Hope Edelman, THE AFTERGRIEF
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[2:15]Hope Edelman has been writing, speaking, and leading workshops and retreats in the bereavement field for more than 25 years.
[2:22]She was 17 when she lost her mother to breast cancer and 40 when her father died.
[2:26]Events that inspired her to offer grief, education, and support to those who cannot otherwise receive it.
[2:31]Her first book, Motherless Daughters, was a number one New York Times bestseller and appeared on multiple bestseller lists worldwide.
[2:37]Her work has been translated into 14 languages and published in 11 countries.
[2:42]She is the author of seven additional nonfiction books, including Motherless Mothers,
[2:46]and the memoir, The Possibility of Everything.
[2:49]She was the recipient of the 2020 Community Educator Award from the Association for Death,
[2:54]Education, and Counseling, and has won a push card prize for her creative nonfiction.
[2:58]In addition to writing and speaking, she is a certified Martha Beck life coach and leads nonfiction
[3:03]workshops to help writers tell, revisit, and revise their stories of loss.
[3:07]She lives and works in Los Angeles and Iowa City.
[3:10]Her most recent book, which we're going to speak about today, is called The Aftergrief,
[3:14]Finding Your Way Along the Long Arc of Loss.
[3:18]Welcome home.
[3:19]Thank you so much for coming on momstone of time to read books, to discuss The Aftergrief,
[3:24]which I'm trying to show here, Finding Your Way Along the Long Arc of Loss.
[3:29]It's such a pleasure to be with you today.
[3:31]Thank you so much, Zavi.
[3:32]Would you mind?
[3:33]Please tell me listeners what your latest book is about and what inspired you to write it.
[3:38]Yes, well, my first book and several of my books were about early mother loss.
[3:43]So I wrote a book about the long-term effects of losing a mom when you are a child teenager
[3:48]or young adult, because that was my story.
[3:50]I was 17 years old when my mother died at breast cancer, and there were no books
[3:54]for girls like me, or adults like me, who had lost a mom when she was young.
[4:00]But then over the years, I started living more into my own experience.
[4:05]And I discovered that even decades later, this early loss was still coming up for me
[4:10]in new and different ways, some that I could anticipate or expect, and others that just
[4:16]blindsided me.
[4:17]And at that point, I knew lots of women in the motherless daughter's community,
[4:20]and I'd met a number of their brothers, and I had a lot of friends who had lost fathers or siblings,
[4:26]and they were telling the same story that the experience of grief was much more protracted,
[4:32]and in fact, extended over a lifetime in some ways.
[4:35]So that's how the after grief came about.
[4:37]That's what I'm calling the period that comes after that acute phase of grief,
[4:42]when we're really wondering how we're going to make it through every day
[4:45]without this person in our life.
[4:47]And then slowly, slowly, the intense pain starts to recede, and we enter this next phase
[4:54]where we're adjusting and adapting to the loss constantly over time.
[4:58]And that's what I call the after grief.
[4:59]So I interviewed 81 people who had lost parents, siblings, close friends, or romantic partners.
[5:05]Most of them before the age of 30, and then asked them how that kept showing up for them
[5:11]10, 20, 30 years later.
[5:13]In my case, 39 years since my mother died and 16 years since my father died,
[5:18]and they're still a big part of my life.
[5:20]And I think of them all the time.
[5:21]And I miss them from time to time, sometimes very painfully still.
[5:25]It's like it doesn't matter how much time has gone by.
[5:28]If you're missing something that you perceive to be so central to you,
[5:32]it never really goes away, right?
[5:33]I mean, does it?
[5:35]It doesn't really ever disappear.
[5:37]I don't think so.
[5:38]And that's why I think that, you know, expecting things to last a certain amount of time,
[5:42]or using measurements of time, often backfires on us.
[5:47]I'm frequently asked, well, how long before I move from the acute face
[5:51]grades into the after grief, you know, people want to have an idea, like,
[5:54]what calendar date they're going across the threshold?
[5:57]And I can't answer that question for anybody.
[5:59]It's so individual.
[6:00]For some people, three months, for some people, six, for some people, two years.
[6:04]It depends on so many factors.
[6:06]But I think once we release ourself from this idea that there's going to be an end point
[6:11]on the calendar and learn how to just move with the ebbs and the flows.
[6:16]And think in terms of intensity and duration rather than an end point,
[6:21]it's a much, I think, much kinder and gentler way to move forward without someone important in our life.
[6:27]You point out so aptly that most employers give people maybe no time, maybe two weeks,
[6:34]and you think you're supposed to be back on your feet.
[6:36]And of course, that's like impossible.
[6:38]Two weeks is nothing.
[6:39]It's like you can barely put your shoes on two weeks later.
[6:41]So, oh, Zibi, the average is three days of paid leave.
[6:45]And three days, oh my gosh, that's the average for the American workers.
[6:49]Three days of bereavement leave.
