Cancer, Child Loss, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Grief is a teacher, a harsh one, but it comes bearing profound lessons.
In today’s heart-touching episode of Grieving Voices, I sit down with Dave Roberts, whose personal odyssey through loss is nothing short of inspiring. He shares his intimate experiences following the passing of his daughter to a rare cancer.
From grappling with unimaginable pain to discovering a spiritual connection and wisdom beyond the veil – this episode isn’t just about coping; it’s about transcending grief and embracing life in its entirety.
Key points covered in this episode:
- Dave reflects on three significant dates that changed his life.
- He discusses the rarity and severity of alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, which ultimately led to his daughter’s passing just ten months after her diagnosis.
- The profound impact on Dave’s life post-loss, including how none of his professional training prepared him for grieving as a father.
- His involvement with bereavement support groups helped him feel less alone but also prompted deeper reflection on what more he needed for healing.
- He discusses a chance encounter that opened up new spiritual pathways that transformed Dave’s approach to grief, leading him to coauthor a book.
- The importance of continuing bonds with loved ones who have passed away is highlighted as an integrative process for moving forward while still honoring those we’ve lost.
Dave doesn’t hesitate to discuss raw emotions or societal expectations around male vulnerability. He dives deep into these topics, offering solace and understanding to anyone struggling silently.
Let Dave’s words guide you through the darkness toward the light—because sometimes it takes hearing someone else’s story to begin rewriting our own.
Transformative Grief: David Roberts’ Journey from Loss to Spiritual Connection and Empowerment
In the quiet moments of reflection, we often find our deepest insights. Today on Grieving Voices, David Roberts shared a story that echoes in the hearts of anyone who’s ever loved and lost.
David faced every parent’s nightmare when his daughter Janine was diagnosed with a rare cancer just after giving birth—a time that should have been filled with joy instead became overshadowed by impending loss. His journey through grief led him to support groups, spiritual guidance, and eventually to teaching others about navigating the treacherous waters of bereavement.
His story isn’t just about loss; it’s about transformation. From the ashes of profound sorrow rose an understanding that grief is not linear—it’s a complex dance between joy and pain. David learned to live with his daughter’s memory woven into the fabric of his life, turning anguish into a source of strength.
As he shares these lessons with students at Utica University, he fosters an environment where mutual growth sprouts from shared experiences. He reminds us that while supporters may come and go as we evolve through our grief, change remains our constant companion—ushering us towards new beginnings even as we honor what we’ve left behind.
David’s message resonates beyond personal tragedy; it speaks to men grappling with societal expectations around emotional expression. It challenges couples to navigate their unique paths through mourning together yet apart in their individual processes.
Above all else, David teaches us that embracing new perspectives can illuminate pathways out of darkness—not by leaving our losses behind but by integrating them into who we are becoming.
For those yearning for more wisdom or seeking solace in similar stories—you’re not alone. Reach out to David at davidrobertsmsw.com or tune into his podcast Teaching Journeys for further exploration on consciousness and healing beyond death’s door.
Remember: In acknowledging vulnerability lies great strength; in sharing your narrative resides immense power—to heal oneself and inspire many.
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Hey, hey, hey, thank you for tuning in to grieving voices. Today, you’re joining me and my guest David Roberts a licensed master social worker who became a parent who experienced the death of a child when his daughter, Janine, died of cancer on March first two thousand three at the age of eighteen. He is a retired addiction professional and is an adjunct professor in the psychology department at Utica University in Utica, New York. Dave has presented brief workshops at National Conferences of the Compassionate friends, as well as for the bereaved parents of the USA. He has been a past Huffington Post contributor and has authored several articles on Grief for a variety of Internet publications. He co authored a book with Reverend Patti Ferino titled when the Psychology Professor met the Minister which was self published on Amazon on March first twenty twenty one, which also happens to be or was eighteenth anniversary of your daughter’s death, which I imagine was not a coincidence.
Dave Roberts: It was that, Victoria.
Victoria Volk: So let’s start there. And actually rewind the clock to when your daughter became ill because she passed up a very rare form of soft tissue cancer called alveolar Rhabdomyocarcoma.
Dave Roberts: Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: Which is rarely – it was more common in children under the age of ten, and can have a genetic disposition of it. So when did you when did she when did you as a family find you know, when did she receive that diagnosis? And
Dave Roberts: Well, at
Victoria Volk: that time.
Dave Roberts: I would have taken back to three significant dates. You know, to to set up the timeline for this. First and foremost, Janine became pregnant in September, I believe, of two thousand and one. And on May second two thousand and two, she delivered a healthy baby girl. Her name is Brianna, and she’s Brianna is now twenty two years old. And during her pregnancy, she had a freak injury to her right foot. And her foot became progressively swollen throughout her pregnancy. And we had Victoria attributed the swelling of her foot to just the normal complications of pregnancy. Adema, And, you know, we just figured it wasn’t anything. It was we figured it was gonna go away once she was once she had delivered her child. However, her foot became progressively worse. Any type of treatment that they used to treat her foot such as a walking boot or rest or elevation did not stem the swelling. So her orthopedic surgeon wanted to do an MRI in April of two thousand and two, but she needed to have said, absolutely not. I wanna wait until my baby’s born. So Brianna again was born on May second two thousand and two. She Jadine had the MRI done in the hospital and they found an undefined eight centimeter mass at the bottom of her foot. About a week or so later, they biopsied it. The biopsy came back as highly suggestive of cancer. On May twenty six, he was officially diagnosed with the Veiliar Rhabdomyosarcoma. Again, a very rare inactive muscle tissue cancer. In the week prior to her official diagnosis, I had just received confirmation that I met the requirements for my master’s in social work degree from Suni Abenei. So on May second, I became I experienced the immense joy of being a grandparent. On May nineteenth, a satisfaction of a twenty five year journey of getting my master’s degree. And on May twenty six, I found myself now the parent of a terminally ill child. In June, we went to Dana Farber Research Institute in Boston, which is one of the best, if not, the best pediatric research and treatment centers for sarcomas in the United States. Because in our area, and I’m from upstate New York, a little town called Lloydsboro, New York. We don’t deal with sarcomas. That’s not the specialty of the oncologist here. So they sent us some place that would be more probably, more in a position to to to treat it more effectively. But when we got there, we had a five minute consult with one of their one of their oncologists. Janina had stage four cancer which meant it totally metastasized and metastasized her bone marrow to her lymph nodes to her bones. They told us that there was absolutely no cure for cancer. The only hope that they were going to have for any type of gove cure was to put her cancer into remission, keep it in remission until they can find a cure. So when my daughter and I firmly heard, and what my wife heard and what Janine’s significant other heard is that. Janine is gonna die. Unless there’s some type of a miracle. So I went from this joy of accomplishment, the joy of being a grandparent to all of a sudden looking at the possibility that I was good to good possibility. I was gonna be walking a path and no parent as ever ever wants to walk. And I did my own research. I found a good rabbit on myosarcoma site. And you had mentioned in the introduction that this is a cancer that is typical to children that are tenant under. Janine got a childhood cancer at eighteen. And that was one of the mortality indicators. Is that of her chances to to have some quality of life would have been better hit she had gotten us when she was younger? But the fact that she got it when she was older, plus her tumor size, plus bone marrow and footnote involvement, increased her chances that she was going to die as I call it now transitioned to a new existence. The five year survival rate for her type of cancer, Victoria, depending on what research you were looking at was ten to fifteen percent, which meant there was gonna be an eighty five to ninety percent chance that she was gonna die within five years. And she didn’t even make it a year within ten months from from diagnosis. From her diagnosis, she transitioned at home on March first two thousand and three with hospice services. And that led me on a path that I never thought I in my life, I would ever I would ever be walking. I was a I was an addiction counselor at the time. I started teaching at Utica University at the time. It was first, it was Utica College, now it’s Utica University. And none of my education, none of my training, none of my background as a therapist or my my work with individuals who had all kinds of trauma due to addiction or not due to addiction. None of that prepared me for for what I needed to do to move forward. So at age forty seven when this happened, my version of the midlife crisis wasn’t buying a sports car. Getting a to pay, getting a headpiece, trying to reclaim my youth, and I was trying to figure out what type of a person I was gonna be in the kind of world that I was going to choose to live in. And I am paraphrasing thatthat term from a gentleman by the name of Neil Peirk, the late Craig Drummer for the Canadian Rock Band Rush who had his own series of tragedies. And he talked about needing to get to determine the type of world he wanted to live in and the type of person he wanted to be after those tragedies. And his conceptualization of his path really, really kinda mirrored mine. And really, I couldn’t have said any better than he did. So that is the background story. That’s how I’ve gotten That’s how I got to this point in my life where now every everything that I stood for, my values, my beliefs, my priorities everything was on the table now. Everything was up for discussion.
Victoria Volk: And how did that change? The David before your daughter passed versus the David after she passed?
Dave Roberts: Well, First of all, if you asked me to to to type of person I was at forty seven years old, Victoria, I couldn’t begin to tell you. That couldn’t begin to find him. He did a search priority to find him. So that person is no longer a part of me. It’s just it’s just it’s just a distant memory. What got me to this point, and it it went in steps and went in steps for me. First was fighting really adequate support, which is necessary to get through any type of any type of grief journey. I found a really good with the help of my wife Sherry, a really good bereavement support group for parents that was sponsored by a local funeral home. Because one of the things is that I really felt alone. You know, I really felt like, jeez, I’m the only person going through this because my world was so shattered and my world was so broken. I didn’t even know where I fit in with this. I didn’t even know did that did anybody else have that has anybody else ever gone through this? Now, intellectually, I figured people had but that wasn’t, you know, but it wasn’t registering anywhere else with me. I just couldn’t, you know, I just couldn’t conceptualized that anybody else was going through, what I was going through. But when I walked into that brewery parent support group for the first time, I saw eighteen other parents who were going through the do the same thing.
And then all of a sudden, I wasn’t alone. And their parents said they were longer a lot farther along in the journey than me, and it helped for me to kind of pick their brains and listen to what they did to help them get to the point that they got through, to begin to and to begin to reengage in life again. I began to do some reading and books of other found grief and other other parents who had experienced a transition of a child And then I began to get involved in doing some workshops for the compassion, friends, and later around thebury parents of the USA, two organizations and support families who have experienced a death of a child of any agent from any cause. And then in two thousand and ten, my whole and I also began to to start or help and organize grief conferences and do some other things in honor of my daughter. I was doing what I felt I needed to do at the time to try to re engage in life and to try to make sure that she was always gonna be remembered.
And then in two thousand and ten, everything changed where my perspective really got a total shot of a spiritual adrenaline?
Victoria Volk: In what way?
Victoria Volk: What do you say to people who maybe are attending such groups and are feeling like they’re not moving forward? Or, you know, because oftentimes, in the work that I do with Grievers and hearing from people that I’ve worked with about support groups and things like that is if they’re not moving you to action. If you’re coming to it’s a great place to connect with people like you said to not feel alone and to who share a similar story. But if you’re coming in and you’re sharing your story and you’re hearing other people’s stories, which can be really heartbreaking for the grieber. Right? You you do you feel better when you leave, you know, after you hear other people’s, you know, sad stories and things. If it’s not moving you forward. So what do you say to to that?
Dave Roberts: So, basically, one of the things I would do First of all, if they feel that they’re not moving forward, I would ask them to perhaps do some inventory. What do you think is preventing you from moving forward? Is it something that you’re missing within yourself? Is it something within the group? Has the group become you know, has the group that support group specifically not met your needs anymore because a support group that might be good for somebody who’s in the early phase of grief as an individual feels they’re progressing and they’re not, that support group may actually not be be be serving that purpose for them anymore.
So I would encourage them. I would ask them, what are some other things that you’ve been curious about exploring? Well, you know, both I’m looking about I’d like to explore maybe something like native. I’m thinking about it, the teachings of animals and nature. So I might refer them to the Native American teachings of Jamie Sams and Ted Andrews just to to look in to look to look at that and see how they can integrate at peace.
I would ask them, you know, have, you know, have they journaled, you know, maybe do some journaling to see exactly and you know, what they feel that their message is right about, you know, specific things that are going on and what may be triggering that and what they feel that. You know Dan’s also asking what specific culting skills do they think they need moving forward or what other perspectives. Because one of the things it’s it’s really easy to to to to feel like you’re not moving forward in grief even though you seem to be on the surface doing okay. And and that was that was for me. I think one of the things that two thousand and ten thathappened to me is that I felt that I was getting to a point where, you know, I feel like I’m doing this okay, but there’s something more than I’m missing. And the way thatmanifested is the day after the conference, I was taking three presenters up into the adiranax, up north because of the changes season up north around here in September, Victoria is really nice with the changing of the leaves and colors of the leaves. It kinda looks like just intensive water paint or oil painting. So I was they were having this intense conversation about spirituality. And I looked up at the sky and I said, I wanted to be where they are. Now, I wasn’t saying this to anybody in particular. Am I doing God or what it might have been the universe, could have been creative, could have been anybody. But I said I want to be where they are. And I’ve come to discover that intention is a powerful form is the most powerful form of prayer. So I would tell an individual, state your intention. What do you what have what do you do you see yourself now in the next phase of grief? What do you see yourself embracing? Where do you see yourself being? I said I wanted to be where they are. And I just basically wanted some some more information on spirituality so that it could give me some more tools to be able to move forward. The universe, however, conspired to give me more than I asked for and it gave me Patty. Patty gave me all different perspectives. And everything. And the work that we did together and the work that she exposed me to that helped me find peace with my daughter’s transition also helped me do some healing of the ancestral wounds over my father’s abandoned when I was five years old and my mother’s decision that to remarry and become overprotective. So all of the work that she helped me do with Janine translated to doing more work in my past to help me heal fifty five year old lives with my father and at least you know, with with my mother probably, yeah, probably about that, probably thirty five or forty years anyway. At least, well, she transitioned to nineteen ninety four, So you’re talking, yeah, probably about thirty year old ones with that. So, you know, it just opened up a world to me I never thought possible in terms of just widespread coming to peace and widespread ongoing healing. Other areas of my life that I hadn’t anticipated, all because of the work that Patty lovingly did with me for ten years to help me embrace a different perspective that would allow me to come to greater awareness of myself, my role in the world, and also to help me find peace with what had happened. Now in acceptance of the fact that I could still engage in a world where my daughter was not physically present, one of the things that I wanna mention and I wanna clarify for your listeners and for your viewers is that just because of peace doesn’t mean I still don’t grieve. I still grieve. There are days depending on what is going on in my life that I could experience the raw pain of grief And it doesn’t matter if it’s ten years later or twenty one years later. But now I look at it as an expected part of the journey I am going to be at or Beth, I’m gonna walk. Until I transition myself. And I’ve relearned to realize the joy of pain, yearning, sadness that can all call exist and we can learn from we can learn from it all. And as long as we accept the fact that, yeah, I mean, you know, we’re going going to experience those emotions that are associated with any type of loss because just because the physical body is is no longer here, doesn’t mean that the relationship doesn’t continue. The relationship goes on and love continues to endure. And with love, there’s also the pain that goes along with it because that person is not physically present. And that can that can still occur throughout throughout the life cycle of grief. Which is why I’ve always said I believe that grief is a circular in its journey and it’s not a linear journey. It doesn’t go on stages. It It’s very much can can resurface at any time depending on what’s going on at the present moment.
Victoria Volk: And for those listening who are paying attention to your timeline, of when you felt like you could that you were once moving forward. You know, it doesn’t have to take ten years. It doesn’t have to take thirty years like it did for me. Thirty plus years actually. But I think if we allow ourselves to be open to the people, to the teachings of others, to nature that truly is in higher power, whatever you wanna call it, that really is wants to nurture us. In our longing and in our sorrow. I think that we can accelerate that healing a little bit if we’re open to it. Right? If we
Dave Roberts: Or more work.
Victoria Volk: Listening more than we’re projecting, maybe, our pain.
Dave Roberts: Howard Bauchner: Yeah. And the other thing is that, yeah, as they were open to it. And the other thing is that to give ourselves permission to become empowered to say, okay, this perspective can be integrated into my core belief system. This one cannot. You don’t have to agree with everything. You don’t have to take in everything. You take what’s gonna work for you. The other piece of that is also being willing to listen to perspectives that are markedly different from yours and not to judge it is saying, well, you know, the you know, this is not the the appropriate way to grieve. It’s basically listening to it, bearing witness to it and saying, okay, what can I take away from this? What can I leave behind? Or can I take anything away from it? And it’s okay. The thing all we need to do is basically bear witness and try to understand where the other person is coming from, how they got to that perspective. With with my work with Patty, every time she would introduce me to something, my scientifically curious and I would say, okay, how can the spiritual perspective fit in with my existing core rational belief system? And then I would call her back and say, cheese paddy this work. Because I can see this. I can see where and and what happened for me is I got I got that assessed for life again because I was discovering new things that I that I never thought possible. And whenever we can discover perspectives that are novel, that work, then we think, boy, if we incorporate these this is gonna mean I’m gonna be moving forward as opposed to stagnating or moving backwards that it empowers us, it energizes us and I think it informs the service work that we do with others and makes it more rich because now we can share that. Anything that I learned learned about my own journey with with grief, I share that with my students at Utica University and my deaf dying and bereavement class. They know very much from day one, my history, including my history with Janine, and in losing a child. And anything that I learned, it’s just like I’m excited to share that with them. And then in turn, they will share perspectives with me that they teach me. So it’s just, you know, it’s just when you’re willing to be open and when you’re excited about what you have learned to communicate, it just opens up so many more doors doors. For connection, our support groups will evolve naturally, I think, based on where we’re at in our grief. People that were there for me in early grief aren’t there for me now, but that’s okay because a lot of that has been a choice that I’ve made to bring in different people in my support group who are going to be been are gonna be helpful to me now. So my support group has evolved. I have let’s see. It’s it’s it’s been fluid And that’s one of the other things I tell individuals expect that things are going to change. The early, early aftermath of a of a death, people that you thought were going to step up are No. Can’t be found anywhere because they don’t know how to deal with your grief. The people that you never thought were gonna step up do. And what is gonna be constant is change. But look at change is something that could be energizing as opposed to debilitating or as opposed to just being uncomfortable.
Victoria Volk: That’s where the growth is.
Dave Roberts: That’s where the exact
Victoria Volk: It’s getting uncomfortable.
Dave Roberts: That that’s you gotta be uncomfortable. I mean, you gotta be uncomfortable. And that is where the growth is. You know, we can’t grow without some type of uncomfortability.
Victoria Volk: And that is grief. That is the grief. And so it’s allowing ourselves to, I think, lead into into the pain first so we can really feel it. But also, like you said then, integrate it into our lives Mhmm. And follow our curiosity as to, you know, and I think too part of what you said is is asking ourselves deeper questions that grief often brings up for us that we’re afraid to ask because we are afraid of the answer. Because once we know the answer, we have a choice to make.
Dave Roberts: That’s right. And do we want to move forward? Do we want to stay stuck? And I think we do I think eventually once we we let the raw pain of grief and golfers, we do have a choice in terms of how we can move forward. I think if you look at Victoria, those individuals that I’m sure you’ve had on your podcast, those individuals in society who have transcended challenge. They did it because they made a choice to reengage in life again. They made a choice to say, okay. If this is the path that the universe or my higher power or God is going to to unfold for me. I am gonna make the best of that path for the remaining time that I have on the Earth. And other people can choose to make a choice not to do that. And there are consequences with every choice that we make. I used to tell my clients when I was an addiction’s professional. You choose the consequence of your actions. You can choose the consequences a sobriety, you can choose the consequences of of addiction. Okay? But the choice is gonna be yours. You’re gonna need to experience those consequences. I can’t do that for you. But it said, if you’re going to choose choose wisely. And if you’re going to choose consequences that are not going to have a negative or it’s not going to have a positive outcome, or could not have a positive outcome, put the accountability where the accountability needs to be, and that’s how you take responsibility for that.
Because once you take responsibility for your actions, you’re gonna jump back in a treatment sooner. Once we take responsibility for how we are going to transcend our grief we are able to move through grief. If I never use terms like closure or move on, when we move through grief, we integrate our grief, and we learn to accept we are living in a world where things are different because our loved ones are not physically present. And any loss, it doesn’t have to be the loss of a child, any loss drastically changes the landscape of our lives because we’re a person’s physical absence, physical absence, changes who we are and changes how we relate to the world. The loss of a pet as well too, depending on the nature of the relationship thatperson has with a pet, is gonna have those those same type of consequences. I’ll be at a different kind of grief. It’s still gonna have the same consequences. So
Victoria Volk: I’ve actually, some people have shared with me that losing their pet felt like they were losing a limb.
Dave Roberts: Absolutely.
Victoria Volk: Part of themselves. Gut wrenching. Like, these are the words that, you know, I’ve heard, and it is one of the most minimized losses too. Yeah. But I was thinking about as you were sharing your story about Janine and Brianna, I just I was envisioning this little girl Actually, I was envisioning Janine, like, as a mother myself, I it’s like, to hear that news and to know that this little girl you just gave birth to will not know you growing up. Like, I can’t even imagine being a new mother and having to go through all of those emotions. How did you support her? And how did she I mean, I suppose it was every day just a matter of survival and doing what she had to do to survive, while being a mother like that, I just I can’t even wrap my head around that.
Dave Roberts: What when when We had offered Branno was born. We had offered Janine and her significant other living in an apartment and their own. To come and live with us, you know, until she got she got better or until she was they were able to to and her significant other time was going to school, he was working. And he was taking full time. He was taking care of Janine. So he finally said to Janine, so we can’t do this. I said, I can’t do all of this myself. Let’s move in with your parents. So they moved in her significant other her significant other her name’s Steve. Jenny their cat moved in with our two cats, me, Sherry, and my two boys. So the joke was how many How many two leggings and four leggings could you get in two a single level ranch? And we ended up, I think ended up, I think, shattering that equation. After Janine transitioned, Janine had asked Steven, she goes, look, she didn’t say, well, she said, please stay here until Brianna’s ready for kindergarten. Stay with my parents. I don’t want her uprooted anymore than she already is. To his credit, he was nineteen when Janine became sick. To his credit, he stayed for four years. He stayed until she hit kindergarten. He stayed with us. He has since remarried. He has a disc you know, he’s he’s very happily married. He made sure that we saw a brand regularly after after he moved. And now brand is twenty two She has a little girl of her own now and she’s got another child out of the way. So I’ve I’ve become a great grandfather. And, you know, and it’s got a surreal holding Janine’s grandchildren as well too. So, you know, you take a look at all of us. And But it was for Janine, one of the things that she made sure to do is she recorded every moment that she had with Brianna. When Brianna walked, when Brianna started talking, when they did things together. And one of the more surreal experiences I had. I think it was last year of Victoria. I had the DVD of Janine’s last Christmas. And I sat down with Brianna, we watched that. So Brianna had a chance to see what kind of a mother Janine was to her for the time that she had with her and she was able to at least get an understanding of who her mother was. You wanna talk about surreal and emotional? That was that was something watching that with her. And but Janine documented everything because she knew she wasn’t gonna be around. In fact, she told me the Christmas before she transitioned and and it was just it was just after Christmas, who were sitting in the family room and we were by ourselves. And she goes, you know, Dan, I did a lot for everybody that I did for this Christmas, because I’m not sure I’m gonna be here next year. She knows she wasn’t gonna be here next year. She knew that. I think she she had a sense of that from the beginning. And I just didn’t say it to her. I just said, I understand, honey. And that’s all I said to her. She never asked me. Do you think I’m gonna die? She knew. She knew. And that’s why she did what she did. To give you an understanding of how resilient she was, When we got back from Dana Farber, and I tell the story, I had this old Jeep Cherokee, and she was in a lot of pain, you know, from her buying and everything from the tumors. And we were was a five hour drive from Boston, and I was sitting every bump in the road. She was screaming out in pain. And I tried going slow. I tried going fast. Nothing worked. So we got home. She sat out of the couch. I walked up to her all of a sudden, I start crying like a baby. I just buried my face in her lap. And I just said, honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause you so much pain. I looked up and she started having tears in her eyes. She looked at me. She goes, dad, I don’t worry. She goes, I’m peripheral. I’m that paraphrasing us a little bit, dad, don’t worry. I was just yelling because I wasn’t so much pain. You know what you said to me after that? She goes, if dad, if you can’t sleep, come and find me, we’ll talk. So I’m thinking to myself, this is a young lady who’s dying, and she’s worried about taking care of me. So I kind of figured, well, she could if she could look at it with that type of toughness, I could get through it. And I could get at least I could get through it. I could at least you know, get through what she is, get through the treatment and and and try to be strong for her through that because she was strong for me. When I was I was just a mess. And that’s the one moment that I’ll and thatwould tell you what she was probably was like as a mother. She made sure that the time that she had with Brianna was quality time. And in the summer, when her chemo was having a positive respect, they did a lot of things together. And she had that DVD so that at some point, Brandon, I can and my wife sure can look at that with her and say, here’s this is your mother. And that was a powerful, very emotional experience for me. And I think for Brann as well too.
