Ep 193 Scott Forrester | Coping with Widowhood: A Story of 50+ Years of Love, Loss, and Learning

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY: 

In the quiet aftermath of a personal storm, Scott Forrester found solace and strength in the Feldenkrais method. His journey is not just about physical recovery; it’s a poignant narrative of resilience amid life’s harshest trials – loss, grief, and reinvention.

Forrester’s story began with an accident that challenged conventional healing methods. Physical therapy couldn’t mend what was broken within him. Then he realized that our struggles often lie deeper than muscle or bone—nestle in the intricate dance between mind and body.

Through Feldenkrais, Forrester teaches us to listen—to really listen—to our bodies whispers before they become screams. This method isn’t confined to those seeking physical relief; it extends its embrace to anyone yearning for emotional liberation from grief’s heavy chains.

His tale weaves through his own tapestry of loss—of loved ones who have passed on but whose presence still guide him like unseen stars guiding sailors home. He speaks candidly about embracing life as a way to honor those we’ve lost rather than being anchored by their absence.

But this isn’t just a story about coping with sorrow—it’s also one of profound love. Over 50 years married, Forrester learned that marriage thrives on more than promises—it blossoms through unspoken understandings, shared growth, and enduring friendship.

Scott Forrester stands as a testament to living fully—not despite losses—but because of them, transforming pain into purposeful strides forward…into awareness…into hope.

RESOURCES:
Book | 
The Aware Athlete
The Faldenkrais Method

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Unlocking the Healing Power of Movement: The Feldenkrais Method with Scott Forrester

In today’s fast-paced world, we often overlook the deep connection between our physical bodies and emotional health. But what if there was a way to harness this connection to heal both body and soul? Enter the Feldenkrais method—a transformative approach to somatic education that has helped countless individuals improve bodily function and awareness without strain.

A Personal Journey Through Injury to Insight

Our guest at Grieving Voices, Scott Forrester, didn’t just stumble upon the Feldenkrais method; it found him in a time of need. After falling off a roof and facing an unsatisfactory recovery through traditional physical therapy, he embarked on a quest for healing that led him straight to discovering how muscular issues are often deeply intertwined with our nervous system.

Forrester’s revelation—that changing movement patterns could vastly improve overall function—didn’t just apply to his injury recovery. It became clear that these principles were universal, extending their reach into managing grief and emotional trauma as well.

Beyond Physical Therapy: Embracing Life Through Movement

The beauty of the Feldenkrais method lies in its accessibility. It doesn’t matter if you’re an athlete striving for peak performance or someone grappling with neurological challenges—the practice is designed for all who wish to explore their potential through gentle movements and heightened self-awareness.

Scott Forrester’s own journey through grief after losing his mother, beloved dog Stealth, and wife Leanne serves as a poignant testament to these practices’ power. He shares how accepting death isn’t about giving up but rather embracing life more fully—a profound way of honoring those we have lost while continuing our paths forward.

Somatic Wisdom: Listening To Your Body’s Story

When practicing Feldenkrais exercises—whether in group Awareness Through Movement sessions or one-on-one Functional Integration—you embark on an intimate dialogue with your body. This conversation can reveal much about your habitual patterns not only physically but emotionally too.

As Forrester delves into his personal experiences—from adventurous hikes with Stealth to navigating life as a widower—he uncovers lessons learned from love itself. His insights touch upon marriage longevity rooted in communication, understanding, empathy—and most importantly mutual growth beyond individual interests.

From Loss Comes Learning: Writing As Reflection And Connection

Filling days teaching Feldenkrais classes or writing provides structure amid loss for many like Scott Forrester. However, it also opens avenues for new connections—friendships that blossom from shared experiences of grief or simply seeking companionship after significant changes in one’s life narrative.

Marriage requires nurturing akin to tending a garden—it thrives on attention paid not only when convenient but consistently over time. Reflecting on over 50 years together with Lee offers invaluable perspectives on partnership dynamics where unresolved issues might be accepted rather than conquered—an echo of John Gottman’s teachings emphasizing collaboration over conflict resolution alone.

Choosing someone who will walk beside you—in sickness and health—is no trivial decision; values such as family history play roles larger than anticipated initially yet resonate throughout shared lives together.

Aging With Agency: The Philanthropic Method In Action

Discussing philanthropy usually conjures images of generosity toward others—but what about self-care? Actively caring for oneself ensures we remain capable supporters within our communities—as demonstrated by engaging activities like hiking regardless of age milestones looming ahead.

If intrigued by Scott Forrester’s journey or interested in exploring how the Feldenkrais method may enrich your own path towards wellness (both physically & emotionally), consider visiting awareathlete.com where resources abound including access points towards works like “The Aware Athlete.”

Remember—if movement is medicine then let us learn its language fluently so we may converse heartily with every step taken toward healing ourselves wholly!

Episode Transcription:

Victoria Volk: Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, whatever time it is you’re listening. Welcome to grieving voices. Today, my guest is Scott Forrester. He is an author, a Felden Price practitioner. Yep. Podcaster, when licensed physical therapist assistant, and I can’t believe if I pronounced that correctly. Is that right?

Scott Forrester: That’s correct. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: Is there anything let’s start there. What is a filled in Christ practitioner?

Scott Forrester: Alright. So a filled in Christ practitioner. That’s a form whenever you have a method that gets named after someone, you have to put up with the name. So that is a method of somatic ed education. Pulmonic education, soma refers to the living body. So it’s a form of learning with or through the body. Okay? It’s so I’m actually teaching a class a couple classes a week. It’s taught in two different modes. Awareness removal and is their group class name. And functional integration is the name for the one on one work. It’s the same work, but just done either verbally or verbally and with a hand.

Victoria Volk: Okay. Can you just explain a little bit, like, what it looks like?

Scott Forrester: What it looks like?

Victoria Volk: Yeah. Okay.

Scott Forrester: So in the classes, these particular classes I’ve been doing since January and almost none of the movement lessons have been the same. There is really only one lesson that’s how you move your attention around and within yourself. But so the last the last lesson, we do them on Wednesdays and Fridays. So on Wednesday, we did a lesson. And the the class is really good. The people I had Friday, I knew know how to take care of themselves. So we did a lesson that that involved one person at the end of the lesson, being able to put surprise themselves, being able to put their foot on their head. And we did that with no straining, no stretching. And then so we did that on the on the right side. Then on the left side, we did hardly any movements, and that was even better because we we used a lot of visualization after you know how to do it on one side, then you also know how to visualize it. And then Some of the lessons have involved no movement at all. If you are watching them, we’ve done lessons where you just cover the eyes. And improve your vision because the eyes are doing things while they’re covered. And so there’s a tremendous variety. A lot of the lessons focus on most of most of the ones we’ve been doing are awareness for movement, focusing on awareness. But they have a heavy emphasis on function also. So you end up with a lot of movement surprises.

Victoria Volk: So people unless you’re watching this, you can’t see my face. And so I am, like, A little bit and, you know, kinda turning my head to the side because it’s fascinating to me. I find it fascinating and interesting. And I can tell you, like, because I’m an energy worker. I Uh-huh. Bio field tuning with Jeff or raki master and and all that. And I can tell you just living where I live heavily, like, old German country. Right? Like, I’m, like, the unicorn around here. Like so at least I feel like it. Although Yeah. I know that there’s probably people that are interested in the Wu’s stuff like that. And are kind of in the closet of it too. Right? Like, they’re interested in these things that you can’t really explain

Scott Forrester: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: But you have to just experience. And that’s what I’m gathering from you is that this is just something that you have to experience and that before you can really wrap your head around it. Is that

Scott Forrester: it is? It is well, it is. Philadelphia wrote a number of books and so you can’t because he was a scientist, you can, if you understand the book, books, you can absorb his contextual framework. So you could kind of understand it that way. His book, body, and material behavior, he wrote in the forties. And so it has archaic language in it. And if you read the introduction to that and pay attention to that, then you might be able to understand what he’s talking about. Baby.

Victoria Volk: How did you land into this practice?

Scott Forrester: Okay. So this This has made a huge difference in my life. I fell off a roof once. And I only fell seven feet, but it was far enough to break it ankle. Your body weight is seven feet, if you’re not dull lines, man, quite quite right, is still some force. And I eventually had that surgically repaired that was successful. But in the meantime, I had developed a movement pattern with my knee that wouldn’t allow me to run very well any any more. That was about twenty five years ago. So I went to physical therapy and they made it worse. Yeah. I knew they made it worse, so I didn’t go back. And very sincere, nice people. Then I went to another physical therapist who was an ultra runner. He’s about my age, actually. And he had won his age group in the Lenville one hundred more than once. And he was familiar withothelin Christ, but he wasn’t a practitioner, didn’t understand everything about it, but he did apply some some of it. And I had been very interested in the in the method. I I tried to research his online at that course, the in twenty five years, what you can do online is increase dramatically. But So I became very interested in it, and I sensed that, for instance, the first person who made me worse, physical therapy, And I I am a physical therapist assistant. So and I’ve worked in a quite a bit, so I understand it. And and if you wanna get very generalized, every physical therapist is different. But if you wanna really generalize it, strengthen stretch. So if you have a problem, you just have to strengthen the muscles around the area. Well, I already had been relatively at the same time. This is not astounding, but I I was able to deadlift four hundred pounds. So obviously, I was strong enough to run. But the problem was all your movement patterns are not in the muscles. Talk about muscle memory. We understand that, but the memory is not in muscles. It’s in the nervous system. And in the central nervous system, in the brain, that’s where you have your your your movement patterns. That’s where they reside. And you may have even had the experience of forgetting how to do something But as soon as you pick up your hands to do it, you can remember how to do it. Anyway, So that was the first thing. But the real problem was just change your movement pattern a little bit. Now you could do it. I could go into detail about that, but The way we do things, this is profound because it doesn’t just apply to to your body, but the way we do things, the quality of the way we do them. The details of how we do of how we do what we do our makeup profile differs. So this is something that you would have to experience. However, it does have a huge conceptual framework, and you could understand that. The the difficulty with doing it just from the books is you don’t understand the person at first. So you don’t quite understand I could say a sentence. And if you don’t understand the context of what I’d say, words are always always limited. So you always not so you get very little out of it and unless you understand what the person is saying. And he writes in sentences that are paragraph long. So Yes. You could do it either way, but but you do essentially have to experience it. And even in the training, I was myself and others were getting about halfway through it, and we were saying, what if what is this? Eventually, you understand. But it is, you have to experience it. So it became something that with somatic education is making big inroads into therapy too. Felding Christ, didn’t want to. His method is so large as to become unwieldy in in some ways. So you’ve heard the somatic experiencing maybe Peter Levine and there are so many so many techniques and methods that use that. But and so if ethics and ethics can be applied exactly to that. To therapy. The beauty of what he did is that it’s it has great therapeutic yeah, advantages. But some of the some of the the results that you obtain are partly because you don’t focus on the problems, that you don’t focus on therapy. If you have a problem, if you focus on the problem, you have a problem for the rest of your life.

Victoria Volk: Welcome to politics. Right?

Scott Forrester: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: Focus on all the problems all the time. And Yeah. Everybody’s always talking about the problems, but there’s Where are we talking about?

Scott Forrester: It applies to everything. So I Yeah. Made a profound difference in in my life and even how I respond to. Everything. In my class, I I’ve had the greatest compliment lately because people are beginning to say, you know, my whole this is influencing and changing my whole life because I approached life in a different way. You could either I don’t know. I often say you could either do what you always do and do what I what I tell you to. Or you could do what’s right for you and and learn how to take care of yourself and how to move from that place.

Victoria Volk: So who who who is this for? Who is a good candidate for?

Scott Forrester: Okay. So if you if you want to advertise it, as you know, you need to well, you probably know the difficulty of advertising what you’re doing in your location. You suggested that Yeah. But if if so if you want to advertise it, you kind of have to appeal to someone. Some particular group because the problem with it is that it can help anybody that you’re familiar with basketball?

Victoria Volk: Mhmm.

Scott Forrester: So everybody knows Michael Jordan. But just before him was doctor Jay. Julius Irving.

Victoria Volk: Okay.

Scott Forrester: Fellow Christ worked with him. Oh, he he worked with ballet dancers. He worked with children with cerebral palsy because you’re working with the nervous system. And So it it really applies to it would apply So a lot of people that think they’re doing fine and are moving through life. Maybe they’re in in the maybe they’re fairly young, thirties and forties, they probably wouldn’t be interested because they think they’re doing fine. They could improve them tremendously. But if you had cerebral palsy, or if you have neurological difficulties or if you were an artist or an athlete and you have some reason that you really want to improve your skill level, the skill level that resides in your nervous system. Then it’s for you. So the problem is it could help anybody.

Victoria Volk: Well, and what I know about emotions and grief and trauma is that these emotions like that these heavy emotions that we our bodies remember. Right? Our bodies hold on to

Scott Forrester: That’s exactly

Victoria Volk: He’s in the nervous system.

Scott Forrester: Right. Right. So you know if you’re doing energy work. Mhmm. There’s nothing. Fell in Christ to him. There was not a mind body connection. They’re exactly the same thing.

Victoria Volk: Oh.

Scott Forrester: So if if you have a that’s a huge difference between saying a healthy mind and a healthy body. So if what you were saying, everything that happens to us is hell in the body. Well, that’s because it’s Also, all held in the emotions and in the mind. It is held it tells everywhere in the person. Mhmm. So Franklin Christ did feel that working with the with movement was the fastest way to access the entire person. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: There’s a question that’s kinda noodling at me. And so I’m gonna ask, is this, like, similar to like, Thai chis, like chigong, like those types of practices?

Scott Forrester: Yes and no.

Victoria Volk: Okay.

Scott Forrester: It was very similar in in that it, you know, it it emphasizes the mind mindfulness the same way.

Victoria Volk: Okay.

Scott Forrester: It’s very dissimilar in that in Chaiti, you learn a formula and you can improve and improve and improve and improve and prove in that form. Falcon Christ had hundreds. There’s even literally thousands of blessings. Over a thousand. So you come into the class. If you understand that you’re doing the same lesson every time, but it has a different flavor, would you like to improve your eyesight? Would you like to improve your balance, whatever? It was it’s heavily it’s unique and that it’s heavily oriented towards function, but also in that every time you come in, you’ll be doing something non habitual.

Victoria Volk: I have a question. Have you seen people with conditions? Maybe even rare that have seen improvements in their condition using this method.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. Yes, you have. I’ve worked with people who had late stage cerebral palsy and and so on. So yes.

Victoria Volk: Or near blindedness.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. So I think it’s David Webber that develops filled in Christ knew everything in his side. He knew all the all the scientists, and he was a black belt at Juno, so he understood martial arts, and he even understood them to the extent that he wrote a book on the Physics of Juno. So okay. So I lost my check. What was the question again?

Victoria Volk: Vision. Near blind.