[6:51]And then you need to take paid leave or unpaid leave.
[6:54]I mean, I'm sorry, personal days, sick days.
[6:57]Or if you have mental health days maybe at your company, or you have to start going
[7:02]into paid time off in order to sufficiently mourn the person who died.
[7:07]And in many cultures, three days isn't even enough time to have the funeral,
[7:11]because there are preparations and there are rituals that you need to go through.
[7:15]And so people are going into unpaid time off just in order to mourn their dead,
[7:19]which I think actually isn't tragedy in this culture.
[7:21]Not to mention the fact that you're so cognitively impaired when you're in the intense
[7:27]beginnings of grief for the most part, that the idea that you have to go through all that
[7:31]sludge and then perform at work.
[7:34]And like, as if you were at the top of your game is close to impossible.
[7:38]So it's almost not even good practice for the companies to have
[7:42]employees who were like, you know, a fraction of themselves.
[7:46]If you just gave them a little more time, it might help.
[7:48]But anyway, I don't know why I've even gotten into this.
[7:51]For some people, work is a really welcome distraction,
[7:53]because they can compartmentalize really well.
[7:55]And then they feel like, okay, I can just leave that, you know, the intense distress
[8:00]over here.
[8:00]I can go to work and get some relief and then come back.
[8:03]But not everybody can do that.
[8:04]And those who can't, I think, shouldn't be expected to.
[8:07]You're right.
[8:07]You're absolutely right.
[8:08]No, grief.
[8:08]I mean, work can be a total refuge.
[8:11]You had so many passages I found so interesting.
[8:14]You wrote, a terrible disconnect exists between
[8:16]with the average person, things grief should look and feel like.
[8:19]Typically, a series of progressive time-limited stages that end in a state of closure
[8:23]and how grief that artful dodger actually behaves.
[8:27]This means a whole lot of people getting stuck in the gap
[8:29]between what they've been told to expect after someone dies
[8:32]and what they actually encounter when it happens.
[8:34]And I love to hear especially the artful dodger
[8:37]so much that I like wrote it here in like Belize Sharpie,
[8:40]because it's such a good description, right?
[8:42]It's something that comes in and out and creeps.
[8:45]It's like that creeping feeling, and you don't know where it's going.
[8:49]And it's so sneaky, almost.
[8:51]Right.
[8:51]Well, I'm also a child of the 70s, and I grew up on Oliver.
[8:54]Yeah, me too.
[8:55]Yeah, me too.
[8:58]I knew where I came from.
[9:01]A little boy with the black hair dancing in the streets of Yckenzie and London.
[9:05]I'm pretty sure my brother was the artful dodger in that play,
[9:08]but now I might be wrong, so forget it.
[9:10]You also wrote that mourners who were able to make meaning of their experiences
[9:15]exhibit lower levels of complicated grief and better mental and physical health later on.
[9:20]In fact, making meaning after trauma is the most powerful predictor of good,
[9:24]long-term outcome among adults.
[9:26]So I wanted you just to discuss this notion of complicated grief versus whatever the opposite
[9:31]is, regular grief and how, yeah, gut complicated grief is a term that's used to describe about 15%
[9:38]of mourners who can't seem to get out of that acute phase of grief.
[9:43]You know, it's like the grief channel gets stuck on high or gets stuck 24-7,
[9:49]and they're not able to compartmentalize and go to work and come back.
[9:52]They're at a high level of distress and can't turn the knob down.
[9:56]It's now believed that those are typically people who have preexis-
[10:00]seeing susceptibility to anxiety or depression.
[10:03]And that gets really amped up when somebody they love dies.
[10:07]But it is about 15% of the population.
[10:09]The rest of us kind of over time figure out
[10:12]how to adapt on our own.
[10:14]But I think there are still mourners' needs.
[10:16]And I would even create the mourners' bill of rights,
[10:20]things that we really need and deserve
[10:22]in order to adapt well on our own.
[10:24]Not everybody needs therapy.
[10:26]And not everybody is a talker
[10:29]and needs to talk it out.
[10:30]But I think we all need some form of self-expression.
[10:33]We all need some sense of safety and security
[10:37]in order to grieve, which is why some people experience
[10:40]postponed or delayed grief.
[10:42]But complicated grief is a known category
[10:45]within the bereavement field.
[10:46]And it affects about 15% of people.
[10:48]And they really do need some professional assistance
[10:51]in order to work through whatever trauma they may have.
[10:55]That's lingering or feelings of remorse or guilt
[10:59]or anxiety or depression that needs to be addressed
[11:02]concurrently with their bereavement needs.
[11:04]I'm actually surprised.
[11:05]I felt like the statistics on what percent of the population
[11:09]has anxiety or depression would make you
[11:11]we think that far more than 15% would have complicated grief.
[11:15]Like isn't, I can't remember.
[11:16]I don't know what the rates are of the top of my head.
