit you down the road, I think you you mentioned that you know it hit you hard um later later on.
24:12
SPEAKER_02: Um did it change your journey the way you were uh when when Christopher died?
24:22
SPEAKER_02: And then did that change your journey when Michael died?
24:27
SPEAKER_01: Okay, um 100%.
24:30
SPEAKER_01: When dad died, it felt like a nuclear bomb had gone off and wiped everything away.
24:35
SPEAKER_02: Right.
24:36
SPEAKER_01: And I had rebuilt stick by stick from the idea because it was my first loss, it was the the first experience where you learn you can lose someone who means the world to you.
24:49
SPEAKER_01: When Chris died for a variety of reasons, there was some frustration and anger.
24:57
SPEAKER_01: You know, he'd been spiraling down a path of alcohol and drugs for a while, and I tried talking to him and you know that how well that often goes.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: Um but with Christopher, I threw myself into work and you know uh you know, unhealthy behaviors like drinking or or less sustainable behaviors like drinking.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: Um and I tried to catharsize my, I don't know if that's a word or not.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: I tried to it is now it is now.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: I tried to make something of my grief, alchemize it, I guess, by doing work that I thought would help the world.
25:40
SPEAKER_01: And so that's how I try to turn my loss of dad and Christopher into work.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: I was working with a company um that I ran that I started called Hobnob, LLC.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: Um, no relation to the Hobnob Tavern in Atlanta, unfortunately.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: Um it was an attempt to try to make a worldwide impact.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: I know it sounds a little bit grandiose, and perhaps it was, but I at that point felt that if there was a reason that I had experienced these losses, it then I wanted to try to find that reason.
26:21
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to say maybe I'm meant to go do something big for the world that's going to help the world in some big way.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: Well, that was my way of coping, my way of just dealing with it.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, part of it was involving my faith at the time and what I I felt like had been placed on my plate.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: Um when I lost Michael, I'd had a very different experience.
26:49
SPEAKER_01: Instead, it wasn't that these things happened to try to create an opportunity for you to serve the world.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: It was just, well, sometimes shit happens.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't happen evenly, it doesn't happen fairly necessarily.
27:06
SPEAKER_01: And there is no fairness, it just we all lose people eventually.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: If we live long enough, we're going to lose someone we love.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: It's part of life.
27:15
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't happen at predetermined amounts of time, it doesn't happen conveniently ever.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: And uh what we do is we uh we learn to pick up the pieces, remember the one we've loved, and rebuild.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: It's a simple statement that we're all gonna lose somebody eventually.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: But I think it's something that we live in denial of.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't think it's something that we expect.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh my wife's um 102-year-old grandma passed away uh a few months ago.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: We we expected that it was gonna happen eventually.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, but when it comes to your dad dying young, you had a heart attack, and your two younger brothers, it it sneaks up on you.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's important to point out that um there are a lot of people that throw themselves into work.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: Uh and when I mean work, I'm not talking about occupational.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about ancillary foundations trying to get legislation changed, sitting on boards of nonprofits that deal with suicide loss, whatever it might be, in order to try to make a difference.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: And I think all of those are absolutely great things.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: So hear me loud and clear.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: But I do think that what I said, that daily inventory as far as what are the motives behind it, and am I exercising mental hygiene and self-care on a daily basis?
28:37
SPEAKER_00: Am I glossing over my grief?
28:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, you had compounded grief in the fact that you had three losses over a 10-year period of time, but then you also had complex grief in the fact of your, you know, if all three of them had died as of a heart attack, then it might not have been as complex.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying it wouldn't have been as hard.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying the grief wouldn't have been there, but the questions with the overdose, the questions with the suicide add a lot of complexity.
29:09
SPEAKER_00: So for our listeners out there that have been dealing with that, um, there is a lot of complexity with that.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of questions.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of if only I had done this or could have, shoulda, would have done that.
29:23
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, my son passed away in an auto accident.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: He was intoxicated, he was dealing with some mental health issues himself uh at the time.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: And I think if only I had flown out to Colorado and had been there.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we can punish ourselves uh for all those uh things, or we can learn to uh turn that grief into growth and you know, not ignore it, not it doesn't go away, but your your opening comment of we don't we're not made, grief is not endless suffering.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to constantly be in a state of mourning uh with that.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: Silence, drop the mic.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: That was not not to me, just the whole the whole comments are just everything.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: Man.
30:13
SPEAKER_02: But it it's true um that yeah grief is part of life, and we yes, we are gonna experience suffering, we're gonna experience sadness, but it doesn't have to be with us the rest of our lives.
30:32
SPEAKER_02: We can still grieve without the the suffering.
30:38
SPEAKER_02: We can still grieve without the pain.
30:41
SPEAKER_02: Um and I think that's where I'm gonna uh don't mean to put words in either of your mouths, but I feel like that's uh we are if we're not there, uh we're getting to that place now, uh all three of us, that we're able to to uh recognize uh our grief, integrate, we've integrated it into our lives, and um and now it's a part of us.
31:11
SPEAKER_02: Um we're doing work on, you know, because of it, uh the work that each of us is doing has a lot to do with, you know, the fact that we have lost people that we care deeply for.