Scott Forrester: Vision. Yeah. So that means he knew a number of things about vision. I think it was stated whether that’s developed a lot of exercises there. And they’re I can’t remember the source, but there’s a case study on a person who was legally blind. And he decided to do these eye exercises. And he was prescribed, you know, you should you should do them an hour, maybe even two hours a day. He did him thirteen hours a day. And he went from legally blind to perfectly acceptable vision.

Victoria Volk: I just got goosebumps.

Scott Forrester: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: I am just fascinated with this falling Christ’s guy. So

Scott Forrester: He had completely destroyed knees. And he was born in nineteen o four, lived till nineteen eighty four. So back when he did that as a twenty year old, they didn’t have the knee surgery we do now. But he figured out how to rehabilitate the function of the knees enough that he could practice you. Which Mhmm. With with no meniscus and no legacies. Pretty astoundingly.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. You would go to a physician, maybe, like, that’s impossible. Don’t do that. You’ll just hurt yourself further, you know?

Scott Forrester: Yeah. He was he was cognitively and physically in the body, very aware of what he couldn’t couldn’t and couldn’t do. You know what? He could move fine if he moved in certain ways, which we can, and not fine if he moved in other ways. He had to he had to move within the stability of what he could do, but he understood that and felt that.

Victoria Volk: It’s almost like connecting with the energy within the body to understand it and manipulate it where it can be manipulated, but then almost surrender to it where it can’t be.

Scott Forrester: Yes.

Victoria Volk: That’s a good question.

Scott Forrester: That’s very understandable. That’s very profound. If I I’ll probably butcher the quote, but Find your greatest weakness and surrender to it. Mhmm. He said most people spend all their life either covering up their weaknesses or trying to improve them. Sent those that surrendered to their weaknesses are rare. And he said they actually lead every generation. So obviously, you can understand why he would say that. He has no knees. No functional knees. But in surrendering to that, he found what he could do. He found his whole person. So that applies really to everything.

Victoria Volk: Well, I’m gonna have to look into this guy. He sounds like a true trailblazer in Renegade for his time And

Scott Forrester: He was a pioneer in neuroplasticity when that term wasn’t even used. And there was a brain researcher, Aileen Bakirida, I think, came to some of his classes. Her husband, Paul, Aker Reed Award, won a Nobel Prize in the I believe he won a Nobel Prize in Nobel Prize in Nobel Plastic Research. I think he was the man who took a blind man and hooked sensors to his tongue and hooked that up to a camera. And the man could see. Yeah. He’s done that with us. He he proves a lot of things, sensory substitution that way. You’ve done it done it with a person with a very poor vestibular system. And and he put a helmet on the head so that he could I don’t think he may have used the camera there too. I’m not sure. But then then the in fact, in that case, the person eventually didn’t need the device. Because the brain had been trained to be able to stand in. So

Victoria Volk: Well, listen.

Scott Forrester: So anyway, when when his wife came to the classes, she said, you are able to do more here practically. And our research is allowing us to do in the lab.

Victoria Volk: Well, this is fascinating. And I do want to get to your grief story

Scott Forrester: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: But so I’m sorry I kind of derailed the conversation in my curiosity. But I think it really is a good context into how it changed your life because you’ve got a lot of grief experiences and a lot of loss

Scott Forrester: Oh, in one year. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. You were already practicing this, I imagine, for years. Yes.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. Yeah. It made made a big difference to my wife and I. I was finishing PTA school, and I ran by a laundromat where my wife was doing the clothes. And we I had thought about doing this, but it was very expensive In terms of you have to not work for seven weeks a year, you have to find a place to live in another city for that long. Then you have to come up with a tuition and and it takes four years, so it’s quite a commitment. And but there was no training offered near us. So I kinda shut down.

Victoria Volk: You’re talking about the folding price?

Scott Forrester: Yes. And so I I stopped in to see my wife, and she pulls out an ad paper. In the line of math there. And there wasn’t there was a train that’s gonna start up within a reasonable distance. And she said, you have to do this. And as difficult as it was, her that was her attitude clear through the training. So it did make a difference with this.

Victoria Volk: So tell us about your what followed?

Scott Forrester: So I I Our training started in twenty ten, finished in twenty fourteen, so it was much later in In twenty twenty two, in August, we celebrated our fiftieth anniversary. And we came back. So in September, it was, you know, it’s almost twenty twenty three. And two weeks or so after we got back. Yeah. I she had I worked in physical therapy and she had a very tight calf. And I said, you need to go to the doctor right now. So she did and she had a blood clot, but and and it was removed. A lot forty five centimeters. And in the meantime, at at the same time that they, you know, did a scan for the blood clot, they did scan at the aggregate and the physician came back and said, you have stage forecast for her. And So early in twenty twenty three, she began chemotherapy.

Victoria Volk: And

Scott Forrester: she after about three treatments, she had a clean scan. So we were We were happy about that, but it was in the lymph system that it came roaring back. And after three treatments has sensitive as she was to that. She they couldn’t give her anymore because her white blood cell count was way too low. And eventually, they she tried radiation and another form of chemo that was probably not as effective. But, anyway, so my dog whom was not only a family member, I almost got a telepathic relationship with him. The only dog I’d ever had, I got over at sixty. You know what I mean? And he was very important to both my wife and myself. I won’t go into downward, but he died in August. And we’re both here for his last last day. Well, I didn’t say that my mother died January. She was ninety nine, so it was expected. She was very highly functional until the last couple months of life. So my mother died in January, my dog. My wife and I both sat there for his last day, and he was kind of a pioneer for us because he lived his he lived his life every day. And he had wait. He’d had a couple surgeries and they couldn’t do any more for him. And their mask came back on his mouth and other places. And I was building my son’s house down in Chris’ Valley, and it was hot out there. And so I left him with my wife for a few days. And I came back. And she said, yeah. You’ve gotta take him with you. He’s more of us here. So as high as it was, is uncomfortable for for him as it was. He wanted to be out there with me. And, anyway, in in August, he could no longer he he reached the day where his fever came back and and he couldn’t get up. He could barely walk, and he just wanted to sit and look. And he couldn’t get in the car anymore. And he never liked me to pick him up unless he was really weak. And but he was afraid to get in the car because he tried it a couple of times and couldn’t couldn’t make the jump anymore. So I picked him up. He was finishing and he scratched me. Yeah. But once he was in the car, it was fine. And then when he got out of the when we reached the vet, he likes vet because they’ve always helped him. So he hopped down the car and walked in on his own. And then they took him into the bathroom and put it IV in his in his, like, and he was fine with that. He he done it before and then and he and then Dave would do something, you know, do a surgery. He’d come back and be fine. So he was fine with that. He walked in on his own, walked to the waiting room where my wife and I sat with him. And laid down because that’s all I could do. Energy was gone. And then they gave the the shot that you know, slug him down, and they gave him another shot that stopped his heart, but it is extremely peaceful. And so that was a role model for my wife and I. She actually she actually lived a year after the diagnosis. She she made it through September of twenty twenty three. And and passed in in the very first hours of October first. My wife had gone through quite a bit of trauma. And my mom died when she was nine, dad’s bad enough, but her dad was an alcoholic. And so he married another alcoholic. And so her stepmother hated her and and hated her father because she was a terrific alcoholic and didn’t know how to love anybody. Yeah. So she grew up with first the loss of her mother and then people saying, you know, you you gotta be strong for your father. Right? Yeah. That’s backwards. That’s so and through your early teenage years and and later teenage years, you hope. In a family that’s not your family. So she grew up highly sensitive doing due to needing to know every night. Her father was a stable alcoholic. He held a job. But you need to know what Moody’s coming home in every every night. Mhmm. And so she actually suffered from depression quite a bit. And then that last year, she was never depressed. We were both really accepting of death, which is a good place to be because in our culture, we just kinda put it off into a corner. I’ll deal with that in fifteen years. Mhmm. It really could enhance life. To understand it. Anyway, so she would she never had time for that and was never depressed. And she lived every single day Even when she was getting weaker, she got up and did something that was life every day. And that was true for her last day. My son visited and he brought pictures from the grandkids, and she held a nice video call with them. She was fully into that call. And, no, ma’am. I didn’t know. She didn’t know. That was her last day. She was magnificent. And she’s my hero. She did not want to spend one minute in a facility, and she didn’t And and the timing was the whole thing was amazing because I spent a little bit of extra money to have some help. To finish to finish John’s house. And I couldn’t be in two places at once, but when I got it finished, that’s when she really needed vehicle. So it’s a huge it’s it’s a bigger thing than you think. But, you know, in the first week, when you lose somebody that closely, you’re holding their hands when they take their last breath, which was beautiful. But when you do that, a presence tends to be really strong, especially for the first week or two. And I got up one morning, he’s walking down the hall, and I It’s a knowing. I related to hearing your voice. She said, I will always be with you, Scott. Not too much later. I was sitting down at the breakfast table and I said, how was it with you? What are you arguing? She said, Sky is so beautiful. So wonderful. Wonderful. Actually, the word, whether anybody thinks that’s a voice or not, some people understand some it’s a great truth because it says that life is sacred. The right way to grieve is to remember someone as your hero and embrace life. You know, you could think and it’s reasonable to think that the right way to agree with us to be unhappy. But counter intuitively, it’s not the the loss is bigger than you think. Because if you’re orientated correctly and you live day by day, you think you can deal with it. But you find there’s more layers to it because she wanted to be a lie a wife that was actually her goal. It’s not everybody’s goal. Wife, a mother, and a grandmother. And she did that her entire life. I matter when she was maybe eighteen. We spent a lot of time together when she was nineteen. She was married when we were twenty. So her entire lifer, she did that. And that’s all I did or don’t either. You live day by day or do it fine. And then you find out the the loss in the hole is bigger and you thought and you find yourself, you know, searching for something to fill that. So I recently hadn’t aware of this. That you have to relate to the past in a certain way. If you relate to the past as the beautiful blessings that you had, the fun times you had, or as the things that weren’t right but what you learned from them. You’re on you’re on a good path. As soon as you say, as soon as you begin to grasp and say, I wish I had that back. It brings you down, like, falling off a building. So never go there. The first time I had that realization, it was kinda like oh, that’s a good realization. I understand that. I see that. The second time I was, like, I’m never going there again. Then I understand. It was beautiful, but I I still am in touch with her. But after seven months, you have to be very quiet and just I could still ask for questions and feel and answer, but So I felt in Christ this thing about that was the beginning of really developing some awareness within yourself. You can use a method to improve your function, or as you were talking about, you can move that use that method to actually notice exactly how you are functioning. There are places that you can go to as a method that improve your your sense of yourself, your standing, your connection with the ground, just how you feel it in in an overall way. You talk about posture. There’s there’s some ideas about posture and the method. But there’s a certain way of standing in which you’re totally comfortable. And I couldn’t quite go there. I thought that we had experienced a whole year of both joy and grief together, and I realized that there was even another level that we could have experience. So you can tell that in your body, you’re not quite ready to go to that place. After you’ve experienced it and know what it is. And then later you are. Yeah. The whole idea of self and self awareness has been expanding. You know, throughout these entire last ten years.

Victoria Volk: What’s your wife’s name?

Scott Forrester: Namely. But her name was always Leanne and was her Italy.

Victoria Volk: And your dog?

Scott Forrester: Stealth.

Victoria Volk: What time was he hold? Was he?

Scott Forrester: He was a lab shepherd mix, and he didn’t quite make thirteen years. He if I had a dog now, I would have known their limits, but he’s a very strong, strong dog. So I felt like he could do anything I could do. So when he was about five, I took him on a hike through the desert from Walker Pass to Kennedy Meadows. Mhmm. I was lost one day too. So we were probably out there by sixty miles. And, yeah, he was totally exhausted when we got done. He couldn’t even walk very far. I mean, we’d really get through it out there. And my wife picked him up and, you know, picked us up. Actually, Actually, she I was a kennady medalist store, and she was up to the campground. I didn’t know that. And I I couldn’t get in touch with her cell phones for her working. And eventually, I had somebody I could have walked up there. But still is good. So I’m gonna leave him with the campground. I I was gonna leave him with the campground manager, but it said he took us up there. That’s how tired stealth was as strong and tough as he was carrying his backpack and and always leading the way. And I’ve taken him on hikes through the wind river range in Wyoming. And Well, one one day we did from Snora Pass to Echo Pass or whatever it was in the Sierra. And we did thirty one miles in one day. The last part of it, it was actually getting dark. So you’re walking up the steepest part of it to ten thousand five hundred feet. The rock is part of it. And you can’t see the trail. So every time you go to a rocky spot, you can’t find the trail. Because now you have to negotiate out of this Rocky area. Which way did it go? My GPS did that for us. But it took a minute to find the trail each time we were crossing streams at night twenty hours and he was right up right here. I had no estimate for a vehicle. Yeah. Yeah. So Yeah. We did some big adventures together. And then finally, he got to the place where I wouldn’t do that with him anymore. It it didn’t have quite the stamina for it. It was too dangerous for him.

Victoria Volk: So growing up, had you had any loss experiences? And and how did how did what did you learn about grief growing up?

Scott Forrester: Okay. So basically, no. I mean, we’re We’re it was pretty isolated from everything. But I both of my grandmothers did die. We weren’t there for it. You know, further passing or anything. We they both had funerals. And then that was way back in my childhood. The first one, my my dad’s mother. The second one was was actually actually after I got married, and she was way up in her nineties. And she passed the way she wanted to. So those are significant. But then my father died when I was I think I was young, but I was forty three. So it’s not a childhood loss. But that one was in such great contrast to to my wife later thirty years later because that one I couldn’t accept it.
And I couldn’t even say that my father had died. I couldn’t use that word. He was so strong. And you know, to a kid he seemed invulnerable and then he had Parkinson’s disease in every a piece at a time what he could do. Went away. I couldn’t even say Parkinson’s for years. And, you know, five years later, I could I had trouble accepting it. And for thirty years, he’s always been there. With me. That was a completely different experience.

Victoria Volk: I noticed you didn’t even mention that in what as one of your losses.

Scott Forrester: No. I I was pretty much focusing on on what happened within the space of the year as pretty dramatic. And I think my wife knew she knew how much she meant to me. Even more than I knew how much I meant to her. She knew what what it would be like. And I think she guided me through a lot of it. But, yeah, there’s a thirty year difference between those two and in the intensity of you losing three, actually four. In one year because I I’m by myself, so I adopted another dog. And my son said, that he would help with it. But in reality, it turned out he couldn’t. And so I found that I couldn’t really take care of but I kept him long enough. He was potty trained, and I kept him long enough that we found a really good home for it.

Victoria Volk: Why do you think you couldn’t take care of him?

