Podcast listeners, I've got someone for you today. Welcome Barry Liner. Grant, I'm so glad to have you here.
You know, I looked up the very, very first time we spoke and it was May 30, 20, 23, like we're almost on our little anniversary.
Oh, it's about our anniversary. That's awesome. Yeah. So Barry did a masterclass for my insider community, which I loved because da da, da da. Drum roll please. Barry is the Chief grief officer of the Memory Circle. So our topic today is grief and grief, tending and memories in the memory circle and to approach this topic.
I just knew it was you who I wanted to be my guest. So thank you so much for being here.
Yeah. And, and sometimes that can clear a room when, you know, when someone asks me what I do and I say I'm a grief coach, an educator, an advocate. And it can either like clear the room or people lean in real close because we all will experience grief and loss of all kinds over a lifetime. But it's really something that we don't talk about.
So I'm always so glad when folks like you are willing to have a conversation. And I loved sharing that masterclass, like there is, there's grief in all parts of our lives. So I always say small g grief and, and big G grief.
Totally. Yeah. So let's talk about it. There's so, I mean, already I'm thinking of all the different directions that we could go with this topic. But first of all, listeners, if you're still here, thank you. Knowing the topic. Yeah.
get scared, don't get scared.
is, it's sad. Of course there's pieces that are sad, but there's, but it's more than that.
And um, I think we're gonna be talking about all of it. And you just mentioned something, there's grief in losing people. There's grief in losing people from death.
Mm-hmm.
also grief in losing relationships of people that are still alive. So we can chat about that. And then there's grief and an identity shift.
And for me, let's say a sobriety journey, or maybe some of my listeners, there's definitely a grief in losing some sort of identity or past self. So grief really does encompass a lot. I think the interesting thing for you and I is, since we chatted about a year ago, we both had major loss,
Yeah,
just, you know, in the last six months or so.
So I know in January you lost your dad,
Yeah.
in December I lost my best friend as well as, um, I. In the fall, I lost my stepmom. So we've been hit with some pretty major losses
Ones.
that are pretty
ask and has become sort of a, a, a signature of the way that I try to open this conversation to the world is to ask you their names. So tell me their
Oh yeah. My best friend is Jennifer and my stepmom was named Cheryl. And what about your dad? I'm, I, I've loved getting to know him through your writing, but I am blanking on his name right now.
Neil. Neil Liner. Yeah.
Yeah. And, um, you, Barry has a substack called Permission Granted. anybody can join that and look back and read and get to know your dad, what you've already written and what you will continue to write about him.
He sounds like a real dynamo guide. Do you wanna share a little bit about him and then also his passing and what that's done to you?
love to. I mean, I came to my work. Um, by way of having lost my mom in 1993, my mom Ellen, died quite suddenly and unexpectedly at 50. My dad's death was wholly different. We found out about a decade ago that he had, was suffering from mild cognitive impairment, which really was the beginning of, uh, dementia, um, Alzheimer's.
And it was really interesting because he was not married. He has sister and I from his first marriage, two brothers from his second marriage, and the four liner siblings were his caretaking connection. We, um, I always say we lived alongside his memory loss and learned to meet him where he was along the journey and. It brought out so much good in all of us. We didn't know anything about caretaking. We didn't know very much about dementia. We all do now. Um, but since each and each person is really so different, um, we, we learned along the way. Like I said, we just, we, we kept learning and meeting him where he was just, just right where he was alongside him. And it was really hard because we were grieving the man that we were losing this incredible advertising um, who in the pharmaceutical industry, my whole entire growing up life. And, uh, worked on breakthrough drugs, like the very first breast cancer drugs. He worked, um, with the Kennedy's on Breast Cancer Awareness Week.
He. There were just so much that he shared along the way. And, and, and as, as I've written about, he was like this very quiet, humble, Midwestern guy. They used to call him the velvet hammer 'cause he'd like come into a meeting and he'd like just sort of be like, yeah, I have this idea. But he was never pushy.
And it was, he had like a sweet storytelling way about him, and all of a sudden you were buying like this, you know, million dollar idea from like the, you know, and you didn't even know, but you, you, you felt like he was gonna care for you. And he, and he did. And his clients loved him. We posted his obituary on LinkedIn because we knew that there were still some people in the industry that were, that were out there. And we got some notes. I, I highly recommend doing that because we got some notes back. Someone said, um, oh, we called him Uncle Neil. that just like warmed my heart and someone said, he taught me everything I knew. Um, there were just so many beautiful reflections and I think it's one of the things that I tell folks in my circle to do, to reach out to people that knew your person, outside of whether being a friend, a mother, like maybe it's like your friend is a coworker and you, and you find this beautiful 360 degree story about your person.
Like stuff, uh, we couldn't even imagine that there was enough time in the day for, uh, the way our parents met us and like knowing all the minutia and talking to you all the time. And call ended without, you know, love you, love you more, that you start to meet these people whose lives they touched and you can't even figure out how they could be those people out in the world. What was so different about my dad's loss is that we were saying goodbye. You know, they call it the long goodbye, which always made me like. roll and like angry, but it, but it really is because you slowly, slowly start to lose the person. Um, I always say now I'm grieving and allowing back in that before person, the person that we knew before the memory loss.
And so sort of celebrating that life and remembering that dad and also grieving the guy I met that was like really funny, had this amazing sense of humor painted like in incre, these incredible paintings. Um, he just was so and kind. So we saw more of him, like more came out even when he as, you know, verbal as he had been in the before days. We just, just loved him right where he was. And, we had to move him to memory care. that was really, really hard. But we had also had a lot of really hard discussions with him when we realized that there were gonna be choices that he was gonna have to make. And if he didn't remember ones that we were gonna ha had to help him make.
Mm-hmm.
we had those hard conversations. What do you want at end of life? How long do you wanna, do you wanna be here? Do you wanna be here with help? Do you wanna, you know, we had to have those really hard conversations. And was really good to know that what we were executing when he was nonverbal was exactly what he wanted. And I want that kind of piece for all grievers that you're not. Reckoning with grief upon grief of the unknown, of not knowing what they want, that you're hoping to make these best decisions. So have those hard conversations now. Um, make sure you have your stuff in order so that your people don't have to reckon with that either.