Victoria Volk: Brings tears to my eyes, just hearing it.
Dave Roberts: Yeah. Yeah. It’s I get emotional telling that story. You know, I can I can tell when I get emotional because I start I start my voice starts breaking up a little bit? I can just feel it in here and it’s but that that’s a testament to the type of young lady she is.
And, you know, it was just the impact she had and and the type of mother she was and and it would have it it could have been and would have been had she had she’d been alive.
Victoria Volk: And to be so young, I think that’s the part that really just touches me is how young she was and just like, how quickly she had to grow up?
Dave Roberts: She had yeah. She had to be you know, it was interesting. She was talking about getting married to Steven in the backyard of her house. And any other side of the coin she was talking to wonder about whether she was gonna make it, you know, what you would also thatbut that’s that type of compartmentalization that you normally see with, you know, you’re one the one he had you thinking about, Bob, but I’m very the love of my wife and second hand, you’re thinking about chemo treatments, and you’re thinking I’m not gonna make it. But, you know, she Don, she told me right from the beginning, she was I’m not going down without a fight.
Victoria Volk: Did they end up getting married?
Dave Roberts: No. Okay. No. No. They didn’t. There was something that they she’s she had always wanted to get married in in her backyard. She already had the son to the she would she one day was she was fifteen. She goes, this is a sign we’re gonna dance to with my wedding. And she had a head that all figured out. What some
Victoria Volk: do you know?
Dave Roberts: I don’t remember. It was a country western song. It was a slow one. And I don’t remember. I never thought to ask her you know, for the type of for the science analytics. Because the time she was cancer free, I’m thinking, I got all kinds of time to figure that out. And then I think, you know, you think you got time and then all of a sudden there isn’t time. So so now I’ve learned to make sure now that when as I make sure I ask those questions, well, what sign is this now? Because not because what I’ve learned through this whole thing is that today isn’t given. Today, you know, today, you know, it’s here to go. I’m very grateful any day I get to wake up and do those. And I share that with God. The universe Thank you for giving me another day. Thank you for allowing me to get up and and, you know, make have this a day where I can make it a great day.
Victoria Volk: Maybe it’s a song about double rainbows.
Dave Roberts: Maybe. Maybe maybe, but
Victoria Volk: You’re gonna go to Google after this.
Dave Roberts: I’ve got a I’ve got a afternoon, Victoria. You got, like, you got a curiosity picked.
Victoria Volk: So who care so I imagine Steven then became her primary caregiver and, you know, and she’s Yep. After she passed and everything and
Dave Roberts: You know, Stephen, who was a state of my wife, and then my thirteen year old son, Matt, who was also involved. And that was his introduction to puberty having a terminally ill sister. And so thatwas I know he was difficult for him, but he just whenever my wife had to go to work, dad would take over. And when Steve came home, that was, you know, he would he would do the primary care duties. And he did it. I would say, nobley is probably an understatement, but he just did what he had to do because he he loved her unconditionally.
Victoria Volk: And to be nineteen too and to take that on as well and to not run away from it and face it and do what he had to do. That’s commendable as well.
Dave Roberts: And my daughter gave him an out. She goes, look, you don’t have to do this. And he looked at her. He says, where am I going? Because I got going anywhere.
And she tried to give him an out because I think she knew what was down the road for her. A body said, no. And I was a a testament to his love for her. And so it was kinda like if you look at it was kinda like a kind of our version of Romeo and Juliet.
Victoria Volk: What was the best piece of advice that you received while you were deep and grief? And I imagine maybe it was from your friends that you co authored the book with, but maybe not. Howard Bauchner:
Dave Roberts: There are two pieces of advice. I’m gonna break this down first in about probably early phase of grief, which is for me about two and a half to three years, and then nine years later, which I would consider to be kind of the beginning of later grief for me. Okay. I had mentioned earlier in our discussion that I was a member of a grievance support group. And it was sponsored by local funeral home. Their support group was facilitated by Franciscan nuns by the name of Sister Rose Trot. And she did a really, really great job. I mean, you could you could come into that group and say that you’re angry with God, angry with the universe she was she just would was not very nonjudge about it because she understood that. Mhmm. There was a time two and a half years two years into this where I said, I’m tired of being a bereaved parent. I don’t wanna do this anymore. So I stopped going to my support group. I caught myself up for meaningful support. I ended up being more miserable than ever. But I just didn’t wanna do it anymore. I wanted my wife back the way it was. I wanted my daughter back I said, I’m tired of going through this crap. And then it finally got to the point where I said, I need to talk to somebody. So I talked to Sister Rose. And I told her, I said, sister Rose, I am angry. That God. She looked at me. She goes, well, what if you put your shoe on the other foot. And it’s thought that maybe God is just as upset as you are because of what’s happened. And when I she she twisted that around a bit in which she looked at us. So, wait a minute. And I started thinking about I remember in the beginning, I told you I didn’t really I didn’t believe in science. I didn’t really But there are some really weird things that were happening to me shortly after Janine transitioned, I would have had a butterfly follow me around when I was walking my granddaughter I heard a song on the radio when I was thinking of Janine that we both had enjoyed. And I started thinking, see, something unusual is going on, but I couldn’t make sense. I couldn’t make sense of how to integrate it. But then one of the things I looked at, I said, well, Maybe if he’s just as upset as me, maybe that’s why he’s been kind of god’s been throwing out these signals that maybe she’s still around. So I was I was starting to think that maybe maybe those signals that it put the butterfly in everything were gonna be the start of something new. A new perspective. But at the time, I wasn’t ready to to see how that fit. But it it plan to save for that. So that shift in perspective. And then when I was talking with Patty about nine years couple years after I met her, the thing with cancer diagnosis is that. You I used to I remember I will remember the dates that she was diagnosed, the dates that she stopped treatment I’ll remember the date that she went into the act of phase of dying. I’ll remember the day that she took her last breath because I was there to witness that. She transitioned on March first of twelve thirty. I held her hand. I she took two swift breaths, and then she stopped breathing. And it always then always haunted me around when I came up to, like, the data for death every year that haunted me. So I told Patty that I said, you know, I can’t help but think that I was the last person to see my daughter alive, and that haunts me that I was there to witness her last prop. And Patty looked looked at me where she was around the function because what if you’re looking as you being the first person to usher into her new existence?
Is you were the person to transition her into eternal life. That was the message. And I said, wow. I never looked at it that way. And By then, I had begun to integrate the whole stuff with after deaf communication. I began to believe in the survival of consciousness. So that helped me shift my perspective and integrate spiritual practices and spiritual beliefs with science. And all of a sudden, well, I made thinking I am the last person to I sure earned to eternal life. That’s shifted to feelings that I had about her last moments of her physical existence at her. So those two or probably the best pieces of advice I gather the best suggestions or comments or seed seed planters that I that I got. Those that just planted seeds allowed me to think about things differently.
Victoria Volk: And I think it comes back to being open to be open to seeing things differently. In a nutshell. Right?
Dave Roberts: Yeah. Yeah. And and that whole experience with Patty and Long Island had helped me up. And plus, I had asked for that experience back and, you know, after the conference, I wanted to be where they are. My my intent, my prayer was answered.
And I believed everything that happened that weekend and we outlined it, you know, very, you know, very, very detailed in the book. I believed in everything that happened. I didn’t question it because I asked for.
Victoria Volk: What does your grief taught you?
Dave Roberts: Wow. Well, my grief taught me a lot of things. It taught me that life isn’t fair. That waiting a good life isn’t gonna push in you from tragedy, that the quality of our life is determined by not so much the fairness of life but it’s determined how well we transcend those challenges that are presented to us. And we can define Victoria tragedy in any way, shape, or form. But it’s how we transcend tragedy and what we do as a result of that. How do we find purpose? How do we find meaning? How can we serve others that are walking the same path? And how can we make sure that the and I think I’m paraphrase of an old Lakota saying how do we make sure that the tracks we we behind are going to to be impactful. And again, that’s a real that’s really paraphrasing that. But I think what the Dakota is saying is we will be forever known by the tracks we leave behind. And so let’s make sure the traps we leave are going to last long after we physically leave and serve.
Victoria Volk: That’s beautiful. What do you say to maybe men who are listening? Who like many men struggle talking about their emotions and their feelings. And more commonly, struggle with addiction, maybe even perhaps after devastating loss, who might say, I don’t need to rehash the past.
Dave Roberts: Well, yeah, I think one of the things I learned is that with any type of tragedy, the pass is gonna come back and look you right in the face. What I had to do. And I think Eric Ericsson had talked about integrity at the end of life where we take a look at the end of our life. We will take a do a life review and say, did we did we live a meaningful life? Well, that process started for me at age forty seven. Where I’d I mean, you you basically we have to look at the past. It’s required when I we’re taking a look at rebuilding our assumptions world. We have to take a look at those past beliefs that contributed to our understanding of the present prior to tragedy. So we have to look at the past. What I tell everybody is the past isn’t meant to be stared at. It isn’t meant to be judged. It is meant to be learned from. There is pro medicine saying in the Jamie Sam’s book medicine cards with Crow, matter the past as your teacher, out of the present, as your creation, and out of the future is your inspiration. We take a look at our past. We understand the decisions that we made in the present. We also can take a look at at and look at the tragedy we’ve experienced and say, okay. How can we learn through the past? How can and and what can we now do develop the president of our creation in the future of our inspiration based on what’s happened, what tools and what resources that we can use. So for first of all, I tell people you the pass is something that is if you don’t look at it, it’s gonna bite you right in the behind. Because you’re gonna it’s gonna come up and you need to look at it so that you can you can orchestrate the present and future of your own desires. It’s part of cocreating our own new reality with the universe after tragedy. The other thing with men and they get a bad rap for this is that, well, oh, men don’t talk about their feelings. If I had a nickel for every woman who came up to me and said, my guy doesn’t talk about his feelings. That’d be a rich man because men are equipped to emote directly. Mehta, we’re taught it early as you suck it up. You take care of those that you love. Feelings are are both make you vulnerable and make you weak. So essentially, with feelings, we learned to distract ourselves from our feelings by doing stuff. Okay? Do men feel just as intensely as women? Absolutely. We just deal with it differently. Women are more comfortable with sharing their feelings, with the molding, with with tears, where men, if they cry, they’re when they cry, they’re gonna cry privately. If they’re feeling out of sorts, they’re gonna go build something, they’re gonna go to try to solve a problem. And so I would tell men be gentle with yourself. If you wanna find out how a guy is failing, ask them what they’re thinking because we’re in our heads a lot. If you ask, Guy, what are you thinking? And this guy’s this guy says, boy, this really stinks. Well, how does that make you feel? Well, I feel angry. I feel disillusioned. I feel confused. You’ve gotten to your feelings through to his feelings through your thoughts. But if you’re asking him how he’s feeling directly, he may not go there with it. Because of how he’s been conditioned to deal with feelings. The other thing is that, I’m sure you’ve heard this word on you’ve heard probably other people telling you, well, my boyfriend gets upset when I cry over a tragedy. My husband gets upset when I cry after a tragedy. Here’s the other thing. Men of I believe have also been conditioned to take care of those that they love. And for me, when I saw my wife cry, when I saw my my boys in in emotional pain, it reminded me that I did not do my job as a father to protect my family from home. Mhmm. For two and a half years, I beat myself up because I thought I should have seen the signs of my daughter’s cancer sooner I thought I should have persuaded her to do one more clinical trial. I’ve my inadequacies as a father and a protector always brought up when my wife was crying because this reminded me of what I couldn’t do. And I realized now that I did the best that I could’ve given the situation I was dealt with, So, you know, it’s just this was just there was all of that. And I just tell you know, which I it gets we do feel. It’s just the the the the if a woman in our lives is crying, it’s not because of That’s not because of no cries because of what their peers represent. They represent a failure of us to provide our do our job as a protector for our family. And that’s and that’s why. If we can understand that, my wife has a totally different grading style than me. Once we began to understood how we agreed, we could begin to support ourselves with and give ourselves space with it and begin to understand it. And I think if I were doing couples counseling with a with a couple who was newly bereaved, I would tell them understand how each other’s grief for each other’s grief respect it and try to figure out how you can support each other within it without trying to change it without trying to change it.
Victoria Volk: Or or expecting the other person to carry the entire weight. Yes. Yep. Experience. Yeah.
Dave Roberts: Yeah. And that’s sad. You know, if you look at we’re talking about how to an orbit of relation shifts with the male and female. You know, seventy five percent of men are going to fit that type of gender ex role expectation of expressing emotions. I mean, twenty five percent won’t. So there may be some situations where you’ll see a woman who will suppress her emotions in a man who is gonna be more intuitive and can don’t come who’s a thing Thanatos well known Thanatos. Just talked about intuitive versus instrumental males. The instrumental males were the males that had through traditional male oriented expectations of expressing grief. The intuitive male were those that were more feelings oriented and were more automotive. It says understanding how do you grieve.
Just because you don’t cry doesn’t mean you’re not grieving.
Victoria Volk: Bingo.
Dave Roberts: You know, and that service everybody measures grieve by the amount of tears that they’re a pig when everybody cries. Brief is manifested very differently, and we need to understand that. When you are sad, When you’ve had previous tragedies, how has your grief come out? It may not be tears. It may be anger. It may be withdrawal. It may be being distracted. It may be your ability for a lot of individuals who suppress emotions. As you mentioned, addiction can be a real big issue. Especially for those individuals that don’t don’t have an outlet to suppress her feelings. And particularly if there’s been a family history, thatcoping mechanism of self medicating can be can be something that has gone to pretty ruddling. If there are no other alternatives for call from strategies presented.
Victoria Volk: And they don’t allow themselves to bring the support in.
Dave Roberts: That’s right. That’s right. And we have to the other thing is we have to believe that we are worthy of being nurtured. And a lot of times we may not accept help because there’s a stigma in terms of asking for help and accepting help, but we need to believe that when we can’t do it on our own, and we need to believe that we are worthy, we are lovable enough to accept that we we can be loved by others, and we can be taken care of by others. I think a teaching from the afterlife abilities finger saying, why do you believe you need to earn the right to be loved when you’ve been bored with that already? We’ve been born with that. Why should we believe that we’re not deemed worthy of being helped?
Victoria Volk: And how has this transformed your relationship with your with your wife? Like, did this bring you closer together? For a time, I imagine maybe it was very challenging like you alluded to earlier.
Dave Roberts: Oh, it was because we didn’t have the energy to deal with Chuck with with our own grief much less each others. And we were pretty much, I guess, were drawn from each other for a while. I think that was one of the net the natural consequences of grieving. But one of the things is gradually as we, you know, we we became coming together. We talked. We carved out some time for ourselves to listen to each other. And our relationship now is stronger as ever been. We’ve been married for forty two years. We have You know, I’ve got two great two great sons Dan and Matt. They’ve got four grandchildren and one great grandchild and another one on the way. So, you know, given everything that has happened, Victoria, to I feel like I’m a blessed man. And I couldn’t have said that twenty years ago. I could if I if I couldn’t envision myself saying that to you now. But one of the things that grief has taught me is is is another thing is to be grateful for what you have in your life. As opposed to what you don’t have in your life or what you can’t have in your life. There are days that I said I wish my daughter could be back here. I wish that I could have found another type of tragedy to to to find meaning from, and I have my family intact. But I learned whenever I started earring for that, I said, well, you know, I can’t continue to earring for something that I can’t have. So I immediately go back to the Okay. What am I grateful for today? And that gets me regrouted again. It gets me back to where I need to pay.
Victoria Volk: And then when you see those double rainbows
Dave Roberts: Oh, yeah?
Victoria Volk: That really crowns you.
Dave Roberts: Yeah. It does. It does. And and anytime I see a three one or here her name mentioned or I run it to somebody thatone time I made a call and I was going to a conference in Saint Savannah, Georgia. And I called to book a hotel reservation. Hey, you know, usually when you go through a Switchboard, it’s gonna be randomly get. So well, the operator picks up the phone and says, hello, this is Janine. Can I help you? Said, oh, this is gonna be an interesting conversation. And so I’d book the reservation. And all of a sudden, I got this nudge and saying, ask her how she spells her name because my daughter had a very unusual spelling for her name. It was j e a n n I n e. So I’ve stuck at a Janine, the operator on the phone. I said, Janine, I know it’s gonna sound like a weird question, but can you tell me how you spell your name? Guess how she spelled her name? Same way. So I’m thinking about, you can’t make this stuff up. So it’s that event. And the other thing that grief has taught me is there are no coincidences only serendipity. And the people that have come come into my life have come into my life at the times that they were supposed to come into my life.
Victoria Volk: I’d interviewed a minister not that long ago. Actually, David Chaka, it was one of my previous episodes, recent episodes, and he calls them divine appointments. Mhmm. And every day he asks for a divine appointment.
Dave Roberts: Well, I’ve had I’ve had I’ve had many of those in twenty one the twenty one years since my daughter is transitioned. So
Victoria Volk: You keep track of them?
Dave Roberts: Actually, I do. I don’t write them down as much as I used to anymore, but I know exactly when they’ve happened and I’ve got pictures of signs that I’ve gotten from her. I also have done I also have a slide presentation that I do in my death hunting breed and class. Right? Once this is section called Dewey survived death, and we get into after death communication. So I’ll give them some examples of signs that I’ve gotten signs that other students have shared with me. And so we have that discussion. And the whole theme of that discussion is the illusion of death. It’s death and illusion. Do we really die? Or do we just go on at a different form? And so we talk about that as well as the mainstream and the basics overview of death dying improvement. When we get into the spiritual aspects of it, with reincreditation studies, with near death experiences, with fast life regression, fast life experiences, everything. We get we get into all of it. And I tell them, Don’t confuse my passion for telling you, this is how you want to believe. This is how you need to believe. I’m giving you all this information because You may run into this with the clients on that. I wanna make sure you’re I’d rather have you over prepared than under prepared.
Victoria Volk: Or for yourself?
Dave Roberts: Or for yourself. And it’s amazing how it’s
Victoria Volk: guaranteed, probably.
Dave Roberts: Oh, oh, absolutely. I’ve had students afterwards literally. They’ve emailed me a You wouldn’t believe that they’ll they’ll email me with the sign that they got or something that they signed before we talked about class, and it gives them permission to open up about that.
Victoria Volk: Are you familiar with the work of Chris Kirk?
Dave Roberts: I’ve heard of Chris, but I’m not familiar with any of his does it a hearer shape? He he, I’m not familiar with that. I’m familiar with the name, but that does work. Howard Bauchner:
Victoria Volk: I don’t know if it’s still on Netflix, but there was a docu series called surviving death.
Dave Roberts: Yeah. Okay. Yes. That I that I am familiar with because I saw I didn’t realize Chris Curr was the mastermind behind it, but I saw that I saw the documentary. And I recommend that to my students a great overview of the non ordinary phenomenon that are part of the whole discussion of the field of fan oncology.
I think it’s it’s great.
Victoria Volk: He was on my podcast.
Dave Roberts: Really?
Victoria Volk: Yeah. So there’s an episode where he’s on my podcast. Yeah. And then Siri Burnson is psychic medium, and she’s also featured on that. And she was on my podcast as well.
So yeah. Interesting conversations. And and honestly too, like, my spirituality was greatly challenged for many years. And I think that that’s a component or a piece of healing that a lot of people maybe take the longest maybe to get to.
Dave Roberts: Yep.
Victoria Volk: In in terms of feeling like you’re finally moving forward. Because I think you with that shift in perspective and seeing things differently, seeing the death differently, I think that’s really one of the things that helped me personally?
Dave Roberts: Well, I think having placing an importance on spirituality is protective against so many different things, protective against mental illness. And I think it can improve physical and mental health care outcomes as well too. It can improve physical health. It can because that spirituality is there’s thatsense of greater awareness, that sense of connection to something greater than ourselves, and all of that, I think, can contribute to increased mental and physical health as well too? There’s no doubt in my mind.
Victoria Volk: Well, if we think about how we can even transcend our own consciousness through meditation or
Dave Roberts: Yoga.
Victoria Volk: Yoga. Adaptigens people using adaptogens to elevate their consciousness or Yep. Keep you an aspect of their consciousness that they wouldn’t see otherwise. We don’t need adaptogens to get there. We can meditate. Right? It can become a really strong meditator, but I think it’s then it’s fair to to reason that Well, who’s to say thatcan’t continue? That that consciousness? Like, what is what is the soul? You know, we are more than just our meat suits, you know?
Dave Roberts: That’s worse
Victoria Volk: than that.
Dave Roberts: Yeah. I mean, there’s another set of teaching the afterlife abilities fingers is that if we could look look into each other’s soul, it’d be one big will manifest. You know, we would look beyond the the implementation. We would look beyond the human contracts and conflicts that have kept people apart. If we could just look at each other’s souls, how we would see his love. And the world would be like one big love fest. But the human experience doesn’t allow for that to happen, and it’s not supposed to. Because any growth that occurs in any lifetime is for the greater revolution and the growth of our salt. And so we have to experience the pain and tragedies I think of the human experience in order for our souls to continue to evolve and grow.
Victoria Volk: We gotta go through the storms to see the rainbows.
Dave Roberts: Absolutely. You got it.
Victoria Volk: Anything else you would like to share that you don’t feel you got to?
Dave Roberts: Jeez, I think we we cover just about everything. I think I think we I think we covered a whole I think we covered a lot of ground.
Victoria Volk: I think so too. And where can people reach you and find you if they like to connect with you further?
Dave Roberts: Well, they could find me. They could go through my personal website. It’s david robertson s w dot com. They could go to myauthor website, which is psychology professor administrator dot com. If they’re interested in purchasing me and Patty’s book, It’s a one psychology method professor is on Kendall and paper back on Amazon. I’m also a podcaster. If they wanna take a look at the the the podcast, it’s a teaching journeys podcast, It’s on a a apple and Spotify. And they’ve they’ve had a lot of interest in guest, and Obviously, I went off I’ve talked about off camera and waiting you to be a guest out of podcast, so hopefully we can make that happen. And I’m just trying to those are, you know, email this booty and angel at gmail dot com if they wanna email me. And I’m all over the place on social media, I’m on Facebook, I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Instagram, my son calls me the world’s oldest millennial, because I’m I’m not I’m not social media, so you could pretty much find me anywhere. And I’ll have a conversation with anybody that is grieving loss of a child, any any type of loss. I also believe in meeting people where their worst losses, their worst loss my worst loss doesn’t necessarily have to be their worst loss. I can tap into the pain of my own worst loss, know what that’s like, and meet somebody at their worst loss.
Victoria Volk: And so the David Roberts, LSW, does that have links to everything that you mentioned?
Dave Roberts: M s w dot dave roberts, m s w dot com. Does it have links to everything that I’ve but the other ones that I mentioned are separate.
Victoria Volk: Okay. And what was that again? The other website?
Dave Roberts: The other website, psychology professor and minister dot com. And then if if they reach us in purchasing the book, they can find out purchasing information through the author website or they can go directly on Amazon to find it.
Victoria Volk: Alright. I will put the link to those websites, your podcast, in the book, in the show notes
Dave Roberts: Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: And I thank you so much for sharing your time with me and helping us getting to know Janine and the remarkable young woman that she was in the short life that she was given and the story of your own transformation and of your grief and the work that you that it led you to do today. So thank you so much for your contribution.
Dave Roberts: My pleasure, Victoria. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I enjoyed our conversation tremendously today.
Victoria Volk: I did too. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life, much love.
Child Loss, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Widowhood |
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Embracing Grief with Grace: Angie Hanson’s Journey from Loss to Entrepreneurship
Grief is an unwelcome visitor that arrives at the doorsteps of our lives, often unannounced and always undesired. For some, like Angie Hanson, grief has knocked not once but multiple times, bringing along profound loss and heartache. Yet in the face of such adversity, Angie has managed to forge a path that not only honors her lost loved ones but also provides solace to others navigating their own journeys through mourning.
Angie’s story is one of remarkable resilience—a testament to the human spirit’s ability to endure and transform suffering into something meaningful. Her experiences have led her down a road less traveled: from working in banking and a taffy store learning about online business ventures, she now runs Butterflies and Halos—a greeting card company designed for those who are grieving—and co-hosts “From Loss to Light,” a podcast dedicated to sharing stories of hope after loss.
The Birth of Butterflies and Halos
The concept behind Butterflies and Halos was born from Angie’s realization that typical sympathy cards didn’t quite capture the ongoing support needed by those in mourning. After experiencing personal losses—the deaths of her toddler son, husband, brother Seth (who succumbed to a brain tumor), sister-in-law Brooke (who passed away due to alcoholism)—Angie recognized how vital it is for people in grief not just be acknowledged initially but supported throughout their entire grieving process.
Her greeting card venture offers messages that resonate more genuinely with what it means truly mourn—sometimes heartfelt; other times humorous because laughter can indeed be medicine even amidst sorrow. It challenges industry norms by advocating for acknowledgment beyond traditional timelines set by society.