[11:18]But we say complicated grief.
[11:20]And that's a term in the bereavement world
[11:22]to explain the people who are really
[11:24]at the highest level of distress and can't get out
[11:26]of it on their own.
[11:27]But I think everyone's grief is complicated.
[11:29]Totally.
[11:30]Because you had a difficult relationship with that person.
[11:33]It can be complicated because you have children
[11:34]to take care of.
[11:35]And you need to attend to their needs
[11:37]over losing a grandparent, for example, or a mom or a dad
[11:41]and don't have time to attend to your own.
[11:43]I think those are complications that
[11:45]can arise with grief.
[11:47]But a number of people who have anxiety and depression
[11:50]can manage it on their own or are already managing it
[11:52]when grief comes.
[11:53]But this 15% typically, it's like the volume
[11:57]not gets turned all the way up like I said.
[11:59]And they're not able to turn it down on their own
[12:02]or with the assistance of the people they already have
[12:04]on their team.
[12:05]And you mentioned how much therapy and talking can help.
[12:08]But that obviously some people are not talkers.
[12:10]What if you have someone who ends up in the 15%
[12:14]who doesn't find talking helpful?
[12:17]How do you help that person if therapy doesn't help?
[12:20]Oh, I recommend that anyone in the 15%
[12:23]work with a bereavement professional
[12:25]or especially a trauma-informed bereavement professional
[12:28]if the loss was due to a traumatic form of death
[12:31]like a suicide or a homicide or an accident
[12:34]that was disfiguring.
[12:36]Or sometimes really watching someone suffer
[12:38]for a long period of time is traumatic for us.
[12:41]There's something called shock trauma,
[12:42]which is when something happens very suddenly and unexpectedly,
[12:45]but there's also a category called strain trauma,
[12:48]which is taking care of someone or watching someone
[12:50]who's ill deteriorate over a long period of time.
[12:54]But so I would recommend almost anyone in the 15%
[12:57]who feels like they might not be able to.
[12:59]And they can decide is it that for six weeks
[13:03]they are too sad to get out of bed.
[13:04]I mean, that's serious, right?
[13:06]Or is it six months later?
[13:07]They still can't concentrate at work
[13:09]because they're still having images or flashbacks
[13:12]about how the loved one died.
[13:13]Those might be examples of complicated grief.
[13:16]But I think that anyone needs it
[13:19]for everyone needs a form of self-expression
[13:21]and it doesn't have to be talking.
[13:23]Some of us are talkers and we don't have anyone who listen.
[13:26]But we'll let us down.
[13:28]They don't want to hear, especially months later.
[13:30]They feel like we should be over it,
[13:32]which is why the introduction to the book
[13:34]is called getting over, getting over it
[13:35]because I think we just have to get past this idea
[13:37]as a culture that grief is something we get over.
[13:41]But forms of artistic expression or physical activity
[13:44]are also terrific ways to externalize our feelings
[13:48]whether we're doing it through cardio
[13:51]or we're doing it through dance or writing.
[13:54]Writing is known to be, and journaling is known to be
[13:57]a really excellent way of helping people release
[14:00]and process the emotions that come with grief.
[14:02]I think reading too, helping, you know,
[14:05]I know it's more of like a receptive type of act
[14:08]versus productive, but I think taking in other people's stories
[14:12]and sort of having that in your head
[14:13]sort of makes sense that your own can help.
[14:16]I think so.
[14:17]I think that's why certain book clubs
[14:19]can be really helpful if people are, you know,
[14:21]really responding to the material
[14:23]or reading a book like the after grief
[14:25]and then talking about it with somebody.
[14:27]That's Bibliotherapy and a form of talk therapy.
[14:30]You just need a compassionate other
[14:32]that you can confide in.
[14:33]It's really important, really, really important.
[14:35]All the research shows that, and this was one of the most
[14:38]fascinating things I learned when I wrote this book.
[14:42]It was a subset of social psychology
[14:45]and it's also a form of psychology called
[14:47]constructive aside psychology.
[14:48]It's about how we make sense of the world around us
[14:50]and this is how we make meaning.
[14:52]But we do it by creating a story
[14:55]that tells what happened and that makes sense to us.
[14:59]And sometimes that's hard when someone dies
[15:01]if we don't know all the facts
[15:03]or we don't really understand what happened or why
[15:06]or we weren't there to witness it
[15:07]and we have to piece it together
[15:09]from other people's accounts.
[15:10]That can take a while, but we need to create a story
[15:13]that makes sense to us emotionally and cognitively.
[15:17]And there's something called the story development phase
[15:20]after a death where the survivors piece together
[15:24]the story to make sense of it.
[15:25]And oftentimes we find that even within a family,
[15:28]members don't have the same story to explain what happened
[15:31]and they may make a different meaning out of the loss
[15:34]as a result.