Scott Forrester: Because I did what I usually what I wanted to do was get a dog who is full of energy. And so he was like a border collie, and he was only about seven months old. I could take care of him. But if I did, that if I were retired and didn’t have anything to do, I could take care of because it took the entire day. I had to take him for a life.
If I took him to run for two hours, he’d go quite okay kind of for one day. But I couldn’t do that every day. So I had to take him for, like, five walks a day. And and I had to keep an e eagle eye on him to make sure that the project training was holding, and I had to do all kinds of things like that. So I could have taken care of, but I wouldn’t have any relationship with people outside the home. You know, drive to bed there. So it was either the dog and you and you stay in the house with a dog for the rest of your life or, you know, you can you can work with other people.

Victoria Volk: Is there a part of you that feels it was maybe just too soon?

Scott Forrester: To seem to get the dog? No. I just I just couldn’t. I don’t I don’t have a fancy yard. And I don’t have anybody having your wife at home that can watch them while you go to work and while you do something.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. That’s yeah.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. I couldn’t I just didn’t have the ability to do it.

Victoria Volk: So earlier you mentioned you just kind of made a statement about trying to fill the void. I that those weren’t your words, but to that effect, trying to fill the space and time and

Scott Forrester: Not not so much the time. I’ve been pretty busy with with the space.

Victoria Volk: I’m actually trying to keep busy. I suppose is maybe the good a good way to say it. Like, you’ve been trying to keep busy. Is

Scott Forrester: that No. No. I’m just no. It’s easy for me to keep busy. I I have things that I wanna write a book. I’ve read written a couple of books. I wanna write a book. About this. I think there’s some useful things in it. And at least there’s some at least your story needs to be told.

Victoria Volk: What were some of the things though that you found that you have found yourself doing since your wife passed away that Oh. Are out of character lead.

Scott Forrester: Well, she loved to cook, and I had no interest in it. So I I don’t know how to cook. So now you have to take that up, and she gave me some hits before she passed, and I’ve been feeding myself quite well. But so now you have to do that. And you find out that it took a lot more time to do some of the things that you thought. So now I’m it’s only me here, so it’s not a big deal, but I’m cleaning the house. I’m teaching my classes. I am I want to write that book. Trying to find time for that. Eventually switching over the cell phone, you wouldn’t believe how much trouble that was. I keep sending you the bills for the person who’s not there anymore in front of the plan and switching insurance and say doing all the paperwork and she paid the bills, so I had to figure out what she was doing there. And then my son needs help. I have two sons. One’s an engineer in Arizona. The other one is not this ability. And he needs some help. Although, I’m proud of him. He’s needing a little bit less as things go. But so I had to figure out his finances and that was and we have to make trips down to Social Security, and then that does get you know, you have too bad. I was totally busy with that stuff for a long time. So during the during these classes, I put quite a bit of work into you’re doing two a week and I’ve I’ve actually kept them so I don’t do the same class every week every twice a week. I could. But so I put quite a bit. Excuse me. I didn’t. I can’t think. I’ve been doing so many things. I can’t I can’t really

Victoria Volk: do you feel like now, like, the dust is settled a little bit? You’ve gotten a lot of that administrative stuff that, obviously, when some when your spouse passes, there’s so much paperwork and you’d kinda hit on that a little bit. Do you feel like now is when you you finally maybe have time to, like, sit with how you’re feeling and sit with your grief and kind of maybe just now being able to do that? Yeah.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. It’s getting a little bit more like that. So something that’s, excuse me, have been crying. I mean, crying a little bit.

Victoria Volk: Okay.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. I wanna get back to the right. See, I still my time will be filled. I I if I have enough time, I would like to get back into painting. But something that takes a good chunk out of my day every day is that, you know, I have to get outside I have to do.
I have a friend that finished a hundred mile race not too long ago, and it was one with a big cut off. And so I get together with her and we’ll do eight, ten, twelve miles. And, you know, you know, we’ll go up we We did Smith rock the loop around that the other day for about eight miles, and it has something in it. They called Missy Ridge, which is just a big steep climb. And then we can jog back down a lot. But every day, so I want to spend if I’m really busy, I only get outside for half an hour. But I I like to spend an hour or two every day and, you know, to start the day doing something that’s movement or exercise. And I do a lot of movement preparing for the lessons. But see there’s that is so important to me that I make time for it. So there’s an if you if you go outside and do heart rate training for two hours, it takes more than that. You had to make sure you had to do whatever things are necessary to prepare for it. Then you’re a little bit more tired, sometimes even requiring a nap. So that’s a foundation to my day. Because if I do live to ninety or ninety five or my like my mother about a hundred, I wanna be fully functional at that age. So

Victoria Volk: Don’t we all?

Scott Forrester: I don’t have any trouble being being busy. But, yes, the other day, I was able to sit down in the sun, and there’s been a I mean, seven days a week, I’m busy. I’ll go out and see my son Christmas valley here. But I have had a couple times where it’s been very wonderful to sit outside and just reflect. In terms of filling the void, it’s a it’s a little embarrassing. But I found myself. So I I didn’t want to just put myself in a closet, turn the light out. So I found myself reaching out in a lot of different ways and making trying to make new connections, which I have. And that’s good. I found myself making new friends on Facebook and trying to find people that live in the area. And it was not obvious to me. Believe it or not that I was searching for somebody to fill that gap. And because it’s not what I was doing, but it was. It’s not what I was doing, but it was in there. It’s all I’ve ever known. So you’re I talked about a habit that’s in the body and an entire person. Yeah. I I went to the store the other day. This has been a little while ago. All of a sudden, that became kind of clear that happened in that in that looking error. And I actually kinda cried because isn’t that obvious that you would do that? Right? It wasn’t completely obvious. It became obvious. So I’ve I I think I’ve kind of indicated that all my friends are twenty years younger. Not all my friends, but but my close friends, Laura is twenty years younger, but a friend that may visit that I used to run with in Cheyenne. He’s twenty years younger. My friend Carlos, and his and his partner, Monica, are twenty years younger. Somebody I did go to visit some people at at the senior center the other day on invitation. And I like the people great. But I couldn’t go there again.

Victoria Volk: Well, I think what I mean, just based on how physically active you are, Yeah. And your background knowledge and stuff, is it accurate to say that you are a bit of a unicorn in the population of your peers?

Scott Forrester: I guess so. I mean

Victoria Volk: And that I

Scott Forrester: don’t think there are

Victoria Volk: other people are is not where you are.

Scott Forrester: They don’t do that some of these things that I do.

Victoria Volk: Exactly. And

Scott Forrester: so I love to talk to.

Victoria Volk: It’s how do we improve our lives, how do we better ourselves, it’s by surrounding ourselves with people who are doing what we who are where we want to be. Right? Yeah.

Scott Forrester: Right.

Victoria Volk: Where we’re at? Does was your wife very active with you as well?

Scott Forrester: No. She was always physically weaker than I was on it. She on her honeymoon, we hike eight miles in and eight miles back to the old mill the crystal mill in Colorado. And on the way out, I care I used to carry her backpack. She was only twenty, but she supported me.

Victoria Volk: And that’s what I was gonna say too is, but she never took that she allowed you to be you fully you?

Scott Forrester: She did. She supported me so much. In fact, there was a time when I I get lost all the time. She was a navigator. But I do have some sense about where I am when I’m when I’m outside.
Mhmm. And but I had no experience to do this, and I was backing very light. And by the time I just lost a couple days.

Victoria Volk: A couple days?

Scott Forrester: Anyway, I I just lost a lot out there. And Let’s see. So it was between fifteen and twenty years ago that I decided I was going to be in the wind river range and go from Green River lakes campground to Big Sandy, which has totally changed now. And they were keeping it kind of wilderness, so they weren’t a lot of sides out there. So you can imagine that was, you know, maybe seventy eight miles or something.
It turned out to be more than that for me. I didn’t know if I didn’t receive it again because what happened was An hour in, I dropped my GPS at the stream, and it was supposed to be waterproof, but it dropped it to a deep part of the stream. And It took me a lot of fishing out there. It worked. It was full of water. It worked well enough for me to find the trail one time. And then it never worked yet. So I’m out there with no GPS. I did have good maps in a compass. And I thought maybe I should go back. And then I thought, well, I might never have the opportunity to do this again, so I’ll go a little farther.

Victoria Volk: Man, you got gumption.

Scott Forrester: So I I know she would be at the campground for a better hour or so, I mean, probably that day. So I could have gone back, but I didn’t. And five days later, I walked out and I’d lost so much weight that she didn’t recognize me. I made a statement.

Victoria Volk: You ran you ran out of food, I take it.

Scott Forrester: I still had two or three hundred calories left, but I had

Victoria Volk: Futch hell from her when you finally met up with her.

Scott Forrester: Well, when I yeah. When I approached enough to talk, you know, but because I was walking towards her, I’m wearing the same clothes, but she didn’t recognize me. And I’m I’m but anyway, that night before the seasons were changing in the melons. I had a one pound sleeping bag. And It was getting too cold. I tried to get out of the wind because I didn’t have a tent. I brought my rain poncho that I strung up over myself, which actually protected me from the rain, but not the wind. And last night, I tried to hike the ice boulders there. My bag wasn’t doing it. I was I was shivering through the night. My my shoes were icy and frosty. In the next morning when I put them on. So I I wasn’t I was thinking, you know, if it gets more be more than shivery, I’m gonna have to get up and start doing jumping checks or something. Anyway, we made it through the night. But that night, I was I was sitting up and I felt her beside me. And I said, she’s here. No. She’s not here. I kept going back and forth before I she’s not here, but she is. And when I the next day, It took me four hours to find the trail. It went through a rocky area, and Anyway, so when I got out, she told me that she had taken, and this is not something she did all the time. She had taken my wallet and held it held it closer to her to her heart and projected herself out. Out beside me. She knew she knew that it was getting it was getting cold where she was. So she knew. So she wasn’t very active, but she she supported me in so many ways.

Victoria Volk: So you could have died. Were you not were you not fearful? Were you not? Like, what was going through your mind?

Scott Forrester: Their last day, I had let myself get dehydrated or and and the lack of food, which you know, you can go coin ways without food. I I knew that, but I didn’t know it in my body yet. In five days, it’s enough to get hungry if you’re not used to what you’re doing, not prepared. Right?

Victoria Volk: Well, when you start hallucinating?

Scott Forrester: I wasn’t to that point, but I was to the point where I didn’t have any extra energy to think to to think about worrying. Mhmm. So I was I was just pretty pretty steady to just kinda do what you go back, come back. I make it or I, you know, I find it or I don’t. You do get to the place where you’re at where you say, oh, somebody help me.
But, yeah, I found the trail. And once I did, I was up to three or four miles an hour again.

Victoria Volk: What I’m hearing in this story is it is a a metaphor for grief. Right?

Scott Forrester: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: We’re you can feel so lost. Like, can you see the parallels of getting lost?

Scott Forrester: Oh, yeah.

Victoria Volk: Not knowing where the trail is, not like losing your path, losing your self identity?

Scott Forrester: I did lose my identity. I’ve been a husband all my wife, life. And she was my everything, and she said to me before she passed. She said she said, yeah. We both wanted her to go first because I wanted to take care of her. That’s always been the case. She was weaker physically. And Yeah. She said you you were in my rock. So you you lose that identity. It’s gone. She no longer needs my help. You’re right. And then it’s every day at a one day at a time, and so you learn and you learn new things. It is a metaphor for them. I could.

Victoria Volk: I see a book along those lines.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. I I really would like to say some things that I think will help other people because I’d like to tell her story. So you know that all my friends are twenty years younger. And I’m not I wasn’t looking for anybody. But I found somebody who I knew I could I knew it was worth with, but I’m I’m not gonna tell you the whole story.
It’s just too funny. But I so this person was actually twenty nine years younger.

Victoria Volk: Okay. So

Scott Forrester: I went way out of him and and asked her to marry me knowing that. Very likely he was gonna say no. So she did say no. So anyway, I wasn’t looking for it then, and I’m really not today either. But that that all is there. It’s a good thing because it’s what I’ve really needed. I recently talked about the difference between being alone and being lonely. Mhmm. If you’re if you’ve never done it before and you’re forced to be alone, you have to learn some things you’ve never learned before. And it’s exactly what you need.
So that’s my story. For the pilot.

Victoria Volk: Thank you for sharing.

Scott Forrester: Thank you. Thank you for being a great host.

Victoria Volk: I would ask you what your grief has taught you, but I feel like you’ve fully answered that question. Do you feel like you’ve answered that question?

Scott Forrester: I have. But in looking over her wonderful marriage, and it was. I saw I saw in retrospect, I saw areas where I really wish I’d been more for and then I got carried away with that to the point where, you know, boy. You could look back and and and say, I was so selfish in in some marriage. When you’re you’re twenty years old and you get married, you don’t know We just had dumb kid. So you asked everything you learned in life. Everything we learned, we learned together. And so you you can get you can kinda get out of focus on that. Yes. I do wish I’d done some things even more for, but you can’t say, I wish I’d known fifty years ago what I know now because it’s impossible.
It’s so it’s always a very beautiful thing and then I I for a while, I got so carried away with. Which I I do acknowledge and I do want to bring into life and other people’s lives. What I learned there how much how much freedom is encouragement that you want to give the woman your a r I two? So that’s there. And I’m working with that. But for a while, it overshadowed what was something that was really beautiful even though it was very imperfect because it could not have been anything else. So, yeah, that’s another lesson.

Victoria Volk: So what his love taught you?

Scott Forrester: What his love taught me? Yeah. I understand the commitment. I understand what it takes it takes a whole lifetime to build that kind of a relationship. The amount of comfort that we had with each other, the we really were one person.
And she has she has guided me through all of this. And love love has taught me, you know, look look at the love, don’t and look at whatever lessons you can learn, but But don’t forget that there was something there that was beyond anything that was done. It’s you can’t encapsulate it all in one mistake or one love is something that goes beyond. It’s more than the sum of the parts. The whole of the whole relationship if it works in the marriage is more than the sum of parts. It works better than it should. It can work better than it should.

Victoria Volk: And what do you think is the key to it working? For fifty years?