From Banking To Empathy
Before tragedy reshaped her life trajectory, Angie had built a career within the banking sector—an industry known more for transactions than emotional connections. However, when faced with devastating losses consecutively—each leaving its unique scar on her heart—she pivoted towards endeavors imbued with deeper meaning centered around family values especially inspired by her daughter Gracie’s strength during tough times.
Gracie herself stands as an example of overcoming adversity; graduating college pursuing kinesiology aiming help others regain physical abilities reflects both mother-daughter duo’s dedication helping heal pain whether emotional or physical form.
Podcasting Through Pain
Together with Michelle another widow friend they started “From Loss Light” podcast explore rediscovery light after different kinds loss death divorce addiction among others becoming inspirational platform listeners find camaraderie shared experiences resilience against odds journey back towards hopefulness again book titled Chapters Resilient Heart encapsulates this narrative perfectly scheduled release May 2024 already available pre-order showcasing power storytelling healing process itself inspiration drawn trip Costa Rica current husband where realized strength lies opening up new chapters despite past closures inflicted upon us fate itself sometimes cruelly so yet never defining entirety our existence if we choose otherwise which exactly did choosing honor memories actions rather than succumbing despair alone powerful choice indeed one many could learn emulate difficult circumstances face daily basis across globe irrespective culture creed color socio-economic status universal language understood all – love remembrance perseverance face adversities life throws way time again without fail relentless pursuit happiness joy may seem elusive moments darkness eventually finds way back hearts willing open them wide enough let light shine through cracks created wounds old healed completely maybe never will entirely point isn’t forget move forward remember carry legacy forward too part ourselves forever changed encounter mortality close quarters intimately familiar contours shape absence leaves behind tangible void filled nothing else same measure value once held dear still holds true today tomorrow eternity long lasts memory alive us keeps going matter what comes next chapter waiting written pen hand ready ink flow freely page blank canvas awaits masterpiece creation patiently biding time until muse strikes chord resonates soul deeply felt core being essence captured words spoken aloud silence contemplation alike either case message clear loud unleash heart unleashing life itself fullest potential reached embraced grace given opportunity do so every single day blessed breathe air earth under feet sun sky above reminder precious gift given cherish treasure always end days come sooner later expected unexpected alike preparedness key unlocking doors future possibilities endless horizon stretches vast expanse imagination limit setting sail unknown adventures await discovery newfound purpose passion ignited flame rekindled ashes past experiences fuel fire burning bright beacon guiding ships night safe harbor refuge stormy seas tumultuous world live thrive survive testify beauty remains midst chaos confusion reign supreme ultimate victory claimed name lived well loved hard laughed often cried tears sadness turned drops wisdom gained perspective shifted priorities realigned accordance true calling found voice heard afar near touched souls kindred spirits bonded together common cause celebrate triumph over tragedy song sung chorus angels watching overhead smiling approvingly deeds done good earth reward heaven promised land dreams reality merge seamless tapestry woven threads golden silver intertwined perfection achieved mastery craft honed skill refined artistry displayed proudly gallery open viewing public private collectors aficionados connoisseurs taste discerning eye detail appreciate finer things offered sale purchase price tag attached worth measured monetary terms sentimental value priceless gem rare exquisite nature behold wonder awe inspire generations come leave lasting impression indelible mark history books annals recorded posterity sake remembering forgotten lest repeat mistakes learned lessons teach children grandchildren importance empathy compassion humanity whole greater sum parts individual contributions collective effort combined synergy effect multiplied exponentially reach far wide deep impact felt ripple waves emanating epicenter event occurred sending shockwaves reverberate echo chambers minds hearts 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illuminated truth knowledge wisdom imparted gifts bestowed upon worthy recipients chosen destiny fulfill prophecy foretold ancient texts scriptures holy sacred profane mundane everyday ordinary extraordinary simultaneously existing parallel dimensions alternate realities quantum mechanics physics laws govern observed phenomena natural supernatural spiritual metaphysical realms exploration curiosity leads discovery invention innovation progress advancement civilization humankind species evolve adapt overcome obstacles challenges trials tribulations tests faith courage determination resolve steadfastness tenacity grit endurance stamina persistence perseverance keep pushing boundaries limits expand horizons broaden perspectives shift paradigms break molds stereotypes labels boxes categorize define restrict confine imprison free liberate emancipate empower enable equip arm tools necessary succeed excel achieve greatness glory honor respect admiration acclaim accolades awards recognition 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Ultimate Supreme Paramount Chief Principal Head Leader Captain Commander General Admiral President King Queen Monarch Sovereign Ruler Dictator Tyrant Oppressor Liberator Freedom Fighter Warrior Knight Paladin Champion Defender Protector Guardian Custodian Keeper Watcher Observer Spectator Audience Participant Actor Actress Player Performer Entertainer Artist Artisan Craftsman Craftswoman Tradesman Tradeswoman Worker Laborer Employee Employer Boss Manager Supervisor Director Executive Officer Official Representative Delegate Ambassador Emissary Envoy Agent Broker Dealer Trader Merchant Vendor Supplier Distributor Wholesaler Retailerm
Episode Transcription:
Victoria Volk: Thank you for tuning in to this week’s episode of grieving voices. Today my guest is Angie Hanson, and she shares her story of immense loss. Journey marked by the deaths of her one year old son, Garrett, her husband Jack, her brother, Seth, and her sister-in-law brook. In her own profound grief, Angie, Phones, and a mission to change the narrative around grief, to bring light into the darkest moments, and to offer genuine support to those walking the path of loss. She founded butterflies and halos in twenty twenty two a greeting card company that seeks to bridge the gap between sympathy and understanding, between condolence and companionship. Angie is also publishing her first book chapters of a resilient heart that will be published in May twenty twenty four, so it’s actually on preorder and coming out very soon as we’re recording this. And she also co hosts a podcast from Lost to Light touching on all aspects of losses and how people have found their light. Thank you so much for being here. And I love the podcast app title, and I love the book title as well. How did those come to be?
Angie Hanson: Well, honestly, for the podcast, I co-host it with a fellow widow friend of mine, Michelle, and When we started talking about doing the podcast together, we were just like, we wanted to focus on how people have found their light, you know, and through any losses because we know that losses are not just death. And we know that there’s losses from divorces, you know, drug addiction, abuse, anything, job losses, pet losses, And so we really wanted to touch on all those because and we wanted people to figure out and let us know and let our listeners know how did they find their light and it’s been so inspirational listening to how people have journeyed through their losses and they found their light and especially the people that have come through like the recovery of any drug addiction. Those are the ones that really just grab at my heart and I’m so amazed by them. So their resilience is amazing and so that kind of steps into my book title, chapters of a resilient heart. I kind of always love the name chapters. I’ve always wanted to own a bookstore named chapters. I’ve just loved that. And so I kinda had chapters of this, chapters of that. And nothing was just really settling with me. And then we actually were on a trip in Costa Rica, and we were sitting there talking about the title of the book and my husband that I’m married to now, the word resilient came up. And we were just like, well, that’s kind of everything that I embody is, you know, the resilience of my losses and what I’ve kinda you know, and what I’ve encompassed by doing what I’m doing now out there in the grief world is I’m leaning into that resilience of everybody. So there we are. My new book, chapters of a resilient heart.
Victoria Volk: I love it. What were you doing before?
Angie Hanson: Well, I actually was working in a Taffy store like saltwater Taffy. Okay. So there’s a little local store here. She’s actually an antique store and I kinda worked for her just part time doing some things, and she actually started this Taffy saltwater online Taffy company where she ships out monthly subscription boxes to people and you get Taffy, surprises every month. So I kinda learned a little bit of the online industry through her and through helping her and working for her. So that kind of just put me in motion to, you know, understand going forward with my, you know, with my business and all that. So Yeah. And then, you know, I just before my deaths, I actually worked in the banking industry. So I worked doing everything in a small bank here. So but then death happened and knocked at my front door, and I never turned back to that job.
Victoria Volk: As a way of doing that, doesn’t it?
Angie Hanson: It just Yes.
Victoria Volk: Then everything. And what were some of the questions, like, big questions you were asking yourself as you were I mean, because you’ve had a lot of loss and we’ll get to those. But, you know, what was coming up for you as you were going through this? And first of all, like, how did you even get out of bed?
Angie Hanson: You know, every day in the beginning after my I was working at the bank when my son had died. And The biggest obstacle for me was how, you know, moving forward in life and how do does that look like? And what does that look like? And it was it was very very hard, but my daughter was four at the time. And, you know, I just really leaned into wanting her to have a good life. And the life that she deserved and honoring her and, you know, just wanting her to be able to have happy fun times. And I had to figure out how that looked like and what that looked like. And so I just basically, every single day, it was, okay, you can get up today and today if you shower, perfect. Today if you just, you know, if you get to go outside and sit perfect. So the questions that I asked myself surrounding that, like, what what matters most now? Does does it working a nine to five in the banking world matter? Absolutely not. It didn’t matter to me anymore. You know, I didn’t I didn’t care. And my only kids were my family at the time.
Victoria Volk: Would you say in in some ways? I just in the conversations I’ve had over the last four years plus years of having my podcast too, it’s like, when you have other children that you have to get up for. They’re almost like you’re saving grace in a way I imagine. Is that Did you find that true for you too? Like, she was really your reason to get Yes.
Angie Hanson: Yes. And her name is Gracie. So she was she was my saving grace. And with, you know, I, you know, my husband and I, Jack, we definitely grieved differently. So he was more of a go out. We lived on an acreage. So he was more of a, let’s go outside and work work work, you know. Keep my mind occupied. Do that do that. And for me, I was just so lost. You know, I just I couldn’t think of how I could move forward. And but every morning when Gracie would come to me and I would see her, you know, I’m just like, this this is not fair for her. You know, she deserves to have this beautiful life, and so she she did. She saved me from going into a rabbit hole.
Victoria Volk: Was your son for those that, I mean, don’t know you or have never heard you speak or be on podcasts and things your son was one, Garrett was one. Was he sick? Much of that year, first year?
Angie Hanson: No. Garrett was the epitomy of health. He had just turned one, and he died six days after his first birthday. And he had just had his one year checkup on that Friday and he died on a Tuesday and he had a heart defect that went undetected. And it’s a very undetectable heart defect as well. It’s It’s got a really long name. It’s like ectopic origin of the right coronary artery. So basically his right coronary artery was kinked, And so you a person suffers sudden cardiac death in extreme arrest or extreme activity. And, you know, you’ve heard similar stories, maybe of athletes dying on a court or a football field, and that is similar to what Garrett had, and he was resting. He was sleeping. He was taking his afternoon nap when he died. And there really are no signs or symptoms, you know, because that was one of the things I had really asked our pediatrician was did I miss something? As a mom, I was just holding guilt. Did I miss something and nothing? I mean, he was He ate well. He was happy. I mean, joyful. I mean, his coloring. Everything was perfect. I mean, even the doctor was like, I don’t know how I could have missed that, you know. And we did talk to some lead cardiologists at our local children’s hospital when they said that there was nothing really that we could have we could have seen or noticed that would have show us that he was he had that.
Victoria Volk: You mentioned your your husband had he had also passed away. And so how far out was that was the loss of your husband from when you both lost your son.
Angie Hanson: Garrett died in June of two thousand six, and then about a year and a few months later in two thousand seven, my husband Jack was diagnosed with cancer. So he had melanoma when he was twenty one years old, and so he had a molt removed, you know, some invasive surgery on his arm, but it was nothing that had spread. And then, you know, we’re fifteen years later when our sun dies. And I honestly believe the stress of our sun dying, you know, ignited those cancer cells on his body again. You know? And he was trying to be the strongest for all of us and that’s who Jack was. So he was diagnosed, let’s see, fall of two thousand seven, so just a little over a year after her son had passed. And then Jack, he was diagnosed with ocular melanoma, so he had a large tumor in his eye. And it had spread through his to his liver and his brain and a spleen. So you know, at that moment, we were told, you know, Jack was diagnosed terminal. And, you know, we didn’t know how long he would have with us, but we weren’t going to not fight. So we fought and fought and fought. He did chemo radiation, all the things. And Jack battled for about sixteen months before losing his life to the cancer. So he died in February two thousand and nine, so just two and a half years after our son had died.
Victoria Volk: And your brother, Seth, and your sister-in-law like this. I know. I don’t even like, it’s not like it’s not nervous laughter, but it’s just like it’s it you can’t even wrap your head around it.
Angie Hanson: Yeah. Yeah. It’s unbelievable sometimes when, you know, own people here it for the first time it is it’s unbelievable. My brother Seth had actually been battling a brain tumor for about five years. And him and his wife, they lived on our acreage with us. So we had like a big house and a little house My brother Seth and Joey, his wife, they lived in the small house. And when Seth was first diagnosed with his brain tumor, five years prior, he I was kind of his caretaker a lot because he lived there and, you know, right there and my parents were divorced. And so, you know, they had both remarried and kinda had some younger families, but I had no problems doing that. And then once he re once he married to his wife, you know, she was able to take care of him a lot, but it was about a month after Jack had died. So in March of two thousand nine, my brother just started having some issues, some headaches, and things like that. So he had his third brain surgery on March thirteenth of two thousand and nine. And he had always bounced back from all his surgeries because he was extremely healthy. You know, he was an exercise guy and, you know, he didn’t drink nothing. And it just came back this third time with a vengeance. And two months after my husband died, my brother died, he died on April seventh two thousand nine. So, you know, just he just they removed that brain tumor that third time and they were going to end up doing some chemo and radiation once he healed from the surgery, but the tumor just came back with a vengeance. And he he just died. And it was, you know, I at that moment in my time, point in my life, I was just like, what in the hell is happening? And I was so lost because and I didn’t know who I was grieving. You know, I didn’t know if I was grieving my son or my husband or my brother. And it took a lot of hard work for me to, you know, decipher who I was grieving for and, you know, separating those griefs and you know, still raising my daughter, Gracie, and just doing all the things that I could to survive.
Victoria Volk: And how old was she at this point?
Angie Hanson: Gracie turned so she was six in February when her daddy died, and then she turned seven and March. So yeah. So, you know, in between all that, you know, she has this wonderful birthday, but Yeah. It was just I, you know, I just really, really just wanted her to have this happy life, you know. I didn’t want her to be the victim of all these deaths, you know. And I didn’t want it to define how we survived and lived our life. So I had to really work on figuring out how to maneuver that.
Victoria Volk: And what did that look like? Because for people listening, like, growing up, we had a lot of loss early in I had a lot of loss early in my life. My dad, my mom had lost her mom within the year. And so there was just it was a lot too in my growing up. But as a kid, you know, there wasn’t a lot of talk you know, and this was back, you know, late eighties, early, you know, late eighties. So what did that look like for Yeah. What did that look like with Gracie? And, like, how did you talk about it?
Angie Hanson: Yeah. You know, we I’ve always been the one to just talk about it. Let’s say their names constantly, you know, talk about them, who they were, you know, listen to stories if people would tell us just so she could know who these people were, and what kind of people they were and if we could mirror how they lived life and that would help us and it has and we we live big for these people in our lives that have died and you know, I we went to some group therapy, and it was a lot of it was four kids, her age, we went to a local organization here in Nebraska and it was called grief’s journey or Teddy Bear Hollow at the time. I guess they’ve changed her name, but And that was really helpful for Gracie because I really taught the kids how what death looked like, what what it all look like. I mean, from just the artwork that they would do to teaching them. So that was helpful. And then she did see a therapist a couple times. You know, and every time I go, the therapist honestly thought she was doing really well. And we just had a strong support system around us. And, you know, our family was hard with our family because everybody was had lost the same people.
Right? But and we are all grieving differently. And we are all grieving, you know, different people. But we were able to come together and honor all these people just the same way that we could greet them. So everybody really wrapped their arms around Gracie.
And, you know, I journaled a ton and that was my therapeutic way of dealing with some of it was journaling. And, you know, I just like I said, still every day I’d get up and I’d make sure, you know what? Gracie’s going to have a good day today. How does that look? And, you know, it’s it’s not easy. I don’t have a magic answer for people because I know people want that magic fix because but we know that grief cannot be fixed whatsoever. And It’s just, you know, time does help whether people believe it or not. Time does help. It’ll never make it go away, but it changes and it evolves. And But that’s not going to be the first year or the second year or the third year. And when you’re having compounded grief like we had, it’s, you know, it’s hard.
Victoria Volk: When did you feel like you could breathe again? Although, you did end up having another loss in the mix?
Angie Hanson: Yes. Yes. You know, I feel like after about a year, after my husband and my brother had died was when I kinda started feeling better. I was feeling more hope And I had more faith in me because I had lost a lot of my faith. And but I was I was feeling that. And I was I was seeing glimmers of light and, you know, there were things just within my life that was just feeling good, you know, and size like, okay. Okay. We’re we’re gonna be okay. This isn’t gonna be easy still, but and yeah. So that leads to my, you know, my sister-in-law, my first husband’s sister, Jack, Brooke, she died in two thousand eighteen, so nine years after her brother had died. And she died from alcoholism. You know, and so that’s our choices that we have. You know, and I talk about the choices a lot. And My sister-in-law broke was an amazing human. She loved life. She was smart. She was beautiful. She had amazing drive, but she couldn’t deal with the deaths. And she didn’t live in Nebraska. She lived in Colorado. So she was away from all of us when we were all grieving, and she was dealing with it by herself in Colorado. And she had lost her job And she turned alcohol because when she would drink, that’s when she felt the safest, and that’s when she felt the best. And, yeah, she ended up, you know, her choice was to drink. And She ended up dying from alcoholism in June of two thousand eighteen. So, you know, that that left her parents without any living children. You know? And so it’s heartbreaking. And but that’s I talk a lot about you know, my daughter, Gracie, you know, we have choices. You know, I chose to live and I chose to honor our people and brook didn’t know how to do that, you know. And it’s it’s not any shame to her. She thought she was doing what felt right because the alcohol made her feel right. She just got she just got stuck into that trap and, you know, it’s sad and unfortunate, but it doesn’t define who she was as a person at all. Because if she could have just known, she would have she would have gotten past it.
Victoria Volk: You know, if and if she would have been grieving maybe with the family and had that support system around her to to witness other people and who could hold her to Exactly. To support her.
Angie Hanson: Exactly. It’s yeah. It’s it’s it’s really really sad. And so it’s like I said, it’s it’s all our choices that we have, and we really honestly just have to decide every day, how we’re going to move forward each and every day, putting one foot in front of the other, and it’s not going to be easy. We’re gonna falter. You know, we’re gonna turned to maybe stuff that makes us feel better and but we have to continue to journey forward healthy and positive.
Victoria Volk: And how is a gracie how is gracie adjusted into young adulthood now?
Angie Hanson: Yes. She actually just graduated college. So, Gracie’s now twenty two, and she just graduated college. And she’s doing amazing and I feel like with her she honestly has such a good head on her shoulders. And, you know, I think she’s just learned by watching. You know, that’s You know, I just always kinda tell her, you know, you can you can do whatever you want. You you know, we can be whoever we want. We can strive to do amazing things, be good. And I think she’s really just kind of taken those and really just become an amazing young lady. And she’s she’s we still honor and we still talk about our people, you know, we we giggle, and we laugh, and we tell stories, you know, now all the time about them and we support everything that our family members met to us and what they brought to the table for us, you know, the all our our grief has turned into this big gigantic bubble of, I don’t know, purpose and love, I feel like
Victoria Volk: What did your daughter choose to go into?
Angie Hanson: She is she got her degree in Kinesiology. So it’s sports medicine, basically. And so she wants to do, like, medical device sales. She wants to give people abilities to walk again, you know, use their arms again, things like that, whatever that looks like,
Victoria Volk: to take action in their lives. Right?
Angie Hanson: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, to move. So, yeah, she’s so she’s home with us.
It’s been a blessing because, you know, she was gone for four years. And now and she went out of state and she was fourteen hours away from us when she went. So she graduated high school in twenty twenty era, so she really didn’t have a normal graduation. And then she graduated just now four years later So now she’s back home and it’s so fun to have in our home.
Victoria Volk: So when did this greeting card company spark come up?
Angie Hanson: You know what, it was probably the end of twenty twenty one I am remarried now to my husband’s chance. And, you know, I would sit there and talk to him and just tell him, you know, the greeting cards you know, greeting cards are simple. They’re an inexpensive, simple gesture to support a friend. And I was just tired of seeing all the with deepest sympathy. I’m so sorry for your loss greeting cards. As well as intended as they are, they don’t hold any value in my in my eyes, you know. It’s it’s it’s an easy out for people. So I’m just like, why can’t we say something like this? So the very first card I had come up with was I don’t know what to say. Let’s go eat one of those damn casseroles. You know, so that’s what I would give to my friend who maybe had just lost her spouse. You know, I’m not going to give her with deepest sympathy card. And I just really wanted to figure out how we could change the narrative around grief and change the stigma that grief shows up in cards and, you know, at the stores, at the, you know, all the hallmarks. And I’m not bashing hallmark whatsoever. They have some wonderful cards, but they don’t have people that understand what griefers feel like. And so I came up with a list. I have about well, I have a hundred and sixty cards. And right now, and they are mostly all grief related. I do not call my cards sympathy cards because I feel like sympathy is something we give. The first few weeks after someone dies. And, you know, that’s the sympathy and understanding. And then moving forward, are we going to show up for our friends, weeks, months, years later, if we could send a card to our friend once a month. You know, just acknowledging their grief still and, you know, telling them that they are supported, I mean, That is what I wish I had. Would have had one I was going through the depths of the grief. If I was having a really crappy day, I’d walk out to my mailbox and if I had a card that just said, I’m thinking of you or some of the funny ones that I have, you know, I just wish that I would’ve had that. But I mean, that’s gonna change the whole day for your friend because they’re gonna be like, wow. Angie’s thinking of me again, and that means the world to me that I’m not alone in my grief, that people still are acknowledging this. And that’s my whole vision with this, you know. And like I said, it’s simple. It’s not going to fix them. Because like I said before, we can’t fix grief. It’s going to just support them and acknowledge it. And that’s all we want. We want to to still even years later. I still love hearing stories about my people. You know, if people will tell me in with writing this book, I’ve had people reach out to me that used to work with my late husband, Jack, and they’ve bought the book, and they’re just like, Angie, we are so proud of you, and they’ll tell me funny stories about Jack. And, you know, that’s fifty Jack’s spent on fifteen years, and I just think that’s absolutely amazing that people are doing that. And that’s what I want with my cards even.
Victoria Volk: Did you not feel supported?
Angie Hanson: I felt supported, yes, but I just think even back in two thousand six, when Garrett had died? People still didn’t talk about grief a lot. You know, I just feel like the whole movement of changing the narrative around grief has happened within the past couple years. Cool. Yeah. I you know, and I’m seeing this, you know, this brief community that, you know, where I even met you on, you know, on this socials, I just feel like, It’s evolving. And, you know, we are changing it. And I think, no, people I had support from my friends. Yes. But I just don’t think people knew. And they didn’t know if it was acceptable to still a month later or two months later or three months later, to send me a card. You know? I don’t think that they knew that or if it was acceptable.
Victoria Volk: And Or even to share the like, the dark humor
Angie Hanson: Exactly. Out
Victoria Volk: of, like, the visceral thing. Right? Yeah.
Angie Hanson: Yeah. And, you know, and then it It’s just and it’s okay, you know, and it’s I just want people to know that it’s okay to do that. But I just feel like even like you said, you know, when you had had your losses, you know, even back in the eighties, I mean, it was really taboo to really talk about stuff like that. You weren’t supposed to bring that up. You know, we honored and we kinda started our own after our son had died honoring him. But then, you know, here we are. Like I said, I think with the social media world that we’re living in, finding these grief communities where we are at and starting to change the narratives is so important. And I’ll give you an example of like, the sympathy versus the empathy, there’s a greeting card, and I this is nothing against anybody. I’ve kinda talked to them about it, but there’s a The Greeting Card Association, and they hold what is called the Louie Awards. And the Louis Awards is like the Oscars for greeting cards. So you submit, you pay per card to submit your cards. Well, so they only have they have so many different categories, but they have a sympathy category. And they don’t have an empathy category, but I submitted to the sympathy category. And so then I didn’t none of my cards won, which is fine. But then we received the feedback from the cards. And one of the comments that I received was very disturbing to me because they said, the cards are okay, but they make me feel uncomfortable.
Victoria Volk: So Then you’re uncomfortable with your grief, my friend? Yes.
Angie Hanson: And so that’s and then all of a sudden, I was just like, oh my gosh. You know what I so I actually made a real about it, like a funny real on Instagram. And that is my biggest it didn’t go viral, viral, but it went pretty close to being viral because people were astounded that this made this person feel uncomfortable, and it’s in a sympathy category. And that is why we need to change the narrative around this grief industry. You know, people need to know. This is why we can’t have people in a hallmark that have never had a loss writing or greeting cards, you know, and it’s it’s it starts. It starts right here, you know, and that’s that’s what I want to do.