[15:35]And we see that a lot when a parent dies and siblings
[15:37]have different stories about what happened
[15:39]and what it meant to them
[15:41]and what it means to the family as a whole.
[15:43]But after you create that story,
[15:45]you really need to be able to tell it in some way,
[15:48]whether it's writing it out as a memoir
[15:50]or putting it in your journal or talking to a friend
[15:53]or talking about it in therapy.
[15:56]The confiding part of story development
[15:59]is extremely important.
[16:00]They psychologists have found for people's adjustment
[16:04]over time that you have to be able to share that story
[16:07]in some way, whether it's with one person
[16:09]or the public at large.
[16:10]Maybe this is why I like those times Instagram all the time
[16:14]when I'm going through grief.
[16:15]I'm like so mortified by it now,
[16:17]but I'm like, that's how I process everything.
[16:20]And I know I'm not alone in that.
[16:21]So I think social media gives us an opportunity to confide.
[16:27]And even if we're doing it with a long list of strangers,
[16:31]we are still putting it out there in the world
[16:33]in some way and getting some feedback.
[16:35]I was also so interested in your book
[16:37]that you went back to the women who you had interviewed
[16:40]years and years ago for your motherless daughter's first spec.
[16:43]And I love the image of you like rooting through files
[16:47]and being like, well, who can I Google
[16:49]and find information about it at this point?
[16:51]So you reunited with, I think you said something like 20
[16:54]or 14 or something like that of the original crew
[16:56]and then interviewed them along with other people.
[16:59]What did you, what were your main findings?
[17:02]Well, that was something else.
[17:03]I felt like the Edelman P.I. firm for a while
[17:05]trying to make a job on this woman
[17:08]because it had been 27 years since I
[17:10]had first interviewed them from other list of daughters.
[17:12]So a lot of their last names had changed.
[17:14]They got married or they'd gotten divorced.
[17:17]A few of them had passed away.
[17:19]Some of them I just couldn't locate,
[17:21]but I did manage through and it wasn't really
[17:23]that sophisticated to be honest.
[17:25]My private understanding firm was not really that high level.
[17:29]But it was mostly Google and white pages and Facebook
[17:32]and LinkedIn and a couple of the women I had kept in touch
[17:36]with over the years.
[17:37]But yeah, I was really young.
[17:38]I was 28 years old living in New York.
[17:43]This was before the internet.
[17:44]I found these people by putting an ad in the back
[17:46]of the village voice or word of mouth.
[17:49]I traveled to a couple other cities.
[17:51]And so these women had now dispersed all over the world
[17:54]27 years later.
[17:56]But I had sat down with them one on one
[17:58]and taped the interviews.
[18:00]And some of the interviews went on for two, three, four hours,
[18:03]really extensive in-depth interviews.
[18:06]And then I had to use portions of it in the book
[18:09]and kept in touch with some of them after the book came out.
[18:12]They were all pseudonyms in the book.
[18:14]And I could not find when I was writing the after grief
[18:18]any studies that had tracked people over decades
[18:22]also to see how their stories had changed and evolved.
[18:25]Because when I say we make a story of the loss to make sense
[18:28]of it, that story, it's always in motion, right?
[18:32]It's always in a state of evolution.
[18:34]We're going to reach a point in our own development
[18:36]later where we're going to look back at those same set of facts.
[18:38]And we must see them differently.
[18:40]Or new information might come in.
[18:41]Or we might meet someone that tells us
[18:44]something about our loved one that we didn't know
[18:46]that maybe changes our perspective a bit.
[18:49]And so I was really interested.
[18:51]How do stories change over time?
[18:53]Stories of loss.
[18:54]And there weren't any studies.
[18:55]No studies tracked people longer than about seven years
[18:59]at the most.
[19:00]And that's because it's expensive to have a study that lasts
[19:03]that long.
[19:04]It's hard to keep participants in it for that long.
[19:06]There are all kinds of scientific reasons
[19:09]why those studies would be difficult to maintain.
[19:12]But I couldn't find anything that tracked people over decades.
[19:16]And then I remembered, oh, I have all these transcripts
[19:18]of interviews from these interviews
[19:21]that I did with the original motherless daughters.
[19:24]There were, I think, 94 of them.
[19:26]And I managed to find about 18 pretty without doing too much work.
[19:32]You know, a couple of days up to weeks of searching for them.
[19:36]And so I located 18 of them and were able to reach them
[19:39]through emails or to LinkedIn or to Facebook.
[19:43]And I think 17 of them agreed to be re-interviewed.
[19:47]And so I reconnected with a number of them in person
[19:52]because they still lived in New York.
[19:53]I flew out to New York and I sat down with them again
[19:56]27, 28 years later.
[19:58]And the rest of them by Skype.
[20:00]or FaceTime, always seeing each other.
[20:02]And it was extraordinary.
[20:04]It was extraordinary to see each other again
[20:06]after all this time.
[20:07]I learned that their stories were very dynamic.