Scott Forrester: So I don’t wanna be too tried, but we we were careful to be committed to that idea at the start. I’ve been kind of astounded if I look back, I see. I guess, you know, there were places where it could not have worked. And then I’ve been kind of astounded when I’m getting a better view of what marriage is for people overall. And and there are a lot of divorces. Yeah. So I’ve been kind of astounded by that. It’s so logical that it wouldn’t work. So I I really have gained no understanding of that. From a perspective of what? You know? Because okay. So a couple of other things that I know even when in my wife’s journal that she said I could read shows up is that commitment’s not enough. If you don’t know how to make the relationship work, commitment is not enough because you’re committed to something that doesn’t work. So then the thing of communication is really essential. And you should develop the skill of nonviolent communication. Of being able to communicate without blaming. But even but we always communicated but we didn’t even know that skill sometimes. The person that can hurt you most in the world is your spouse. And if you have not shed a lot of your ego, everybody wants to be hurt and everybody wants to be loved. And if you have a very strong egoistic way of doing things, which we all do, then somebody gets hurt, and then they say, but you did this, that as a matter of self defense. There’s various ways that can happen. I just listened yeah. You’ve been very patient. I just just listened to an interview with I think his name is John Cotton. And he was saying that after all the studies he’s done, you could predict whether a couple would stay together in as little as fifteen minutes with eighty five or ninety percent accuracy. Because we talked about the fellow Christ method that it’s the quality of what you do dictates what you learn, not the quantity. So you can do a lot of quantity and you end up with neck pain or or hurt because you’re doing the same thing the same way and you and you increase the intensity, but you’re using the same habit. So because of the quality of couples interaction, they can tell just a short period of interaction would typify the quality of what you’re doing. So do you do you still enroll? You don’t even listen and they know you’re not listening. So they upped the volume. I mean, do you do that or or do you even when you hurt one another, are you really seeking for something really knowing It’s not even compromise. There’s some truth somewhere. And are you really pursuing this? Which we did as a friendship? Or are you trying to be right? And those those little things and you can eventually to be learn to communicate much better. But then So that brings you to the other thing and you can’t up your what’s the quality of your communication in the first place? Are you trying to be right or and that comes you know, you have to learn that because that comes through. But but the friend aspect of it, you know, is that the most important thing? And like I say, in beyond compromise, are you looking for something together? I we weren’t great at it. Just I mean, and and and listening with a high degree of awareness. If you bring complete awareness, complete observation to that in a non bias, non passionate way, then you are you are observing your own self in my con. You are observing your wife’s body language. You are observing her words. You are observing hell around. She holds your head, and and you are seeing the meaning behind it. And if you don’t, you ask that’s a high level of communication. And we didn’t always have that, but we we did have this basic belief in. What we were doing. So you need that communication and then you need that continued growth. That self growth. If you don’t have that, that’s a well, that’s a hard place too. But but if you have that friendship aspect, if that’s really what you’re what you’re after, you you can keep going. I mean, you you’ll probably make it. What what was very interesting? And John Gottman’s speech I was listening to was he said, most married problems don’t they don’t ever get accepted or changed. Resolved, but they get accepted. So the friendship, the aesthetics really what determines it all. If you want to go farther, you can. And and you show that it might be dangerous not to.

Victoria Volk: Well, that’s the foundation. Right?

Scott Forrester: Yeah. But that’s the foundation. Mhmm. You can learn better communication skills and you can learn learn not to to put that ego first and you can learn to do that. And then something that you should have learned that is it’s becoming more a possibility in a in a country you can learn. We throw the word partner around. It’s a good work. But it loses some of its meaning if you throw it around too much. Like so to add to that, you can say, you collaborate with your wife or your colleagues or and then you can go back to use the word partner with a different meaning. As equals.

Victoria Volk: I had a conversation yesterday with a minister. Mhmm. He said the most important decision you will ever make in your life is the person you choose to spend your life with.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. Liam was eternally kind. That was so important. So Yeah. You’re you’re right.
That is and so you should be a little nervous about it. And take your time. I actually I asked, actually, after before he got married, we were a kid. I said, what makes you think you can stay better?

Victoria Volk: What’d she say?

Scott Forrester: She told me, you know, she’d never experienced. Divorce in her family. Her mother was always there. Even her father was there. Even though her father invited to a horrible marriage, he never left his wife. And then I thought that was a pretty good answer.

Victoria Volk: What is it that you would like to scream to the world? You were on a long hike and you were out in the mountains and you’re at the top of the mountain, what would you scream?

Scott Forrester: Well, in a book, I would like to scream, scream, her her story. It’s amazing. Overall, I would I would just I would just like people to know how how great marriage could be even though it’s it’s a process to see through. It’s not great every day. It can become great every day, but that’s a that’s a long story. I would like them to see how wonderful it could be. I would like to I would like them to see two things. One, the beauty of how how much my wife or a woman can give, and then I would like them to see the wonder of what the husband how he can lay himself aside. That I’m I’m not talking about wear yourself doing a wear yourself out doing everything for for your old wife, but you give your entire heart to to her elevation. Those two aspects. I mean, what she gave is astounding. And it’s hard to put it into words. But I would like I would like so I would like overall people to know, you know, what what marriage could be. How you could get there. What a wife really? What a gift a wife could be? And And I think there needs to be more a lot more knowledge of of how a husband needs to function in terms of putting his eagle down and and any leadership comes from my my entire heart is in elevating my partner. I yeah. So the the beauty of the whole thing, I can I cannot overappreciate the gift that she gave? Her entire life.

Victoria Volk: That’s beautiful. Is there anything else that you would like to share that you didn’t get to?

Scott Forrester: No. I just appreciate the opportunity to talk about even. I I guess Yeah. The fact that I can still I can still ask her questions and I feel a response just in the smile or It is it’s never it’s not really a loss. I only lost the physical things.
Anyway, I I thank you very much for the chance to share all that even some of the most embarrassing things.

Victoria Volk: It was my pleasure to have this conversation with you, and thank you for describing this new Well, it’s not new, but this the method.

Scott Forrester: Oh, the the film price method if you

Victoria Volk: Yeah.

Scott Forrester: If you didn’t any help understanding that get in touch with me.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. So thank you for bringing that to my awareness, to my audience who Yeah. I mean, there’s so many neurological issues out there. And as we talked about grief and emotions and how they get held in the body and I see that it’s something that could be very beneficial for everyone just as you shared and It’s obviously been helpful for you in navigating your grief and bringing a sense of awareness to your body and being within the body and Okay. Has allowed you to live an exceptional physical life.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. Without that, I wouldn’t be doing some of the things I’m doing right now.

Victoria Volk: And isn’t that the whole goal of I think all of us, you know, I’m forty five. I’m thinking, oh my gosh, I’m gonna be fifty. And you’re thinking, oh my gosh, I wish I could be fifty. Maybe, you know. But that’s the goal. Right? To get to as we get older, it’s not to view it as a death sentence or slow progression of debilitation and weakness and all of these things. And so I try and take care of myself so that truthfully. I can probably take care of my husband because I feel like I’m the stronger of us too, you know.

Scott Forrester: Really? Yeah. Yeah. I can still lift my wife. It’s That’s incredible.
Absolutely. That’s we wanna live our best life and we we don’t wanna accept unnecessary rehabilitation.

Victoria Volk: And that’s the key unnecessary. Right?

Scott Forrester: And so when you get out of the Pacific, unnecessary, exactly. And if we have the necessary, then we want to incorporate that into our life the best we to be the best that we are. And if you get on the Pacific Crest Trail, you find, you know, you hike all day. Entire day, you take your breath, breaks, so you make sure you eat and drink enough. But that’s all you’re doing. The entire day from when you get up in the morning to when you when you need to allow enough time to set up your tent. But there’s old people out there. And they’re in shape you wouldn’t believe. There’s, you know, there’s a lot of twenty, thirty, forty, fifty year olds out there, but there’s older people out there.

Victoria Volk: Well, in thirty, forty year olds that can’t do what you can do, wouldn’t even dare do what you’ve done?

Scott Forrester: Yeah. I throughout my life, I have shunned any job that involved eight hours a day of sitting.

Victoria Volk: Oh, Yeah. Sitting if they face sitting as the new smoking.

Scott Forrester: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No. That was the same.

Victoria Volk: Well, thank you so much for your time today and sharing about Lee and stealth and your father and your and your mother and all the wisdom that you brought to our conversation, I I thank you for your time.

Scott Forrester: Thank you. You are an an excellent host to enjoy talking to you. Get in touch with me if you wanna learn more about the fellow price benefits.

Victoria Volk: And where can people find you if they would like to get in touch with you?

Scott Forrester: I’m actually reworking my website, but you can get all my contact information off of the aware athlete dot com.

Victoria Volk: K. I will put

Scott Forrester: a link. Not the aware athlete. Aware athlete dot com.

Victoria Volk: Aware athlete dot com. And I will put a link to that in the show notes as well.

Scott Forrester: I’m actually yeah. I’m I’m I’m actually working on a website that’s not really live yet, the aware human.

Victoria Volk: Okay. I like that.

Scott Forrester: Yeah. And you can find my books. You wear athlete book. Your warehouse to find that you should put in the warehouse, the entire title I won’t give you the subtitled now. But the awareness, like, by Scott Forrester, you can find that on Amazon.

Victoria Volk: And I’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Yeah.

Scott Forrester: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Victoria Volk: Thank you. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Watch your growth.

Ep 188 Denise Schonwald | Critical Care Nurse to Holistic Healing: Empowering Emotional Wellness

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:

Welcome to another profound episode of Grieving Voices, where we explore the emotional intricacies of dealing with loss and healing.

Today’s guest is Denise Schonwald, a registered nurse turned nationally licensed therapist. With her holistic approach to care that encompasses mental, physical, and spiritual well-being, she offers insights into nurturing both body and mind.

In this episode:

  • Discover how Denise transitioned from critical care nursing into mental health support.
  • Understand why honoring commitments is crucial for personal trust and self-care.
  • Learn about the high burnout rates in nursing – especially post-COVID – and how self-care can prevent it.
  • Explore the importance of emotional intelligence in recognizing when you’re inflicting suffering on yourself through poor self-care choices.
  • Gain strategies for managing anger effectively without damaging relationships or your own well-being.
  • Delve into people pleasing: why we do it, its impacts on our lives, and how to establish healthier boundaries.
  • Hear about grief’s “waiting room” – what keeps us there and how to move forward.

Denise’s journey from a nurse fascinated by the intricacies of human anatomy to a spiritual teacher and family mediator is nothing short of inspiring. She has woven her experiences into a tapestry that offers comfort and guidance to those navigating emotional turmoil.

Through her narrative, Denise uncovers an essential truth: honoring personal commitments is pivotal. When we falter on these promises to ourselves, trust erodes, leaving us vulnerable to self-inflicted suffering.

Self-care isn’t just about indulgence; it’s preventative maintenance for our souls—something Denise has embraced through meditation and mindful practices like Reiki. These practices have been instrumental in managing stress levels after witnessing patients’ crises firsthand as a critical care nurse and mental health professional.

Denise sheds light on how emotions like frustration are precursors to anger—an emotion many grapple with yet struggle to manage effectively.

RESOURCES:

*Denise is generously offering my listeners a free copy of one of her books. Reach out to her through her website to receive your FREE copy today!*

CONNECT:

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.

CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:

Insights on Personal Commitments and Emotional Management

In the labyrinth of life, we often find ourselves at crossroads where our hearts bear the heavy toll of grief. Today, I had the privilege to converse with Denise Schonewald—a beacon of solace and understanding in such turbulent times.

Denise’s journey from a nurse fascinated by the intricacies of human anatomy to a spiritual teacher and family mediator is nothing short of inspiring. She has woven her experiences into a tapestry that offers comfort and guidance to those navigating emotional turmoil.

Through her narrative, Denise uncovers an essential truth: honoring personal commitments is pivotal. When we falter on these promises to ourselves, trust erodes, leaving us vulnerable to self-inflicted suffering. It’s akin to constructing a dam without acknowledging the river—eventually, the waters will breach their confines.

She sheds light on how emotions like frustration are precursors to anger—an emotion many grapple with yet struggle to manage effectively. Her approach? Acknowledgment paired with therapeutic tools like tuning forks that recalibrate our emotional energy.

One profound aspect she touches upon is people-pleasing—a double-edged sword that while momentarily alleviating anxiety can lead us astray from our true selves. Clear communication and solid values stand as sentinels guarding against this tendency.

As someone who has experienced loss closely through my son’s grieving over his friend’s suicide, Denise’s insights resonate deeply. Creating safe spaces for expression and being present in silence are powerful acts of support during grief.

Nurturing the Soul Through Meditation and Mindful Practices

Self-care isn’t just about indulgence; it’s preventative maintenance for our souls—something I’ve embraced through meditation and mindful practices like Reiki which have been instrumental in managing stress levels after witnessing patients’ crises firsthand as a critical care nurse.

Wisdom and Practical Guidance

Denise reminds us that preparing for tomorrow doesn’t mean living in fear but rather simplifying life so we can face what comes with grace and resilience.
Her work goes beyond counsel—it provides hope anchored in real-world wisdom honed through years of helping others navigate their darkest hours.

And if you’re wondering about tangible steps towards healing? Engage with nature or nurture—a pet or even a plant—to foster growth amidst sorrow.
For those seeking more than words, Denise extends an invitation: visit deniseschonewall.com for resources including mental health quizzes and books designed not merely as reads but as companions along your journey toward healing.

The essence here is clear: Unleash your heart because within its beats lies untold strength capable of weathering any storm—with love serving as both anchor and compass guiding us home.

Episode Transcription:

Victoria Volk
00:00:00 – 00:00:38
Welcome to grieving voices. Thank you for joining me today and listening. And today I have Denise Schonewald with me. She is a dedicated registered nurse for over 30 years, a seamlessly transitioned into a nationally licensed mental health counselor and published author based in Sarasota, Florida. With a deep understanding of the emotional challenges faced by patients and their families, Denise’s holistic approach integrates mental and physical well-being. As a spiritual teacher and certified family mediator, she brings a unique perspective to her private practice, offering support to clients nationwide through virtual sessions.

Victoria Volk
00:00:39 – 00:00:55
Denise is committed to nurturing both body and mind, providing flexible and accessible care for individuals, couples, families and even young thinkers starting at the age of 4. Thank you so much for being here and also thank you for a copy of your book.

Denise Schonwald
00:00:56 – 00:00:59
Oh, terrific. I’m glad you received it. Welcome.

Victoria Volk
00:01:00 – 00:01:30
It’s insightful self-therapy, increasing your awareness about mental health and how to live a happier life. And I will put a link to that in the show notes, and we’ll actually be talking. I’ll be there’s a couple of things I have noted that I would like to talk about that you mentioned in the book, but first I’m curious what brought you into the nursing profession and you know, it’s in a way a healer profession. What brought you there?

Denise Schonwald
00:01:31 – 00:02:07
Well, I love how fascinating and sophisticated the body is. So I always saw myself in some sort of nursing. I considered just very briefly being a physician, but and I love also helping people. I did my specialty was critical care, and working with people who are very sick and dying is quite an honor and very stressful. And I just it was just a wonderful career until I was getting to the point where I was getting too old to do the grind of 12-hour shifts and call and nights and weekends and holidays.

Denise Schonwald
00:02:07 – 00:02:13
And so the transition for me to into mental health was an easy one.

Victoria Volk
00:02:13 – 00:02:19
What would you say to a young person who is just pursuing a career in nursing?