Victoria Volk: You know you’re onto something special when you’re poking the bear and you’re giving a response like Right. Promise. Yeah. I actually designed a couple cards. And years ago, like, gosh, five years ago, and I put him on redbubble and, like, just randomly one day, I was like, where is this money from? So I bought the card. I was like, Yay.
Angie Hanson: That’s awesome.
Victoria Volk: I’m gonna be out there and I was, like, whatever, I’ll put it out there. Yeah. I’ve just been dabbling, but I’ve understood that too for years that people just don’t get it. And to bring some sarcasm in humor, into something that’s just so heavy. Everyone has that friend that will get it. Yes. You know what I mean? Like that it’s bringing some lightness to something that’s so heavy and you can’t even wrap your head around sometimes. Right?
Angie Hanson: Exactly. Yeah. Well, yeah. Because, like, one of them I have, you know, it’s the next person that tells me everything’s gonna happen for a reason. I’ll throw, punch him. You know, just I mean, you know, never would I do any physical harm to anybody, but you know what? My friend would she would appreciate that card, and she would, you know, she would understand it. So that’s definitely yeah. I I’m enjoying it. I enjoy the greeting cards.
Victoria Volk: Well, let me ask you this. So, I mean, you’ve shared a lot of, you know, backstory and how you were feeling and on supporting Gracie and all of that. But what overall has your grief taught you?
Angie Hanson: Really, you know, it goes it goes to resilience. It’s taught me that you know, we can have join happiness together that, you know, the grief and happiness can coexist. And honestly, I just it’s taught me to be obviously more empathetic. And I think through everything that I have been through, I am so amazed by the human body in our mind and what we can tell ourselves to journey through the grief, so that’s where the resilience comes in. And I don’t think somebody can be resilient if they keep on telling themselves that this is crappy. You know, it’s no fair. You know, why didn’t my person have to die? You know, if we tell ourselves negative feelings and thoughts, it’s going to be a negative journey. And you’re going to be stuck and fifteen years later, you’re still going to be stuck. But if we can tell ourselves that, you know, what we can be happy. You know, we deserve to be happy. You know, we have to have that faith and trust. And, you know what, that’s going to evolve throughout the years. And so then one year fifteen years and almost eighteen years out for my son dying, I can live an extremely happy life because that’s what I’m doing right now. And so I just think our resilience in our bodies and our mind is so powerful, powerful, and we just have to tell ourselves that we can.
Victoria Volk: When it comes to kids, when people say kids are resilient, when they’ve had losses, that’s always I’ll tell you this. It’s always rubbed me the wrong way because as kids, they don’t have a choice.
Angie Hanson: Exactly.
Victoria Volk: You know, it just I hate when people say that, oh, your kids are so resilient. They’ll bounce back.
Angie Hanson: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: And I can speak from my own experience, but you know, just knowing the grief that I’ve experienced. It has a child growing up as a grieber. It just changes over time and it’s it’s gonna show its face again and again and again and especially with loss in the future because we are human and you love and you lose. Right? And we’re taught how to acquire people and things, but not what to do when we lose them. And so you mentioned and you touched on your parents’ divorce, your son wasn’t your first loss. So you had other losses, I imagine, growing up and pet loss and probably maybe friends and moving and all of these other things. Can you speak to that a little bit and what you learned about grief growing up and maybe in hindsight what you took from those early experiences in your life.
Angie Hanson: Well, I did experience probably that my first traumatic loss was probably when I was about seven. My uncle was killed in an accident. And so I just remember that that feeling of wow, you know, and I would say, again, like, back in the day, we just didn’t talk about that. And so it was kind of hush-hush and different things. I mean, it was It was a very public accident. He was on the volunteer fire department and the rescue squad got hit by a train. And so three of the members had died and two had lived. And so it was a very public, you know, accident, but You know, we didn’t talk a lot about it. And then, you know, my grandparents died when I was younger, you know, and then my parents divorced when I the year after I graduated high school, And so through all that, I guess, I would say that I just really learned how to I guess, separate some of those losses and grief and just, like I said, I journal a lot and I read a lot and so I think separating grief and losses into what they are. So, you know, it’s okay. This is a bad accident. You know, I we can’t put blame on, you know, like, losses. I don’t like that. Like, people are like, well, why would God let this happened to your son. Why would god let this happen to your husband? Why would god let your uncle get hit by a train? You know, things like that, but God doesn’t allow that, you know. And I just he’s there for us when we when we go through these hardest things. And I guess, I just probably stuffed a lot of it sometimes when I was younger just because we were taught to do that. And so then as I grew and then as I come upon my first loss of my major loss that catapulted me into a losses that I never would ever, you know, turn back and be the same from. That’s when I really learned about what death was and how to journey through it. And I’ve learned now more so that talking about all those losses are probably the biggest thing that really helped, you know. And I just wish that we could have back in the day talked about those losses because I think it really could have changed because I’m certain that my parents divorce probably stemmed from a lot of the losses that they had endured. You know? My dad’s brother was the one that had died, so my dad didn’t deal with it. You know, they just didn’t talk about it. And so then, you know, my dad drank and then my parents got divorced and then, you know, it’s just it’s a cycle. And so how can we move forward in these losses in a healthy manner. And I guess that’s what I’ve learned to do is just do it with all our people in mind and keeping their memories alive.
Victoria Volk: Well, my next question is, one tip you would give other hurting hearts, and I would say that that’s a pretty good tip?
Angie Hanson: Yes. Yes. I would. Yeah. And I just I’ve always believed in the, you know, the choices. You know, the choices that we make. And If you’re if you’re hard if you’re really really hardening, you know, don’t don’t expect don’t expect change immediately. And I always, you know, say, you know, give grace because you’re going to have a great day one day. And then and the next day, you’re going to take a couple steps back and it’s going to take time for your heart to feel love again and normal again. And, you know, you can have it there. You know, I had love for my daughter the whole time, but I didn’t really care about the outside world as much. I didn’t care about the outside noise. And but it’s the choices that we have. So how do we choose to love and honor our people?
Victoria Volk: You had touched on a little bit about having lost your faith a little bit. And so the role of faith and spirituality through your grieving process. I know that was a huge aspect of my grief story. Can you share a little bit about what that looked like and how that changed over time?
Angie Hanson: Yeah. I talked it was really after my brother had died that I had lost all faith, you know. And I couldn’t understand how this was happening, why this was happening again and again, and you know, and you always hear the saying, why do all the good ones go? You you know? And I kind of just slowly journaled about it. I went to a group that was a Christian led group, and that is really what changed a lot for me. Is because I learned about death and how it is in the bible and God. And then I started putting my faith back into him. And I learned, like I said earlier, that you know, we are all built a certain way, you know. And so for my son to be born with a heart defect, you know, that was that’s just something that happened. And, you know, my husband and my brother are both with cancer. You know, they it’s just their genetic disposition. You know, they environmental things. We don’t know, but what I know is what I’ve where I’m at today is not because I am the strongest human in the world. It’s because I’ve been carried and something bigger than me is holding me through all this and they’re guiding me and I have to believe that and I have to believe that all my people are safe But for me, I just really leaned into reading a lot about it and just trying to understand what faith and death and god all meant.
Victoria Volk: What was the toll of grief on your health? Over the years. Do you recognize you did you have physical symptoms? Like, how did the grief manifest for you? Because in grief recovery, which is program I adore and love and change my life, but we talk about nerves, short term energy relieving behavior. So you were talking about alcohol and just how people use these outside things to cope. And so how did neither grateful manifest in physical symptoms or will turn to these things to help us to feel better for a short period of time. So what how did the grief manifest for you?
Angie Hanson: I would say that, you know, I you know, I after our son’s death, I really lost a lot of weight, you know. That was my kind of my health thing I just didn’t wanna eat, I didn’t care. After my husband had died and my brother died, you know, I just I didn’t really I didn’t turn to anything, you know, I didn’t drink a a lot more than I had normally. You know, I had drinks But my health wise, I just I just honestly like I said, I guess I just didn’t eat a lot, so I lost weight that way. But I was really just I think my mind was the biggest recovery thing that I needed to figure out how to be present, you know. And I had to be whole for Gracie. And I honestly didn’t turn to anything negative for myself. And I didn’t find I don’t have an addictive personality, so I don’t turn to, you know, that. But mine was mostly all my mind work. And how could I stay healthy? And the healthiest way I could be would be to work on my mind? And that was journaling and reading and, you know, I mean, traveling. Gracie and I traveled quite a bit. You know, we would go visit friends and just be in present. So, yeah, for me, I didn’t really turned to anything that hindered me from my process.
Victoria Volk: Well, even exercise can be a stirb. So it can be good things too.
Angie Hanson: Yes. Exactly. All of a sudden. Yeah. And, you know, I did not I did not turn to work. That was one thing I slacked on. You know, it’s just but yeah. Just I don’t know. Yeah. There’s not I don’t have anything. That’s that’s one of the things that I’ve kind of always been wondered about. You know, maybe I need a deep dive into that a little bit more, you know, to go back into those corners of my mind and really see about what I did. That’d probably be a good exercise for me.
Victoria Volk: Because there’s these myths of grief. Right? It’s keep busy, grief alone. You know, don’t feel bad. You know, there’s so many time heals all wounds, which you touched on time, but it’s not it’s not the time itself. It’s the action that you take within the time. You know, that Exactly. Matters. And it sounds like you were, you know, surviving but yet also doing what you knew to get more control or what have you of your thoughts and your thought process and it’s so easy to downward spiral, to allow your thoughts to downward spiral and Yeah. Take it You know, I just
Angie Hanson: I always you know, I had a friend of mine. She had lost her husband two years prior to me losing my first husband, Jack, and, you know, she was a she was a good resource for me, but when I would have bad days, you know, we would and we would do this with each other, we would just be like, okay. You’re allowed to have this one bad day. But tomorrow, you’re going to get up and you’re going to, you know, you’re going to change your thought process. And you’re gonna change, you know, your mind and everything. And, you know, just giving ourselves that permission to be because I feel like people, honestly, like, they want to do something to fix it. Even even ourselves as grievers, we want to we want to feel how we felt before. We want to feel the same way and, you know, we just can’t. But if we can allow ourselves that time to grieve or just to be or just to not do a single thing. Like I said, if if you wanna lay in bed all day for a day, lay in bed all day, there’s nothing wrong with that. And I feel that that is part of the whole healing aspect of grief is doing that. But you know what, then she’d say, she would check on me the next day. Okay, Angie. How are you today? Are you going to get up and shower and go? And yes, I would. And, you know, I, you know, just and also just yet, like you said, exercising and being outside with nature, but I just think giving ourselves permission to be and not rush. And don’t rush the grief process either. You know, you we it takes time. And I feel like a lot of people rush it.
Victoria Volk: Well, we are a you know, let’s just take a shot, let’s take a pill, let’s,
Angie Hanson: you know, let’s call Amazon, you know.
Victoria Volk: Herb side, like, we are such an impatient society. It is redontulous. Yes.
Angie Hanson: Yes. I agree a hundred percent.
Victoria Volk: How would you describe the ANGI before loss versus the ANGI after loss?
Angie Hanson: Well, that’s a good question. I would say that I was way more outgoing. I was way more friendly. And I and don’t get me wrong. I’m a very outgoing friendly person now, but it’s evolved and changed. I would it was easier for me to be friend. You know, now I feel like I don’t be be friend people easily and I think they don’t because I think I have this aura around me and people get scared of grief. So if they know about my story or any loss that I’ve had. They kinda run or turn their head or they just don’t wanna dive deep because I think they think it’s contagious, but it’s not but I’ve had a lot of strange situations with that. But I was I was very just more very laid back, more more easy going, and like I said, more friendly. And now I just I get a little bit more anxious. I, you know, I really deep dive in who’s going to be my friend and who’s going to be in my life. And that’s maybe something like of a protectant part of me, like, I don’t wanna lose anymore people. So if I if I don’t bring all these people in my life, maybe I won’t lose them. So, yeah, I would I would say I have a lot I have a lot more anxiety in that aspect and Yeah. I wish I had some of my oh, my my free thoughts that I used to have, you know, because now I don’t have those free thoughts as much. And I’ve just kind of adapted all my like I said, I’m I still have all those feelings. I’m still a nice person because I am, but they’ve all adapted differently than what I was before
Victoria Volk: I resonate with that a lot. I don’t know if it’s my resting bitch face or my aura, but probably my aura too, but I tend to I tend to poke the bear when I’m, you know, meeting people. And it’s it’s because It’s like you don’t have time for bullshit. Like, let’s cut the bullshit. Let’s cut the surface level talk. Like, tell me your deepest desires and your dreams. Like, what do you want what do you wanna do with your life? Like, like, those are the kind of the questions that I wanna talk about, and it’s like, it’s really hard to find those people, like the deep thinkers and the, you know, the thought provoking questions and the insightful you know, people, you know. And I think because we get so caught up in this, the mundane daily life, you know, the hamster wheel. We don’t even stop to think about the things that ignited us when we were kids. Right? Like, just actually one day just over Mother’s Day weekend. There was three little girls, and the semi truck just chewed its horn, and the girl’s just so kitty and just yeah, just like this. And it was so funny because I never shared that with anybody. And as I was sitting there, I was thinking, gosh. I was taken back. I was having some ice cream with my girls or seventeen and a half and six you know, fifteen already. Yeah. And I just was taking back in time in that instant to See, I saw them, like, you know, in doing that, my daughter does this still to this day when she gets excited. And Yeah. So it just took me back in time, but I don’t know where I was going with that.
Angie Hanson: Yeah. I just think it’s like, you know, the society the way society has grown and changed and evolved that, you know, we we are losing, like, you know, you the deep conversation with people. You know, it is hard to find those people that we can match up with and have those, you know, just sit there and talk about and walk away feeling just refreshed. You know, I leave a lot of conversations feeling icky. You know? And I don’t I haven’t pinpointed exactly why, but like I said, I just when people when I first kind of meet them in a situation and they ask me, oh, what do you do? And I’m like, well, I you know, I have this greeting card business. Oh, that’s awesome, you know, and they’re like, what kind of cart and I, you know, I tell them and they’re I’m like, well, they’re mostly grief cards and they’re would you do that? You know? And then I’m like, well, do you have a while? No. But, you know, so then I kinda explain And then I can see their whole demeanor change. And so then I just like and then I get sad sometimes because I’m like, There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m still I’m the same person but different, but I still want to have the deep cover stations, and it doesn’t have to evolve all around me. I wanna hear all about you, you know, and so that’s yeah. So I just I feel like in society and it’s it’s kinda like the fast and go of the world that we were talking about that people people don’t wanna take the time to learn and have those deep conversations anymore. And I feel like we have to get back to that.
Victoria Volk: Well, and I think they’re afraid. I think it’s fear. Imagine what people say to me. I work with Grievers. Like, I work with Grievers, and I do energy healing, and and all this weird stuff, you know. And she might, like, do some voodoo on me or she might, like, you know, get me to, like, confess and verb verb vomit, all of my grief. You know what I mean? Like,
Angie Hanson: explain my real feelings. Right? I mean, people they’re they’re scared of their real feelings.
Victoria Volk: I had someone actually just just word vomit just let it all out in a very public place. And I felt so you know, obviously empathy for this person. Right? But I was, like, a little bit, like, What’s the word? What is the best word to describe that feeling I had?
It was refreshing. It was refreshing. That’s probably
Angie Hanson: felt the same feeling. Probably.
Victoria Volk: It’s like it there is something about giving it a voice. And, you know, I think so many of us I’m gonna get into, like, some voodoo top voodoo voodoo talk. Like a throat wound. Right? I think many people have a throat wound, you know, especially if, you know, as females particularly or young girls that grew up and, you know, be seen and not heard and don’t use your voice and or or you’re too loud or you’re too much or you’re too much of this or too much of that. And so we just kinda minimize our voice and we don’t use it. And I guess that’s been the greatest gift for me and having my podcast. And maybe you can relate is that it’s helped me find my voice in what I experienced and in sharing stories with people and meeting people like you said just sharing in community with other other grievers
Angie Hanson: Yeah. A hundred percent. I yeah. I do. I feel like when I hear stories after people talk about their stories during the podcast and, you know, and then when I listen relistened to him and I, you know, I just I take back I take away so much.
You know, I take away from that initial conversation. And then when I re listen to it, I take away more and I hear more and I hear more of what they were saying because then I can listen to more tone. Their tone of their voice and different things like that. And then I have a whole different perspective of what they are feeling and going through. And it’s absolutely amazing. I mean, that’s why I just you know, we these platforms that we’re able to utilize such as the podcasts and, you know, writing our books, you know, and even our socials, it’s sharing our stories is so huge for everybody because it is bringing out so much for so many others that they’re maybe just sitting on the sidelines and they hear the podcast and then they they read about or if we’re talking about our books, they’re like, Well, I could maybe do that, you know, so it’s sparking stuff in people. And we are, like I said earlier, we’re changing this narrative, and I feel the evolution of this really taking place. And I’m really excited for what it’s gonna do for future grievers. Because I just feel like sharing our stories however that looks, you know, even if I’ve told people before, even if you write a full book and you never publish it, that’s okay because you shared your story. You know, you shared it and that’s you shared it within yourself and that’s okay too. You don’t have to publish a book to be great. You don’t have to have a podcast to, you know, you can just sit there, but you’re you’re growing by hearing stories.
Victoria Volk: And that is a form of giving it a voice too. Yeah. And journaling. You know, I journaled I journaled since I was fourteen.
Angie Hanson: That’s awesome.
Victoria Volk: I mean, quit, you know. It’s it was my outlet very early on too. So
Angie Hanson: Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s so methodic for people to be able to write down things. And I, you know, I just people are like, sometimes I’ve heard people say, well, I could never write a book. Well, no. You could write a book. Write it all out. I don’t care. Type it all out. However you want, but you don’t have to publish it. No. It’s you’re still doing the same thing I’m doing. I just excited to publish mine, and you didn’t. But we, at the end, we did the exact same thing.
Victoria Volk: That’s exactly true. Yeah. Like I said before when we started recording, it’s like, I think they people think to write a book, it’s this huge And it is a big project. Right?
Angie Hanson: And I’m
Victoria Volk: not gonna deny that or minimize that. It’s a project, but it’s not as scary as some people make it out to be. You don’t have to have a publisher, you can self publish, which there’s there’s so much free information out there I mean, actually, my tagline is Google that shit because I mean, I’ve learned so much by Googling and and I guess I’ve never been one that’s been afraid to, like, dive head first and let the rabbit hole, you know, swallow me all, but You know? I mean, that’s the fun of it. Right? Like, that’s and that reminds me of what I was telling with the story, with the little girls
Angie Hanson: Yeah.
Victoria Volk: A friend of mine I didn’t tell her about that, but she had the exact same story exact same story across two thousand miles away where she saw these two little girls and she saw them get so excited and hers she we’re in a in a box or group together and Yeah. We’ve known each other online now for, like, four plus years. But she’s one of those people, right, where we talk about stuff, like, we’re talking here, like, have deep conversations that she was, like, just never it was a reminder to me and she said to never lose that spark. Never lose that joy that you had as a little kid just seen, you know, having someone toot their horn and give you you know, and I told her my story, and it’s like, it’s like mind blowing, like, the synchronicity of that. It’s it was just a reminder again to me, you know, what brought you joy as a kid? How can you bring some more of that into your life as a grieber? In your adult life, you know. Yeah. It’s Yeah. I love that. Messages there for you. Yeah.
Angie Hanson: Yeah. I do. I absolutely love that because that’s the joy as a child is absolutely beautiful. And, yeah, we we need more of that in our adult life.
Victoria Volk: To play.
Angie Hanson: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Instead of just these schedules and these these deadlines and just the anxiety that life brings everybody if we could just let it go. And just be, that would be amazing.
Victoria Volk: So what would a day of play look like for you? Well,
Angie Hanson: you know, I’m actually gonna do it later on here. My daughter, since she’s back, we’re gonna go golfing. And so she wants to go she wants to pick up and learn golfing. And she wants us to learn how to play pick a ball. So it’s like, so, you know, it’s a beautiful day in Nebraska, finally today.I was like, you know what? Yeah. We’re gonna make time and we’re gonna go golf this afternoon. And so that’s what we’re gonna do. So today, and we’re just gonna have fun. And we’ll probably giggle because she will probably be I golf. So I do golf already, and I’m on a ladies league, but she doesn’t giggle. So we’ll probably giggle at the way she hits the ball and all that, and it’ll just be, you know, easy going. And like I said, having her home has brought so much life kind of back into our house that was missing, you know, not you know, my husband and I it’s just been the two of us and which has been great. And, you know, we’ve had an amazing four years, but having her here just brings a only different element of joy back into our house and laughter. And because she’s just you know, she’s a silly twenty two year old girl.
Victoria Volk: And the energy. Right? It’s a different energy
Angie Hanson: and Yes. Yes. And we’ve been taking she’s, you know, walks every day. So we’ve been going for walks every day and you know, it’s just it’s just been so amazing. And, you know, that’s just I’m learning to, I guess, slow down in a sense to, like, I don’t have to sit in front of my computer and do do do, you know, I guess I’ve built I’m going to build my career around my life, you know, and the way I want it to look like. So I’m able to do that right now, so that’s what we’re gonna do. And I’m celebrating that for you. Thank you.
Victoria Volk: You know? Yes. Is there anything else that you would like to share?
Angie Hanson: I really just want people to know that, you know, if you are if you are a griever and you’ve lost someone, you know, just really, just give yourself the grace that you that you deserve and do not rush your grief and your grief journey because it’s just it’s it’s yours. And you get to do it your way and you need to move through it and journey through it. So I just I really want people to honor those feelings that they’re doing as they’re grieving. And then if you’re not the griever, if you’re on the outside and you have your best buddy or anybody going through something tough. You know, meet them where they’re at and don’t try to rush ahead of them, you know, speak their people’s names, you know, just acknowledge them. Don’t try to fix them. And, you know, you will be the best support system that they need. And just always continue to reach out to them even if they tell you no twenty five times. You know, the twenty sixth time they’ll say, Thank you for reaching out to me. I needed to hear you today.
Victoria Volk: And just by twenty six of Angie’s cards and then Yeah. And then I’m like,
Angie Hanson: That will get you through two years.
Victoria Volk: Twenty six. Yeah. Yes. Definitely. So where can people find your cards and connect with you?
Angie Hanson: On socials, Facebook and Instagram. I’m at butterflies and halos, and then my website is butterflies and halos dot com. All my cards are there. I’m also if you’re an Etsy person and prefer that, I’m on Etsy as well, butterflies and halos. And you can order my cards there. I have some other stationery products as some stickers and notebooks. And my book will be on there for sale here probably within the next week or so. And, yeah, Everything’s butterflies and halos.
Victoria Volk: How does that mean?
Angie Hanson: Oh, the well, butterflies are assigned my sign that I’ve had since my son died. And so and then the butterfly is just the the symbolism of a butterfly and the trans formation that they make and the spiritual transformation that they make is something that I hold really dear. And then the halos are for all my people. So that have diets. And so I just I kinda meshed them together for butterflies and halos. Yeah. I love it. And then for anybody that is on here, if you use the code podcast fifteen, you can get fifteen percent off your first order.
Victoria Volk: Is it all caps, lower caps?
Angie Hanson: All caps podcast fifteen. Yep. And then that can be that’s accessible on Etsy or my website.
Victoria Volk: And I will add that to the show notes as well. Yeah. Yeah. How long is that good for?
Angie Hanson: It’s it’s never ending.
Victoria Volk: Okay.
Angie Hanson: Yep. Yep. So they can they can use it whenever.
Victoria Volk: Right. Thank you so much, Angie. For sure. You. For having this deep dive conversation with me for the work that you’re doing in this movement that you and I are both part of, I think, is is moving the needle.
Yeah. Moving the needle by little.
Angie Hanson: Yeah. Yeah. We’ll get there. But I appreciate everything you’re doing as well, and I appreciate being on here and sharing and just the beautiful conversation. And then, hopefully, we can have you on our podcast here in the next few months, and that would be amazing.
Victoria Volk: I would love that. Yeah. Thank you. Invitation. Yeah.
So thank you again for being
Angie Hanson: my guest. Yes. Thank you.
Victoria Volk: And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Cancer, Child Loss, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Parenting, Podcast |
Karla Helbert | My Son, Theo, Is Always With Me
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Society will often say to bereaved parents (or guardians), “I cannot imagine your loss…” when expressing their sympathy. However, these words can feel like a thousand paper cuts to the bereaved because, if they’re anything like my guest, Karla, they want you to imagine, even briefly. As Karla shares in this week’s episode, we are all capable of using our imagination; however, when it comes to child loss, no one wants to imagine it. Karla herself never imagined she would experience such a loss in her life. And today, her beloved Theo would be 18 and off to college.