[20:10]Obviously they changed a lot.
[20:11]Most of these women had been in their 20s and 30s
[20:14]when I first spoke with them.
[20:16]So now they had had very rich and full lives.
[20:18]They had been married.
[20:19]Some of them had been divorced.
[20:20]They were some of them had children
[20:22]or they were single moms.
[20:24]A number of them had lost their fathers as well.
[20:26]By that point or had other major losses in their lives.
[20:30]But I said, just as I had the first time,
[20:33]I'm just gonna ask you to tell me your story of mother loss,
[20:35]start wherever you'd like, and tell me the story.
[20:39]The second time I said, as if we've never talked before,
[20:42]I wanna see what your story looks like now,
[20:43]or sounds like now.
[20:44]And I asked the same kinds of questions I had the first time,
[20:48]but not leading questions.
[20:49]I was just asking them to fill in some parts of it
[20:53]that I thought could be flushed out more.
[20:55]And then we sat down together or both of us separately,
[20:59]but together looked at the original transcript
[21:02]and looked at the one that came several decades later.
[21:06]And it was really fascinating to see which parts of the story
[21:09]that had been so important to them
[21:11]when they were younger, didn't even show up
[21:14]in the later version.
[21:15]And which parts did show up almost verbatim
[21:18]because it had been important parts
[21:20]that they'd been telling over the years
[21:22]that they were telling it exactly the same way.
[21:25]But what really struck me, Zibi,
[21:27]was how many of them talked about that first interview
[21:31]as a watershed moment in their story.
[21:34]And I think it was for many of them,
[21:36]the first time they had been able to confide in someone
[21:40]because they had been carrying a story for all these years
[21:44]and people had told them you should be over it by now,
[21:46]or it's in the past, don't wallow, don't dwell,
[21:50]and family members maybe didn't want them to talk about it
[21:54]or had silenced them in some cases, very deliberately.
[21:57]And so it was the first time that someone said,
[22:00]I want to hear your story, and I want to hear all of it,
[22:02]and I'm going to give you hours to tell it.
[22:05]And quite a few of them said that interview
[22:08]was a real turning point for me.
[22:09]It was when I feel like my healing really advanced
[22:12]or in some cases really began
[22:13]because somebody wanted to hear it
[22:15]and it didn't have to carry it alone anymore.
[22:18]I mean, that must have made you feel really good.
[22:20]It did, but all those interviews helped me
[22:22]as much as they helped them
[22:23]because I was on the same journey that they were.
[22:26]So I was just thankful to all of them
[22:28]as they were to me because those original interviews
[22:31]were really very, more of a conversation
[22:33]than a Q&A.
[22:35]So if there's somebody who has recently lost a mother,
[22:39]say in the last five years,
[22:40]knowing what you have researched about the after grief,
[22:44]like what can they expect in 20 some odd years?
[22:47]You can expect that there will be certain moments
[22:49]when that loss feels almost fresh and new
[22:53]and painful again.
[22:54]And that's because they might be experiencing it
[22:56]in a new way.
[22:57]There's a category of grief that I identified
[23:01]in this book that I call new old grief.
[23:03]And that's when we experience an old loss in a new way.
[23:07]And we can't grieve the loss of person in this capacity
[23:11]until we get there.
[23:12]So for example, I was 17 when my mom died
[23:15]and I was 33 when my first daughter was born.
[23:18]There was absolutely no way I could grieve my mother's
[23:21]absence as a grandmother or as a resource to me
[23:24]as a new mom when I was 17.
[23:26]I couldn't even have those emotions when I was pregnant
[23:29]with my daughter, although I felt them coming.
[23:32]I really could only miss her that way
[23:34]and understand what she had lost when my daughter was there
[23:38]in my arms healthy.
[23:39]And it was 16 years after my mom had died.
[23:43]I had thought, oh gosh, even after all the work I'd done,
[23:46]I thought you'd think that more than anyone wrote this book
[23:50]have been traveling the world talking about mother loss
[23:52]that I would have a handle on this.
[23:53]And it turned out that no,
[23:55]I was no different from anybody else.
[23:57]I was still mourning the loss of my mom as a new mom
[24:01]in a way that I couldn't before.
[24:03]Because, and then another big one,
[24:05]and this is a big transition for women too,
[24:08]is when you reach and pass the age your mother was when she died.
[24:12]Because if your mom died,
[24:13]a young mother of us are gonna do that.
[24:15]And I've worked with women,
[24:17]and I also agree from lost coach.
[24:18]So I've worked with clients whose moms died
[24:20]when they were 29, 35.
[24:23]My mom was 42, they said, this is young.
[24:26]So 42 was a really long year for me.
[24:29]Cause I was like, wow, I'm as old as my mom was.
[24:31]And when I was 17, she seemed so old.
[24:34]And 42 is not very old.
[24:37]And then I turned 43 and that was like, whoa,
[24:39]I'm older than my mom.