They can just grieve. I call that like clinging grief. Like we're gonna be sad, but we don't have to reckon with the guilt and the other complexities around that, which I think is really a gift to the griever.
Mm-hmm.
write your own even if it's, um, seems too soon. My mom was 50, you know? So I think knowing what we know now and how many people I have sat with that have to reckon with the complexities and guilt and. It's unneeded. It's not, it's, it's, it complicates grief. And so I say just having those difficult conversations will really relieve everybody of the guessing and the wondering and the, and a lot of financial burden too. Um, get your estate in order, even passwords, like you can, you can almost do nothing.
You know, when your person passes without myriad of passwords getting into accounts and knowing where they all are, and important papers. Every time I leave to go on even a small trip, I have like a little file that's like for you when I'm gone,
Mm-hmm.
my family knows, um, should something happen to me. It's all, it's all, here.
Here are all the important papers. I think it's really important.
Yeah, for sure. Um, the best thing you can do for your survivors is to let them know what you want because the people that love you want to do right by you. And if they don't know that there is that extra burden of, of guilt. It's interesting as you're talking. So first of all, I feel my dad passed away years ago at age 60 years old, and I feel like I'm continuing to get to know him through others and through his death and through his, it's like I, I'm, and as I age and grow thinking of him at different stages in his life, it's like we, I continue to learn about him long after he's gone. And a recent death that I have that I didn't mention was my grandma passed away just in March this year, but it was the best case scenario. She was 101.7 years old. Yes. Fully prepared. And so that was the thing. We knew we were carrying out her wishes. Exactly. She had had it all lined up and in place for her. Yeah.
And I, and I wanna say, even though, you know, that's a beautiful long life, and I think we need to remember also that even when they have a beautiful, long life, you don't know a life without grandma.
Mm-hmm.
time you're also reckoning with that grief. So, so I think sometimes we think the first thing that someone will say is, oh, she had such a long life, she that, and it kind of discounts your grief.
Or, you
Yeah.
we need to remember that matter how long that, even like losing a loved one after all those years on the planet, only knowing them here, a reckoning too. Right? We don't even know what it's like to live on the planet without grandma.
Yeah. Yeah. And she was the best case scenario as far as a health. She lived healthy, her quality of life was excellent right up until the end. And, um, it was great. But yeah, I was like, I was surprised myself at how sad I was,
Hmm.
you know, like even. Even though it was the best case scenario, I'm gonna miss my grandma.
Right? I'm sad. It's a her go. It's time. I'm ready. There's a reunion happening on that. There's way more people on that side for her. She's outlived two husbands, two chil, two children, all of her brothers and sisters. Her parents, like, imagine her having the time of her life at her reunion on the other side.
So it's all good. And yet of course I'm sad. The other thing that's um, cute though was in her receiving line for her funeral, a man, like a 85-year-old man who was probably six foot six, me that my grandma used to babysit him. And so he was so sad to have lost her back up. So this is very interesting though that you're. Dad was losing his memory, and you're the founder of the memory circle, and you had to navigate this, and it was a lot of goodbyes. It was goodbye to the person he was, and then the person he became, and then the person he became after that, as this, he had this at to start, probably escalating at the end, cognitive decline.
So you saw many versions of him and you had to say goodbye many times.
I don't think you even realized what was the, the, the potential last until it was,
Mm.
um, the beauty of the time that we were in with him was, I. So much video, so many pictures. I think because I had lost my mom, I was so aware that I wanted to capture all of that because my mom died before, um, we had phones and we weren't like a super eight video family.
And so there was very little left. And so I was really had this awareness about capturing pictures and moments and his audio history. Um, my daughter got to interview him. He knew all the grandkids. Um, my, uh, baby was born, my brother's baby was born while my dad was in memory care and he called it Grey's House.
And
Hmm.
there was so much about, like I said, about just meeting him right where he was during the entire process that um, when he could no longer remember stories about himself. We told him stories about him.
Hmm.
You know, we took him to get a covid shot and the woman said, I need to confirm your date of birth and your whatever.
And you know, he, he really couldn't remember. So she said, let me confirm your date of birth is this, and you know, are you ne nail, you know, is this your name? And he said, if it says handsome, then it's me. But it was very sweet because I told him, dad, the shot you're getting is is from Pfizer and that you used to work at Pfizer and they were a big client of yours.
And he says, yeah, I didn't work there, I just worked on some campaigns for that. Like we never knew exactly what he, what would come through. And the brain is so unbelievable. Some days there was such clarity and he would come out with something crazy once somebody was carrying a, um, a target bag of all things.
And he said. Isn't that a great logo? Look, someone went to Target. Isn't that a great logo? And he would, it was like that ad guy was in there, right? But we didn't even, like, how did he remember Target when he couldn't remember like the kids' names? It was, it just made me realize how astonishing the brain is.
And so we, we didn't know really, we were in the sadness of a goodbye. We knew we were losing that guy. Um, there was a lot of anticipatory grief, but we shared so much with each other. The siblings, like my, my brother would, would say, you know, I'm so sad that dad doesn't know I'm an agent. My other brother, I'm so sad.
Dad doesn't know. Like it's opening night. My sister, like, I'm so sad. Dad doesn't know. So even saying that, that aloud, you know, even, even being able to. We had our own grief support group, if you will, being able to talk the four of us about what felt sad and the big emotions that we were having. And but same, same, same as you said about feeling as if you knew him.
We were told over and over again by anybody that came in contact with us and my dad, he must have been a great dad. We can tell by the way you care for him. And, and what's better than that, you know, it was, it was not the end of life he deserved, you know, it was almost like this, this incredible brain, um, no longer working.
But once he went for one of those hideous tests, those memory tests where they're like, who's the president? Who's this? But then you have to like count backwards by whatever, which I couldn't do on a good day, like count backwards by threes or fives or eights or say the alphabet backwards. I was like, th these tests are so awful.
And once my dad turned to the doctor and he said. Haven't I remembered enough already?
Mm.
it was like his disc was full. That's like, that's how he saw it. But we found sheet after sheet of paper. It was like a beautiful mind. When we started to clean out his things, it was our names over and over again.