Theo means “God,” and Karla never imagined how much her spiritual life would suffer when Theo was diagnosed at three months old with a brain tumor and died six months later. She needed God and her spiritual practice more than ever during that time, and yet all of the tools and teachings in her toolbox through her therapy practice, yoga, aromatherapy, and more were of no interest to her; she wanted nothing to do with any of it. That is until she was ready to face the one unimaginable loss she could not change.
Through this episode and Karla’s story, you’ll learn two important lessons her grief taught her, as well as her insights around balancing the fear of the world and something bad happening with living, and in particular, the challenges parents with other living children face after already burying one child.
We also talk about how her practice evolved with her grief and how it’s also enabled her to sit with other grievers, including other bereaved parents and guardians, in their pain.
When unimaginable loss happens, every aspect of our lives takes a hit. But when our spiritual life is bruised, finding meaning, which Karla explains is very personal, can be the fuel needed to get up in the morning and keep moving.
Karla lives her life with one thought: to live a life that would make Theo proud.
May we all strive to live our lives to honor our departed loved ones – in even the smallest of ways. 💛
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CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Victoria Volk: Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Grieving Voices. Today, my guest is Karla Helbert. She is a licensed professional counselor, internationally certified yoga therapist, compassionate bereavement care provider, certified yoga instructor, certified hypnotherapist, reiki practitioner, and an award-winning author. Her life changed when her firstborn child died of a brain tumor in two thousand six. Carlos Therapy Practice has a focus on loss, grief, and bereavement, working in particular with those affected by trauma and traumatic death. She is also the author of Yoga for Grief and Loss, The Shakras and Grief and Trauma, and Finding Your Own Way to Grieve a creative activity workbook for kids and teens on the autism spectrum. It’s a mouthful
Karla Helbert: Fill up.
Victoria Volk: And that’s amazing because I often see that even for myself personally, grief can either crack us wide open and, like, have us go down all these different paths that we never imagined, or it can really take us down in our lives and devastate every aspect of our lives. And we never meet our potential. We never see our potential, and we don’t take chances on ourselves and go after these things that are not only healing for us in the process, but also bring healing to other people, and that’s exactly what you’ve done through your grief and experience. And so I do have questions. But, often, like, even for myself with certifications and things, like, what came first? And I know that you were a therapist for many years before your son passed, but can you describe how things shifted for you with that experience? And share about your son too, please. Yeah, sure.
Karla Helbert: Yeah, sure. And when you were talking about, well, we can either be devastated or we can have this potential, there’s like this huge spectrum and you can be any place on the spectrum at all sorts of times because it’s certainly I mean, when your child dies. And there’s lots of other catastrophic losses. But anytime you have trauma and grief intersecting, it can be really devastating. So there was a lot of devastation. And I will say, I think that I was really fortunate just to being me. And I felt like I cannot turn away from this, like I had to be in it, I had to feel it, and I had to do something with that energy. And I think that’s a a big part of it when I work with other people or when you see situations where people are not growing in their grief or developing because it is really a developmental process and when you’re not being nurtured and supported and having that really fertile ground where to put your roots down so that you can then grow people often don’t. And it’s not always their fault. I hear like, oh, the choice. There are choices to be made sure. But also when you’re in a situation where you don’t have the personal strength maybe to stand up and say no, I’m not gonna accept this notion that I’m supposed to be somewhere other than I am or that I have to subscribe to the five stages, which we don’t really have to get into that, but it’s so permeated in our culture that we’re supposed to somehow lend the early follow these stages, and they’re not linear at all, and I know you know that, and get to the place of acceptance. And that means so many different things to people and also people don’t know. I didn’t know.
Karla Helbert: I took a whole semester long. I think that just makes me laugh. Elective course in counseling and death and dying and grief and bereavement in grad school. And when it happened to me, I still was sitting there going am I going through the stages like I’m supposed to? Am I fitting in like I’m am I grieving like I’m supposed to? And I just had this moment of like, what why they’re supposed to and that notion of acceptance at the end of the line makes some people just feel it’s insulting and like you’re supposed to there’s no such thing that closure. There’s no place where you’re done with this. And if you can’t understand that and integrate it and then stand in that truth for yourself and what it means, you often feel to squash down and if you are not behaving and responding, like, our culture says you should in grief, which is ridiculous, the expectations that are placed on grieving people, then you tend to just sort of keep it to yourself and then you have these emotions like shame, and that increases your sense of isolation and you don’t share and you don’t grow. And if you don’t have access to support and help and the nurturing and the love and all those things that go along with appropriate and healthy development then you might not reach those places. Like, there’s no, we hear a lot too right now in our in our world about post-traumatic growth it’s not a promise. And it’s also not a contest. And I know I’ve done a lot of stuff. But it wasn’t immediate. I mean, it took me a long time to sort of unfold that process.
Karla Helbert: I was a therapist. And primarily, I mean, I was working in a private school with kids and teenagers, with autism, and other developmental disabilities, which were co-occurring with lists of mental health diagnoses, but severe behavioral challenges. And I did that for a long time. And then my son died in two thousand six of a brain tumor, and he was a baby. And that was just a whole the whole thing from the moment of the diagnosis through his illness and the surgeries and the treatments and his death, it was just horrific. And then he died. And I thought because I had a lot of time. Well, we had five months between the time we decided to withdraw treatment, and he went home, and we had amazing support from pediatric hospice. But I thought oh, I’m gonna handle this better because I’ve had all this time to get used to it. And I’m grateful for the time I had. I mean, I certainly know many people people who do not have time. And it’s just this sudden thing that happens when you’re in immediate shock and it’s very difficult to even process. I had the opportunity to plan what I wanted for his funeral. I was able to be with him. I was able to had a lot of processing through those times. But when he died, like, I had no idea what it was gonna be like. I was plunged into this, like, depth of despair and everything I thought was true about the universe and my belief system was just like and I did not know what to do or how to put it back together. And I started taking because I maintain my license and we need to have CEUs. I decided, well, I’m gonna try to learn about grief. I’m gonna try to learn how to figure this out for myself. It wasn’t because I wasn’t gonna be a great therapist. And for me, support groups were incredibly helpful. I’m still I’m involved with the MISS Foundation, which we’re a nonprofit organization that supports families after the death of a child. And I was fortunate enough to have had a group already here. A lot of people think that I started the chapter in Richmond, but I did not where I live. And I went to the group. Every time they were meeting. And when the facilitator at the time found out I was a therapist, she wanted me to help her run the group and at first, I really didn’t want to because I was like, if I do that, I’ll have I won’t have space. But, like, two years in, I thought I can do it. I’ve gotten so much help. I know I can do this, and so I did. And then from there, I started doing some groups with local hospices and those people were asking me, do you have a private therapy practice that we can meet with you? And I did not. I was still working in private schools. But when my daughter who was born two years after my son died, which is about when I started facilitating those groups, went to preschool, I had time. So that was like four years in that I actually started a part-time therapy practice. And started writings and things as well. I mean, I’ve always written things, but for other people to read. Although I did keep a blog throughout his illness and wrote a memoir which has never been published and I don’t know that it will. I don’t feel like I need to at this point. But I hear a lot of people feeling when they come to me that they’re not doing enough, that they need to do something big. And really, like that whole idea of the tree and your roots, a lot of people when they go through something like this immediately want to just jump into this huge project, which is okay because you have a lot of energy to put into things, but it’s also not giving you a chance to establish your own roots and see, like, what you need. And so some people can’t, like, they can do both at the same time. But a lot of times, it’s just overwhelming. And for me, like, I did it just sort of unfolded. It was not a plan. It wasn’t a thing that I said I was gonna do and that’s just how my journey has been. Although, I will say, the yoga piece of everything I do, I started my yoga teacher training before I was ever pregnant with him. And those skills really helped me through a lot of that journey. Although when he died, they felt useless.
Karla Helbert: So I had to sort of integrate that and figure out, like, well, when I wrote the Yoga for Grieving Lockbook, it really came from me spending a lot of time and looking back and seeing how all the skills that I had learned really were supporting me through all of that, and I just didn’t realize it. Like, yoga is a lot of people think that it’s depositors, and it’s so much more than that. Which is what the book is really about is the takes the branches of yoga each chapter is about a different branch of yoga and talked about how the tools within each of those branches are really incredibly helpful in grief. And the yoga postures are like this much of it. They’re only part of two of the different brands of the yoga. And the rest of it or it’s philosophy, its spiritual practice, it’s meditation, it’s self-inquiry and awareness, it’s a lot of different things that I realized later, really were carrying me through. So I’m not sure I answered your question. But it for me, that whole journey of becoming and I’m still doing it, still unfolding was a slow thing. It was not a planned thing. It’s just kind of how I ended up getting to know my own grief better. And for me, the motivation because that’s when we talk about finding meaning or creating meaning, that’s such a personal thing. And if something you have to explore on your own for me, the overall motivation is you have to help people, but I was already doing that. It’s really to me creating a life and living a life that my son would be proud of. And sort of doing things in his honor even though I don’t even really, like, talk about it so much, but it is the motivation behind what I’m doing.
Victoria Volk: What is his name?
Karla Helbert: His name. Everybody mostly knows if it’s Theo, but his name is Felinious Luther Helbert.
Victoria Volk: That’s beautiful.
Karla Helbert: It’s a big mouthful. But that Thelonious Monk, my husband is a huge fan of Thelonious Monk and the whole time I was pregnant, I really thought, well, not the whole time. Until I got the twenty-week ultrasound, I really was sure that he was a girl. And so I had only thought of girl names, and I was like, when I found out he was a boy, first of all, weird. I don’t even have a penis inside you, like, twenty-four hours. Sounds like Oh My God, I really have to adjust my thinking around it weird. And I didn’t know what to call him and we were looking at an album cover and I thought that’s a cool thing. Well then, what about Thelonious? And my husband was thrilled with that. And my dad’s name is Luther, and his father’s name is Luther. So that was his middle name. Mhmm.
Victoria Volk: Oh, it’s beautiful. Right.
Karla Helbert: Everybody mostly called him Theo
Victoria Volk: And you had shared that he would be eighteen now.
Karla Helbert: He would be eighteen now.
Victoria Volk: When was his for when will his eighteenth birthday be or when was it?
Karla Helbert: Well, it passed till this coming year, his birthday is on May Twenty-sixth Twenty Twenty-Four, it will be nineteen years. And he died nine months old. He wasn’t a year old. He didn’t live to see his first birthday. So the death date when we get there in February will be eighteen years that he’s been dead, but then nineteen years of his birthday following way though.
Victoria Volk: And when I hear something cocky?
Karla Helbert: Crazy for me to think about that sometimes, they’ll just tell me.
Victoria Volk: So my son, his name is Xavier John, and his due date was May twenty-six two thousand five, but he was born May twenty-fourth.
Karla Helbert: Oh, wow.
Victoria Volk: So we were pregnant at the exact same time.
Karla Helbert: Oh my goodness.
Victoria Volk: And gave birth around the exact same time.
Karla Helbert: Wow. That’s amazing.
Victoria Volk: Yeah. That’s never happened before in an interview. So
Karla Helbert: Wow.
Victoria Volk: I know it. So
Karla Helbert: Thank you so much for sharing that with me.
Victoria Volk: And thank you for sharing you didn’t mention it, but the Reiki, how has that served you in learning? Because I know how beneficial that has been for me just to learn about energy at self in the energy of emotions? Can you yeah
Karla Helbert: Oh, yes for sure. And emotions are energy. Mhmm. Absolutely. Well, you know, everything is energy. But it’s interesting because I’m trying to think of when it was one time and then, like, late nineties. A group of my friends all went to go get Reiki trained. And it’s totally a thing that I would be down with. I mean, I am, but they asked me to go and I didn’t do it. I just I don’t know. I really can’t remember why I said no. Because it sounds like a thing I would be like, oh, yeah. Let’s I wanna do that with y’all, but I didn’t. And I was the only one out of this group of friends that I hung out with a lot that didn’t do the Reiki training at the time. And they were all coming and breaking me afterwards. And I was like, oh, cool. And I just, like, let it go. And I really think it’s because I was gonna need it a lot more later.
Karla Helbert: But so in twenty thirteen, I guess, I went another thing that I’ve been really interested in for many years is essential oil and aromatherapy. I’m not a certified aromatherapist I’ve been working with them for a long since nineteen ninety. And a friend of mine said, oh, there’s this weekend workshop about a Aroma therapist, but aroma therapy for therapists do you want to go? And I thought, well, okay. And so for me, a lot of things after he died, just I’ve always been a very spiritual person. I always call myself spiritually promiscuous. Like
Victoria Volk: I love that.
Karla Helbert: Sort of, like, avenues and studying different religions and paths and stupid interested in so many ways. Like, I really believe that the yoga that I’m trained in, which is integral yoga, our motto is truth is one and path are many, and I absolutely believe that. So I’ve learned a lot about a lot of different things over many years. But when he died, it was like none of that meant anything. It was just that loss of my spiritual self. It’s still makes me cry. I was just like, who am I now? And the only thing that really helped me then was I and I’m again fortunate in this because I’ve worked with lots of people who say that they cannot. They hear all these things about signs and connection and communications and they don’t have it and they can’t feel their children or their other loved ones and but I knew he was around. I knew he was there. I couldn’t believe in anything else. It was all gone, but I could believe in that. And I could talk to him until the o means god, sort of male, like, okay. Well, if he’s around and I feel that, then somewhere, there must still be this divine presence. I just don’t know where it is. It was truly this dark night of the soul space. A feeling disconnected totally separate from that source. It was awful. I stopped doing yoga, the awesomeness. I did chant. That was one of the things that got me through chanting, and just being taking a lot of bath, a lot. But so many things that were who I was just were gone. And I had hundreds of dollars in essential oils. Just hundreds and hundreds just sitting on a shelf doing nothing with them. Because for me, that was also part of my virtual practice, like using them in a spiritual way and in ritual and add mixing them together and potions really, but, like, ways that for me, like, really carried the energies of the plant. And I just didn’t want anything to do with it. I would put lavender on a cotton ball vacuum. That was about it. But I said, well, okay, I’ll go to this thing with you. And it was like a turning point for me. It was really really what I needed in that moment. And the two women who were putting it together the wrong therapist was named Katiebugs. And I love her and she and I became really close over the years and she’s become like a mentor and the other woman, Barbara Davis, is a licensed therapist and also a Reiki Master. And that’s the first time I met her and she became a really important person for me and I thought, okay, it was funny because at that weekend workshop, mostly everybody there were, like, bodyworkers and acupuncturists and massage therapists me and one other person were psychotherapists, and it was like, I don’t even have them in the right place, but we had to learn some certain acupressure points and work with the oils and work with people. And one person I was working with that, are you a reiki person and I was like, no. And she said, are you sure? And I was like, well, I’m pretty sure. She said, but I can feel the energy in your hand. And then I said, oh, okay. And then I looked into it more after that and went to train with Barb Davis. And it really helped me regain a spiritual connection and a spiritual practice. And I think had I done it all those years ago with my friends that wouldn’t have happened. And I think something in me or something in the universe just new, the right time for this is gonna be later. And so that was in twenty fourteen. I did my reiki training level one, level two, and worked with it on myself a lot. And on some clients, but I didn’t really, like, get into really using reiki with a lot of other people until the pandemic. And to my reiki master level in twenty twenty or maybe twenty twenty one. It might have been, like, right at the change of the year. And started working with it differently in a way different way. I mean, for people who are who under who know about Ricky, I would use punchalization in and send it decently, like, just a prayer list? Like, I’m sending this to you. I’m sending but I didn’t start working decently with people really in session until the pandemic when we I was doing the master level and working with it in that way because I really couldn’t wasn’t seeing people in person. And it was a profound experience. And many people that I’ve worked with distantly have said, the feedback from them is even more powerful than what you get in person, which has been an interesting experience for me.
Karla Helbert: And then last year, I started teaching some people. I haven’t done tons of it, but it is incredibly powerful experience every time I do a reiki training and the right people show up. You know, once you are supposed to be there in that moment and the groups are just so cohesive and they stay in touch, and it’s just really interesting. But that part, I think that weekend was really I’m gonna know because I can feel the difference. Really profound. And then from there, the reiki journey started. And I’m really grateful for it because I think it wouldn’t have been the same. Had I done it earlier. I can’t know for sure but
Victoria Volk: Mhmm. Well, and I had similar experience, although I did my reiki master, I think, twenty nineteen. And then I did Corona Holy Fire Rakey Master. And then I phoned biofield tuning, which is his tuning fork, so I got certified in that. And so, yeah, it’s what I’ve heard you saying up to all this point is that it’s like when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Right? And it’s being open to receiving what it is that is there for you to learn about yourself, about healing, about whatever it is that is peeking your curiosity. And where I think people come into our lives too just to nudge us like they’re brought into our lives to nudge us and then we might not ever see them again or speak to them again. I’ve had so many instances of that one off conversations that just, like, change the trajectory of my life sometimes. I’ve published a book because of one off conversation with someone. It’s been bizarre. Yeah. And I think the message that I want people to hear and what you were sharing is that to be open, really, it’s important to be open to support and be open to the nudges and to getting out of your comfort zone. Because I think we can become very comfortable with our suffering too.
Karla Helbert: Oh, yeah. I think you’re right. That’s true. And then it’s scared to what is it that the devil? It’s easier to stay somewhere than to face the fear of something that’s different. And it is scary. And I think I’ll stay often to people in grief. We often feel like we don’t we don’t wanna move. We don’t wanna literally go out. We don’t want to do anything. And I’ll say, go when people ask you to do something, drive your own car so you can leave, but try. And just yesterday, I was talking to a friend of mine and we’re planning a webinar, and we’re talking about just, like, basic tips. And I said, you know, when somebody that you love and trust sent to you. Let’s go take a walk or maybe you should take a shower. Just listen to do it. Just do it. You just never know how one little thing might really shift how you’re feeling in a moment. And sometimes, just taking a shower can really, like, change how you’re feeling or going out and walking around the block and getting some sunlight. I mean, those things are so basic. But so important. And especially really early on when you’re in those spaces of devastation, we often don’t want to do anything. You don’t care to take care of yourself. Like I talk a lot about self-compassion, and self-care. And when you’re in those places, you don’t care to have compassion for yourself or take care of yourself. And so really, you’re right. Like, that just do it anyway. Like, just take this moment and listen when somebody gives you a little bit of a nudge. Because you don’t know how just this one little shift can change the energy of your emotion. Because as we said before, emotions or energy. And I’ve shared many times that word emotion comes from the Latin verb, a move air, which means to move. Emotions are supposed to move. We’re not supposed to just, like, hold them tight and just But I know because when you’re in pain, like physical pain, you just don’t wanna move, but everybody knows if you don’t move that arm that’s hurt, it’s gonna freeze up. You have to take those little steps to allow on an emotional level, also the pain to move. It doesn’t mean you’re gonna be fixed or cured or you’re not gonna grieve do grief stays with us forever? I mean I was just I can if I talk to you about it, it’s right there. It doesn’t go away. I just now am strong enough to carry it that building your emotional muscle and all of those things are energetically motivated, but it includes the physical aspects too of taking a shower, going for the walk, taking the chances and having lunch with a friend. And it’s scary because we don’t know you don’t know from one minute to the next sometimes seconds, what’s gonna just bring you to your knees any moment. A song, a look, a kid that looks like your kid or you never know and they’re everywhere, these dangers. And if you don’t make the effort to become strong enough to handle them when they show up. You never leave that safe safe circle it’s how your world gets smaller and smaller. And I don’t think that’s a good way to live. Mean, I can’t I’ve had conversations where people say, well, who are you to say? I’m I can it’s my business if I wanna keep my world that small. You’re right? You know, that’s true. You can’t ever make anybody do anything. But I don’t want to live in a little tiny box. Know, so in order to be able to expand, you have to, as you say, be keep being curious. You’re curious about something. Go find out. Like, curiosity is a very healthy place to be always.
Victoria Volk: And that’s the hardest thing I think when being, like, on the therapeutic side of it or renew assisting others in grief And for a long time, I just felt this like, I just wanted to, like, help everybody. Right? And you can only help those that really are ready to help themselves who are ready to be open, right, to the support. And that was the hardest part for me when I first started this my work of working with grievers too is being on the other side of it. Right? Like, you just you just wanna bring everybody with you. Like, there is hope. There is support. There is a path forward. There is joy and happiness waiting for you.
Karla Helbert: It’s hard believe sometimes, I mean, I remember vividly being in the space of thinking, okay, well, I’m never gonna feel joy again. I guess that’s alright. I mean, I’ve had little kind of burst of oh, I feel happy for a minute. That’s okay. I mean, I had accepted that was weird when that first happened, but I’m never gonna feel joy again. I mean, who knew? You can. It’s not and so, you know, the for me, the most profound thing was really real. And it was did not happen overnight. Is being able to hold grief alongside other emotions. And it’s hard to do because grief, especially traumatic grievance and the trauma aspect of it really has to be worked on, like, how do you deal with post-traumatic stress issues when they come up. Like, that’s a different thing, learning how to calm your nervous system down and understand how it works. But the grief itself does not need to be healed. It’s a normal and a natural response. And in the beginning, It is so overwhelming that it’s impossible for other things to come in and feel. But the more you learn how to carry it, the more than you’re able to have that space for other things, it doesn’t mean that this is gonna go away. It doesn’t. And then that not being afraid of learning that grief isn’t your enemy, that was huge for me too. But and I remember talking to a really good friend of mine. I was on one of the death anniversaries, and I was saying to her, I hate this so much. I hate this grief. I hate it. And she’s like, you don’t hate it. And I was like, yes, I do. No, you don’t hate it. And I was like, oh, I totally do. And she said, no. You hate that he’s dead. You don’t hate the grief. I was like, okay. That is true. That’s true. The grief is just there because he’s dead. Like, there’s Of course, it is. And so, like, that for me was another little turning point of really realizing, okay, I don’t have to try to get rid of it. How can I, like, make friends with it a little bit? It’s a constant companion. You know, it’s always here. Even in that the the metaphor of sort of, like, this thing being huge and you can’t see around it at all and or you’re just blind to buy it. And then eventually, it moves out here and you can see around it or under it and then it’s here and so it’s always right there. Or maybe it’s like right here most of the time and oh, I know you’re there. If I wanna come get you. And then there’s those days where it’s like, oh, look, here I am. It’s never like this for me anymore. And his grief isn’t. And I,really feel that the only thing that scares me and it’s that true for a lot of grandparents as my living child. Then I don’t know what will happen to me if she were to die before I die. I just hope she won’t. But here, I’m all I’m pretty confident that I can handle anything grief-related that comes my way in regards to his death. I can I can handle it even if it’s here? and it doesn’t stay here very long. It’s just like, okay. I know. And then it goes back here. But it’s always part of me. And in the beginning, had you told me that’ll be like, I don’t want this, and I understand that completely that impose to protest and to push this away and to not have this be your reality is absolutely how you feel. And I get it. And so you’re right with the where people and people are ready. And in this job, in my job, I No. There’s nothing I can do to help you. I can’t fix this. Like, I can’t fix the grief. I cannot change how you feel. I can offer you suggestions, I can be there with you, and it doesn’t scare me. And so now in a lot of ways working with dramatically grief people, I don’t I’m not responsible for their healing. I can just be there with you in it, and I’m really good at that now. And I think a lot of people who do this work, including lots of therapists, are not comfortable in that discomfort. It’s also a cultural issue. This is much fun with culture. Like, our culture is not comfortable in the face of other people’s pain. They either, like, don’t wanna be seeing that. Or they want the person that they care about to be who they used to be, which is also impossible, or they wanna fix it for them and take like, when people say, oh, if I could do take this away from you, I would never want somebody to take my grief away from me. It’s inexorably connected to my love for my child and you’re not taking my breath away. It’s impossible anyway. But even early on, I knew that. Like, I had to feel it. But if this it is a developmental process and a journey, like, nobody overnight just as like, okay, I’m ready to be healing now. I mean, just and for me, I don’t even really use that language because I think the idea is that grief can be healed and it doesn’t need to be. And I’m never gonna be healed from that trauma, relationship problems with other people that show up, physical issues. A lot of times, this can be healing, all that depending on what has happened. The immune systems are depleted. People have autoimmune problems because of extreme amount of stress that their bodies are under. And once you start dealing with the emotional peace and find the right physical support, that stuff can be healed, but the grief doesn’t need to be. It’s a learning process too with all of those things growing, learning, developing, but I don’t need to heal from it. So but other I don’t suggest other people use my words, but figuring that out was also huge because for several years, I thought I needed to heal. And I tried and tried and tried and thought about it and wrote about it and finally, when I started thinking about it in a different way, it was a relief to just be like, oh, and god, I don’t have to heal from this because I’m not.
Victoria Volk: I have a lot to reflect on that because it is. It’s like this, it is a constant wound. Right? Like, there’s nothing ever that will bring your son back and Right. Or any loss that anyone experiences or any traumatic experience that someone has, there’s nothing we can’t go back in time. We can’t change it.
Karla Helbert: Right.