Denise Schonwald
00:02:20 – 00:02:58
I think a lot of people go into nursing, a lot of the young people that I meet, because it’s a wonderful career. I mean, you certainly have a lot of opportunities. You can certainly do very well financially. But what I really encourage them to do is not to forget that these are people that are going through very tough experiences. And I think a lot of times, we get caught with the clinical aspect of ordering meds and titrating drips and so forth, and we forget that these patients are going through something very very difficult, probably one of the most difficult things I’ve ever gone through, not only physically, but emotionally and sometimes spiritually.

Victoria Volk
00:02:59 – 00:03:18
What do you think is the highest indicator or greatest indicator of a nurse who will burn out in that career because they can be a very high burnout rate in that career as well, especially with COVID. I mean, you can you saw it. We saw it happening before our eyes.

Denise Schonwald
00:03:19 – 00:03:45
Yes. One thing when people are either physically sick or emotionally struggling, they pull energy. They only they’re thinking about themselves. They’re focused on themselves, rightly so, because they’re sick. And as healers and helpers, we understand that it takes a lot out of us to try to help them and nurture them, not only physically and emotionally.

Denise Schonwald
00:03:45 – 00:04:00
And when nurses and physicians and and mental health counselors don’t do their own work, so when we get home, we have to recover from that with self-care and exercise and rest, then we’re likely to burn out.

Victoria Volk
00:04:01 – 00:04:17
In your book, one thing I jotted down was, and I didn’t really think about this in terms of how we can inflict suffering on ourselves, but I think there’s actually a book. Oh gosh. The four agreements.

Denise Schonwald
00:04:17 – 00:04:18
Yeah. Love it.

Victoria Volk
00:04:18 – 00:04:35
Yeah. Yeah. But you mentioned in your book, the importance of honoring commitments. And when you think about the flip side of that, of dishonoring our commitments, and one of the commitments can be self-care to ourselves, right? Just self-care.

Denise Schonwald
00:04:35 – 00:04:35
Yeah.

Victoria Volk
00:04:36 – 00:04:40
But can you speak a little bit about the importance of honoring our commitments?

Denise Schonwald
00:04:42 – 00:05:10
If you think about relationships, the only thing that we can sort of we rely on with each other is trust. And when I tell you that I’m going to do something or you tell me that you’re going to help me with something and you don’t do that, that really betrays my trust. And so that’s difficult to recover from. But what I find more frequently is people, and individuals really don’t honor themselves. They don’t get enough self-care.

Denise Schonwald
00:05:10 – 00:05:34
They don’t, sometimes when I talk to patients about self-care, they say, I don’t have time for that. And I say, well, you’ll either make time for self-care or you’re gonna have to make time for illness because the body cannot sustain if we don’t nurture it. And I’m not really sure why as a society now, we’re neglecting our own self-care care for sacrificing it for helping others.

Victoria Volk
00:05:37 – 00:06:10
You know, there’s been periods of time in my life where I’ve been guilty of sabotaging my own self-care. It’s like in those moments of, like, extreme challenge or being confronted with something really challenging, that that’s when you need to double down on your self-care. And me personally, I think I’ve had to learn that lesson several times. Like, okay, this is when I need to really double down on taking a break and needing a mental break. And so I’m glad that you mentioned that in your book.

Victoria Volk
00:06:11 – 00:06:41
In that same vein, you talk there’s another aspect of your book where you talk about the importance of emotional intelligence. And I think as we develop that emotional intelligence, we have that obviously more self-awareness when we realize that we’re self-sabotaging our self, you know, our own self-care and things like that. What have you found in your practice has been helpful for people that you’ve worked with and even for yourself in developing emotional intelligence?

Denise Schonwald
00:06:42 – 00:06:57
Here’s a very easy way. 1 is notice, not judge. Notice how as an individual that we’re starting to act. Are we all of a sudden very irritable? Are we going to the refrigerator one too many times for more food?

Denise Schonwald
00:06:57 – 00:07:26
Usually, when we’re very stressed emotionally, we go for sugar and carbs just automatically. Watch how much we’re drinking. If we’re smoking, watch how much we’re smoking because the body is trying to balance. And if we’re not doing healthy things, the mind becomes very active, and we start reaching for things in the environment that are unhealthy, spending, too much screen time. It’s something that the body is trying to find ease.

Denise Schonwald
00:07:26 – 00:07:30
But, unfortunately, if the mind’s in charge, it’s likely not gonna be a good choice.

Victoria Volk
00:07:31 – 00:08:10
My personal go-to is anger. So when I’m, like, just this last week, last week was a doozy of a week. I had some credit card fraud on my website, and it’s like when I thought that the week couldn’t start off any worse, it snowballed. I’ve lost access to my business Facebook page. Like, it’s been just technical, like stupid stuff that, I actually like the Facebook page thing was my own stupidity, not realizing what I was doing, but it’s really created a lot of anger to come up inside me.

Victoria Volk
00:08:10 – 00:08:27
And I find that when I’m angry, and I would love to talk about anger more because I think it’s a really important emotion that we have. But when I find that I’m getting angry, I don’t eat. I don’t drink. I don’t want it. I don’t want people to even talk to me.

Victoria Volk
00:08:28 – 00:08:32
Don’t talk to me. I just I need to sit with my anger.

Denise Schonwald
00:08:32 – 00:08:33
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:08:33 – 00:09:01
And I know not everybody’s like that. Like, a lot of people will just that like you said, they’ll reach for the refrigerator or they’ll go shopping to distract themselves. But for me, it’s like I have and it I it doesn’t come out very pretty either. So, like, how do you reconcile that? Like, when the anger is coming out and up, it’s like and you have people around you and you don’t wanna be, you know, you don’t wanna be a jerk.

Denise Schonwald
00:09:01 – 00:09:01
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:09:01 – 00:09:07
What is your advice for that? Because I’m sure there’s a lot of people out there listening like, that’s me.

Denise Schonwald
00:09:07 – 00:09:25
Yes. One of the things, as a therapist that I do when I meet someone is I’m trying to figure out where they are emotionally. Like, where is their emotional frequency? It’s actually measured in something called Hertz. Anger is around a 150 Hertz.

Denise Schonwald
00:09:25 – 00:09:52
So it’s a low vibrational energy, but it’s got a lot of intensity. So anger, ego, jealousy, they’re all around the same sort of frequency. And when we get to that point, we likely are going to say something or do something. We can no longer hold it in. And after we say something or do something, likely, we feel either very guilty or shameful about how we just acted out.

Denise Schonwald
00:09:53 – 00:10:27
And then many times, we feel very sad and depressed. Both anger and shame and depression are take a lot of energy from the body, both very extreme emotions. For me, personally, when I want to say something out of anger or ego, let somebody know how I really feel, I remind myself not to say a word. Because even if I do, it’s not likely going to be well received. I will say, however, right now, I really don’t feel like I’m in a good place to talk about this.

Denise Schonwald
00:10:27 – 00:10:38
I would like a little time to, you know, think about it or whatever I wanna say just to give myself a little bit of space knowing that I’m going to very dangerous territory because I’m already pretty darn angry.

Victoria Volk
00:10:40 – 00:10:45
And it’s not even like I’m getting angry at people around me. They’re just trying to ask me a question

Denise Schonwald
00:10:45 – 00:10:45
Mmm

Victoria Volk
00:10:46 – 00:11:17
or they’re and I’m just so wrapped up in my own anger that I can’t even have a conversation. But you bring up a good point. I never I so one of the service offerings I have is, biofuel tuning with tuning forks. And so it’s interesting that you mentioned the hurts of anger, because I never thought personally to get out my tuning fork, maybe just come to my office, light a candle and you know, just strike my fork

Denise Schonwald
00:11:18 – 00:11:18
Yes.

Victoria Volk
00:11:18 – 00:11:19
Few times.

Denise Schonwald
00:11:19 – 00:11:35
Vibrational energy to go a little bit higher

Victoria Volk
00:11:21 – 00:11:21
Yeah

Denise Schonwald
00:11:21 – 00:11:35
to get through that anger. Yes. The other thing is underneath anger, and I when I work with little children who have anger issues, I pretend it’s an umbrella. And I say, what’s underneath the angry umbrella? I’m frustrated.

Denise Schonwald
00:11:35 – 00:11:50
I’m overwhelmed. I’m disappointed. And I try to give them some language so that it doesn’t just come out in door slamming or screaming or calling names. And I go, okay. Let’s let’s think about the what’s under the angry umbrella.

Denise Schonwald
00:11:50 – 00:11:52
It’s actually very helpful for me too.

Victoria Volk
00:11:53 – 00:11:59
I will probably remember the umbrella the next time because I’m sure this issue that I’m dealing with is not over yet. And so, I’m suspecting some more anger will pop up

Denise Schonwald
00:12:00 – 00:12:00
uh-humm

Victoria Volk
00:12:00 – 00:12:39
as a result, but, thank you for that. I also wanna talk about people pleasing, which you mentioned in your book too, because just this past weekend, there was a skit on SNL. Ariana Grande was on and it was a people-pleasing support group skit. And, you know, it was it kinda was making fun of the people pleasing, but it had it was interesting that SNL is addressing this on their show

Denise Schonwald
00:12:40 – 00:12:40
Mmmor

Victoria Volk
00:12:40 – 00:12:41
talking about it on their show in this way.

Victoria Volk
00:12:41 – 00:12:56
But, you know, what people were saying was, oh, no worries. You know, because they had their lines to say, and one of them was, no worries. Whatever you decide and, you know, what do you think? Well, I’m I’m okay with whatever you think, you know, and so it was kind of exaggerating things. Right?

Victoria Volk
00:12:56 – 00:13:25
But I heard myself in what they were saying in some of these things, like, no worries, you know. What is what are some techniques for people to stop themselves when to recognize again, it’s developing that emotional intelligence about people pleasing first, but what are some suggestions that you have for people to get out of that? First of all, why do we do it? And then secondly, how do we stop it?

Denise Schonwald
00:13:26 – 00:13:37
Well, the reason why we do it is when someone’s unhappy or they don’t have something, it causes us a lot of anxiety, and we want to go in and fix it. And I might say, well, I wanna do it because I wanna help them but what I really want to do is make myself feel better about it.

Victoria Volk
00:13:37 – 00:13:37
Mmm..

Denise Schonwald
00:13:38 – 00:14:09
And so we have to be careful of that. And so what I tell a lot of people is when somebody’s unhappy or some they’re going through something, you can be supportive without fixing it. Because sometimes when we please, every the other person gets very resentful and frustrated because we’re coming in and we’re trying to just rescue and take care of when that’s not what they’ve asked for.

Denise Schonwald
00:14:09 – 00:14:45
They’re just letting us know they’re upset about something or some situation. But what happens with people pleasers, if we can imagine drawing a circle, and inside the circle should be our personal values and ethics and what makes us different from the next person. What is it that we know to be true about us? And when we meet people, they will figure out fairly quickly what’s inside our circle, what our values are, and they will like us or not like us or align with us or not. Does it mean one’s good or bad?

Denise Schonwald
00:14:45 – 00:15:17
Just means we understand and we appreciate each other or we don’t. The people pleaser circle has a lot of gaps in it. And what happens with them, unfortunately, is they will fall prey to people who are very manipulative and controlling. Because somebody who’s manipulative and controlling, they’re masterful at finding a people pleaser. And so when the people pleaser pleases, they’ll walk away knowing that they really may not have wanted to do what they just volunteered to do.

Denise Schonwald
00:15:18 – 00:15:34
And then they get a lot of they betrayed themselves, and they also have supported somebody to be very manipulative and to be very unkind. And that is really hard on the body.

Victoria Volk
00:15:34 – 00:15:34
You can see why.

Denise Schonwald
00:15:35 – 00:15:35
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:15:35 – 00:15:45
So in the dynamics of friendship and when we think about grief and what I hear a lot too is and I know people that have had this personal experience, but when you are going through something really challenging and you’re reaching out to people and they’re not showing up in a way that you need them to

Denise Schonwald
00:15:46 – 00:15:46
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:15:47 – 00:16:23
or are asking them to, how do you reconcile that where I don’t know how I’m trying to ask this, because it kind of revolves around people pleasing. It’s like, what if 2 people pleasers? I guess. You know, if you’re 2 people pleasers, and then you one person has, like, a really difficult time and needs the other person, and yet they can’t they just can’t do it.

Victoria Volk
00:16:23 – 00:16:39
They just they’re not able to support you. And so how do you reconcile honoring where someone else is at that they just can’t support you in that time? Because this can happen with grievers too a lot. Right?

Denise Schonwald
00:16:40 – 00:16:40
Yes

Victoria Volk
00:16:40 – 00:16:47
Like, this is where friendships kind of can break down and break apart, because people aren’t showing up for you how you hoped.

Denise Schonwald
00:16:47 – 00:16:47
Yes

Victoria Volk
00:16:48 – 00:16:50
Yeah. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Denise Schonwald
00:16:50 – 00:17:36
And I think with people pleasers, I think sort of the fear is that they’re going to hurt or disappoint someone. And what I try to do is help them with language because you can express how you feel without being insulting or dismissive. What I have found with grief is many people get very uncomfortable with grief, and they don’t know what to say, so they will say something very insensitive. Not meaning to, but they can hurt your feelings because they just sort of speak out of fear, and then they say something that is very hurtful. So what I tell people is understand that it’s just a very uncomfortable situation, and a lot of people don’t really feel comfortable navigating it.

Denise Schonwald
00:17:37 – 00:17:56
If they’re offering something that you really don’t want or won’t appreciate, it’s thank you so much. That’s so thoughtful. Maybe next week would be better to drop off whatever, some food or something like that. It’s always complimenting and appreciating, but then also letting them know what would work best.

Victoria Volk
00:17:59 – 00:18:01
So you bring up boundaries

Denise Schonwald
00:18:01 – 00:18:01
Yes

Victoria Volk
00:18:01 – 00:18:03
in a way in a roundabout way.

Denise Schonwald
00:18:03 – 00:18:03
I do.

Victoria Volk
00:18:04 – 00:18:12
So, I actually wanted to talk about that because you have a great exercise for creating boundaries in your book. Do you mind sharing that?

Denise Schonwald
00:18:12 – 00:18:16
Well, is that about the circle? Is that what I talked about about the 2nd?

Victoria Volk
00:18:16 – 00:18:20
Yes. Yes. You did. Yeah. You did touch on that when it came to yeah.

Denise Schonwald
00:18:20 – 00:18:38
Yes. And so what I tell people when your circle is clearly defined, you don’t have to defend it. You don’t have to overexplain it. You don’t have to get nasty when somebody but people will test boundaries. They want to know, like, what you will accept, what you won’t tolerate.

Denise Schonwald
00:18:39 – 00:18:55
It’s very important that we all understand that. As a therapist, as you can imagine, I get a lot of good experience and practice with boundaries. People are can be very manipulative, and why can’t you do this, and why can’t you see me there? And I said, listen. I would be happy to.