The, the sad part was knowing that he knew he was forgetting. Trying so hard to remember that our names all the people he loved over and over again. It was like Barry, Dana, Matthew, but it was all the grandkids. His sister, his brother. It was like all of us. And, and there were lists and pages and every notebook and inside his checkbook, it was just over and over until he couldn't remember anymore.
And we, we learned so many systems to put in place. You know, there's a phone that has just photos, like when he is stopped being able to know how to use his phone. There are these big oversized buttons and you just put your picture on it. It's like an auto dial with a, with a photo.
Mm-hmm.
we just found lots of systems like that to put in place and use them until they don't work anymore.
But they're terrific.
Oh my gosh. I have such a lump in my throat. I'm gonna
Aw.
cry about the names because. The flip side of grief is, is beauty and the fact that he had a life and the people that were so worth remembering
Aw, that's sweet. Thank you.
working so hard to remember
So hard.
had because it was so good. You know?
And he never, and he never said it out loud to us, which, which, you know, the finding that was really was treasure. 'cause that's what I felt. Thank you for that reflection. 'cause I really felt like he was trying so hard not to forget us. And I think, yeah, that's really just a beautiful testament and I wish.
That I had had a lot more conversations and time to talk to him about losing his dad as a little boy, because as I started to grow in my work and sit with more people who had lost their dad as children, I learned so much about what that looked like. And I had never really had the opportunity to say to him, you know, in my work, dad, I'm really understanding what it must have been like for you.
And I, I really wish that's the, the one, there's very little that my siblings and I feel like we, we didn't get to, you know, juice him up with knowing how loved he was. But I wish I could have said to him, I don't know how you knew how to be the extraordinary father you were without your own. Um, because it was all intuitive.
It wasn't like his dad taught him something and then he did what his dad did. He, it was just from this beautiful place of love and. He used to always tell, he always used to take pictures. He was a really beautiful photographer. Drag that big camera wherever he went. And whenever he would take a picture, his like dad joke, sense of humor would be like 1, 2, 7.
And I woke up the day after he died straight up in bed and realized in the middle of the night that my dad died on 1 2 7. And I like texted my siblings in the middle of the night. I'm like, dad died on January 27, you guys, that's 1, 2 7. And we got to say it at the funeral. And um, that was the other thing I'd always wished I had eulogized my mom and a lot of people said like, oh, too much shock too this, too that you can't, you couldn't possibly, I.
You know, writing is my love language. Let me write about you. Let me tell people the story of you. Let me also try to figure things out on paper when I can't figure out anything from the time I was little in a little pink diary with a lock on it to, you know, Substack. Now I always say my, my genre has always been quick.
Tell the others like, anything I learn or is confusing or, you know, I, I think if I write my story, then maybe you'll see yours. And so, yeah. So I kind of,
you on that. I've
yeah,
um, probably 10 eulogies. And performed them. It's like everyone's like you, I want you to do my obituary. I want you.
I've helped people write them. It's like a service on my website. I realize that it is really hard, so sometimes I'll let someone just. Tell me the story of your loved one and, and I'll, I'll send this back to you and you, you let me know how this sounds, but really we, even his obituary, we were at a lunch after we had done like the, I always say the sad men of all, all the stuff that you have to do when you lose loved one.
We were sitting around the diner where he loved to go and one of my brothers started the obituary and then passed his phone around to all the siblings and we added an, oh, yeah, what about, and hey, and, and we created this joint document and someone said they printed it because they didn't know you could write a eulogy.
The way that we did that, it sounded like an essay and it read like, you know, it read like something they would read in a magazine. Like it wasn't very formulaic or state or sound like it was in a newspaper. It was like the story of my dad and written by his four kids. Yeah.
I love it. You have eulogized your mom, maybe not in 1993, but since then, you definitely have.
I wrote it on her on my 50th birthday. She died at 50th. So on my 50th birthday I actually wrote the one I would've wanted to read,
Mm-hmm.
and I read it to the people at my yoga birthday party when I turned 50. Um, yeah, and I feel like I've written about her enough now and written to her enough now, which I will say is sort of a beautiful, what I call a grief tending tool, which is to change from just writing about our people, to writing to our people.
Mm-hmm.
That there's something really on a cellular level that connects you and creates that continuing bond that I think is so important. Um, and to bring them into the day to day, you know? Mom, you'd be so proud. Emma's graduating, you know, cum laude from BU today. Remember when I wanted to go to bu, you know, like really bringing her into the day to day instead of having those like horrible moments of sadness and despair, like she should be here.
And believe me, I've had a ton of those, but I feel like writing to her and bringing her into those days has become a, a real important tool for me. And I think when we do come to the page, especially when we write by hand, we create, uh, we use a part of our brain that actually responds in healing. And when we are in deep grief, um, sometimes our brain can protect us and, and our prefrontal cortex will sort of go offline.
And when you write by hand, it brings it back online in sort of a, um. Uh, a way of organizing our thoughts and making sense of what happened and that part of our brain. Um, the prefrontal cortex also responds in healing. So not just executive function, but also the part of our brain that responds in healing.
So I totally geek out now on the science. Like I feel like it was intuitive to me. It was the place where I helped, where it helped me make sense of the world. But now that I share it with others, um, I am just so interested in how expressive writing and write to heal protocols and just coming to the page and being your own story witness can really bring you a lot of, a lot of understanding and healing.
I love that. So your background is in journalism, is that correct?
is.
So this has always been a thing for you, but now you're combining it with your grief work. When did you come into grief work? Was it when your mom passed, way back when? Was that the start of a seed or did it take some time?
It took a long, it took a long, a much longer time. Yeah, it took a much longer time. I think the story I told myself for a very long time was, mom would be sad, mad, and pissed if you in any way defined yourself by her death. I, I really, that was really the story I told myself. And fast forward, we moved from New York to Chicago shortly after she died.
And um, I did a yoga teacher training. I was a yogi for many, many years. And I had a beloved teacher that was like, I can't believe you've never done teacher training. I was like, well, I don't wanna teach. And she's like, well, you'll just learn a lot about your practice. And at the end of the training, they said, um.