Victoria Volk: And so it is this ever present wound. But like in grief recovery, what the language And I use healing but more towards, like, energy work. Mhmm. But when it comes to grief, it’s more of the a sense of recovery. And almost like, you know, like the twelve-step programs of alcohol or substance abuse disorders and things like that. But for me, personally, it was recovering from the pain. Mhmm. It was and that’s what I feel like grief recovery addresses is the pain so that when you have those moments that show up in your life that remind you you’re not pulled back to the pain. Mhmm. Your relationship changes because your relationship continues with your son. Your relationship continues who never passed.
Karla Helbert: Absolutely. Yeah.
Victoria Volk: And so it’s and she’s yes. So grief recovery. What it did for me and what I see it doing for clients is it helps them change the relationship moving forward? Because I think there’s a lot of you know, what’s the loss of hopes, dreams, and expectations and anything that you wish would have been different better or more. And I think that’s the story on repeat in a lot of people’s minds and hearts and that’s really difficult to let go of.
Karla Helbert: Oh, totally. Yeah. And that’s for me and a lot of other bereaved parents. And in a lot of ways for anybody who’s the loved one, but that those ideas of, like, what we what would have been if he would be now. Like, I was not expecting, for example, fact that school stuff has been with hard for a lot of years. But I didn’t even really think about it. All the kids going off college this last summer. And I was like, oh my god. Like, it went it’s interesting. I looked at it. I was like, wow. And a lot of the things I was reading from a lot of mothers being devastated and grieving. And I just thought, oh, gosh. Yeah. I’m not gonna I can’t I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t comment on anything. I didn’t because I just thought, okay. It was it was very hard to read. And I don’t know if he what would he be doing? Will he take a gap year? I don’t know. Would he be going to college at all? What would he be doing? I don’t even I don’t know. All things you don’t know. That’s all still there. But for me, yeah, like, you know, language is so important how we talk about things and what we think about words. I mean, I’m a big word nerd. So I mean, to me, I’m always like, look up the ophthalmology of this thing and see where it comes from. But that’s why healing and the thought around that. But it really is how we because the way you’re talking about grief recovery, like this resonates with me. I don’t like that word because I think in a lot of places, people assume it means you get to go back to who you were before and you don’t. And I know you know that. Mhmm. And so it’s hard to our language is still limited to on how we can really express it’s hard to talk about. I write a lot about grief. I mean, I have written a lot about grief and there’s still no words that really can describe your actual experience in it.
Victoria Volk: Can I read something that you shared with me in your application here?
Karla Helbert: Oh of course.
Victoria Volk: Because I feel like a lot of people listening who have lost a child will resonate with this. So I asked, what would you like to scream to the world? And you had said that others who did not know this pain could fully you wanted them to fully feel the catastrophic immensity of not just my pain, but the totality of living with such traumatic loss and the ongoing experience of what it is truly like to live without the person you love and cherish most. I wish they could experience it so they would know and if only for a few minutes what I was going through, and I imagine that as a feeling that you have kept all these years. Even when you’re reading those messages of the moms when their children were going off to college and things, I imagine, like, it really touched me. That’s why I wanted to bring it up.
Karla Helbert: I can I didn’t remember what I wrote in the so but that’s true? Because, you know, people will say. And this and it is I do concur. I would not wish the death of a child. On anybody. I don’t really have any enemies, but if I did, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, people say. But I do wish that for just an instant, people could really feel it. Because I don’t think I mean, I know. So I also have this thing that I don’t like it when people say I can’t imagine because human beings have the capacity to imagine anything. Like, we’ve imagined worlds that never existed. Galaxies far, far away and all these things. And it and I think what it means when people say that is they don’t want to imagine it because it’s new scary because if you really really. And I know you can never if you’ve not experienced it, you cannot know what it’s actually like. But people don’t want to try to imagine. And I haven’t had a conversation with my mom not too long ago. Which was really interesting because she’s one of the people who just have historically over this whole period difficult to talk about this with. And she’s gotten so much better over the years. She’s really, like, taken in a lot and I think learned and had I’ve seen her deal with grief with friends and other aspects, and she’s gotten so much better at it. But she asked me something about how do you work with all these people’s pain and what how do you do that all the time every day? And I was trying to explain it and and that this conversation went into the phase of that because that was happening at that time, everybody’s children were going off to college, and I was talking about it. And she said to me, oh, bigger. She said, well, when you went to when you went off to school, I cried every day from month to month, it was awful. You just have no idea and I was like, Okay. Now imagine, I’m an only child. Imagine if you would never speak to me again, never see me, never hold me, never touch me, never hear my voice, never mail me, but I don’t want to hear that. And I was like, okay. This is what I’m talking about. And I didn’t you know, we were we were out at our house. I was making dinner and all. I just went back. And it’s interesting too. I like that I mean, for me that moment, if that had happened fifteen years ago, I would not have been able to even talk to her. I would have had to leave. You know, it was just no, it’s interesting, and I remember miserably in those moments. Early on in grief. Just wishing that people could feel how I felt. Just for a few seconds even because grieving people and I experienced it too are so judged. It’s like I mean, yeah, you’re tired of our grief, oh my god. Imagine having to do it every single second. We’re sick of our shit too. Oh my god. We can’t do anything about it. And then for that gets back to that, what you said earlier, it’s a choice to do something. It’s so hard. So I have so much sympathy and sympathy for people who are in those places, and I work with people who it’s protracted. And it’s just, okay. You just keep doing these things, and then there might be a little shift, a little shift. And I had a woman once. It totally sticks out to me. Our son took his own life. She came in, she walked on my sofa, she’s just crying crying crying. And for, like, twenty minutes, all we did, she sat there and told me how she can’t do this. And I said, but you’re doing it, but I can’t do it anymore. But you’re doing it. This went on and on and we had a lot of conversations around, okay, what are your options? And to killing herself, completely just like taking every drug and just staying high and she didn’t like any of those options because all of those had bad consequences. And I thought well, Okay. We’re doing it then. And then we shifted the conversation and we’re talking about other things. And when she left, she was laughing about something and we were just it was not we’re having a great little time, and I said, you know, I want just want to point out to you. This isn’t to say that some great healing moment happened but look at how differently you feel right now as opposed to how you felt just like an hour and a half ago. That doesn’t mean you won’t have those moments again, but you’ve got through it. And now we’re in a different place totally. Just remember that. It can change. It can. And people just don’t believe that often when you’re in those places of just total pit darkness, but it can’t.
Victoria Volk: You just highlighted a very important point is that especially in those moments when you’re sitting in it and you’d have don’t see a way out of it. You can’t see the label from inside the jar. This is where you need support, you need someone else to light the way for you, to show you that you can shift your perspective in an instant.
Karla Helbert: It is variable. Don’t have that Yeah. Right. And a lot of people don’t have that. They don’t have that help and support. And it’s it’s hard because a lot of times people who may not be the kind of person who would reach out and go find it are the ones who need it the most. I mean, you see this, people who are help, seeking people just naturally be like, I I need to go to a group or I’m gonna go find a therapist or whatever. And now I’ve said a few times on different podcasts. Now what is so helpful? Even more it’s I mean, it’s been almost twenty years, which seems like a long time, but it all those things really fast. Then, like, there was very little support. Now, you can and social media can be really devastating for many people, and it can be really helpful but there’s so much more. And you need to be discerning because not every place that’s supposedly helpful and supportive really is and there can be a lot of toxicity, but this is where you knowing yourself and learning, having that self awareness and starting to pay attention again to your own wisdom, finding the places where you feel safe and comfortable there’s so many more out there now than there were even when I was going through it. I felt really alone. I mean, it’s really thankful for the miss foundation and the group that was here. And that’s one reason I’ve stayed so connected and and still very much active with with the foundation. Is because it’s what really helps save me. So having that support and there’s so many more options now and that’s really, really good.
Karla Helbert: When I wrote that book yoga for grief and loss, Actually, the the other book defining your own way to grief book that’s for kids on spectrum, that came from a story that I wrote one of my clients is for my son, any of this happened with him. This kid was a new kid to me. Both of his grandfathers had died. And one of those grandfathers was, like, his person. And there was nothing anywhere. I could find no resources. So I wrote him this little story that’s at the beginning of that book, but then turned into chapters because I couldn’t find anything out. And now, there’s more support for people on the spectrum. There’s more support for grief parents. So I remember finding there was one book that I found that was for marine parents at the time. And then there were a couple more, but there really weren’t that many resources even for bereaved parents. There was nothing for siblings. So, and all of this has grown a lot over the last fifteen years. And there’s so much more out there. It’s easier to find support than it was, but you have people that it’s hard for them to reach out. Which is why I say also to other people don’t stop reaching out to the greeting person. They may not come to lunch, keep asking them. And a lot of times, what happens is this victim blaming kinda thing, oh, well, she doesn’t wanna come to let her sit there. It’s part of it is because they don’t understand how grief is not a disability or a disorder, but it can be debilitating. Had trauma with it, you have all of that combined. It can be terrifying to walk out of your house. And they need support. You need people who the people who love you who are gonna keep coming back instead of getting annoyed with you because you’re not getting over this. Are you still sad about this? It’s been six months or less? I mean, it’s just like amazing. So for me, if people could’ve veld it, just for an infant, maybe they would have more other lips.
Victoria Volk: And zip their lips. Right?
Karla Helbert: It’s like impossible. I get that it’s impossible.
Victoria Volk: It’s like I equate it to society’s response to grief to grievers, like a thousand paper cuts. It’s like every little comment, every little inciliation, every judgment, or every whatever it is. It’s like just another little paper cut on a griever. And the thing is what this is why I started this podcast is like nobody has to die for you to be a griever, for you to grieve. Like, I guarantee you these people that say this stuff, this un these unhelpful things, have a lost dream, or have a less than loving relationship with a parent. I mean, we grieve, have a loss of career or finances. Maybe the less they’re home, everything went up in flames. Like, we all grieve something as we just forget. We forget.
Karla Helbert: Yeah, well, maybe that forgetting. I don’t know. Because when you’ve had these huge losses, catastrophic losses, you can’t forget. And I don’t know. I mean, maybe when people have those other those other kinds of grief and those other losses and they forget, they sort of think, well, I got over these things. I mean, and people equate these things together, they do. I mean, I’ve seen it. Like, it’s amazing. Oh, I know exactly how you feel.
Victoria Volk: Oh, yeah. Mhmm.
Karla Helbert: Because my grandmother died, my dog died, my whatever died. I mean, it’s like
Victoria Volk: My aunts, cousins, brother, sister.
Karla Helbert: Yes. Whatever, you know. I mean, it’s just like,
Victoria Volk: trying to relate and trying to relate you’re creating more harm. And Yeah. You talked a lot about support and making sure that grievers seek support and you talked about ways that you found support and what you looked for and what helped you. But overall, what has your grief taught you?
Karla Helbert: I don’t think you asked me this ahead of time.
Victoria Volk: It was on the form and you selected it.
Karla Helbert: Oh, well. Okay. Okay. Well, today, I think well, the thing that came to my mind very the first thing is that I’m not special. Like, I so in the beginning when this first happened, one of the things, right, that was, like, universe shattering and this idea somehow that I was protected and special. Even if I didn’t really say that to myself and I think like a lot of people walk around with this assumption that they’re exempt. They know bad things can happen, but somewhere they don’t think it’s gonna happen to them. And I was just, like, with the why, why, why, why, why. And then I just had this, like, thought, but this was really early in. Oh, why not? I mean, like, why not? Why not me? What’s I’m no different than anybody else. I mean, I’m just I’m special. I’m just special and I’m just as not special as anybody else. And I think it also had taught me And that was really eye-opening. I was like, okay, what does that mean now? What do I how do you navigate the world. And it’s scary. How do you navigate the world when you know for sure these terrible things can happen? And I’ve had to learn how to balance that fear? Because it’s still there. I mean, I know all the things can happen. So it’s how do we balance that fear and then at the same time knowing that. And maybe it’s the curiosity piece because I’m I’ve always been, like, very curious and open to lots of things. It’s like, well, if I know that, then how do you make the most of this one this moment that’s happening now. Right now, as far as I can tell and everything I can do, everybody that I love is safe. Everybody is okay. Now what do we do? We live in this moment. We live in this present moment as much as we can. We plan for what we can plan for. But you can’t control everything. And that’s been really hard. Like, I’ve tried my best and I’ve really have tried my best. Some people say that and I don’t always try my best at everything. Try my best. To try to be the kind of parent. That I think I would be if I didn’t have a dad child, but learning how to, like, let her go into the world she’s gonna be fifteen on her next birthday. Oh my god. She’s gonna drive a car. Like, how it’s ongoing. How do you balance this stuff? It’s taught me how to be able to live a more balanced life to let go of what I don’t control or hang to how to really surrender to things how to learn how to surrender to that grief because it cannot control it. And then how to then take the steps to continue learning and growing. I mean, those are the things I’ve learned from my grief. For sure.
Victoria Volk: I’m glad you touched on that with your daughter, like, you know, that fear of I mean, you’ve lost one child. Right? That fear never goes away. Right?
Karla Helbert: Now when I know many, many families who’ve lost more than one child, it’s it happens a lot. And it’s a real fear and a real possibility. So how do you live? And that’s the thing I address with lots of parents that I work with who have living children. How do you live with this? Without being crazy, without being super controlling, letting them have and have made mistakes, I’m sure not definitely not a perfect parent. I do feel I’ve tried my best to not control her and let her have experiences climbing trees. Oh my god. I used to love to climb trees. Nobody paid any attention to me. Climbing the trees. I was so scared to deliver climb trees, but I let her do it. Thank goodness she was not like a daredevil child. Really glad for that, but it was really hard. But I wanted her to have those experiences. And I’m gonna have to let her drive a car at some point. That’s worse than climbing trees because there’s other people driving cars and on phones and drilling and drag all these things. So it’s just like to terrifying. Is scary for non bereaved parents?
Victoria Volk: It is. Yeah.
Karla Helbert Yeah. It’s a it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge. And it’s ongoing. I mean, their times when it’s harder than other times. So, like, that’s a skill. Right? So, grief has taught me many skills to move through my days.
Victoria Volk: I do have one question kind of on that topic. What would you say to parents I have this belief system too that, like, a parent’s anxiety can become their child’s anxiety. How do you express that to parents in a loving, compassionate way. I know.
Karla Helbert: I mean, in my kid. I do. I mean, I see it in my child. And and there’s so much, like, we knew nature or nurture all these things. Like, she’s her own person. She has a lot of anxiety. That I never had. Really, we’re very different people. You know what I mean?
Victoria Volk: It’s a very different time too.
Karla Helbert: Yes. Yes. There’s so many things. Like, I would never wanna be a teenager right now. It’s just so scary the world that they are living in. And so there’s that, I mean, when they do active shooter drills at school. I mean, she’s terrified, but there was one day that this is a middle school. And she that happened and then she had a nightmare that night that there was a shooter in her school. And she didn’t wanna go to school the next day because she thought that it was gonna come true. And I said, I mean, we had a long talk about it. And I said, because I can’t tell her it’s not gonna happen. I can’t. I know people whose children have been killed in school shootings. I know them. And I can’t tell her it’s not gonna happen. But I told her, I said, I understand that you’re scared. I know. And she knows of the children that I know. I mean, she’s aware. She knows what I do. She knows a lot of things. And I said it, but it’s like lots and lots of accidents happen in cars every day, and it’s scary to drive a car. But what if I say, we’re never gonna get in a car again because we might be in an accident. We would never go to go anywhere. We would have to be only where we could walk, and I send this to her, that would make our world a lot smaller. I know it’s scary. But we have to figure out how to breathe through our fear, do the best we can, protect ourselves, and take care of ourselves. But also live our lives. You’d have to live your life. You’d have to go to school. And it was so hard sitting here in a school. And every time this happens, it’s like, mean, I think of it all the time when she goes to school. But, I don’t know, there’s not even a but. It’s a very, very difficult. She does have a lot of anxiety and some of it is the world. I mean, the pandemic was horrible, living through that as children and teenagers. And what that had done. And we were terrified during the pandemic for her to catch it, like all of these things. And when she was a child, I mean, I know when I was pregnant, I was terrified. There’s only so much you can control and even in terms of, like, what anxieties rub off on her? I’m like, I’ve talked about my husband’s fears. He’s been through the same stuff I’ve been through, and he’s a different person. And the way he deals with trauma is very different. She’s living with two traumatized parents. And grief stricken parents. I mean, I even didn’t even know how I thought I’m gonna bring the child into this house that’s still with grief. Is that the right thing for me to do? And I did. And I think I do think too that she’s a more empathetic person she does not have hang ups about grief at all. It is normal part of her life. I also tried. I didn’t wanna push a relationship with her brother on her. Like, she never knew him. Let her come to her own sort of thoughts and feelings about it. I have a hundred percent sure. Like, none of us, grievers are not can avoid our own stuff coming off on our children. I just think being as self-aware as possible and as open as possible to your own feelings. Like being telling yourself the truth about stuff is number one important thing. Okay, how am I affecting her right now? Can I need to manage myself first before I can manage the whole oxygen put your own oxygen mask on first? But I know that it’s impacted her. It can’t not have impacted her. I don’t know how much of her anxieties or because of me or my husband or whatever stress or whether she absorbed in utero. I don’t know. I can only do what I can do and try to be as aware as I can, as loving as I can. Come back to her when I’ve made mistakes. I’ve done that too. She’s a really good kid and she’s very smart. She’s funny. She’s creative. She’s finding her own way. And I just do my best to do my best. I don’t know.
Karla Helbert: There’s not a lot I can say to people because I get it. I understand. That fear and that learning to balance it is hard. And we don’t always I don’t even know what success looks like in that, but your kids as much space to be themselves. And we’re guiding all the time and once she’s an adult, to get out of the way and let her live her life. I mean, I’ve always thought like our job as parents is for them to not need us later. Hopefully, right, for her to be able to be on her own in a contributing adult in society and be as happy as she can be as content as she can be with who she is. I mean, I hope that I’ve done that. And I think some of that is unavoidable.
Victoria Volk: And to piggyback on that, I think the best way we can do that is, like you said, have a self-awareness about ourselves and sweep our own doorstep and look at our own parts.
Karla Helbert: Yes. Do your own work. I mean, that’s really important. Because if you don’t if you if you’re not aware, then nothing can change. Like, that is the first part, self-awareness. That something needs to change or it never changes.
Victoria Volk: It’s a great way to end this podcast, I think.
Karla Helbert: Thank you so much.
Victoria Volk: Yes. Thank you. And I’m gonna put links to the books to your everything in the show notes, but where can people find you if they’d like to connect with you and work with you?
Karla Helbert: Oh, for sure. My website is the best place, and you can always any any of the contact forms come straight to my email. Also, I’m not sure whether this is gonna air, but we’re a friend of mine, animal rogers who’s also a bereaved parent. Her story is very different from mine. We’re doing a free webinar for marine parents on December fifth. And that is gonna be from five to five thirty seven eastern time. Yeah. And that information is off the on my website. And you can just click there. It’s free, but you do need to register just to get the link and everything. I think that’ll be a really helpful thing for people. My website is just my name. It’s www.karlahelbert.com. It’s Karla Helbert. And all the stuff I do is on there, and any email that you send come straight to me, and I will write back.
Victoria Volk: I will put that information in the show notes. And I
Karla Helbert: Can also find me on Instagram. I’m also on Facebook. I don’t do Twitter so much anymore. X. No. It’s really not there anymore. So Instagram and Facebook are places to find me. And also my website, you can just email me and I would love to hear from people about reiki, about bereavement, about whatever. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff that I do about yoga. So Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been really, really great talking to you.
Victoria Volk: It’s been my pleasure. Thank you for sharing your story. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life much longer.
Child Loss, Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast, Q&A |
Q&A | My Son’s Death is the Elephant in the Room
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Today’s Q&A is a great reminder for all of us that we express our grief differently and in our own timing. However, when emotions run high, and the loss seems unbearable, as is often the case with child loss, more grief will often add to the pain and heartbreak within family dynamics.
We must remember that 75% of how we respond to life’s challenges is learned by age three. By age fifteen, we’ve learned the remaining 25% of how to respond to life’s challenges. These are impressionable ages, and the lessons in our youth are what we fall back on as adults.
So when life hands a family a devastating loss, everyone brings their unique perspective and feelings about the person the family, as a whole, is grieving. This is why family dynamics have the potential to create more togetherness or more grief and separation in the wake of devastating loss.
However, less would be taken so personally if we all took the time to understand our loved ones better and honored each individual where they’re at in their grief experience.
RESOURCES:
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NEED HELP?
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
- Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor
If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.
Are you enjoying the podcast? Check out my bi-weekly newsletter, The Unleashed Letters.
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Victoria Volk: Hello. Hello. Welcome to grieving voices. Today is episode 149, a Q&A episode. But before we jump into the question today, I just wanted to share that this is the start of season 4. It is absolutely bananas to me that I’ve been doing this going on four years. I never anticipated that I would be having this podcast this long. I really didn’t know what to expect. It took me a good year to even really just decide and do it and learn along the way and it’s been an amazing experience of connecting with people from all around the world hearing people’s stories and being able to connect with people in a way that still truthfully blows my mind because I have clients that find me through this podcast who listen to my podcast and it’s a great joy that people feel connected to me in this way.
Victoria Volk: And can feel connected and supported even if I’m not working with you listening one on one. I hope that this podcast first and foremost helps you feel supported and that you’re not alone. And also is a resource of information that you can count on to be true and helpful and yeah just not more of the myths that society seems to perpetuate. So thank you again for being here and for just supporting the podcast, for sharing, for liking, for leaving a review. And if you’ve never left a review, but you love the podcast, that would be I would be immensely grateful if you took a few minutes to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Share your thoughts. I would love to hear how the podcast is helping you. If there is something in particular you want me to address, you can send in a question just like others have at [email protected] or reach out to me on social media. And I will bring your question to the podcast. And you can be anonymous if you prefer.
Victoria Volk: So anyway, with that being said, let’s move on to today’s question which comes from Amy and she asks, my twenty eight year old son died unexpectedly five years ago. Many people say I shouldn’t be so emotional after this long when I talk about him. His brother and father don’t talk about him because it makes me emotional. I tell them they just need to give me a box of tissues, but we’ve never had a talk about him as a family since his death. Is this unusual?
Victoria Volk: First of all, I can’t imagine what it is like to lose a child and you know, we had a scary moment with my son where we didn’t know what was going to happen. And I can speak to that fear but to actually lose a child. I imagine that as a heartbreak that any parent never really truly gets over. Right? It’s like it I don’t know that that phrase is even honest. Right? It’s not even an honest phrase that you need to get over. A death of losing a child. And really if people say that, it’s quite hurtful and harmful. Grief is unique and the pace that people experience, the emotions of grief, there’s a direct relationship to how they normally react emotionally to other life events. So this question is great for anybody listening because you may have people in your life who seem unaffected. Or they may not be as expressive emotionally about a loss that was maybe close to both of you. We all display our emotions differently too. And our grief is unique because our relationships are unique. And so this is where a lot of misunderstandings can happen within family units. But for Amy, if it’s your natural inclination to be more emotionally expressive and that’s your natural style to be open and emotive. It would be normal for you to still have feelings five years later. As it will be in ten or twenty years. If that’s true, then that’s great. This is a normal and natural response to the death of someone important to you as a unique individual.
Victoria Volk: And I want people listening to keep this in mind who may not be as emotional may not react to life in a more emotionally expressive way that just because people in their life do doesn’t make them wrong or bad or, you know, just like they should be over it.
Because I can actually speak to this even as a child. I’m very much a feeler. I’m a feeler. I feel things. That’s how I actually make a lot of decisions. How it makes me feel And so when something tragic happens, I’m really wound up in my feelings and especially children can be said that told that they’re cry babies or this is where this whole, like, if you wanna cry about something, I’ll give you something to cry about and this is where children who are emotionally more expressive who maybe wear their heart on their sleeves, are shut down as children, where we’re not allowed to speak to the fear, speak to the anger, or speak to the sadness, or express it. And so you can be a very emotional person, but if you’re shut down as a child, imagine what that does to you as an adult when you’re shutting down your natural inclination of how to respond to life’s challenges. Do you think you’d probably experience manifestations of physical nature like migraines or overall body pain or gastrointestinal issues, things like that. So I just want to highlight that because the way that we express ourselves and emote as adults is probably what we learned as children.
Victoria Volk: But back to the question, we can become sad by the nonactions of other people in our lives, in this instance, the brother and the father, in not talking about the sun, even in their incorrect belief that they’re protecting you from your own feelings. They actually rob you and themselves of sharing the very emotions that are helpful for you to feel and express. So that’s not to judge them because grieving people need and want an opportunity to talk about what happened. And their relationship with the person who died. But sadly, that’s not unusual for families to avoid or ignore the emotional pink elephant in the living room. Right?