Denise Schonwald
00:18:55 – 00:19:16
Unfortunately, I’m not able to do it today, but I certainly have time tomorrow or Wednesday. If that’s acceptable to them, they go, okay. Thank you very much. If it’s not, that means that they’re not that there’s no boundary there. They don’t they would prefer that I don’t have boundaries, and it’s not going to be a good fit.

Denise Schonwald
00:19:16 – 00:19:30
I don’t wanna support them to be manipulative and abusive, nor do I want to run myself to the point where I’m exhausted and I’m no good to anyone. So I honor them, and I also honor myself with boundaries.

Victoria Volk
00:19:31 – 00:19:52
I was just gonna say, and that’s where a lot of helpers get themselves into trouble is yeah. And it and that ties in with the people pleasing. Right? Where you just you want to be supportive, you wanna be helpful, and it’s often to your own detriment when you’re not recognizing or acknowledging that boundaries are healthy, and they’re good for both parties involved.

Denise Schonwald
00:19:52 – 00:20:18
They really are. And if we don’t have, boundaries, what we end up doing is have being very bitter and resentful. Because we feel like people are taking advantage of us, and they are, but we’re also allowing that. So we also have to take responsibility for that. And, again, it’s getting comfortable just having these conversations nicely and then allowing the other person to accept it or not.

Victoria Volk
00:20:19 – 00:21:05
Yep. Absolutely. What I like you what you said about grief too, you know, when you get to that point where all these things just kind of where you realize you need boundaries and you start honoring your own commitments and you’re recognizing that you’re a people pleaser and you’re doing all these things and you have all this awareness, you can find yourself in a lot of grief just because like you said, when you’re start implementing these things in your life and having these awarenesses, people can it can rub people the wrong way. And that’s where these, you know, friendships and relationships can deteriorate as a result.

Denise Schonwald
00:21:01 – 00:21:01
Mmm.

Victoria Volk
00:21:01 – 00:21:06
And there’s grief in that, especially if it’s been a long-time friend or whatever the scenario may be, or even a marriage or a partnership and, and things.

Victoria Volk
00:21:06 – 00:21:10
I like how you said grief is it’s like you can become stuck in the waiting room.

Denise Schonwald
00:21:10 – 00:21:10
Mmm

Victoria Volk
00:21:11 – 00:21:29
And so many people get stuck in the waiting room. And me personally, I was stuck in the waiting room Most of my adult life. I was a child griever and I, you know, you carry that stuff with you from childhood into adulthood and all the trauma and the mess and the baggage. Right?

Denise Schonwald
00:21:29 – 00:21:29
Mmm

Victoria Volk
00:21:29 – 00:21:42
You carry it with you into adulthood. And, I mean, only in the past 5 years, have I had this leaps and bounds of self-awareness and growth and reconnecting with my own intuition and my own knowing.

Denise Schonwald
00:21:42 – 00:21:42
Mmm

Victoria Volk
00:21:43 – 00:21:55
But can you speak to the philosophy you have about that and then about treating grief with medication and your philosophy around that?

Denise Schonwald
00:21:56 – 00:22:27
One of the things about grief, and I tell people this all the time, there’s no way of going around it. You have to just go through it. And you we’re we get so frightened of pain. But also with pain is I try to remind people, and this has been helpful in my own life, I try to look for meaning. Because what you said was so true about relationships, people that you think will show up for you sometimes don’t, and people that you think really didn’t even know you that well will show up.

Denise Schonwald
00:22:28 – 00:23:04
So grief will cause this major shift, and what you’re gonna get from it, hard to say. And it’s just something that that it just surprises me. But what I tried to find through my own grieving times is what how can I come through this a better person? One thing about with death, even back when I was in my critical care days, is boy I had such an appreciation for life and relationships and so forth. Also, for me to be more compassionate when other people are grieving.

Denise Schonwald
00:23:04 – 00:23:27
We tend to go to the funeral and maybe check in once, and then we go on to our daily lives. But yet, that’s when it’s the most difficult, you know, when things start to settle down. And so I’ve made myself a mental note to reach out to a lot of people that are grieving and suffering, just checking in. Not offering to help, not offering to just hey. How are you doing?

Denise Schonwald
00:23:27 – 00:23:33
Giving them that space to just speak their truth and how they’re feeling. It’s very important.

Victoria Volk
00:23:35 – 00:24:03
Do you find working in the mental health or the area of mental health and obviously with and things like that. Do you find because I’ve I’m feeling like, you know, there’s so much heaviness in the world. There’s so much sorrow and, suffering. Really? I mean, suffering.

Victoria Volk
00:24:03 – 00:24:03
Yeah.

Denise Schonwald
00:24:03 – 00:24:04
I agree.

Victoria Volk
00:24:04 – 00:24:53
It’s like, I feel like sometimes I just want to cocoon myself. And it’s like, you know, when you are work and when you work in this space, it’s like sometimes I think to myself, do people expect that I should do or behave or respond a certain way because I’m the grief expert or I work with grievers or the mental health expert, and I’m, you know, working with patients and families. And I know all this stuff, and I’m a helper. Like, how do you reconcile that for those listening, who are helpers, who are working in this space. Because to me, sometimes it is it feels like too much.

Victoria Volk
00:24:53 – 00:25:02
And that’s where I know I need to then maybe address some self-care within myself, but can you speak to that a little bit?

Denise Schonwald
00:25:02 – 00:25:32
It it’s very true. And so when you’re finding that it’s all so overwhelming and it’s so heavy, we need to go in and go, okay. What do I need so that I’m in a better, I’m sort of in a better fitness state to handle and to share space with this person who’s grieving? But, you know, at the end of the day, we’re all human beings, and it does affect us. Just because we don’t know this person or who’s lost somebody doesn’t mean we don’t feel that energy.

Denise Schonwald
00:25:32 – 00:25:57
That energy that their experience is pulling. They’re pulling from us because they want support and they want help and they’re they’re struggling and they’re suffering, and yet that’s gonna take a toll on us. You asked me before about medication.

Victoria Volk
00:25:49 – 00:25:49
Yeah

Denise Schonwald
00:25:49 – 00:25:57
That’s something as a nurse, I understand that sometimes medication is needed, but we also have to go through this grieving process. We’re not gonna get around it.

Denise Schonwald
00:25:57 – 00:26:12
We can try to numb it a little bit, but it’s very very painful. Some people can’t survive it. They’ve been married 50 years and their spouse dies. They tend to go right after them because it’s so heavy on the heart in particular.

Victoria Volk
00:26:13 – 00:26:29
Yeah. Thank you for circling back to that question. And even for me personally, it’s not even that I think you know, it’s not even people reaching out to me asking me but it’s like this I feel like this maybe a sense of duty in a way.

Denise Schonwald
00:26:30 – 00:26:30
Mmm

Victoria Volk
00:26:30 – 00:26:34
And then I feel guilt when I don’t. And so that’s a little bit hard to reconcile for myself sometimes.

Denise Schonwald
00:26:35 – 00:27:10
Well and sometimes you need to make sure you’re in a good space to like, for instance, if somebody’s people that don’t know that I’m a therapist, if they catch me at the grocery store, I’ll say something like, listen. I’m really sorry this has happened to you. Why don’t you give me a call so we can meet privately or something like that? I just don’t know that I’m in a good mental space to have this conversation, you know, standing in the and the deli guy or whatever and so forth. And so I understand that it’s important to them, but I also have to make sure that I’m in a good place because I wanna give them my 100% focus.

Denise Schonwald
00:27:11 – 00:27:15
And I’m not in a good place when I’m out doing errands and so forth.

Victoria Volk
00:27:16 – 00:27:19
Yeah. And that’s great advice for the helpers listening to this.

Denise Schonwald
00:27:19 – 00:27:25
Mhmm. Yes. We’ve we all, sometimes have to go through that challenge.

Victoria Volk
00:27:26 – 00:27:59
We had talked before we started recording, talking about grief. And one of the things I would like to talk about is supporting kids because we had, you had mentioned that you, there’s been a lot of loss for your children or your son over the years and throughout his school years and into adulthood. And I think one of the things that hasn’t really been talked about a whole lot from a mental health standpoint is supporting, kids who have lost friends.

Denise Schonwald
00:27:59 – 00:27:59
Mmm

Victoria Volk
00:28:00 – 00:28:05
And so can you share your professional and parental because it was also your son, right, from that like, the two halves of that?

Denise Schonwald
00:28:06 – 00:28:31
Yes. My son, who is now 28, probably lost 10 friends between 18 and 25, many to drug overdose, suicide. And you know, how do you and as parents, we wanna we don’t want them to suffer because they’re our children, and we wanna make it easier for them. But, again, this is something we gotta go through. We can’t go around.

Denise Schonwald
00:28:31 – 00:29:09
So all I have been able to do, and and the most recent one was just a couple years ago for my son, his very good friend committed suicide, This is to really sort of sit down and say, how are you doing? How are you feeling? Just because it’s an uncomfortable conversation, but it’s one that he needs the space to grieve. It can be very painful for me to hear it because he’s my son, and I don’t want him to suffer. But it’s also important that he know that I’m willing to sit with him in that time and in that space and be as comfortable as I can when he’s uncomfortable.

Denise Schonwald
00:29:10 – 00:29:11
So but it’s tough.

Victoria Volk
00:29:12 – 00:29:19
One of the common things that people say in grief is when people are asked, you know, how are you feeling? How are you doing? Most people say I’m fine.

Denise Schonwald
00:29:19 – 00:29:19
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:29:20 – 00:29:26
And in the grief work that I do, we say that fine means feelings inside not expressed.

Denise Schonwald
00:29:26 – 00:29:26
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:29:27 – 00:29:45
So it’s really just a mask. Right? That we say. So what are some things that you suggest then if you ask your son or your child or young adult or whether they’re 5 or 15 or 25 and you ask them how they’re doing or how they’re feeling and they say I’m fine, when do you press that?

Victoria Volk
00:29:45 – 00:29:50
Or how do you press that? And do you just keep asking until they say otherwise?

Denise Schonwald
00:29:50 – 00:30:00
Well, the other thing that yeah. I’m I’m very intuitive. So I’ll I’ll say something like, you know, how are you doing since you’ve lost such and such? And if they go, yeah. I’m doing really well.

Denise Schonwald
00:30:00 – 00:30:16
They seem to be very dismissive of it. I’ll say, listen. You know, if at any time you wanna talk about it, I’m I’m happy to have the conversation. Because it’s a little bit tough when you don’t wanna have the conversation, and somebody goes, well, just tell me. Just tell me or just share with me.

Denise Schonwald
00:30:16 – 00:30:37
And, you know, that’s also a boundary. But I like to sort of create the opening of listen, if you ever have a tough time with it, I’m more than happy you know, give me a call. I’m more than happy to talk to you and sit with you during this. But we have to understand that some people everybody deals with grief differently in their own way, and we need to honor that.

Victoria Volk
00:30:37 – 00:30:57
So what if you as the parent is uncomfortable with the topic of grief, period? And how do you get yourself more comfortable in having that conversation? Like, if you’re not confident in how you would respond or how you would support them, you may not be inclined to even ask. So how do you get to that point as a parent?

Denise Schonwald
00:30:58 – 00:31:17
Right. Well, so what maybe what you’re asking or what you’re suggesting is that the parent feels very anxious and very fearful of doing that. And so when we do that, we only think about ourselves. So we pull in and go, oh, I don’t wanna have this conversation. I don’t wanna feel uncomfortable and so forth.

Denise Schonwald
00:31:18 – 00:31:54
And what you were saying with your tuning forks to get your vibrational energy a little bit higher is for me to say, I’m okay to be uncomfortable to just open this space for this person to express themselves. And what I tend to do when I’m uncomfortable is I try to listen more than speak so that I don’t say something that I wish I hadn’t said. So I open the opportunity for conversation unless they don’t seem to wanna have it, and then I assure them that, listen. I’m happy to talk to you if you want to. If not, no problem.

Denise Schonwald
00:31:54 – 00:31:57
Just want you to know that I’m just checking in and hope you’re doing well.

Victoria Volk
00:31:59 – 00:32:09
Yeah. And you touched on it, but I think a lot of people think they have to have the solution, right or the fix it.

Denise Schonwald
00:32:09 – 00:32:09
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:32:10 – 00:32:15
And sometimes you just need to listen, and that’s maybe the best medicine is just to listen. You don’t even, you know, release that pressure from yourself to have to have to respond.

Victoria Volk
00:32:16 – 00:32:18
And just like like you said, just listen.

Denise Schonwald
00:32:18 – 00:32:22
Yes. I like to say, just checking in, see how you’re doing. So just it’s really light.

Victoria Volk
00:32:22 – 00:32:22
Mhmm.

Denise Schonwald
00:32:23 – 00:32:28
And if they say, you know, doing this well as can be expected, I’ll say, okay.

Denise Schonwald
00:32:28 – 00:32:31
Just want you to know I was thinking about you. Maybe that’s enough.

Victoria Volk
00:32:32 – 00:32:49
Right. What is one thing that you would like to scream to the world or wish that people knew about just grief in general, your personal grief that you’ve experienced? You had mentioned before we started recording, you have lost your parents, but what would you like to scream to the world?

Denise Schonwald
00:32:50 – 00:33:17
With any time someone comes into your life that I would say touches your soul, when they leave this earth, there’s going to be suffering and grief. That’s just a natural part of it. I try personally not to pull in and suffer by myself. These are times where I can connect with other people. These are times when other people will come in to support me, and I need to receive that.

Denise Schonwald
00:33:18 – 00:33:39
Certainly, with grief and any sort of suffering, there’s meaning. I think about my parents and some of the wonderful things that they taught me and left me as a legacy. You know, something’s not so great, but I can let those go. And to me, that’s very meaningful. My my sister and I talk about my mom all the time because she had some, like, silly habits.

Denise Schonwald
00:33:39 – 00:34:03
And then we’ll notice ourselves doing the same silly thing, and we connect, and we think of her in a positive light. I certainly, when I leave this earth, don’t want my children every time they think of me to burst into tears. No. I certainly know that they’ll grieve me, but I also hope that I’ve left a lot of goodness in them that they will think of me and smile, say some nice things. That’s my hope anyway.

Victoria Volk
00:34:04 – 00:34:14
I’m pretty sure my kids will probably say, you know, she was pretty weird. They say I’m weird now. So I take that as a compliment though.

Denise Schonwald
00:34:14 – 00:34:14
Yeah. Absolutely.

Victoria Volk
00:34:15 – 00:34:32
So throughout your career, I mean, as you know, a critical care nurse, like what were some of the things before you had these tools and before you went to school and back to school for mental health, what were some of the things that you personally leaned on and that you’ve brought into your practice and kind of incorporated?

Denise Schonwald
00:34:33 – 00:34:51
For me personally, self-care is key. I start every day with about 15 minutes of meditation just to sort of keep get myself grounded and sort of to find my center, if you will. I work hard, but I also take time. I exercise every day. For me, that’s something that I really need to do.