To write what they call a San Culpa, which is really coming up with almost like a, a future pulling mantra or idea or ideal that makes it sound like this thing is already done that's like in your highest and, and best purpose, like sitting in your purpose. And I was like, I sit shoulder to shoulder with others who have experienced mother loss.
It was like clear as day.
Mm-hmm.
I actually made that happen. And it was after that that people came up to me and said, there is nowhere to go for this. I can't believe, um, what this felt like. And so every year since then, I've always had something called Unmothered Mother's Day. I think the first one was in 2017.
And then people would ask me, could you do this for. I just lost my grandmother, my father, my partner, my, and I thought, Ooh, I, I have to make the circle bigger. You know, I feel like I have to make the circle bigger. But it wasn't formal. It was very informal. And I met with a shaman that a friend told me to see and the shaman said, you have to collaborate.
And I was like, I, I'm like kind of solopreneur vibes and freelance journalist and I've had stints at Chicago Tribune and like all these places, but I was like driving home on Lake Shore Drive and I was looking at the lake and I thought if you could collaborate with anybody, you know, who would that be and what would that look like?
And the only person I knew back then that had a podcast was an amazing friend of my sister named Elena Brower. She has the Practice You podcast, and it was lots of people with. You know, famous people with books and I was like, I don't know who I think I am, that I would be on her podcast. But it really was what came to me and her assistant sent me a form and at the very, very bottom of the form it said, is there anything else you wish for us to promote?
And I kid You Not Outta my fingers, came the memory circle. I hadn't searched it, thought of it. I mean, I, I've done branding and naming and, and PR for like, most of my life before I was a reporter. And I just thought out it came. And it's so interesting that you said it's interesting that you, you were with your dad through memory loss because the, the memory circle to me meant only then that I was sort of the keeper of the memories of my mother.
That we were the keeper of the memories. And then someone said to me, can you believe that? Now the memory circle also means that. As I meet now with other people in supporting caretakers and helping other people who now just come to me because they know my story, that I now see folks who are experiencing the anticipatory loss of not just in memory loss, but also in all kinds of long-term illness that we're, we're calling it grief and grieving, and they are seeing me before their person passes away to try to ease what that feels like.
So yeah, I started to do trainings right after that. I thought, if I'm gonna call myself this and really lean in, I started to do trainings with, um, Claire Bidwell Smith, hope Beman, who wrote, um, motherless Daughters, David [email protected]. Um, my trainings have trainings at this point, and I'm so interested in the different modalities.
Um, I call them grief tending tools, and I think. It is a practice. I think we need to learn to live with loss. That's really my philosophy. I don't think there's any end or culmination or graduation or stages. I think, um, we won't always be in the acute pain that we're in when we experience the loss at the start, but over time we will learn how to live with it, live alongside it.
Um, live, just live with grief on board in a way that feels like you just said, that we just create a more rich relationship with our people as we learn to carry on their memory in, in new and interesting ways.
For sure. I wanna hear more about this work, but also. I'm with you, and I think I've had so much loss in my life and my loss and my alcohol use
Hmm.
matched right as my loss escalated. So did my, uh, coping tool
Yeah.
wine on the couch. And mostly it was because, um, not of the loss as much as the trauma that I gave myself, because I performed the eulogies.
I wanted to do a really good job performing, and so I stuffed my feelings right to keep it together, to do a really good job. And I did a really great job for a lot of people that I love very much. And then the services were over and I told myself to get over it,
Mm.
over it. I didn't give myself time and space to feel the grief attend to the grief, or I just stuffed it and avoided it and expected myself to move along with and my life as if it never happened. And now I,
we know what happened.
the drink and I've also loved people since, and I know that I get to carry that along through. So that has been the biggest difference for me is I'm not gonna get over it. There is no going back to who I was before this, I'm forever changed, having lost this person that grief can live alongside me without taking me under.
Right. I can, um, we can share space and I can tend to it. And I can, you know, the biggest difference is I let myself express it now. And when my friend Jennifer died, wad, I a primal animal scream I let myself, and was it a little bit too much? Was it kind of dramatic? Do I deserve a actress award for that?
Maybe. But
No,
never done that before. I
I
let
totally, yeah, I totally disagree. I think that. Uh, tears and crying need, like way better pr. I,
yeah.
I was just with, um, this brilliant Dr. Ellen Ra and she said, you need to take tears to an 11.
Okay. Yeah.
Like ride them out. Like that whale is really what moves it through our body. What, and what happens sometimes is when you say stuff it like, we'll take an emotion, and all of our emotions big and small have a beginning and middle and an end.
Mm-hmm.
happens sometimes is like we get so wrapped up and it feels so big, but somehow we stop and we like, you know, we put it away right when it feels like
together.
too much and we just like pull ourselves together. A lot of that is societal, right? We're really quick to say soon as someone cries in like my, my circle or in, in, in front of me, just for any reason they apologize.
Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Right. We apologize. Cry it out. I am more worried about my people that can't find the tears. If you come to me and say, I haven't cried yet. I'm more worried about you than like the wailing to take it to an 11. Like, that's my new, my new battle cry. Like I really,
it. I
yeah. Yeah. Cry it out.
Yeah.
now we say, um, always remember to be just a little too much,
Yeah.
but
I'll take it.
same with
it.
like go for it, you know?
Go for it. Yeah. I think it's even the, even the, um, you know, what moves through us when we cry, grief, tears versus when we cry, like the, the very structure versus like, you know, the crying of an onion,
Mm-hmm.
molecularly, they even run down our face more slowly. That is so that other people can see that we are in sadness, that we are in, in need of support of tending to.
Um, and I think there's something so beautiful and heartbreaking and poetic about that. But we need to be seen, heard, witnessed, and understood in our grief.
Mm-hmm.
And we are doing a big rebrand of grief and grieving. And that was really, once I, um, I knew in like a, I did a reading with my mom once, like I saw medium and.
I said, I am, I just wanna know that like, it's okay. Like she's okay with me doing the work. And she's like, are you kidding? You did all the PR and all the writing and she was saying like, all of my background was for just this. Like you were all, that was all in preparation for, for exactly where you are right now.
That was my mom's message to me. And whether or not you, what you believe in the afterlife, I really believe that our people are energy in and around the universe That, that love can't die. That that, like, there, there is something that keeps going long after our soul is gone that the, there's just like, I mean our soul is still here, that the, the body may die, but there's, there's something that that lives on.