31:25
SPEAKER_02: And Ben, you know, there's no question, uh what Greg was saying is so true that you know it's a complicated grief when you lose multiple people and in and the way uh each of them died uh you know, suddenly with your father, um, overdose with Christopher, and suicide with Michael.
31:51
SPEAKER_02: I mean, those are complicated griefs in and by themselves, but when you put all three together in a 10-year span, that's you know, it like that's a lot.
32:02
SPEAKER_01: And that probably led me to some of my greatest personal growth.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: My uh, I guess they talk about post-traumatic growth following Michael's death, I realized that there were some things in our family that if I didn't address and manage with myself, like some other currents of addictive behavior, addictive tendencies, things like that, that if I didn't manage my own personal wellness, um, then I could very easily go down uh a negative path that or a less sustainable path that wouldn't end up with me being around.
32:45
SPEAKER_01: I didn't want that.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: So I I focused when I was younger, I used to focus on like these like mind hacking and body hacking kind of books and concepts.
32:57
SPEAKER_01: I've got my bookshelf over here off camera.
32:59
SPEAKER_01: But um some of the things that have worked well for me is you know, I've I developed a practice of gratitude, like writing down what I'm grateful for every single day.
33:12
SPEAKER_01: Um, and what it does is it trains your brain to look for what you can be grateful for, even a warm cup of coffee or a hot cup of coffee.
33:22
SPEAKER_01: It was hot earlier, it might be warm now.
33:25
SPEAKER_01: But and I'm not saying that growth or that that I'm sorry, I'm not saying that uh gratitude is any antidote or for grief by any means, but there are a bunch of different practices that can help in their own right, um, incrementally, little bit by little bit.
33:47
SPEAKER_01: One of the things I try to do for myself, besides just making sure that my environment is is clean and neat every day and lights are on and stuff like that, I express my love to a friend, I express my love to a family member, I try to reconnect with somebody, I try to thank somebody.
34:03
SPEAKER_01: These are all the kinds of things that you don't normally see on a daily checklist.
34:09
SPEAKER_01: But I see them as soul enriching.
34:12
SPEAKER_01: And if I can build a checklist for the work I gotta get done this afternoon and the projects I gotta follow up with, um, I might as well build in some of the things that enrich my soul as well.
34:28
SPEAKER_02: That is that's great.
34:32
SPEAKER_02: You know, I um I've always been somebody that has looked for silver linings and you know the things that have um uh happened over the course of my life.
34:44
SPEAKER_02: Um and I recall uh about less than a week after Josh died, uh many of his friends and and my two surviving children uh and their friends were sitting around.
35:02
SPEAKER_02: And we were all just kind of like sitting in this deep dark place.
35:06
SPEAKER_02: And I don't know, the TV may have been on, but nobody was really paying any attention to what was on.
35:13
SPEAKER_02: And I remember standing up and declaring to them that we had to find a way to turn this tragedy into something positive.
35:28
SPEAKER_02: I I needed to do that.
35:30
SPEAKER_02: And you know, whether they did or not, uh I don't know, but I just felt like I needed to say that.
35:38
SPEAKER_02: And then I I felt like that was my mantra, um you know, to to help get me through um all the pain and the suffering.
35:52
SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, it was I'm going to find a way to turn this tragedy into something positive.
35:58
SPEAKER_01: And it was that mission, I think, that um that you have that uh helped bring you and me together originally, Don.
36:05
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
36:06
SPEAKER_01: It was four months after Michael's suicide when you and I uh joined several others on a family panel at the DOD VA um uh conference on suicide prevention and shared Joshua's and and Michael's stories.
36:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that that certainly was a a part of it, and that's what brought us together.
36:34
SPEAKER_02: And and I feel like that's what you're doing too, and and Greg as well.
36:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: It took me a little longer to get there, uh, honestly, when I think about that.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: I think about you know, I was almost catatonic, you know, uh a week or two out and just trying to figure out what was up and what was down, and it took me uh took me a little while, honestly.
36:56
SPEAKER_02: And and I'm glad you're saying that because part of why um I went there in my mind, I I mean doctor psychiatrist might tell you something different, but um I have had experienced a lot of grief prior to Joshua's suicide.
37:20
SPEAKER_02: Um and people very close to me.
37:24
SPEAKER_02: My grandmother uh died when I was six years old, and and her and I were inseparable.
37:30
SPEAKER_02: Um and then uh my mom died uh at a young 63, and she was a epitome of health, uh great health, and I didn't see it coming.
37:44
SPEAKER_02: Um and she was uh probably my best friend.
37:48
SPEAKER_02: Um and then uh with Joshua's uh suicide, I knew right away uh that I needed help because of my past experiences and not getting the help right away.
38:06
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, and and I I knew also that that this was a much more devastating loss to me than my mom or my grandmother.
38:18
SPEAKER_02: Um even though they were devastating at the time, uh this you know was just uh overwhelming.
38:25
SPEAKER_02: So I I get what you're saying, Ben.
38:28
SPEAKER_02: And uh and I agree.
38:30
SPEAKER_02: Um thank you.
38:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's hard to know what's going to work for you in grief because again, the relationship is unique, the grief is unique, and the things that are going to work for us are going to be unique.
38:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: Um, I've skimmed over a couple of the things that worked for me, but I've also seen counselors and psychiatrists over the course of my grief, and that's aided to in my uh in my grief journey.
38:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've had medication that's helped in my grief journey, but but some of these things like pure support were things that I learned after Michael's loss um through some support I had received from a national nonprofit.
39:11
SPEAKER_01: And uh that really made all the difference for me because eventually I found my way first to suicide loss survivors.
39:19
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, this is my tribe.
39:21
SPEAKER_01: And then I found my way to siblings, um, people who had lost a brother or sister.
39:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, I was like, oh, this is my tribe.
39:30
SPEAKER_01: And it really uh for me, it became such a wonderful experience.
39:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, people that I can cry with, but also laugh with.
39:41
SPEAKER_01: We switch back and forth between the uh the tears and the dark humor um pretty quickly in the sibling grief community.
39:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
39:53
SPEAKER_01: But it's always been something that um has brought me a lot of comfort, brought me a lot of catharsis as I've worked within those communities to try to support others and and be supported myself.
40:08
SPEAKER_02: Ben, if there's a one nugget that you could share with our listeners that they could take away and say, well, I'm glad that uh yeah, and and maybe even encapsul encapsulize what we've been talking about.
40:28
SPEAKER_02: Uh and I don't mean to put pressure on you, but I think um I think it'd be great to to have just one thing that they can walk away with and say, hey, that was a good I'm glad I listened to this.
40:43
SPEAKER_01: Something immediately comes to mind.
40:45
SPEAKER_01: And as hard as it may be.
40:49
SPEAKER_01: I I try to never give advice to anybody grieving because you don't need to hear my advice, but I will tell you one thing that has been so very helpful for me, and this is where I break my rule and I do share one small piece of advice with anybody grieving, and that is to find grace for yourself in this process, to be graceful with yourself, to be kind to yourself.
41:16
SPEAKER_01: It's not easy, there's no right way to do it.
41:19
SPEAKER_01: There are times you're going to feel crazy or weird for holding on to things or wanting to get rid of things or doing things or not doing things.
41:28
SPEAKER_01: There are times you're going to wonder, why can't I do this yet?
41:35
SPEAKER_01: Why can't I do this anymore?
41:38
SPEAKER_01: You've got to give yourself grace.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: Even when Love it.
41:46
SPEAKER_00: No, it's uh Dr.
41:47
SPEAKER_00: Frank Campbell taught me that in year one.
41:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, is I have to show myself grace.
41:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, when I threw David's fishing pole and tackle box uh in the lake at you know, Hamlin Lake and couldn't fish anymore.
41:59
SPEAKER_00: When I couldn't read my David Baldacci novels like I always loved, um you know, things have started to come back.
42:06
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, Ben, I can't thank you enough for coming on today.
42:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, this has been very insightful.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: You started off talking about the absolutely equivocable aspect of authenticity and vulnerability.
42:20
SPEAKER_00: And I'll leave our listeners uh with a little of that.
42:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm almost 6'7.
42:25
SPEAKER_00: My wife likes to remind me I'm 6'6 and a half, um, but who's counting?
42:29
SPEAKER_00: I guess I am.
42:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh 325 pounds, pretty big guy.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: And uh, I remember earlier on laying in bed in the middle of the night, 2, 3 a.m.
42:37
SPEAKER_00: in the morning, uh, with my phone, looking at Google photos of David and just weeping like a baby, bawling for hours on end.
42:46
SPEAKER_00: And she never complained.
42:48
SPEAKER_00: Uh, she, my wife, she took her hand and she would just put her hand on my chest, and that's all she had to do.
42:54
SPEAKER_00: She just that gift of presence, even in the middle of the night, she just put her hand on my chest, and that's what I needed.
43:01
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it's it brings back tears thinking about it.
43:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I I want to be authentic and vulnerable with our listeners.
43:10
SPEAKER_00: And there's just a couple of things I want to leave you with.
43:12
SPEAKER_00: I see you, I love you, and you're not alone.
43:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I like to say that because in in the grief world, so many people do not feel seen.
43:23
SPEAKER_00: They do not feel loved, and they feel like they're an island under themselves.
43:28
SPEAKER_00: So thank you for listening on this podcast.
43:32
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I see you, I love you, and you're not alone.
43:35
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Ben.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: Much love, guys.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: Thank you guys so much for the conversation today, and thank you, everyone, for listening.
43:42
SPEAKER_00: Our pleasure.
43:43
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to listen.
43:46
SPEAKER_00: We hope turning grief into growth spoke to your heart and becomes a part of your own journey of healing and transformation.
43:53
SPEAKER_00: If you know someone who could use a little hope, please share this episode with them.
43:58
SPEAKER_00: And don't forget to follow.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: like or subscribe on your favorite platform so you don't miss what's coming next.
44:05
SPEAKER_00: Don and I can't wait to share more conversations to help you keep turning your grief into growth.
44:11
SPEAKER_00: Until next time.