Denise Schonwald
00:34:52 – 00:35:11
Just just really helps me just disconnect for a little while. I’m very careful with my screen time. My first hour of the day, no screen time, and I shut it down a couple hours before I go to bed just so that I can my mind can take a little bit of a break. I’m a big proponent of acupuncture. Reiki, I love quite a bit.

Denise Schonwald
00:35:11 – 00:35:23
Massage, not saying you need to do these every week, but sporadically, depending upon how you’re feeling, incorporate some of these wonderful practices for just overall health and healing.

Victoria Volk
00:35:23 – 00:35:32
Did you start doing these things as you were a critical care nurse too in the within in the 30 years or just in recent years?

Denise Schonwald
00:35:32 – 00:35:52
I had a defining moment one night in the ICU. I was looking around at all of the patients that we had, and I realized some were just at the end of their lives. They were, you know, in their nineties and maybe had a heart attack and so forth. But most of the patients that we had sort of put themselves there. They neglected their body.

Denise Schonwald
00:35:52 – 00:36:19
They were stressed out. They were smoking, diabetes, and I made a commitment to myself that if I were ever in the ICU, it wouldn’t be because I did something to contribute to that. And then when I went over to mental health, I felt the same thing. I was like, boy, you know, we me included, and I really start to invested, invest more in my mental health. And I realized that when we don’t we’re not mentally healthy, we’re eventually going to become physically ill.

Denise Schonwald
00:36:20 – 00:36:30
And so I understand how important it is for me to manage. And this is my responsibility, my own stress and wellness, so that I can stay healthy and happy.

Victoria Volk
00:36:31 – 00:36:48
You bring up a good point in that. Well, it just brings up the feeling in me that you can have, let’s say you’ve been you have a there’s a couple they’ve been married 30, 40 years or, or even not. Let’s say it’s just been maybe 5 or 10, like or significant other. You don’t have to be married. Right?

Denise Schonwald
00:36:48 – 00:36:48
Mmm.

Victoria Volk
00:36:48 – 00:37:35
In partnership with someone. And you see these people just like one or the other, or maybe even both, just kind of going about life and just eating whatever they eat and drink whatever they eat, drink. And like you said, perpetuating these the disease that’s probably slowly manifesting until it becomes a flow full-blown heart attack or stroke or whatever the case may be that lands them in the hospital or in a medical crisis or terminal illness or whatever the case may be. And then one of them becomes a caregiver.

Denise Schonwald
00:37:35 – 00:37:35
Mmm.

Victoria Volk
00:37:35 – 00:37:41
So for those listening who may find themselves as a caregiver, who are looking at their significant other who has put themselves in that position and now feel maybe anger,

Denise Schonwald
00:37:42 –  00:37:42
Mmm.

Victoria Volk
00:37:42 – 00:37:42
resentment.

Denise Schonwald
00:37:43 –  00:37:43
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:37:43 – 00:37:46
And to reconcile that as a caregiver, like it’s like you’re holding the both the reality and the grief.

Denise Schonwald
00:37:46 –  00:37:46
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:37:47 – 00:38:02
The reality of what you’re looking at in the situation of what it is and how that person got there. And then also, but I love this person. I wanna care for them.

Victoria Volk
00:38:02 – 00:38:02
Like,

Denise Schonwald
00:38:02 –  00:38:02
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:38:02 – 00:38:05
I think that’s a really difficult challenge for caregivers.

Denise Schonwald
00:38:06 – 00:38:47
I agree. And what I suggest for people that are going through that is to consider having a therapist just to sort of, you know, catharsis or venting with somebody that can help us in coping skills can be very very healing. It’s just hard when we have to go through it alone, particularly when they’ve got some sort of, like, dementia or something like that. It’s you know, this is why these support groups are so important that we can sort of help each other. There’s no way of eliminating it, or it’s just getting some help to just sort of cope through it, cope with it, and also get other people that can help and support as needed.

Denise Schonwald
00:38:48 – 00:38:58
But I know my husband is is 15 years older than I am, and as his health has started to decline, I have reached out to my own therapist more frequently just for support.

Victoria Volk
00:38:58 – 00:39:15
Let’s say you see where the train is going, and they’re just not wanting to take the power back within themselves. They’re not taking ownership of the situation. They’re not doing what you would hope they would be doing. And I’m sure there’s a lot of people in this situation listening. Right?

Victoria Volk
00:39:16 – 00:39:21
What do you do in that situation? Because you can’t make somebody start working out. You can’t make somebody seek mental health.

Denise Schonwald
00:39:21 – 00:39:21
Yeah.

Victoria Volk
00:39:22 – 00:39:27
You can’t make somebody else do these things.

Denise Schonwald
00:39:27 – 00:39:32
Correct. And what what I see down here in Florida, we have a lot of people that obviously that retire and come down to Florida.

Victoria Volk
00:39:32 – 00:39:32
Mhmm.

Denise Schonwald
00:39:33 – 00:40:03
But what I see typically is that neither husband or wife or partner has really prepared for sort of the end or the latter stages of life. For example, they have 2 or 3 homes, you know, and they’re 80 years old. I mean, that’s and they’ve never really downsized and so forth. Then one or the other gets sick, and the one person is not only caregiving but now has the 2 homes, you know, 1 in Michigan and 1 in Florida.

Denise Schonwald
00:40:03 – 00:40:38
And so what I say to them is, as you’re starting to age, downsize and get something manageable, manageable for 2 or 1 because that may happen. But there’s some things that we can do regardless of what our spouse chooses so that we’re in a better position, maybe financially and logistically and so forth so that we’re preparing for this. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve met with people that with the 3 homes. This is, you know, it’s really unreasonable at 80.

Victoria Volk
00:40:39 – 00:40:44
Like you mentioned though, you made a statement something to the effect of planning for retirement or later years or the golden years ho you know,

Denise Schonwald
00:40:44 – 00:40:44
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:40:45 – 00:41:00
that time period in your life, we you know, so many people spend so much time financially preparing for that, but you don’t think about what do I want my health to be

Denise Schonwald
00:41:00 – 00:41:00
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:41:01 – 00:41:02
At that stage.

Denise Schonwald
00:41:02 – 00:41:02
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:41:03 – 00:41:17
And what’s in my power and control to address that starting today so that when I get to that stage, I can enjoy it. Right. Because what’s the point of getting to that period of your life if you are sick and you can’t enjoy it?

Denise Schonwald
00:41:17 – 00:41:17
Yeah.

Victoria Volk
00:41:17 – 00:41:19
And I think yeah.

Denise Schonwald
00:41:19 – 00:41:57
And one of the things that I work with people in is when we become physically ill, depending upon what’s happening, that has started on the emotional energetic level. So certain emotions will play out physically. And what happens is, you know, we’re so afraid to deal with I don’t, guilt or shame or trauma or so forth, but eventually they manifest physically. I cannot tell you how many patients that we had in the ICU, and they would say, can you believe I’ve had a heart attack? And I would look at their chart, and I’d be like, you know, I sort of can.

Denise Schonwald
00:41:57 – 00:42:11
I mean, you have a lot of risk factors and you don’t take care of yourself. And yet, you know, we think that just because we don’t wanna recognize it or acknowledge it, it’s not gonna take have an impact on us, and it really does.

Victoria Volk
00:42:12 – 00:42:14
And everybody around them.

Denise Schonwald
00:42:15 – 00:42:29
Yes. Yes. And so I have to think, not only is it gonna affect me, but it’s gonna affect my spouse, it’s gonna affect my children. And you know, we have to take responsibility for that. But many people don’t, unfortunately.

Victoria Volk
00:42:30 – 00:42:44
No. What is one tip that you would give? I mean, you’ve shared a lot of tips, but what’s one tip that you would give to someone listening who is hurting, whether it’s watching someone else suffer who is grieving or whether they’re grieving themselves.

Denise Schonwald
00:42:44 – 00:43:02
Mhmm. Even when life is going fairly well. So we’re going through our developmental stages and so forth. At every stage, it’s a struggle, because we haven’t done it before. And once the kids go off to college or we retire or we get a new job or whatever.

Denise Schonwald
00:43:04 – 00:43:33
I highly recommend I started to see a therapist every now and then back in my twenties. Because even again, when there’s nothing really particularly wrong, certain stages are very difficult for me. When my husband retired, that was a major change because he was home all the time. I’m still working, and it for me, that was a struggle. And I really felt like I needed somebody just to other than my sister and my friends, and that’s not their job, to be my therapist, but just talk through it.

Denise Schonwald
00:43:34 – 00:43:53
And I highly recommend everybody have a therapist, not just because I am one, because they’re very very helpful. Find somebody that you connect with and find somebody that can work with you when you’re really going through a tough time so that it doesn’t play out physically and affect your life and others around you.

Victoria Volk
00:43:53 – 00:44:09
Well and when would you rather find a therapist? When you are in the emotional throes of something and it’s like, feels very immediate, like stat important or

Denise Schonwald
00:44:09 – 00:44:09
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:44:09- 00:44:14
When you can kinda ease yourself into the experience. Because for a lot of people, they may not never have had an experience of working with a therapist too.

Denise Schonwald
00:44:15 – 00:44:27
Yes. And it may be take a couple till they find somebody that’s right for them. People will say to me all the time, can you recommend a good therapist? And I go, a good therapist is somebody that is right for you. So that’s very important.

Denise Schonwald
00:44:27 – 00:44:34
And you’re right. Let’s not wait till we’re right in the throes of crisis, and then we’re scrambling to try to find somebody.

Victoria Volk
00:44:35 – 00:44:49
What would you say to people who don’t really think therapy is for them because they just don’t wanna, like, just talk about I just don’t wanna talk about talk, talk, talk. Right?

Denise Schonwald
00:44:49 – 00:44:49
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:44:50 – 00:44:58
Like, what is your perspective of that? Like, do you core incorporate other things or, like, action steps and things into your practice?

Denise Schonwald
00:44:58 – 00:45:22
One of the things that I recommend for everybody is always have a self-help book around. I mean, there’s thousands of them, and I always carry a book with me. And I’m I read and read and read. And, again, 1, 2 pages at a time because I sort of have a busy schedule and so forth. But there’s always some advice and some keys and some ways to cope that can be very very helpful.

Denise Schonwald
00:45:22 – 00:45:33
So start that way where you start to just learn about yourself and emotions and how they affect the body and whatever you’re interested in meditation and so forth, and then move from there.

Victoria Volk
00:45:34 – 00:46:14
That has actually been one of the catalysts for my growth is reading self-help books because at least to you know, it’s like one book can lead to the next book to lead to the next book or you end up down this rabbit hole where you learn maybe a new perspective. And, you know, it just it really it’s like, you didn’t get to where you are overnight. You’re not gonna get to where you want to go overnight.  So you might as well just take these incremental steps. And if it’s reading 2 pages at a time, like you said, I mean, that’s it’s has a camp compound effect,

Denise Schonwald
00:46:15 – 00:46:15
Yeah

Victoria Volk
00:46:15 – 00:46:17
you know, just like grief and trauma, and it has this compound effect, but we can chip away at that.

Victoria Volk
00:46:18 – 00:46:22
I think by doing the things that you’ve talked about and mentioned,

Denise Schonwald
00:46:22 –  00:46:22
Mhmm

Victoria Volk
00:46:23 – 00:46:23
in this episode.

Denise Schonwald
00:46:23 – 00:46:43
Plus it helps us when we connect with other people. I can’t tell you how many times I’ll be out and about and somebody will say thank you for recommending that book. And I have no memory of and I go, what book was that? And they go, oh, this book, it was so helpful. I rec I gave it to my sister and this is how we the power of our ripple in a positive way.

Denise Schonwald
00:46:43 – 00:46:43
Mhmm.

Denise Schonwald
00:46:43 – 00:46:57
Other than complaining or you know, connecting with people just over problems, we’re actually connecting with people and recommending books and then talking about the books to each other and what we liked and what was helpful and so forth.

Victoria Volk
00:46:57 – 00:47:02
What is your grief and the grief that you’ve helped others work through taught you?

Denise Schonwald
00:47:04 – 00:47:26
I have a very good friend that lost her son at 16, so it sort of was a freak accident. And so now he’s passed away a little over 10 years. And I said to her one night, how do you deal with it now that it’s 10 years? You know, it’s not like it’s been 2 months and so forth. And she said, you know, she said, we’ll never get over it.

Denise Schonwald
00:47:26 – 00:47:50
She said, but we’ve learned to live peacefully next to it. And I thought that that was such an interesting way to describe. She said, you know, it’s just something that’s always gonna be there, and you have to learn to be at peace with it living next to you. It’s a wonderful question to ask people who are going who have are grieving 5 years down the road. Ask them, well, what is it like?

Denise Schonwald
00:47:50 – 00:48:08
Like, what is what are the challenges 5 years later or 15 years later and so forth? It’s something that not only is helpful for them and also helpful for us. I never forgot that that’s how she described it, and I thought that was so beautifully said.

Victoria Volk
00:48:08 – 00:48:21
One thing I talk about with my own experiences, so I lost my dad when I was 8 to cancer. So he was sick for almost 2 years before that. So I really didn’t have much of a childhood.

Denise Schonwald
00:48:21 – 00:48:21
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:48:21 – 00:48:28
Had to grow up really fast. And my grandma had died the year before that my mom, my mom’s mom, and then my sister moved away.

Victoria Volk
00:48:28 – 00:48:49
So there was just a lot of change and trauma and things happen very back to back in the early part of my life. And one thing I say to people is that, especially with children who experienced grief or trauma in childhood is that they’re gonna grow up with it.

Denise Schonwald
00:48:49 – 00:48:49
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:48:49 – 00:49:06
So and one thing I hate that people say is that children are resilient. Like, I can’t stand that when people say that because children don’t have a choice. And they just they may be just are able to adapt a little bit more easily than the adults because we don’t have a capacity at that young age to wrap our head completely around it.

Denise Schonwald
00:49:06 – 00:49:06
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:49:06 – 00:49:28
And so we, we adapt and how, because we’re imaginative. Right? As children were more imaginative.

Denise Schonwald
00:49:06 – 00:49:06
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:49:06 – 00:49:28
And so I created a lot of stories in order to adapt to my experience. And so people saw that as resilient and saw that I was fine and I was adapting well and but, you know, that stuff has stuck with you.

Victoria Volk
00:49:28 – 00:50:29
It you carry it with you and you grow up with it and it changes over time.

Denise Schonwald
00:49:29 – 00:49:29
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:49:30 – 00:49:49
And that’s what I want people to understand about child grievers is that it will never leave them. It is, you know, and there’s so many people too. Like, I can recognize when I come across an adult who hasn’t had probably a lot of loss in their life. They haven’t had an experience that has completely flipped their life upside down or completely changed life for them,

Denise Schonwald
00:49:49 – 00:49:49
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:49:50 – 00:50:06
it’s easier for me to see, you know, they and I think that’s what helps build emotional intelligence too is grief and trauma.