I, I have to believe that there's been too many signs and synchronicities that I've experienced, and this particular medium was sort of releasing my mom's. Spirit from the room so that, you know, she could go on with her next client and not have Ellen still hanging around the joint. And she's like, oh wait, one more thing Ellen said, don't make it sad.
And that was always my fear and it is always the feedback that I get. Like, you make it hopeful. Even my web designer said to me, you're pink grief. You're pink grief. And I always, that always cracks me up. But I think, I think it is sad. And also in the other hand, I think when we, like you said, when it's all the love and all the memories and all the things that we still hold so dear and carry forward and there are memory.
It's magic. It's just magic.
I love that. I got that from your first thing when you said, oh, my mom wouldn't want me to do this, was the story you told yourself,
Yeah.
um, not in the way that it had been done
Mm-hmm.
Like of course, you're the rebrand. You're the rebrand. And it's not sad, it's hopeful. And it reminds me of like, is, is pain is inevitable, but like suffering, the extra suffering is avoidable.
It's the same with grief. Like loss
Agree.
we're all gonna lose. But the added suffering,
Yeah. That's what, that's what
And there's some ways where you can not suffer so much. Right? You're gonna
totally right. What comes your, what, what comes your way? This is what, um, clear Bidwell Smith calls conscious grieving. We don't have the choice, right? That something comes our, our way. We, we haven't invited in whatever it is usually that we're grieving or that some big life change. But the way that we meet it, it is our choice.
We do have choice in power over the way that we meet it. And so that's what I mean when I say grief tending, is that we can practice. Every day ways in which we meet our grief, whether that is listening to sad music or going on a, a walk, um, moving our body every day, sitting down, lighting a candle, some ritual.
Um, there are just ways to be with it that if we do tend to it, like you said, if we don't stuff it away, uh, it won't come out sideways. It still may surprise you from time to time. You still may, you know, I used to fall apart in the grocery when I would see like the bounty because my mom always used to say, don't buy anything else.
Like if you, if you don't buy that, like, forget it.
to.
She did. She did. She really did. Um, I've even written about that, like how wowed she would be at all the variations that they have now. Like, I'm like, dear mom, you know, like, wait till you see how many, like, do they have all these, you know, the, the three size pick a size?
Like, do they have all these. Patterns and they have that in heaven.
Yeah, well you carrier with you. She's part of you. She's part of your memory.
I know
and she's made you who you are. And you go about your day and you think of her,
all day,
all my people are with. It's like, because this song, this time of the
uh,
this comes, there's something I wanna tell them.
There's something I wanna show them. There's, you know, I even have like recently literally took a screenshot, was gonna send to my friend and was like, oh, 'cause for a minute, forgot. Right? Like, um.
so many of my clients keep the phone on for a really long time and use that almost like the, the idea of the Japanese wind phone. Like they keep that on and they text into the vortex and they send the pictures to the phone and they keep that line open. I can't even tell you how many times I still get in my car and think I'm going to visit my dad.
It's like autopilot. I, I, I have that like. Beautiful. One moment where I'm like, I'm on my way.
Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know what, and then it's a relief from your grief for a minute when, until you realize, right? You're like,
know,
oh,
know.
ago, oh, they were here with me. I thought I forgot.
I forgot.
you
It's so sometimes those are sweet. I, I recently had one and it's been 32 years of my mom. I recently had one where I was like, I should call mom. It was something I, I can't even remember. It was something to do with going to see a Broadway show, but I, I, you know, I take her purse with me. There's so many things that I do that are like, ri ritual, like I take her purse with me to theater.
Like, come on Ellen, we're going to a show.
Speaking of, we were at the same show at the same place and didn't know it. Redwood in
is nuts? That is really Ann, a grief, a grief play.
Oh yes,
Hello.
I know, I know. Oh my gosh. And my Aunt Joan, who I lost, was the one to take me to see the Redwoods for the first time when I was 10 years old. So there was this whole thing and substance use was included in that. And um, yeah, the
Extraordinary. I, I hope that somebody has videotaped it. It's, um, Idina Menzel in Redwood. I was with a client who had lost her son, and she wanted my support to sit beside her to see it.
also with a client who has a son with substance use issues. Yeah. Sitting with her. And
it was,
until I posted on Facebook that I was there and you were like, wait, was it on this day? 'cause I was there,
and it was so crazy.
theater. We
It was,
space together and
and it was like a weeknight. It was a really odd,
It was a
yeah,
I think.
it really was crazy. But I even, the, the, the interesting thing was I sent, um, this woman pictures of me in the Redwoods. You know, uh, it's a place where I've done two retreats now in the, in the energy of those redwoods. Um, one again this August.
I think there's, there's magic in the, you know, I always say like, go hug a tree. Put your back against a tree. Like, feel your feet on the ground and feel your back against a tree. Like, be in nature, be in wonder, be in awe. Just the idea that it's all bigger than us
Mm-hmm.
is, you know, one of, one of my greatest tools.
Um, yeah, I, I really love the energy of those trees and I thought they did an extraordinary job recreating it in the set.
I loved it too. So nature writing. Also, I think you gave me this idea of like the up and out of you sort of thing,
Ah,
Um, so wailing, crying, screaming, tears, all of that writing, um,
Movement, moving energy. Right.
walk. These are all grief to light A candle, have a ritual. These are all grief tending, um, modalities. How, tell us about
I think music is a beautiful one. I always say have some playlists, like maybe it's really hard in the beginning, um, to be with their favorite music.
Mm-hmm.
nice when you're able, you can have a sad playlist if you have trouble with anger. I always say I make like a really like hair metal, heavy metal, like whatever.
Get whatever, you know, gets you, like, you can go on like a really stompy angry walk. Like we need to, uh, grief is just energy that needs to be moved through the body. It's there on account of loss. Just
What
it's, it's energy.
of grief and the old way of like,
Ah.
we know that it's not stage one through five in this order.