Victoria Volk: And while I would love to encourage you to suggest to the brother and the father that you have an evening of memories about your son who meant a great deal to all of you. I don’t know that they’d be at all receptive. And then there’s that feeling of being rejected, right? Of not feeling like you’re in how do I say that? Like, in communion of grief with your loved ones, like, it’s not it doesn’t feel like it’s this shared experience. And that’s another brief experience after the loss, right? That so many of us can experience within a family unit or family dynamics So if that’s the case, if you have loved ones who are apprehensive about their own emotions and are afraid to let it all out. And if that’s the case, and they don’t want to have the joy and the sadness and other feelings in relation to the person who passed, then you need to look around your extended family. For people who know you, who knew your loved one, in this instance, your son, who might be open to sharing stories and feelings. Because it is important for those who are more expressive to not isolate and don’t shut other family out just because you’re grieving differently. Your life experience has shaped how you respond to life’s challenges. This is where we honor each other’s grief because all grief is unique in individual, and all relationships are unique in individual. And it doesn’t make one person right. It doesn’t make one person wrong. It’s honoring what your needs are as the individual in your grief experience.
Victoria Volk: And I’ll tell you many times, you will not find that person within your family unit. So I really highly suggest that anyone listening to this to try not taking it personal because we all just express ourselves in a way that we’ve been taught or we’ve learned and there’s no right or wrong of that. It’s just different. And so even just accepting that can really ease the pressure and expectations that we place, not only on ourselves and how we grieve, but on others too and others that we love within the family who mean be going through their grief differently than we are. And so I hope this was helpful in helping you, Amy, and others listening understand that there is nothing wrong with you, that there is nothing wrong with those that you love who just simply don’t express themselves in the same way.
Victoria Volk: So I hope anyone listening can find that person who can share in the love and in the joy and in the challenges of their relationships, mutual relationships of someone who has passed. And if you are struggling to do that and you need to heart with ears, where you will not experience judgment, criticism, or analysis. Then I am here to support you whenever you are ready. I actually have an opening for a one-on-one client right now in my Do Grief Differently program, which is 12 weeks long. And in this program, you work through two of your most painful relationships. And not all relationships give pain, right? Many do. And in fact, most do. I mean, I’m sure you can find things that or ways that people have hurt you in your life even if it was a loving relationship. But through Do Grief Differently, we work through all of that. And I would challenge anyone who thinks they don’t need to dig up the past to move forward. I challenge anyone who believes that because I guarantee that there are many aspects of your life where the past is dictating your present and will highly influence your future. And so it’s only when we become emotionally complete with the relationships of those we have loved and lost. Or who may be challenging to love and are still in our lives, whatever the case may be. Right? Because all your relationships are unique. That this is a wonderful program to address those things in a safe and in a safe way. So I hope this was helpful. And if you have any further questions about this topic, please reach out to me. And in the meantime, remember when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Child Loss, Educational, Grief Tips, Mental Health, Mind/Body Wellness, Resources |

Suppose you have been dealing with mental health issues or been going through an emotionally challenging time lately. In that case, you may have thought about or even been recommended to go to therapy or counseling. If your first reaction is to deny or deflect this thought, you wouldn’t be the first person. Counseling can seem intimidating to some, but this fear often isn’t rational and might hinder your ability to live a healthy future. Here, we’ll examine what you can do to overcome this fear.
Self-Inflicted Stigma
Many of us have an inner voice, and those of us experiencing depression, anxiety, or other mental health issues that can affect our self-esteem might find this voice can be our biggest critic. It can introduce worries about stigma and labels that can be applied to us if we go to counseling or therapy. We might want to think of ourselves well enough not to need it and also judge ourselves for needing that help in the first place. It’s essential to address that these subjective qualities that we attribute on our own (with some help from society) are different from objective facts.
Research Counselors/Therapists
When you’re looking for a therapist or a counselor, you might think that you don’t have much of an idea of what you need, which can introduce a bit of choice paralysis. How do you choose the right one? Some people will get recommendations from a doctor or another trusted individual. Still, you can also research services using the five qualities you should be looking for: qualifications, specialism, listening skills, a passion for helping others, and reliability. You can ease worries about your counseling experience by making sure you’re choosing the right help for you.
Help Doesn’t Have to Be Face-to-Face
Counseling has become much more accessible, thanks to the internet (and as a result of Covid-19). This can, in turn, make it a lot easier to arrange an appointment. Some people can feel a better sense of security when they’re in the comfort of their homes receiving virtual counselling, whether in Canada or the United States. You don’t have to be in an unfamiliar space, nor do you have to worry about the logistics of how you reach your appointment if that would typically be a concern. And, for those that don’t know, I also work with clients online and specifically on the topic of grief. I currently have a program called, Do Grief Differently™️, and in late November, I will launch an online grief recovery group program. If you’d like to keep up to date when registration becomes available, sign up for my newsletter, The Unleashed Letters, below this post.
Afraid to Tell Others
You might want to tell your friends and family about your choice to seek counseling because you want the people important to you to know or because you would like their support, one way or another. Having that conversation alone can be intimidating, but there are scripts that you can follow that can help make it easier to explain your situation. That way, you can ensure you’re effectively putting your side across.
Some trepidation as you go to counseling is to be expected, but many people find that this fades away quickly when they start going. Hopefully, the tips above can help you feel more confident as you make a new choice for yourself and your future.

Child Loss, Divorce, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast |
Phil Cohen | The Pursuit of Healing After an Ocean of Tears
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
They say it’s unnatural to lose a child. And, there’s no word for a parent who has lost a child other than griever, which somehow doesn’t embody all a parent experiences—much less childless parents.
What is a word for a parent whose only child dies?
As it turns out, there’s maybe only one that might describe that inconsolable feeling – lost.
Phil found himself lost in an ocean of tears after his only son, Perry, 14 1/2 years old, and his friend became victims of a storm that came out of nowhere while fishing on their 19′ fishing boat off the Jupiter inlet in Jupiter, Florida. It was a beautiful summer day that turned treacherous on July 24th, 2015, and it was a day that changed the trajectory of Phil’s life forever, as grief does.
The waves and tides of the ocean are often an analogy used for grief. There is irony in Phil’s story of how he lost his only son, never to be found. However, what Phil did find was his voice, a calling in his pain, and lessons in the heartache along the way.
Phil lives his life as if it were a love letter, continually being written to his beloved and only son. Although it’s a letter, he would rather not be (metaphorically) writing, and he would change that day if he could, knowing that healing is the only thing he can do about it.
Phil has chosen to listen to his son’s voice, which he believes he heard one night while crying alone: “Get up, dad!”
May this episode inspire others, especially if you’ve lost a child, to come to terms with what happened and what you cannot change, and dare to GET UP and do something about it now.
RESOURCES:
CONNECT:
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NEED HELP?
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
- Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor
If you or anyone you know is struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are HERE.
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CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Victoria Volk 0:00
Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices. Today, my guest is Phil Cohen. He is a keynote TEDx speaker, grief coach and creator of the grief continuum, a framework for helping others grow, flourish and overcome despair by discovering and developing their inner resilience. for over 25 years, Phil has helped global technology startups grow and prosper through developing their sales teams. After experiencing the sudden loss of his son, Phil has found a renewed purpose in helping others to integrate grief into their own lives after experiencing the inevitable traumas, tragedies and transitions in life. Thank you so much for being my guest, Phil.
Phil Cohen 0:44
Yeah. Thank you for having me, Victoria. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Victoria Volk 0:50
So let’s start with you call yourself is your business the grief guy? Is that accurate?
Phil Cohen 0:57
Yes. Does that mean either just Phil Cohen or the grief guy. And you know, the reason why I did that is that I found that the vast majority of people that I’m working with are men. And it’s been my experience through everything that I’ve gone through, that men have no idea or they’re, they’re really not educated on how to grieve properly. So they’ll push it down, they’ll run away from it. And especially those men who have lost a child, as a society, we have a tendency to flock around the mothers, which I totally, totally get. And dad just wants to be strong for his wife and his family. And he really doesn’t get a chance to be heard. So I just named my business to grief guy really just to, in an effort maybe to attract more men?
Victoria Volk 1:46
Do you find that a lot of the work that you’re dealing with these men do you do actually do dig into their childhood experiences with grief and trauma too? Does a lot of that come up? Or is it mostly just current grief experiences that they’re having? They find that.
Phil Cohen 2:02
It always starts sorry to interrupt the dad always starts with the current experience. That’s where the jump off point is, and eventually inevitably gets into other parts of their life. So it’s kind of like, it starts out and grief coach, and then maybe more of like a life and business coach at the same time. That, you know, I found that a lot of men or even some of the women that I work with, they want to do something with what they’ve learned and what they’ve been through. So whether it’s be I get a lot of questions about how did you get your TEDx? What did you do? What processes did you go through the process of writing a book and people ask me, Well, how can I do that? Do I have to Self Publish? How do I start? So it’s not only working through the emotional aspect, it’s also helping them do something with what they’ve learned through their grief.
Victoria Volk 2:53
And when did this this all started because of your own loss and your experience? And so can you take us back into time and share what your loss has been? And the impact it’s had?
Phil Cohen 3:07
Sure. So on July 24 2015, and if you were ever if you’re anywhere on the East Coast, especially Florida, you likely remember the story. My son and his close friend were last seen leaving the Jupiter inlet on a 19 foot fishing boat. There was a really bad storm, one of those storms that South Florida storms that come out of nowhere, that was 40 mile an hour winds, heavy rains. We tried to reach the boys via their cell phones and after an unsuccessful attempts at that the Coast Guard was notified. And I haven’t confirmed this but I was told that it was the most extensive search in the history of the United States Coast Guard that lasted seven excruciating days if if you live I live in California now in San Diego, so on the other coast, and people go miss all the time. You know, paddleboarders people on sailboats. Generally they’ll look for a week I’m sorry, like a day, maybe a half a day, but to be continuing looking for a week and all the assets that were used. You know, it was it was a really long search. Unfortunately, neither of the boys were ever found. And although I’ve been through all of the reports, and there was the Coast Guard report, the FWC see report that’s Florida, wildlife. FBI was involved and we hired private searches as well. I don’t know for sure exactly what happened, but I’m pretty sure they got caught in a storm there. I know that their motor seized and likely flipped over in that storm. Then I’d like to think that they perish quickly, but we don’t know for sure.
Victoria Volk 4:52
Was the boat ever found.
Phil Cohen 4:55
The boat was lost and found three times for good or not. So the boys went missing on a Friday. On Sunday, they found the boat off the coast of Ponce de Leon from Florida, so many, many miles north, a guy who got into the jet stream and started to head north than what the Coast Guard will do is they’ll basically reverse engineer the currents to determine where the boat, you know where the boats started from. So what they said that they did was that they threw in a marker buoy, because they found it with a helicopter. And they couldn’t obviously, I’m sorry, it was initially one of their planes. So they dropped a marker buoy that would basically stay with the boat. But unfortunately, somehow it didn’t. Then several months later, water taxi, spotted the boat, and they went back to go to go get the right equipment to pull the boat in. And then when they when they went back for it, they couldn’t find it. And then about a year and a half later, there was a Norwegian shipping container that eventually found the boat and pulled it up onto onto, onto its, I forgot what you call the platform of that boat. But so we eventually did find the boat. And believe it or not, one of the crazy things about that was the mom my son’s friend’s cell phone, his iPhone was found in a watertight compartment inside the boat. We sent the phone to Apple to get some data off the phone, but any possible data because I really thought okay, now I’m gonna be able to fill in some of the missing pieces of exactly where they were, maybe some of the texts or phone calls that were made. But Apple was never able to retrieve any information off the phone. So, you know, there’s still a lot of missing pieces to it. But the boat was eventually found.
Victoria Volk 6:49
Was it in good condition? Like it was still good condition or just pretty?
Phil Cohen 6:54
No, no, it was very deteriorated. I mean, the the phone was actually in decent condition. But the boat was there was just mainly just a hall, the center console, I basically dropped off, and a lot of the other pieces have basically dropped off. There are there are photos of it. If you Google, Perry Cohen, who’s my son, you’ll you’ll see, you’ll see that pictures of the boat, and the vessel that attempted to pick it up or did pick it up. But it was crazy. The the captain of that boat said that his wife was on there with his wife and his wife said, let’s go out and get some fresh air. And he said, If he didn’t go out at that exact moment, and look in the direction exactly where he looked, he would have never spotted the bow because it had a black hole. So it was almost like, you know, a bow wanted to be found.
Victoria Volk 7:49
Wow. So what was life? Like? In the weeks following? And after and months? What was that? Like?
Phil Cohen 7:58
You know, people asked me that question quite a bit. And it’s, it’s like almost impossible to put into words what that feeling is like, Perry was my only child. So you know, and prior to that, I’d always consider myself blessed. Because I’d never been I still do consider myself blessed. But I’d never lost anybody that I loved. So to all of a sudden lose the most precious person in my life was a real blow to me, I didn’t know what to do, I’d say in terms of feeling. It felt like somebody just scooped out the entire middle of my body. Like there was nothing in the center part of my body, but it still hurt a lot. And you know, there’s there’s no preparation or training or, you know, for something like that. So I really, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. So I just, I just broke down. Really I broke down and stay I stayed hidden for quite some time just in a dark room on the floor crying trying to figure out asking, asking why, why me? Definitely had my, you know, my wrestling with God moment for sure that especially as a Christian going into this, I remember thinking, God, you know, the words that you used, and could have said anything to tell the world how much he loves the US. But the words he chose to use was I love the world so much that I gave my only begotten Son. And yet you took my and so it was definitely shook my faith for a little bit. But I’m so thankful for the foundation of faith that I had in place going into this. Because otherwise, I really don’t know where I would be.
Victoria Volk 9:57
What did healing look like for you?
Phil Cohen 10:01
Healing? Well, you know, like I said, we in our pre interview, I didn’t know, really what I was supposed to do, really, I didn’t know, do I see a therapist? Or what? What kind of therapist? How do I find a good therapist. So I actually Googled how to grieve, because I knew that doing nothing wasn’t going to be the right thing. And I really wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. And if you google anything around grief, you’re gonna find the five stages of grief. And for me, you know, denial, anger, bargaining depression, when I saw that, it felt like I was doing something wrong, because I had an experienced grief in those stages, or in those ways. So the ultimate healing came from me is from a couple of things, one talking to people, I did go see a therapist. And that was very helpful, both talk therapy and EMDR therapy. But the biggest moment for me was, in one of those moments, when I found myself on the floor curled up in a ball. I saw my son and may people ask me, Did you really see him? I’m not sure. You know, maybe it’s been so similar to yours, but I definitely heard it. And he said, Get up, dad. It’s okay. I’ll see you when you get here. But the way that he said, Get up dad was like, enough already, like you cried, you know, you’ve gone through this, you’ve been doing this for a year and a half. Get up live your life with passion, like you’ve always told me to do. And I’ll see when you get here. And that, at that moment was was a transitional point for me, because I was always focused on myself. You know, I was focused on my own pain, my own shame and worthlessness and guilt. And it wasn’t, it was the moment when I stopped asking myself why me, too, you know, what can I do about this now, that things really began to shift for me? And hearing those words, let it just let me know that my son didn’t want to see me in that state. It’s not the way he’d want me to live my life. So when I talked to people about this, they’ll say, Well, it’s like, he gave you permission. But I feel like, you know, I gave myself permission, he just told me like, just enough already. And when I finally gave myself permission to let go of the worthlessness and the shame and the guilt, I started taking posted notes, and I placed them, you know, my car and my bathroom mirror or my refrigerator, and I’d write things like, I’d give myself permission to heal. And from that moment on, it was a real shift for me, because I started, stopped thinking about myself and started thinking about, Okay, well, what can I do about this now?
Victoria Volk 12:59
Growing up, you said that your son’s that this loss of your son was the first loss that you experienced. So growing up, you didn’t have any losses and grief wasn’t really a topic of conversation in your home?
Phil Cohen 13:14
Yeah, no. So my both my my mom’s parents were gone. Before I was born. My father’s mother was gone before I was born. I did lose my grandfather, but we weren’t very close. So you know, although that was probably my first experience with a direct family member. You know, it wasn’t the extreme amounts of pain that you feel from somebody that you spend every day with, or you see often or a brother or sister. So it’s not that we avoided the discussion, it just it nothing traumatic like that ever happened.
Victoria Volk 13:54
I’m curious if you ever thought because in grief isn’t just about death of a loved one, it can be the loss of a dream, or it really is to the loss of hopes, dreams and expectations, and anything that we wish would have been different and better or more, that can be for relationships with those living, and it can be with your career, or all sorts of things. Did you ever consider or think about, like the loss of not having grandparents really in your life? You said your grandpa was in your life, but you weren’t real close? So I mean, I just think back to my childhood, there’s a picture of me in my classroom. And I it was like Grandparents Day, and I’m looking turning around and on either seat next to me. My classmates both had their grandparent with them. And I was the only kid that didn’t have a grandparent with with them. So did that ever. Was that something that you recognized as a child that you didn’t have your grandparents in your life?
Phil Cohen 14:56
That’s a great question. Yes, you Yes, there definitely were times where I did recognize that I just And don’t get me wrong. I mean, I guess when you when you put it like that I definitely had experienced a lot of grief prior to losing my son. I mean, I’ve lost relationships and, you know, other things that I loved jobs, hopes and dreams, things like that. But none of that. I guess I, I’ve always been fairly resilient, you know, growing up, I just folk say, okay, you know, I’d feel the pain and then immediately ask, Okay, what’s next? What can I do about it? Because if there’s nothing that can be done with the loss of a job, or the loss of a dream, or something like that, you know, then I chose really not to ruminate in it, because a lot of these things like these other decisions, you know, I feel like they do come down to a choice. Yes, we do. We do need to grieve those things and feel the pain. But eventually, we it’s a choice whether we want to live there or not. So, you know, with with everything else prior to losing my son, I felt like I was able to move on fairly quickly. But with my son that was that took me for a big loop, for sure. I’m not sure if I completely answered your question, but I can’t recall ever feeling sad that I didn’t have you know, grandparents, because they’ve always had a lot of friends and a lot of family. So maybe not knowing what I didn’t wasn’t missing, potentially was part of that.
Victoria Volk 16:42
In the work that you do with men, particularly how do you help them discern then if what they’re how they’re approaching their grief is, is resiliency, or if it’s a tendency for not just men, but many of us to be like missed, like, go into the Mr. Fixit role, like I’m gonna fix this, and I’m going to, you know, what, I’m getting a
Phil Cohen 17:11
Yes. And I mean, I think that that’s definitely what you know, as men, we do always go into, you know, what can we do to fix it? And, you know, I, I feel like, yeah, as you said, it’s not just men that do that. The biggest thing is, you know, have they taken the time number one to truly feel the pain, because that’s, that’s one of the biggest things that I feel that most men don’t take the time to do. It’s kind of like holding a beach ball underwater, right? Like, you could do it. And you could do it for a while. But eventually, it’s going to find its way out to the surface. And sometimes the harder we push it down, and the further we push it down, the faster and harder it comes up, you’re not going to avoid it, you’re not going to escape it and you can’t insulate yourself from it, it’s going to have to be addressed at some point. So you know, but most people have a tendency to, to run from it, you know, and there’s a, there’s a, there’s kind of a great metaphor for this, one of my friends was telling me about where he lives in Colorado, near the Rocky Mountains. And I don’t know if you know this, but you know, Colorado is one of the only places where both buffaloes and cows can coexist. And, you know, we all we all have storms right there storms are going to come. But the choice is the choice that we have is, what are we going to do about them? How do we respond to those storms. So and what these two creatures do when this with the storms is quite interesting. Cows, when typically, generally, the storms will come from the West, and head towards these. And cows will when they sense the storm, they will start running east away from the storm. And if you know anything about cows, you know that they’re not very fast. So they want to running with the storm that ultimately maximizing their time, then the pain and the frustration that they have in that store. And I feel like as humans, we often do the same thing, right? We run away from these things that trials, tragedies and transitions as opposed to facing them. Below. buffalos do is quite unique to the animal kingdom. When buffaloes sense the storm coming from the west, they hide behind a ridge and when it rolls over the crest of the mountaintop, they turn and and run through the storm they run at the storm, ultimately minimizing their pain in time and frustration in the storm. And I think it’s just a great metaphor because although we all have storms in our life, it’s just a matter of how what we choose to do when we’re faced with them. And you know, I’m not saying that when a storm comes especially like losing a child, you turn it face it and just run through it. You have to feel that pain And at some point, at some point, you’re you have to make a decision if you want to stay there.
Victoria Volk 20:07
How in that year and you said it was about a year and a half where it was just really difficult and challenging after your son passed? What? How was grief manifesting in your life during that time.
Phil Cohen 20:18
It was a lot of feelings of worthlessness. A lot of feelings of guilt things I wish I could have done differently. Feeling like I wasn’t able to even protect my only son. So you know, what good, am I just tremendous amounts of tears. And because of the fact that everything played out on national news and social media while this search went on, I didn’t really even want to go outside. You know, I wanted to stay inside it. Because I would remember I know, and I recall several times where people were like, pointing and looking at me, and saying, oh, you know, that’s the guy who lost his son at sea. And I remember thinking like, well, what’s a man who lost his son at sea supposed to look like, you know, like, what? Am I supposed to walk around with my head down crying? You know? I didn’t know what to do. I really didn’t. I was completely and utterly lost. Having no idea what my next steps should be.
Victoria Volk 21:28
I can’t imagine it’s, I mean, when we typically have a loss, we don’t have it in the public eye. Right? And so I can’t imagine what that would have felt like to feel like your grief is under scrutiny. Really, you probably felt like, I mean, from what you’ve described, like, you didn’t know, am I doing this wrong? Should I be doing this a different way? Like, it would be very confusing and overwhelming, I’m sure.
Phil Cohen 21:58
I was, and you know, even after even after, you know, hearing those words from my son, I remember thinking, okay, you know, maybe a couple of years, two and a half years later, I, again, didn’t want to post anything on social media. My, I remarried about three years ago, and my, my wife and I took a trip to Italy. And I was, we were enjoying ourselves. But I didn’t even want to post a picture of myself with any type of smile, or showing that I was doing something at a fear of people thinking, like, how could he be having fun? Like, how could he be out living his life, you know, after losing his only child, and just the fear of what other people might think. But, you know, my belief is that we don’t have to stay there, that that is a choice, that is a choice. And I believe that I know, with absolute confidence and conviction that my son would not want me to be in that situation. And I believe that most of the people who’ve lost somebody, the one that they lost would also probably tell them to get up too. So at some point, like I said, it really does become a choice. And then, you know, how do we then take that first step, and then the next and then the next to be able to try to come back to an some semblance of a normal life?
Victoria Volk 23:23
So what did that look like for you processing the guilt? And the shame and the feeling of scrutiny? Like, what did that look like?
Phil Cohen 23:35
What did it look like? You know, a lot of it, a lot of it was internal, you know, a lot of it was my own thoughts. And, and asking myself, you know, is that true? You know, there was, there was nothing that anybody could have done in that moment, you know, other than maybe had locked my son up in a room, you know, which obviously, nobody’s going to do. But so, really, you know, the, the first step for me was a decision to decide, I said, Okay, you know, I don’t want to live my life like this, because if I do, this is not a life worth living, you know, to be just constantly ruminating and thinking about all the things that I could have done differently or ways that maybe I could have stopped it or how maybe some other people made mistakes and things like that. So that was getting me nowhere. So my first my first step was okay, I want to pursue a life of healing. And, and then, you know, to find some way to help other people. And then, you know, I cultivated community, you know, I found people that would support me, and to be there with me and to help me and you can’t go through something like this alone. You can’t you can’t you can’t do it alone. You need somebody there to help you and to pick you up, and not to fix it, just to be there and to listen and to let you cry and to just sit there with you. You know, I did find EMDR therapy helpful, but it didn’t remove all of the pain, you know, wasn’t able to remove and I don’t think the pain will ever fully go away. And, you know, part of like, in the TED, my TED talk I talked about, yes, I did finally reach a point of acceptance and even found some gifts beyond acceptance. But even like, last night, or the night before, my wife and I were watching a movie, I don’t remember the name. It’s with Mark Wahlberg, where his son committed suicide, and he decides to walk across the country, to, you know, talk about bullying. And eventually, I think he gets hit by a truck and he dies. And just going through that watching the movie, I was in tears, I was in tears, because, you know, it makes me sad to kind of go back to some of those moments of losing my son. But all that’s okay. It doesn’t mean that I’m not healing properly or not grieving properly. I think grief is something that, you know, we move back and forth through it’s not, you know, specific actual steps that we go through, even though there are similar stages, I think that we all experience, but there isn’t one route. And I don’t think that there is a place of acceptance, and then we’re done. You know, we always we’re constantly moving back and forth through this forever.