[24:41]I got to be in this.
[24:42]And my inner relationship with her
[24:43]and my inner representation of her really needed to shift,
[24:47]especially as I got even older.
[24:49]And then I'm sort of looking back at her.
[24:51]And so I think women who have lost their moms just a few years ago
[24:56]can be aware that that's ahead.
[24:58]But I'm creating resources and there are resources
[25:01]that exist.
[25:02]And I'm actually working with people now
[25:03]who help create rituals to offer free templates
[25:07]for a way to honor reaching your mom's age
[25:10]and passing it.
[25:11]And also for acknowledging deaf anniversaries every year,
[25:15]particularly significant ones,
[25:17]like the first, the 10th, the 20th,
[25:19]almost like wedding anniversaries.
[25:20]We have ways to acknowledge wedding anniversaries,
[25:22]like a 25th wedding anniversary.
[25:24]But we don't have any way to acknowledge,
[25:26]wow, my dad or my mom has been gone for 20 years.
[25:29]That's a long time.
[25:31]I want to do something.
[25:31]I don't know what.
[25:32]There's nothing in the culture that we can do.
[25:34]Some, if you have a culture within American culture,
[25:38]there may be some kind of ritual
[25:40]that your family might perform like,
[25:42]a day of the dead celebration or ceremony.
[25:45]Or if you're Jewish, you can light a candle.
[25:47]But there really is, once we're done with the funeral
[25:51]and American culture, there really isn't a whole lot
[25:53]of ritual for us to connect with,
[25:56]to maintain those connections and to bind
[25:58]the past, the present, and the future
[26:00]for a sense of continuity and allow that person
[26:03]to walk forward with us in a meaningful way.
[26:06]And so I know there are a number of initiatives happening now,
[26:09]especially in the COVID era,
[26:11]to help people through these transitions.
[26:14]Anna, and my hope is that they will extend
[26:16]to the larger culture over time.
[26:18]I hope so.
[26:19]I feel like there's such a lack.
[26:21]You're so right.
[26:22]And it would just, I mean, everybody at some point or another,
[26:25]you, I mean, I guess maybe not every single person,
[26:28]but almost every single person goes through losing somebody
[26:31]at some point in their lives.
[26:32]And yet, there's not that much.
[26:34]I mean, their experts like you
[26:35]and their obviously books on grieving and things like that.
[26:39]That's not enough, right?
[26:40]Like your message that your ability to scale it
[26:44]is so important and like having things be a part of life
[26:49]as opposed to like we all know,
[26:50]okay, we go to a memorial service.
[26:52]Like then what?
[26:53]Like there should be more, there should be for 100% more
[26:56]goalposts and ways that the community can help you too.
[27:00]I think in COVID, and I think,
[27:02]I'm not sure if I mentioned an email,
[27:03]but we lost my mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law
[27:06]both within six weeks this summer.
[27:08]So I have my, you know, my husband who's 38
[27:11]and my sister-in-law, I'm 33, we've all, you know,
[27:13]they've been living with the kids in me this whole time.
[27:16]And we've been sort of going through this process together.
[27:19]And there's no, especially in COVID times,
[27:22]there's no community that you can be a part of, right?
[27:24]It's all virtual or, you know, maybe, you know,
[27:27]an a cousin, I'll check in on text,
[27:30]but it's not like what you had before.
[27:32]So and there's so many, many, many people
[27:34]who are going through this right now, not just for COVID,
[27:37]but in so many ways.
[27:38]And what would you say to that, not in my story, you know,
[27:41]itself, but just like the probably millions of people
[27:44]who can't be with somebody who's grieving
[27:47]or who feels they're doing it more or less alone?
[27:50]Right, I know this is so important right now.
[27:52]It's really important, you know, 120 years ago,
[27:55]grieving was a social phenomenon.
[27:58]People came together, like the village gathered
[28:01]to mourn the passing of one of their own
[28:04]and our facsimile of the, now that has, you know,
[28:07]has survived 120 years of Western culture is the funeral
[28:12]and the eulogy and the memorial service.
[28:14]And in some cases, the celebration of life
[28:17]and it doesn't extend much beyond the event itself,
[28:20]but it's something because it brings people together.
[28:22]And they sit and they share, they listen to stories
[28:25]and they share stories and they even laugh, you know,
[28:27]about warm and funny memories that they can share.
[28:31]And when it's much harder to do that now,
[28:33]I think the Zoom funerals and Zoom memorials
[28:36]don't really fulfill the need that,
[28:39]especially the mourners have for human companionship
[28:42]and human touch.
[28:43]But that said, they do offer an opportunity for people
[28:48]who can't physically get to a funeral
[28:51]to still be part of the village.
[28:53]People who can't afford to fly on short notice
[28:56]or can't leave children or can't leave work
[28:58]and otherwise would not be able to take part in the ritual.