You know, the,
with your rebrand,
yeah. This, with my rebrand, the stages were really created for, um, the, those that were living with chronical chronic illness. And I think we adopted and adapted them because we are so hopeful that there is, if you will, like some magic pill, right? That we're gonna do these five steps and then we're gonna be done and
over it model that I tried.
we get over it model.
Right. And it is, it is interesting because I think when we were, like with my dad in hospice, I saw them on his behalf. He wasn't with all of them. Like I, I didn't see him in acceptance, but I was in acceptance and
Mm-hmm.
like, so I do think that you touch on all of the stages. Over the course of grief, but it's, it's not linear.
It's like a messy scribble. And you may go back and you may go forward and you may go back three times to, you know, anger and denial. And I think there are parts of the grief journey, but I don't, they, they are not a model for one through five and we're done. I don't believe, like we've just said that there,
certificate of completion
there is not, I so wish, I always tell people the good news and the bad news is there's no right way to grieve and there's no one way to grieve.
And so it's very hard to know. It's as unique as the person you lost. It is, you know, your way. So you try all of these things and you decide what works for you. I think group work is beautiful work. I think therapy is also great. I think for those who are not, um. There's some people for whom talking is just like, I don't wanna talk about it.
I think there's movement. That is grief therapy. That's movement therapy. Um, I think there are so many ways that we can engage gardening, using our hands, creativity. I am so, like I said, interested in the science travel, you know, that sense of awe can be seen when we, when we see how big the world is and we get out of our own environment and we see that we are, that the world is, is greater and beautiful and and bigger than all of us and we make beautiful connections.
Um, seeing bodies of water, mountains, there's so much that we can explore to see what works for us. And I think that's the thing. Trust your intuition. You know, you know, but you have to really check in and see this is a grief is a 360 degree full body experience. And I think we don't realize that. I think we don't realize that we're gonna feel it in our bones, that we're gonna feel it in our body.
Some of us have never really been comfortable like being in our bodies. A lot of us disassociate and there's so many tools and techniques. I will say if you are experiencing days where like you really feel like it's not moving and you're not able to be part of your day-to-day life in a fully functioning way, that is the time to ask for help.
And I know it is so hard for so many of us to ask for help, but nobody should grieve alone. I think if, if folks take nothing else away from this. We not only deserve, but need to be seen, heard, witnessed, and even understood in our grief. And I think because we're such a grief and death denying society, the messages that you might get, you know, one of the first messages we get is like, you have three days bereavement leave.
And it may or may not be paid. I don't know who could even plan a funeral in that amount.
it up,
Time. Yeah. Get it together. You're done. Now.
Yeah.
you will learn to live with loss over time, but if you are not in your life, if you are unable to function highly, you know, ask for help. Ask for help.
The hardest thing to do. I was so resistant to community myself, even on my sober journey, and it's ended up to be the biggest blessing, and it's like, mm, maybe you could do it alone, but it's so much better, easier, more fun.
I'm not a. Um, I'm a, I'm not a joiner either, but I have to say witnessing grief work, it's not necessarily that you're like, woo, we're all gonna go out and, you know, hang and be besties
Right.
is the wisdom exchange that happens in a circle,
Yeah.
is somebody who says something and you see yourself in what they're talking about in a way that makes you feel less alone or less, it's less crazy or, you know, unsure.
And then the same that they may hear what you say, or maybe you're a little bit further along in you're grief journey or sobriety journey, and you see hope. You're like, oh, that could be me. And the, it isn't necessarily, I think what people are getting themselves into. It's one hour a week where you really have a container to rest your grief.
So maybe that might be your only, I. Grief tending practice. But you know, I even say people to, people keep like all the things you need to lay down in group, in your notes, like on, even on your phone, like all the things you wanna talk about or the things that came up. Like just know that you have this safe container
Mm-hmm.
these other people who understand, it's a shorthand.
You're all speaking the same language. Even if you've lost different people, even if your journey is is different, there is some connective tissue there. And I think when you pull that thread, it, it can be really beautiful to see it run through a group. It's like,
Totally.
it's like a ribbon. It is. It's so beautiful.
And just the knowledge that you're not alone in this. You're not alone. You're not the only one feeling this way. Right.
You do, you know intuitively that you're not, I think it's crazy. Like we can look at all the stats, right? Like one of every three people, or 54, 4% of all people, you get all these stats, right? You feel still so isolated and alone immediately like this, this is only happening to me. You feel like the rest of the world is somehow spinning and you're the only one whose life has stopped.
Yeah.
And I think when you come to group, and it might not be, you know, you need time, there is, you know, sometimes I tell people six months out to like, go on a retreat or join a group, like you'll know and, and talk to the provider and do your due diligence. Make sure it's someone that I always say, do a little vibe.
Check, check in, and see if it's, you know, a good connection. Um, and that you'll feel, you know, only you get to say what a safe space is. And when you show up, see how that, you know, space feels in your own bones and body, um, because only you know.
Mm-hmm. Definitely. I love that. And I say keeping your notes, like in my group it's like report back to headquarters, right? Yeah. Your grief headquarters are your sober
Exactly. It's not, it's
what this person said, or,
exactly like you'll hear.
or
Yeah. You keep Yeah, exactly. The people that say the wrong thing, the ones that said nothing,
Right.
you know, the, the people in your life that just want you to be well and better and, and back to normal. And you are a whole new normal. Like you said, that loss of identity on the other side of grief is the same as sobriety.
Like you are a new person and people are
a
meeting you in this Yeah. People are meeting.
back,
No,
In either case, you're not reversing, you're not going back, you couldn't,
no,
a
no. I always say that's like, it's that line in the, in the sand where you have the before and the after
Yeah.
the after is really forever changed. You may look at the, at the before and, and visit her and wave to her from this side of the line, but. It is, it is. It's a new truth. It's a new you and you meet you and others meet you.
And I think there's so much compassion that you need to have. Um, and people have it in group
Mm-hmm.
need it to
Yeah. How do we become more grief informed, or what can we do in communities or workplaces to, you know, like a, like I have a friend who just had a miscarriage. Oh, everything is meant as meant to be, or people are in a better place, or, you know,
Oh
are the things that we say
yeah, yeah,
that helpful.
yeah,
But this is, we don't, nobody knows.
yeah, yeah.