Victoria Volk 26:34
Yeah, it’s an ebb and flow. And I think as we grow and evolve, as does our grief, and in the follow up takeaways and reflections episode, I’ll dig more into that five stages and talk a little bit about that. And so we won’t cover that here. But we did briefly talk about ahead of time, though, that it wasn’t a linear process. And it wasn’t there’s many more stages in quotations than just the five it’s society really has, in pop culture has really driven home, the idea of the five stages, but really, it wasn’t the intention of Elisabeth Kubler Ross’s work and yeah, anyway, that’s for another episode. But I want to ask if your son was in front of you, you had one day with him, he was just in front of you, what what would you want to say to him?
Phil Cohen 27:42
You know, I like to journal. And I would let these free flowing thoughts come up as they did nothing in a particular order, or that it would make sense. And one time, I found myself writing a letter to Perry, I go back, and I visit it often. And I’m not sure that it will ever be done. So I’ve kind of had this conversation in my mind. The first thing I’d want to say is I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to save him as his father, you know, that, to me, that was the most amount of pain is, you know, if, if they were if the boys were lost in a field or somewhere on land, I know, I’d be able to go to where they were and, and walk a grid pattern until I found them. But in the Atlantic Ocean, you know, it was nearly impossible to know where to start. But still, you know, I know that. I know that he must have been thinking or wishing that I was there to be able to save him. And so, you know, I would tell him that I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to save him. I told parents that I loved him so often, to the point where I would say guess what power and you say, Yeah, Dad, I know you love me, you know, so, but I would still I would still tell him how much I love him and how much I wish that I would be able to experience all of the things that a parent should be able to experience with their child, you know, his first girlfriend. His first love getting married, going to school first job, and just being there as a dad to be able to give him the advice that I know that I did get AND and OR I would have wished I would have gotten, you know at his age and years past. How much I miss him. I miss him so much in others. Perry’s Perry’s natural state was one of them. Laughter he’s such a happy kid. And I miss hearing that laugh, his laugh was infectious. And when he gave you a hug, it wasn’t like a weak hug. It was a strong firm hug. And I miss feeling his arms are wrapped around me. I guess you know, things like that.
Victoria Volk 30:28
Make me cry. I’m a mom. I’m a parent and I teenagers and so my heart just goes out to you. Because I’m know that pain probably will never go away that that sadness. Not that empty seats always there. And those milestones are never to be enjoyed. So thank you for sharing about Perry. In that way, have you been back to Florida?
Phil Cohen 31:02
I have several times. I’ve been to the Jupiter inlet. The other the other my son’s close friend, family, they put up a, a monument, a statue out there, of mom and dad are kinda like, I believe they say it’s not supposed to be them. But it looks like them, have them kind of going like this with their hands above their eyes kind of searching out into the sea. There’s no plaque or anything like that. It’s just a memorial to them. You know that when I stand there, you know, I really feel it, because that’s, that’s the last place that they were seeing. There’s video cameras, their boats going in and out of the Jupiter inlet. So that was, you know, the last time they were actually seen alive. And my parents lived there. And they live on the ocean. So I go out there. And I, you know, I talked to Perry every day in the shower in my car. And I remember, in the first like, the first couple of weeks, my my brothers, I have two older brothers among the youngest of three, they were there with me the whole time. And my oldest brother. He’s definitely a bit of an adrenaline junkie, but you know, super positive kind of person. And I remember him saying to me, it’s like, let’s go on the ocean. And this was like, maybe 10 days, so a couple of weeks after the boys went missing. And I remember saying, I remember like almost getting an angry at him. Like how could you know, like, No, I don’t want to. I remember saying to him, I know what you’re trying to do. Like, almost got mad at him for doing that. And I know, I heard in my in my head also like, go ahead, Dad. You know, like, I don’t know, there’s something about I’ve always been this way. Like there’s there’s a there’s a quote, I’m not sure who said it. But it’s it goes. If you can’t, then you must. So if anytime something ever comes up, that brings up a level of fear for me, I do it. Because on the other side of fear is always something powerful. There’s always some kind of gift on the other side of fear. So we went in, I went in the ocean, and I broke down. I mean, I mean, I broke down big time. But there’s healing that comes from that, you know, there’s healing that comes from facing your storms, you know. So, and when I do because my parents are there, I go there and I sit on the beach, and I talked to Barry, even though I know he’s not there. But since I have an idea of where they went missing, you know, you kind of feel like they’re there with you. Like he’s there with me. So yeah, I go back often, and I don’t let anything like that. Get in my way, like things that I want to, you know, I don’t let anything I don’t do or not do anything out of fear. You know, I will let something if it scares me. I feel like it’s something I need to approach and, you know, like giving my TED Talk and and, you know, working with other people and sharing my story right now, you know, this is this is probably like the fourth podcast I’ve ever been on. I still I’m still working my way through it. You know, but I’m here because I want people to hear my story. I want people to know that regardless of what they went through, that they can heal, that healing is attainable. And there are things you can do. But the first thing you have to do is choose because I would say that there’s over the past six and a half years Here’s I’ve had tons of conversations with people who have lost children. And maybe not somebody who’s just lost the children, maybe someone who’s lost a wife, or husband or somebody that’s really close to them, or somebody will connect me with them. And I’d say about 10% of the people I speak to, will say something like, Phil, I don’t care what you have to say, I lost the most precious person in my life. So there’s nothing you could tell me, show me talk to me about my life is over. And I don’t really even want to be here right now. So if that’s the stance that you choose, then you’ll likely never heal until you decide that healing is something that you want to pursue. So, you know, I made that decision. About a year and a half into it. I wish I would have made it earlier. But, you know, I remember, I think it’s, um, I don’t remember her name. It’s on the tip of my tongue. There was a young lady through COVID.
Phil Cohen 36:04
She’s in her husband lost his leg. He was a he was a is a theatre actor. And she was posting, you know, pretty girl, blonde hair. I can’t believe I forgot her name. But she went on the view, or one of these talk shows, and she got scorned, because she was smiling, and she was laughing. And she was, she was having a good time, you know, that people were saying it’s only been a few months, how could you be out there laughing and having a good time? You know, and I think that there’s like this negative taboo thing that like, if something bad happens to you that you have to lock yourself up in a room for years, you know, and that’s, that’s, that’s false. That’s false.
Victoria Volk 36:47
Criticized for that.
Phil Cohen 36:50
What you mean for locking yourself up? Right? It’s true. I’ve lost friends and family members. Because of this. People have said in a film, so it’s just too sad for me to be around you. Which is, like a kind of like a double whammy, right? Like it’s too sad for them. To be around lease
Victoria Volk 37:09
Are very common. Yeah. What you’ve shared, I probably answered the question already. But I was going to ask you, what is your grief taught you and and you’ve kind of shared a lot there. But is there anything specific that you would like to say to that? What,
Phil Cohen 37:26
Yeah yeah. It’s taught me a lot. Actually. You know, I think that you’ve you’ve really, when you go through something like this, you really figure out who you are. When you ask yourself, when you stop asking, why, why me? And you start asking we okay, what can I do about it? Now, I realized that I’m a lot stronger than I thought I was. And I also that there’s nothing at this point in my life, that can happen to me, that was worse than what already happened. It’s no like, I can take on anything, I’ve made it through the worst, what some, many medical professionals would consider the worst possible thing that can happen to a human being it was losing a child, and I don’t want to say made it through, but you know, I’m not living a life of despair. And now, you know, God’s got me on a path to help other people get through that healing. And I just love, there’s nothing more satisfying. So I’ve owned a couple of businesses, I’ve been fairly successful on a professional level. And the money and the success is so much lower on the totem pole, compared to somebody coming up to you or, and saying, Thank you, thank you for spending the time with me, thank you for that thing that you said, or that thing that you shared, because it’s helped me heal. Like, to me, that is the highest level of appreciation, the highest level of a gift for me is to know that, I guess it’s, you know, mid taking this thing, and making some sort of good out of it.
Victoria Volk 39:07
In the work that you do with men now, can you talk a little bit about the grief continuum and what that looks like?
Phil Cohen 39:15
Sure. So, you know, it does touch kind of, you know, a little bit, you know, on the five stages part of it, but, you know, it’s it’s when I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I go actually Googled how to grieve. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. And, you know, I saw the five stages and I felt like I think I must be doing something wrong, because I didn’t experience grief like that. So, you know, you may start at denial or anger or bargaining or depression, but you also may be somewhere in guilt or worthlessness or revenge. And going through this process, you know, on the other side of acceptance So everything if you think about the continuum, with all the negative things being on the left, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, worthlessness, guilt, shame, all of those things, all those things are all about you. They’re all it’s you focused on you, then it’s only when you start thinking about other people, and how you can help other people or even those being your family, and those other people that who are around you, that things start to shift a little bit. So, it’s mostly it’s mostly, you know, also getting guys to, to take the time to feel the pain, especially like men who have lost children. And I don’t know if we talked about this earlier or during, during our time live, but when men lose a child, generally, as a society, we flock around the mothers, which I totally understand, I totally get. And there’s not a lot of attention, if you go to, I’ve been to several, if you go to a few happened, not that you’ve want to but if you happen to find yourself at a funeral for a child, you will see this played out over and over and over again, how everybody will be flocking around mom, and dad’s kind of off to the side. And it’s been my experience that the last person men want to share their pain and their grief with is their wife, you know, they want to be there support them, you know, they want to be their rock, they want to be, you know, their support system. So a lot of times they don’t get to, to let it all out and to face that the vulnerability, you know, that it takes to make it through feeling that pain. So I work with them on on to helping them to access that because you can’t, you can’t avoid it, you can avoid it and, and I know even you know from from with my my new wife, she over the years, she every time Perry’s birthday repair his birthday or his death day. Or the day that he went missing. You know, I know, she would have say asked me questions like, how do you want to spend this day? You know, what, what she was really asking is, you know, can we do it together? You know, how can I be there with you to support you. And I always in the past, I always went and sat by the ocean and cried my eyes out by myself because I was I was afraid to let her in on some of that, you know, to let her you know, see me really ugly cry. And this this past year would have would have been Perry’s 21st birthday. And I decided to try something new. So we went to a local restaurant, and we toasted Perry and, you know, as as going through that process, of course, you know, I started to break down and then you know, she didn’t say anything, she wasn’t trying to fix it. She wasn’t trying to she did say, you know, we did talk about some of the times where Perry would make me laugh and some of the funny things that he did. And those things are extremely healing, to be able to speak about and let out, especially with somebody who’s loves you, and who wants to be there for you. So to any any man that might be listening to this podcast, if there’s somebody out there that you know, that you lot that loves you and that you trust, and is trying to express an interest in spending one of these days with you. And you’ve been hesitant because you don’t want to let them fully in or you don’t want them to see you ugly cry or you don’t, you don’t really know what you’re supposed to do. Let them in, try something new. Let them in and spend some time with them. And I bet you’ll find it as healing as I did.
Victoria Volk 43:51
One of the myths of grief because so many of us are taught these lessons in childhood that you know, that’s it’s emulated for us because grief isn’t generally talked about as we grow up is to be strong. And in a podcast, many podcast interviews at this point, it comes up frequently. But just yesterday I even brought posed the question like what does it mean to be strong? What’s that even mean? Like what does that look like? There’s no heroism and pretending that you’ve got it put together and that you’re okay. And and really it’s you’re lying to yourself. And that probably does more harm than anything that anyone else, you know, can say to you. Those do harm to mean people say hurtful and harmful things all the time because they don’t know better. They don’t. They haven’t received the knowledge of how to sit with others in their grief. Probably because they haven’t setting their own. So true. Yeah. So I think for men specifically, it was actually two were it was military, we were taught in the military audience, and that’s very much so. You know, the time. Yeah, be tough. And that’s where a lot of men that they have that upbringing of believing need to be tough. Yeah,
Phil Cohen 45:23
I think I think we’ve all been basically I’m, I’m 50 years old. So I know, you know, I feel like it’s changing a little bit now. But, you know, I was basically brainwashed to believe that Real men don’t cry, you know, but the we don’t, we don’t talk to each other about our emotions, or even go and seek therapy, you know, we’re supposed to just tough it out and suck it up. And that is the farthest thing from the truth that that strategy doesn’t work with grief, because you’re never going to be able to outrun the memories, you’re never going to be able to, to, you know, outflank them. So it’s only by sitting in your grief and talking with it, and talking with people and facing it, that you then begin to connect to their memory memories and the reminders, because they’re never going to go away. So I agree with you. And I think that I think I think it takes a lot more strengths, to be vulnerable, and to share your story and to cry in front of people than it does to not because I feel like it was a lot it was, it was a lot easier for me to push people away, and just do it all alone. And so it took me stepping into a discomfort, you know, to talk with people openly and honestly and vulnerably. And I think that more men need to realize that especially through grief that you you can’t deny it, you can’t run away from it. And if you want to truly heal, let people in and talk about it. Because otherwise, it’s just it’s going to come up in some negative way eventually.
Victoria Volk 47:09
How has this because you know, with a family unit, everyone grieves, how has this reshaped your relationships? And I mean, do you talk is grief more openly talked about within the family now? Has that changed? A little bit?
Phil Cohen 47:26
Yeah, you know, but, you know, it was it was me that that made that happen. I’m not saying that, you know, I take credit, it’s that people will avoid it. You know, if my parents my brother’s family, they, they avoid it. And I even notice it, like, you know, in just day to day conversations with those people that know me and know my story. You know, they’ll say, if they’re talking about their child, they’ll kind of change the conversation because they don’t want to make me feel bad or something like that, you know, I’ll say, oh, no, you know, Perry played baseball, do you know, he was left handed, he was a pitcher. And he did this. And he did that. And I openly bring him up in just in conversations I don’t, it’s not something that I want to hide. And I don’t want his memory to be forgotten. You know, and it’s, I look at it as no to, you know, number one, I’m, I’m so thankful and feel blessed for the fact that I was even lucky enough to have a child, you know, I mean, there’s a lot of people out there that that would have trying and trying and can’t even have children. So the fact that I had a child and got to spend 14 and a half amazing years with him, I focus on all of the memories and the good times that we did get to share together because, you know, I do believe that where focus goes energy flows, right. So just like, you know, if you, you stand outside in the sun, you know, that sunshine can cover vast amounts of the earth and you can go outside and you can be stand there and be feel like you’re being wrapped in a warm blanket. Yet, if you take a magnifying glass and you focus in on one specific area, you can start a fire, you know, and I believe that that’s true of our thoughts as well. It’s what we choose to focus on that where the energy goes. And I focus on all of the good things and the good times that I had, as opposed to the why me and why did this happen to me? And why didn’t this person do that? And all of the negative aspects of it, it really, it’s a conscious decision that you have to make. So I some people I can tell you even look surprised like that I’ll bring up his name, you know, in conversation. But why? Why yes, this thing happened. There’s nothing that I can do about that. Like, if there was a way for me to bring him back. I would do it. If there was a way for me to trade places with him in that moment. I would do it. But that’s not possible. You know, there’s I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this, but there’s that old Chinese tale about the magical mustard seed. Have you ever heard that?
Victoria Volk 49:57
I haven’t, but will you share it?
Phil Cohen 49:59
Here? I will try my best. I don’t have it memorized. But it’s something like this, where there was a woman who lost her only child. And she went to some sage and said, What magical potions or incantations that you have to bring my son back. And he told her that he wanted to encourage go to find a mustard seed from a home that has never known sorrow. So off she went, and she she saw a big match. And she went, she knocked on the door. And she said, she said, I need to get a mustard seed from a seed from a home that is no no sorrow. Is this such a place? And they said, Oh, no, you’re in the wrong place. This family has no sorrow. And she realized that what she went through, she was a she could possibly help these fans, this family. So she stayed with them for a while and help them and then off to the next place that she went, and then the next and the next. And she never found that magical mustard seed, but in her in her aura home that had never known sorrow. But in her travels, she was able to help so many people, she eventually forgot about finding that magical mustard seed. And I feel like I’m on a very similar path. You know, at that I’m finding that I’m put in positions where people have been through something, mostly the loss of a loved one, and through conversations and through walking them through specific, you know, diving into certain areas. That, yeah, I feel like that, that the I’m on a very similar path is that as that woman who was looking for that, that magical mustard seed, you know, that God, the universe, whatever you want to call, it, has me on this path, and has given me the strength to be able to have these conversations and to help other people navigate their own grief. And to me, there is nothing more rewarding than somebody helping somebody through that process. I’m not saying that, you know, everybody I talked to I can get them to the point where they’re happy or something like that. And the fact is, I say this to several people, I don’t I don’t have a master’s degree in psychology. But I have a PhD and experience, you know, and the heart to serve other people. And through that, you know, through my experience, I feel like I’ve been gifted an ability to be able to do that.
Victoria Volk 52:22
That’s wonderful. What is one tip that you would give, I mean, you gave a lot of tips, but is there one tip that you would give someone who’s a parent, specifically who’s lost a child? Today, listening,
Phil Cohen 52:36
Most of the parents that I’ve spoken to have lost a child hold on to very similar things that I was holding on to, which was the guilt and the shame and all the things that they could have done. I think that, for me, everything changed when I gave myself permission to heal. You know, that may be a month that may be six years, I think it’s going to be different for different people. And I believe that their child would likely want them to get up to write, they wouldn’t want them to live in a life of misery and despair. But at some point, you have to give yourself permission to heal. And whether it’s as simple as something as using post it notes or writing something in places where you can see them, allowing yourself to give yourself permission. At some point, you have to make that decision that you want to pursue healing. Because without that, nothing is going to work.
Victoria Volk 53:37
I had a guest recently say you can be a griever and you still can go to Disneyland.
Phil Cohen 53:42
Love that. I love that. Because you’re always going to be a Griever we’re always going, that’s not like I’ve got I can’t say all I’ve gotten through it, or I’ve overcome it. You know, it’s, it’s how you integrate grief into your life, I believe, because it’s not something that if you look at it as something you’re gonna have to overcome or break through, you might be setting yourself up for failure, because you’re, you’re always going to find those memories, you know, and those reminders, they’re going to come up and and when they do take the time to feel though don’t don’t run away from them. That would probably be the other thing that would probably be even a big bigger thing is to don’t avoid the pain. Don’t push it down. Don’t run away from it. There’s times I mean, I have pictures of my son all over the house of pictures of me and him and pictures of just him. I mean, not like all over like where it’s everywhere but in some rooms in the house because I want to see him I want to see his face, you know, and it’s not something that I look at it and it makes me want to break down. But that’s you know, I think it’s also my perception of it. You know, the way that I choose to look at it, but is that to at some point they have You have to take the time to kind of sit in the pain of what happened and recognize what happened. Because that’s where, for me anyway, the true healing came from.
Victoria Volk 55:10
In the first early months or weeks. Did you want to when you realized he’s not coming home? Like he’s gone? Did you want to pack everything up? And do away with it? Like, what? Or did or you know, because sometimes parents will keep everything just as it was. And then there might be parents that just want to pack everything up and have it gone. What was that? For you?
Phil Cohen 55:38
No, yeah, no, I, I didn’t pack everything up in one gone that. Because for me, that would be like, almost like, I don’t know, I don’t want to say you’re wrong. You know, I think I don’t think there’s a wrong way or right way to do this, really, you know, I think people have to do what’s going to what’s going to work for them. But I would never want, I want his memory around, you know, I want the little things, whether it be his baseball glove, or the necklace that he made for me when he was eight years old. I like I like having those things around, you know, because they are reminders of His love, you know, and, and that he was here. So I never, I never felt the need to pack it up and put it away so that I can kind of box up the pain and move it out of my life. I mean, yes, there was a point where, okay, well, you know, I got to clean up his room or take certain things out and move them away. But it wasn’t, it wasn’t because of an effort to try to get away from it. You know, it was more of just like, this, just, this is the right time for me to do that. And for some people, if that’s a month, if that’s what they feel that they have to do, as long as it’s, as long as it’s not coming from a place of avoidance, that’s the biggest piece, I think the point that I want to make is that if you’re trying to box up the things or hide the things away so that you can not see them, because they make it too painful for you. I think you’re kind of missing the point. It’s kind of it’s going through that pain, that where the healing eventually comes from.
Victoria Volk 57:11
There might be people listening who lost somebody that like you don’t have a grave site to go to, particularly where they know that their loved one is right. I believe for me, that would add another layer of grief. That’s why I asked you if you’ve ever been back to juniper. Yeah. What would you write juniper? to Jupiter? What did I say Juniper, juniper. Okay, well, that’s an essential oil. Okay, let me rewind. Okay, what would you say to parents who like you don’t have, like a cemetery or grave site to go to where they know that that’s where their loved one is at? Because I imagine for me, that would be another layer of grief, to experience and go through and, and have to address and that’s why I’d asked you if you had gone to back to Jupiter. What would you say to those parents? And how did you kind of work through that yourself?
Phil Cohen 58:16
That’s a great question. That really is a great question. And that’s something that I I struggled with for a while, but in my heart, whether it’s a graveyard, or a monument, whatever it might be, they’re not there. I mean, yes, their body or their remains may be in the ground, but their spirit is not there. You know, that’s just the container, and I get why it may be important to I always went to the ocean, you know, that was where, and I still do, I still do I go sit, you know, on the coast, because I feel like that was the last place that he was seen. But I feel like it’s more about it, even on a daily basis, you know, I talked to Perry, I don’t feel like I need to go to a specific place. But if the fears if somebody’s struggling with that, you know, there, you don’t necessarily have to build the statue, like I said, the, the parents of the other child when they put the statue there so that they can have someplace to go to, for me, you know, I, I’m in the process of writing a book, I did my TEDx talk. And there’s other things that you can do with your pay, you know, to or what you’ve been through what the lessons that you’ve learned from what you’ve been through, that might serve you just as well, but I don’t know that I have the best answer for that. You know, I wish they were saying I wish I could say, well, you could do this, this or this for me. You know, I was, you know, getting up on stage, you know, at a TEDx event and sharing my story, in an effort to help other people see other people heal, that I felt is was kind of like a way for me to give back. And the book that I’m writing, same thing kind of a way to, you know, to give Back, or, you know, you can do something like what the other parents did, you can build something or put a monument or do something that you feel is what helps you heal. But even if there was an actual physical place for me to go, I likely would go, I likely would go, because but I know that he’s not there. You know, I, so for me, it’s more I feel like the conversations and my, my the way that I honor and respect him is by by sharing his story and sharing his memory. And also now what I’m doing, I’m trying to help other people.
Victoria Volk 1:00:38
Think it circles back to what you’ve said about integrating your grief and integrating the experience into your life and how it’s shaped your life now. And you alluded to it earlier about your faith, I think that plays that’s greatly influences how people respond to their grief, in feeling like they have a spiritual connection in some way to their departed loved one. And, you know, I think that yeah, there’s a lot of influences there, I think, but I was just curious how you in particular, and what you would say to people, if they had that question for you, if they’re a grieving parent, too, because I think if I’m, if I’m wondering, I’m sure someone listening is wondering, and so that’s why I like to ask, and
Phil Cohen 1:01:26
That’s why I feel like my, you know, my TEDx or, and or my book that’s coming out will be sort of my monument, it’s not a place that I need to, you know, and the place that I need to visit, that’s sort of the way that the way I look at it is trying to kind of giving, giving back in a way,
Victoria Volk 1:01:41
Are you finding your book writing therapeutic for you?
Phil Cohen 1:01:44
Very, yeah, very therapeutic. And I mean, and, and, but ultimately, everything, everything that I do like, is really just to help other people. Really, that’s my, my biggest goal is that I just want to give people you know, either an idea or, or a story or something to think about, to let them know that they don’t have to live a life of despair, whether it’s the loss of a child, or the loss of a loved one, and like you said earlier, or they might be a job or a dream, you know, we should all take that time, to grieve and to feel that process. But eventually, at some point, we have to choose, you know, do you want to live there or not?
Victoria Volk 1:02:29
So tell us about your book, when’s it coming out, and where people can find you.
Phil Cohen 1:02:33
I’m, I’m still I’m still in the editing phase, I would like to see it started to come out in the next couple of months. I don’t have a specific date. But I would say sometime, maybe over the next 90 to 120 days, people can visit my website. That’s Phil cohen.com, pH, IL, co H e n.com. And I have a place there where you can book a call with me, I don’t charge I’m not charging you to have a conversation. But I’d love to learn more about what you’ve been through, and maybe any way that I might be able to help you. And if there is, you know, that’s really my main goal through all this is to see if there’s some way that I can help people heal, please reach out and it would be honored to be able to help.
Victoria Volk 1:03:18
Is there anything else that you would like to share?
Phil Cohen 1:03:22
I think you did a pretty good job of asking me all the questions around grief and Healing. And other I can’t really think of anything else.
Victoria Volk 1:03:25
Thank you so much for sharing. I will put all of the links that you mentioned in the shownotes where can people find you on social media? Where is your favorite place to be there?
Phil Cohen 1:03:40
Either on Facebook or LinkedIn are the two places that I’m that I’m active right now.
Victoria Volk 1:03:45
Okay, I will put those in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time and sharing your story and for being here.
Phil Cohen 1:03:51
Thank you very much Victoria for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
Victoria Volk 1:03:55
And remember, when you unleash your hearts, you unleash your life. Much love.