[29:03]So my hope is that we get back to in-person gatherings
[29:07]and memorials as soon as we can, as soon as it's safe,
[29:10]but that we also live stream them
[29:11]so that the people who can't make it can still be part
[29:14]of that village and the village is more expansive.
[29:17]Because our village is now our dispersed, you know,
[29:19]they're not all in the same geographic perimeter.
[29:22]Our villages are spread out all over the world in some cases.
[29:26]And so we wanna find a way to bring them together.
[29:28]But people have asked me, you know, or said,
[29:31]we've had to postpone the funeral or memorial
[29:33]for a loved one who died it.
[29:35]And not just to COVID,
[29:36]because people are dying of all other causes as well, right?
[29:38]In the past nine months.
[29:40]But they say, you know, they've said to me,
[29:42]well, what do you think, you know, it may be another year
[29:45]before we can do it.
[29:46]And I said, doesn't matter.
[29:46]Where's the law that says the celebration of life
[29:50]has to occur within the first week or two
[29:52]after a death or the first month?
[29:54]There really is no written guideline that said or mandate
[29:58]that says we have to do it within a certain period.
[30:00]of time again. I think we have to let go of our idea of the calendar structure and say,
[30:05]we'll do it when we can. And it's really important. And I say, if you can't do it for another
[30:09]two years, people are still going to remember your loved one. They're still going to have
[30:12]stories of the person who died. And we're going to find out what it means to us to come together
[30:18]a year or two later instead of doing it right after. And we might find in some ways that it's
[30:23]actually richer and more meaningful. I don't know because we haven't tried it yet. But I think
[30:29]it's really important that we do it no matter how long we have to wait. It would be nice if
[30:33]like each year on the anniversary of the birthday or the death or something that there was
[30:39]an event or something that marked it, not just for you. But anyway, I think it's great all
[30:45]you're advocating for and all the rest. Tell me a little more about your work as an author on
[30:53]top of a researcher and coach and grief counselor. Now you're doing all these live seminar
[30:59]right. I saw an Instagram. You have a new six week course or something coming up. Well, tell me a
[31:04]little bit about that. And then also when it is you managed to fit all of this into your life.
[31:11]Oh, well, okay. So I do offer online courses and online support groups now. And this is kind of an
[31:18]offshoot of the retreats that I was leading in person. Claire Biddwell Smith, author, therapist,
[31:23]friend of yours. And I in 2016 started offering live retreats for motherless daughters who really
[31:30]wanted to meet other women who could understand their experiences as adults. And we started in
[31:36]Ohio, California with 23 women. And that grew into a whole company that I'm now moving forward.
[31:43]And 13 retreats have been done. One of them virtually 12 of them in person. We do ones for women who
[31:50]children and teenagers when their moms died. I've done one for women who were just in their 20s,
[31:54]a couple for women who were adults when their moms died because the needs of those groups
[31:59]are very different. But when COVID came, I started moving into more online offering. So yes,
[32:05]I do offer some online courses. I also do individual and group coaching. How do I fit it in?
[32:12]Well, my kids are older now. It would have been almost impossible to do it when they were younger
[32:17]at this level because not having had a mom after the age of 17. I was really committed to
[32:23]being a mom who was present and gave my kids as much of me as possible. But they're now 23 and
[32:30]almost 19. My youngest one just started college in September. So I'm able to dive more fully
[32:37]into these kinds of offerings. And it just happened to coincide with COVID. And this incredible
[32:43]need for grief awareness and grief education and grief advocacy. So it is a little bit of being
[32:50]at the right place at the right time. Or maybe I should say the right place at the wrong time
[32:53]because nobody would have wanted to think of COVID as the right time, of course. But there's
[32:58]an expanded need for this work. And I'm just trying to fill those gaps. Excellent. Do you have
[33:05]any advice? I'm going to ask two questions. Any advice to aspiring authors, particularly of your
[33:11]type of work that involves a lot of research and sort of more analytical thinking mixed with memoir.
[33:16]And also to those who have a relationship with grief that they continue to wrestle with.
[33:23]Okay. Well, in terms of writing and you're right, I do this book is a high, I write straight
[33:28]memoir to short pieces long form as well. But this book is a hybrid. This book integrates my own
[33:35]story with research. So I became in a way sort of someone who tried to decode my own experience
[33:41]and understand it and also so combines research, interview, and personal writing. I find
[33:47]it difficult to maintain a really solid writing schedule. And so I've been right. I'll go away
[33:54]for four or five days and I'll take everything else off my calendar and I will just write in
[33:59]those. That's how I've written most of my books. I've just had to binge write them. And same thing
[34:04]for this book. This book, the majority of this book was written between February and June of this
[34:11]year because COVID took everything else off my schedule. And I just sat down at my dining room
[34:16]table day after day after day and worked out in the book. I can multitask like an ninja. But I
[34:22]can't always, you know, focus on writing to the extent that I need to if I've got three or four
[34:28]other things going on. So I tell people, you know, whatever works for you. If you read that
[34:33]Stephen King gets up every morning at 5 a.m. and writes for four hours and you feel somehow less
[34:38]than because you can't do that. Don't worry. I mean, my circadian rhythm is to write late at night.