Nobody knows. How do we become grief informed? What does that mean to
It's in, it's really interesting. I, uh, recently posted a beautiful video of a gentleman who lost his dad like seven years ago, and he was a guest on a podcast and he was talking about coming back to work and people are like, where were you? And he shares that his dad died and no one really said anything to him and.
The, the two sides of the coin are the workplace. Like those are not your friends and those are not your family. And so you can't expect them to be that. And I completely disagree. I think we spend so much of our life in offices that we can be compassionate souls and we can ask for a story about the person.
You can read the obit and bring one of the great things that you read that's of interest to you. Like, oh my God, I didn't know your dad was an ad guy. That's really cool. Just, just to be recognized. Right? Maybe, um, you know, someone else who had a miscarriage, let me know if you want me to put you in touch with my friend.
Like, how do you show up? I always say the cook cooks right show up as your truest self. If you're the one that cooks, by all means, you know, just say the casserole is outside the door or. Cinnamon buns or the favorite whatever. But if you're like a doer organizer, offer that service, um, dropping by to give your kids a lift, like I think show up is your truest self.
But the, but the bottom line is show up and say some,
it. It sounds like some people are scared, like if I mention it, they're gonna cry if I, me and crying is a bad thing. Right. I
Well, some of these people were like, I don't, yeah, some people were like,
about it.
some people are like, no, they're, we're never not thinking of her.
them
No,
they
I'm never forgetting my mom and dad died. I'm never forgetting that. But some of the people in the workplace were saying like, wait a minute. Like, I don't wanna cry at work.
So in the, in the spirit of that, I think, could you drop off a beautiful book of poetry? Could you put a note in the mail? Could you put one on their desk? You know, open at home. Uh, sometimes I say on the cover of a book to write. For when you're ready.
Mm-hmm.
For when you're ready. I have,
thinking of you.
yeah, I have a list on my, um, on my website of all the books that I really love, but also I think the writing down the death anniversary and remembering it on, oh, I know today is three months.
Just thinking how nice to know that you are not alone.
Yeah.
in those few words of somebody remembering the death anniversary. I think that's so lovely and such a small, simple gesture and so big for the griever. I have all the people, all the dead people are on my calendar. All their death dates
And there's so much at first attention and love and care and concern,
fades away.
are over, it starts to drop. When that first week
yeah,
is
yeah.
the dishes
Agreed.
It's not there. So having a
So be that. Yeah. So be that one that remembers that odd, you know, six month for the, for someone who miscarries, I think like Mother's Day can be really hard. Like remember that friend on Mother's Day,
Mm-hmm.
send them a card, write them a little text message, send a little email or a poem.
Um, I love memoir and poetry. I always say those are sort of easy. In the beginning. I think sometimes when we give them like the stack of books that are, you know, um, psych education, we can sometimes read those. And again, that's from one person's point of view, one therapist's point of view perhaps. And I think sometimes in those books, especially in the beginning, we're looking for a way of getting it right and we can be in those books.
And when it doesn't feel just right, when we're in acute grief, we, we feel like we're getting it right or we're getting it wrong. We judge ourselves for not being like, good at it.
Mm-hmm.
I would say keep beautiful words around you. And that means also the people who do you have in your ear, not the ones that are telling you, you know, you need to get over it, you need to get back to it, back to normal, back to, you know, business.
Um, I wish I knew some magic in getting us to be more grief informed as a whole. As a society, but I think it starts, maybe we'll start from the inside out instead of from the outside in. So being a compassionate leader means meeting a griever at your office and saying, who do you want to be in touch from the office?
Can we pick one person that communicates with you? So you're inbox is not full of everybody's business making you anxious, like it's business as usual, and you feel like you're gonna be fired while you're in the midst of trying to grieve a loved one. Um, what can the office do to welcome you back? You know, how can you make it easeful?
Um, even if you have a bereavement policy, and you should ask today, if you're listening to this and you're not sure of your company's bereavement policy, or you're in HR and you don't have one, or you go to HR and you find out that they don't have one, how can the company maybe write one together? What would it look like for us to feel supported as a company?
To meet a loss, to meet time that we need to be as caretakers, right? We're all, many of us caring for kids. The sandwich generation, caring for kids and parents at the very same time. Um, how can we be, like I said, how can we be compassionate companies? And I think we, we get more out of our people if we meet them with compassion than if we meet them with none.
You know, we're, we're, you don't want your griever back at work with their, with their broken heart. They can't, they have grief, fog. They can't think, they can't do their best job if you just, if you just allow them to. Have a, you know, I always say my wish is that we can call in grief as we would call in with like a, a cold, like I'm not coming in today.
There was a woman who shared with me that in the UK she asked her boss if they could create something called duvet days. Of course she said it with like a great British accent.
Yeah.
but you didn't have to answer. It wasn't a mental health day. It was kind of a duvet day was like judgment free zone. I'm staying under the covers, no questions asked.
You had like however many, she's like five duvet days. Wasn't vacation leave, it was just paid duvet day. Just take it. So I think if we can come up with ways that we can meet the workplace with compassionate leadership. We spend so much time there, so much, so much of our day away from our family that when we are grieving someone that we loved and we come back to these people that we have to see every day, we don't want nobody, we don't want them to say nothing at all and pretend nothing happened.
Right. It would be like coming back to work like you left with black hair and you come back blonde and no one's saying a word.
Mm-hmm.
It wouldn't happen if you had a baby. Everybody's asking
Mm-hmm.
Birth and death I think are treated so differently. Uh, you know, it's, it's, there's so much that's the same. It's the, it's the cycle of life ending and, and we just, we're, we're just not good at it.
I wish we were, I feel like we're getting better. I'm, I'm hopeful, but think of yourself having lost someone as. A lighthouse light as a teacher that you are paving the way. Maybe one thing that helped you, you can tell someone else that's grieving.
Yeah. I love that. And I just think it's loss is universal. You know, we're all losing people and I've worked at multiple workplaces where we've lost employees, so then we're navigating it together, right? And we're so awkward. We don't know what to do. We don't know
Just it just, it just happened. We learned after a play, we saw last week that two, two, the director had lost her mother two weeks prior to when they all started and someone else had an accident. And no, they're like, no one's talking about it. They called in a therapist and she started to tell me that they were talking about like essential oils and crystals, and she's like, I'm not putting a crystal at my butt.
I want you to acknowledge that the cast is grieving and we need. We need to come together and talk about what we're, what we're feeling like. This isn't a package of crystals. Like it's nice if that works for you,
Right.
but she was like, you're not talking about the elephant in the room. We, we need to talk about this person that we're missing.
Mm-hmm.
He was in the cast and now he is not in the cast.
Right,
He died. He's not at,
it felt ripped without warning, to
yeah. Yeah. He's not, he's not at another play. He didn't take another job. He is now no longer part of the fabric of, of what we knew yesterday. We need to talk about this and not everybody is gonna be comfortable talking about it the same way, but as I said, sometimes you just are the listener and you hear something that somebody else says and it makes you feel less alone, less.
Sometimes you feel crazy sometimes. Grief can be really crazy making. Because you are telling yourself a story or you have guilt and shame about something that was left unsaid. When you can bring that to a group that will hold space for that without judgment, you get to lay that down.
Mm-hmm.
Get to put that down if only for that, that time and space, and I hope forever.
But we need spaces. We need, we need the workplace to be a safe space.
Definitely, we do spend a lot of time there. You started the conversation and we're kind of ending the conversation on a, this, a similar note that guilt grief go hand in hand. It sounds like, it sounds like guilt is the complication, the a
of,
complication
yeah, one of, yeah.
can you share more about that?
What does that mean? Is it that you're not doing their end of wishes appropriately, or is that it
How much
argument or you were in a fight or
could be. Could be. Yeah. You're. Maybe you weren't speaking, maybe there was a fight. Maybe there were words unspoken, left unsaid. Maybe you feel awful for not having visited more. There's a lot of people that said, gosh, it was really hard for me to, I went to the hospital once and they were, you know, covered in tubes and that was really hard for me.
Or, you've experienced a prior loss and it involved the hospital and it's too hard for you to visit, but you still have, there's still sadness about having not showed up. And so I think sometimes fear and anxiety are also under the hood of, of guilt and shame.
Mm-hmm.
you know, maybe it's just because we, we wish that there was some way, maybe it's because, um, at their end of life you made decisions.
You know, we can go back with that, um, magical thinking and say, well, if I had just. Turned left instead of right. If I had just, you know, noticed that their breathing was a little bit heavy and taken them to the doctor sooner, you know, we can rewrite the story because we have the, the perspective now
prevented something
we would, we would've somehow, this would not be what we were grieving right now.
I could have done better. I could have changed it. I should have told the doctor I picked the wrong doctor. You know, all of those,
Mm-hmm.
you know, I just ask you to interrogate the truth. You know, sometimes I'll have them write that out what they're believing, the story I'm telling myself is, and then I ask them, is that the truth?
Mm-hmm.
And then to answer that is that the truth? And to answer that and to really sit as a writing exercise, the story I'm telling myself is, and then asking yourself when you see it in front of you on paper, is that the truth? Could I have changed it? I think it might be. Like I said, magical thinking that we could have changed what happened, that we didn't say we were sorry.
We have complicated relationships in so many ways. Um, I, I say right to them. Right to them. I think you can resolve so much by, you can still say the apology. You know, I always say the front seat. Imagine they're in the front seat with you when you're driving from place to place. Have that talk, have that talk.
See what it feels like if you just say out loud what you, what you wish you could have said. Um, for some it's really hard to be there at, at end of life and they wish they were. One more visit, one more phone call. Work was so busy. I was so busy. We, we, we all have with that 2020 vision, um, those wishes on our heart.
I do too. I do too. I, I think we had a, we had a beautiful relationship with my dad and i, I still, it's not guilt so much, it's just wishing there were more, more and more visits. Like what, what would it have looked like if I had gone every day?
Yeah, I think that's a tribute. Also, just like, him wanting to remember his beautiful life. You wanting more time with your beautiful person. I think that's a beautiful tribute in itself.
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. We miss him so much.
Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing your heart with us. This is so helpful. Um, I love the topic, so you've, you've always got my ears.
I'm not somebody who's gonna drop off. I'm all in because, um, there's been so much and it, it's shaped who I am. For those interested in becoming more grief informed or supporting others or getting support for themselves, tell us a little bit about the memory circle. Help folks can work with you, follow you, follow your work.
Yeah. Thank you. Um, at the memory circle on Instagram, I get so many beautiful dms that, you know, people have never been in circle, just read what I share there. And I think sometimes even a, a magic little square might have something that just makes you feel like you've been seen. Uh, a little bit of knowledge.
Um, my groups, uh, are six week sessions and, uh, we, same as the emotion I was saying, we kind of come in, we, we work, we open up, and then we leave. And people have been with me for years, but we do them in six week blocks, which I love. So, um, June, uh, two starts my, uh, partner loss group, and June three starts my Living with Loss group, which is an all loss group.
We'll begin a six week session and there's, uh, room in my Tuesday group at the moment. Um, I. Have writing workshops all the time, if that's up your alley. I work inside companies as well, so I'll come in like if, as you said, like if somebody loses an employee, I work with groups and one-on-one in that way.
Um, family meetings all always, and I'm really open sometimes you teach me what's needed, like coming into your sobriety group and talking about the grief that we have there. And, um, I work with folks now I think as, as I shared with a lot of non death loss too, divorce, um, pet loss. So all loss, welcome. And, um, if you don't see an offering on there, I have, you know, a intake that's like 15 minutes where I'll, I'll figure out what support looks like for you and if it's not with me, um, my network is, is wide and deep and I will find someone to help you support your particular loss.
Mm. Awesome. Thank you so much. And next time in, I'm in New York. We are going to a show together.
I didn't know.
not gonna let that happen again,
I didn't know that was up your alley.
without knowing. Okay.
Yeah. It's really a way I honor my mom. I feel like sometimes we, you know, we, we cook their meals, we return to their favorite places. I think that's what I do with my mom. Like this is, this is some shows she would never see and she just loved it. And so I returned to those.
Kind of a ode to Ellen.
I love it. I wanna sit with you in the dark as a O to Ellen as
Let's do it.
you so much,
Do.
Bye.
ran