[34:42]I do my best writing like between 5 and 10 p.m. So I can do all my administrative tasks during
[34:48]the day and then write between 5 and 10. Or like I said, I just go away and binge write. Again,
[34:53]it's a matter of finding what works for you. And when my kids were young, I couldn't, you know,
[34:57]always go away for four or five days. But occasionally, I was able to negotiate with my husband at
[35:03]the time that he could take the kids from like, he picked them up from school on Friday. And so
[35:09]I would leave, I would drop them at school Friday morning and I'd take off. There was a hotel in Ventura,
[35:14]California, an hour and 15 minutes away, which was just far enough away that I could get home
[35:20]easily in case of emergency, but they would not be dropping by for dinner if the kids were crying
[35:24]that they missed me. So it was like the perfect distance and they knew me there, you know,
[35:29]she's back, the writers back. And I went like one weekend every six weeks, maybe from a Friday morning
[35:35]until a Sunday at like three o'clock. I got a late checkout and I would just bring food into the
[35:40]room and eat all my meals there and just sit at the desk and write. And that's how I wrote Motherless
[35:45]Mothers back in 2000. That came out in 2006. So my kids were five and nine when that book came out.
[35:53]So they were probably like four and eight when I was doing those weekends there. And that's what
[35:57]worked for me. And, you know, now I have more time to write, but other more responsibilities. Your
[36:03]other question was about people who were having trouble with their grief. Yeah, that is still trying
[36:08]to get a handle on it. Well, there's no right or wrong way to grieve if there's only your way
[36:15]to grieve. And if someone says I'm having trouble with grief, I first asked them, what are your
[36:19]expectations of what grief should look like and what it should be. And let's sort of deconstruct
[36:23]those at first and see if you're holding yourself to a standard that maybe isn't one that you can
[36:29]meet for various reasons. You know, a lot of people, especially men, think they're not,
[36:34]they haven't grieved because they haven't had these outward displays of emotion that we normally
[36:39]associate with grief. And someone went to have said to me, I don't feel like I cried enough. I
[36:44]don't think I grieved my person. Or someone says to me, I never grieved, you know, the death of
[36:50]my mom or dad when I was young. And I said, well, what do you mean by you never grieved it? And
[36:54]they say, well, I didn't, you know, I ain't cry enough. And so we want to look at that. But I say,
[36:59]I firmly believe that we all grieved to the best of our ability at any point in time. And maybe
[37:04]at that point in time, your ability was very limited because you didn't feel safe or you didn't
[37:09]have, if you were a child, you didn't have adults around you to help support you in your grief.
[37:14]Or maybe you had other survival needs that were more pressing at that moment. And you couldn't
[37:20]focus on your own emotions because you were taking care of other people. Or you couldn't,
[37:24]you know, you had a demanding job that had to support your family. But men often say to me,
[37:29]they feel they didn't grieve because they didn't cry. And in fact, there's so much more research
[37:34]now about the difference between how men and women grieve. And I see this amongst spouses,
[37:38]as I see it among partners and siblings, they don't really understand each other because
[37:42]men don't typically have these or the masculine way of grieving, I should say, because about 15 to 20
[37:48]percent of women grieve in a more masculine style and 15 to 20 percent of men grieve in a more
[37:53]feminine style. But the feminine style is reaching out, talking, emoting, showing your emotions.
[37:58]And the male grief patterns are more about working through your feelings by doing,
[38:03]which is why some cultures have the women sit in a room with other women and cry for days in
[38:09]a row and have the men plan the funeral because working through the details for the men is a way
[38:15]that they are processing their emotions around grief. Men tend to want to fix things,
[38:21]yourself problems and work through their grief that way. And women don't always recognize that
[38:26]that's what the men are doing. And men often don't understand why the women can't pull things
[38:32]together and be more instrumental and need to talk about it all the time. It's just different
[38:37]patterns of grieving, but they're both working through their feelings of loss.
[38:41]Well, thank you so much for chatting today. I'm going to share your episode far and wide
[38:47]for those many people out there who needed and thank you for all the research and the
[38:51]personal stories and everything they went into the after grief and for creating this concept
[38:55]so that people who are continuing to be sad for the rest of their lives know that there's a
[39:01]reason why and they're not doing anything wrong. And I just want to also emphasize this doesn't
[39:06]mean you're going to be grieving for the rest of your life. It just means you're going to be
[39:09]remembering and thinking about an occasionally mystery met person because they were really
[39:12]important to you and they will continue to be important to you. Amazing. Thank you so much.
[39:18]Thanks for your time. Thank you so much. Okay. Bye bye.
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