Victoria Volk
00:50:06 – 00:50:09
I mean, would you kinda say that in a way?

Denise Schonwald
00:50:09 – 00:50:23
Yeah. And I always think where I’m going through it, why me? And then I think, well, why not me? Yeah. Because we, you know, we think that that’s something somebody else should should experience. But I realized that it’s important for me to experience too because it’s very very painful.

Denise Schonwald
00:50:23 – 00:50:33
And it also helps me get have a new understanding of other people that are going through it. But you’re right. You have to learn to look next to it because it doesn’t go away.

Victoria Volk
00:50:34 – 00:50:37
Yeah. What gives you hope for the future?

Denise Schonwald
00:50:37 – 00:50:56
I absolutely love what I do, and I feel it’s very fulfilling. It’s also very challenging. And for me, certainly I my passion is I just finished my second children’s book. I write books. That’s sort of my ministry.

Denise Schonwald
00:50:57 – 00:51:07
I enjoy sharing what I know about mental health. I hope to help people live happier, more fulfilling lives. And so that is sort of why I’m here.

Victoria Volk
00:51:09 – 00:51:29
I love that. In the last paragraph of your book, I just want to read it because I absolutely loved it. It was one of my favorite parts of the book. Remember the mind does what you tell it to do. If you say, I choose to take care of myself because I’m worth it, your mind will be the best assistant you could hire.

Victoria Volk
00:51:29 – 00:51:39
It will help you flow through your day in with ease and less pain, suffering, and stress. Our perception is our reality. Make the choice to help others by first helping yourself.

Denise Schonwald
00:51:39 – 00:51:39
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:51:40 – 00:51:56
I think that beautifully wraps up our episode. But I do wanna ask you about one more thing because I found it interesting in what you also incorporate into your practice is Henry your dog.

Denise Schonwald
00:51:56 – 00:52:02
Yes. Yes. In fact, I keep snapping my fingers because he’s growling a lot.

Victoria Volk
00:52:02 – 00:52:03
He wants your attention, I suppose.

Denise Schonwald
00:52:03 – 00:52:12
He does. He does. Yes. I started my practice initially with a therapy dog by the name of Max, and he worked with me. He we had to put him down when he was 15.

Denise Schonwald
00:52:13 – 00:52:27
And you know, it’s just such a wonderful part of the practice. And so Henry is now his successor and people just love to come in. And of course he loves his job and that has been, it just helps people feel more at peace.

Victoria Volk
00:52:28 – 00:52:35
Since you brought up Max, can you discuss a little bit briefly how you navigated that pet loss of

Denise Schonwald
00:52:35 – 00:52:50
That was, that was a tough one. He was the dog that we got when the children were little, and now the children are all, you know, out of the house and married and often. And then he worked with me for years years years. And so, you know, when he passed, it was like I had lost to Lynn.

Victoria Volk
00:52:50 – 00:52:50
Mhmm.

Denise Schonwald
00:52:51 – 00:52:53
Talk about being in the waiting room.

Denise Schonwald
00:52:53 – 00:53:12
I mean, I didn’t I had Henry at the time. He was a puppy, and I just didn’t know how to move forward. And I had difficulty sort of sitting through a session and so forth. And and again, you know, he was a very important part of my life and and had to sort of work through that.

Victoria Volk
00:53:14 – 00:53:23
How did you work through that? Because I know there’s a lot of people listening that probably have experienced pet loss. I know I’ve talked pet loss has come up a lot in recent months for me.

Denise Schonwald
00:53:23 – 00:53:56
And there are times where I still struggle. I have this little picture that I kiss before I go to sleep every night and so forth. And I just, you know, he was, he taught me a lot. In fact, my first book, Healing Your Body by Mastering Your Mind, the reason that I wrote that book was I dedicated it to him because I felt like he was such an important part of the practice and I wanted his leg you know, I wanted him to live on. And so I sat down and I wrote the book and dedicated to him, and that book has been very well received.

Denise Schonwald
00:53:56 – 00:53:58
So that was one of the ways that I honored him.

Victoria Volk
00:53:59 – 00:54:02
Well, and I’m sure it was very therapeutic for you to write it.

Denise Schonwald
00:54:02 – 00:54:15
Mhmm. Yeah. I wrote a little bit at the end about how we got him and how we named him and how he was very instrumental in our practice and so forth. And so we’re a little bit about him, and people love that part of the book.

Victoria Volk
00:54:16 – 00:54:19
So how did you know that you were ready for another dog?

Denise Schonwald
00:54:19 – 00:54:45
Well, it’s interesting. He was getting older and I wasn’t sure that he was really wanted to practice with me anymore. We had a little dog door, which I do in my office, and he was starting to come in less and less. And I thought, you know, maybe I’ll get another puppy and see if he can teach the puppy how to be a therapy dog. But by the time the Henry came in, he really was getting very sickly and he just really didn’t live too much longer.

Denise Schonwald
00:54:46 – 00:55:02
And that was really tough too, having a puppy and then also a dog sort of toward the end of his life. But I just he was such a valuable part of not only my practice, but to me. You know, he was he was just a real special little guy.

Victoria Volk
00:55:03 – 00:55:07
Well, and I’m sure to your patients as well, the people that you worked with, your clients.

Denise Schonwald
00:55:07 – 00:55:18
Hundreds of emails and texts and cards after he passed. And and that just also reminded me of how important it is for us to connect to each other and support each other when we’re going through grief.

Victoria Volk
00:55:19 – 00:55:38
In a recent episode too, I was saying to I mentioned weird pet loss come had come up and I said, you know, even if people listening can’t, they’re in a place where they can’t have a pet or they don’t feel comfortable getting a pet because it’s maybe more care than what they can handle at the time or whatever. Just get a plant, get something to nurture,

Denise Schonwald
00:55:39 – 00:55:39
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:55:39 – 00:55:43
you know, give that, give yourself something to nurture. And even maybe that small thing can help you

Denise Schonwald
00:55:43 – 00:55:43
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:55:43 – 00:55:44
create some purpose

Denise Schonwald
00:55:44 – 00:55:44
Yes.

Victoria Volk
00:55:45 – 00:55:52
in your day. You know, if you’re feeling a little low, if you’re

Denise Schonwald
00:55:52 – 00:55:52
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:55:52 – 00:55:53
yeah.

Denise Schonwald
00:55:53 – 00:56:09
You’re very fulfilling. In fact, if when people sort of look me up after this episode, if they’d like to email me, I’d be happy to send them a copy of one of my books. That’s just a thank you for listening today. We’ve talked to us about some really great topics.

Victoria Volk
00:56:10 – 00:56:13
Yeah. And where can people find you to connect with you?

Denise Schonwald
00:56:14 – 00:56:33
My website is the best, deniseschonewall.com. In there, I have a little 10 question mental health quiz, which is also very fun to do, just to sort of see where you are. My books are listed. I have 3 currently. I’d be happy to send someone a copy of one of them if you email me.

Denise Schonwald
00:56:33 – 00:56:48
If you’d like an appointment, I’m licensed both in the state of Florida and nationally. So I see clients all over the United States. If somebody would just like to try a session and see how it works out, be more than happy. My calendar is online.

Victoria Volk
00:56:48 – 00:56:50
Wonderful. I will put the link in the show notes, and

Denise Schonwald
00:56:50 – 00:56:50
That’s great.

Victoria Volk
00:56:51 – 00:56:53
Thank you so much for everything that you shared today.

Denise Schonwald
00:56:53 – 00:56:55
You’re welcome. I enjoyed it.

Victoria Volk
00:56:55 – 00:57:01
Great. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

Ep 186 Kris Carr | Mourning the Darkness of Loss To Fully Embrace the Light

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:

In this heartfelt episode of Grieving Voices, I’m joined by the remarkable Kris Carr, a multiple New York Times bestselling author, wellness activist, and cancer thriver. Known as a force of nature and recognized as one of Oprah’s Super Soul 100 influential thought leaders, Kris shares insights from her latest book “I’m Not a Morning Person,” which delves into the raw emotions that surface when life falls apart unexpectedly.

Kris discusses navigating through loss and grief with humor and hope while providing readers with strategies to move forward. She opens up about her personal journey living with stage 4 cancer for over two decades and how it has shaped her approach to health advocacy.

The conversation touches on profound topics such as:

  • The unexpected grief journey sparked by the death of her father.
  • How old wounds resurfaced during this period.
  • The importance of emotional literacy in healing.
  • Tools she developed to manage anxiety related to ongoing cancer scans.
  • Her transition from trying to cure herself to focusing on healing.

Listeners will learn how Kris transformed fear into proactive self-care measures that millions now embrace. She also emphasizes the power of naming our emotions as a step toward understanding them better.

Kris’s story isn’t just about survival; it’s an inspiring testament to thriving amid adversity by harnessing love, acceptance, and resilience. Join us for an episode that promises deep reflection and practical wisdom for anyone grappling with their own grieving process or supporting others through theirs.

RESOURCES:

CONNECT:

_______

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.

CONNECT WITH VICTORIA: 

Navigating the Tumultuous Seas of Grief: Insights from Kris Carr

Grief is like an unpredictable storm; it can hit us with ferocity when we least expect it, leaving us to navigate through its tumultuous waves. In today’s blog post, we dive deep into the insights shared by Kris Carr – a beacon of hope and resilience in the face of life’s most challenging moments.

Kris Carr isn’t just another voice in the wellness community; she is a testament to living vibrantly even amid adversity. Her journey began with a stage 4 cancer diagnosis that would forever change her trajectory. But rather than allowing this diagnosis to dictate her life’s story, Kris turned it into an opportunity for profound self-discovery and healing.

Her latest literary offering, *I’m Not a Mourning Person: Braving Loss, Grief, and the Big Messy Emotions That Happen When Life Falls Apart*, isn’t just about coping mechanisms but also about embracing our vulnerabilities as sources of strength. It’s about finding humor amidst pain and discovering hope when all seems lost.

One crucial takeaway from Kris’ philosophy is understanding that **self-care is non-negotiable**. Whether facing illness or loss, prioritizing oneself isn’t selfish—it’s essential for survival and growth. This means acknowledging our emotions fully without judgment or suppression.

In particular, emotions like anxiety and fear often get a bad rap as being purely negative forces within us. However, as Kris illustrates through her own experiences dealing with these powerful feelings constructively can lead to personal empowerment instead of paralysis.

Moreover, anger—a frequently misunderstood emotion—can be constructive if we view it correctly. Anger signals something deeper at play beneath our surface reactions; injustice felt or pain endured demands attention so healing can occur.

Another poignant aspect discussed by Kris is how society has historically viewed grief—and especially women expressing grief—as unbecoming or taboo. Yet openly discussing such emotions paves the way toward wholeness and recovery—a message particularly resonant in times where mental health awareness is gaining much-needed recognition.

For those who find themselves in caregiver roles—often overlooked heroes—the reminder comes loud and clear: care must flow both ways for sustainability’s sake.

The act of writing itself serves dual purposes for someone like Kris —it becomes both cathartic release and personal reflection tool while simultaneously offering solace guidance others traversing similar paths.

Perhaps one most compelling points made during her interview was regarding language used around illnesses such cancer – traditionally framed battles waged against enemy within ourselves body seen battlefield casualties inevitable consequence warlike mindset approach disease aggression compassion holistic perspective needed here one treats their body ally need tender loving care opposed adversary conquered defeated at all costs

This shift viewpoint not only changes how individuals experience their illness but also affects societal perceptions surrounding diseases overall thus promoting more empathetic inclusive dialogue
Lastly let’s touch upon interesting tidbit revealed by herself – past involvement Budweiser Super Bowl commercials showcases versatility breadth career spanned beyond realms health activism authorship Indeed professional background advertising gives unique lens which view cultural phenomena such annual spectacle Super Bowl ads yet choice refrain watching year underscores commitment staying true authentic self regardless external expectations trends

As wrap up thoughts on enlightening conversation had between Grieving Voices host inspirational figurehead wellness movement encourage readers seek out additional resources provided kriscarr.com follow along Instagram @crazysexykris delve further into book available wherever books sold. Remember whether you’re bracing yourself against storms grief learning sail smoothly calmer waters wisdom gleaned voices experienced navigators invaluable compass guiding towards brighter horizons ahead.

Episode Transcription:

Victoria Volk
00:00:00 – 00:00:15
Hello. Hello. Thank you for tuning into Grieving Voices. Today, I’m excited to share my guests, Kris Carr, with you, my listeners. She is a multiple New York times bestselling author, wellness activist, and cancer thriver.

Victoria Volk
00:00:15 – 00:00:44
She’s been called a force of nature by o magazine and was named a new role model by the New York Times. Kris is also a member of Oprah’s Super Soul 100, a group of the most influential thought leaders today. Her latest book, I’m not a mourning person, braving loss, grief, and the big messy emotions that happen when life falls apart, shares what to expect when you’re not expecting your world to fall apart. It’s raw and inspiring, but has joy, humor, and hope too. This book gives readers tips and strategies to move forward and start living again.

Victoria Volk
00:00:44 – 00:01:04
Kris has helped millions of people take charge of their health and live like they mean it through her award winning books, blog, online courses, and membership communities. Thank you so much for being here and taking your time to share with my listeners. And I just gotta say, I loved the book. The movie we recommend.

Kris Carr
00:01:04 – 00:01:05
Sorry. You can’t really see it.

Victoria Volk
00:01:05 – 00:01:20
I loved it. I do have one question because I wanna make sure I ask this because I just I don’t remember reading the acknowledgments the first time., And so I just kind of peeked through now. What book on grief were you given by your friend, Jeanette?

Kris Carr
00:01:21 – 00:01:24
Oh, well, that’s Julia Samuel’s book.

Victoria Volk
00:01:25 – 00:01:26
Julia Samuel’s book. Okay.

Kris Carr
00:01:27 – 00:02:13
Yeah. And, one of her books, and that was my introduction to a world that I was resistant to enter. And then once I entered it, I realized, actually, this is the conversation that not only do I need for myself, but I wanna have with other people because it’s the most meaningful conversation that I could have. And I didn’t realize up until my most recent life kick just how grief was woven into, the nooks and crannies of my heart, my history, and how it was really something I was so afraid to touch, and yet it was holding me back.

Victoria Volk
00:02:13 – 00:03:00
In reading the book, I resonated with so many aspects of your story of re I, like, reconnected with parts of myself where, like, I was like, I could imagine myself back in time and feeling those similar emotions. And I have, like, a 1000000 and 1 questions, it feels like on my paper. But what you’re here to talk about though is the death of your father, which seems to have been the catalyst for you to explore grief in a way a deeper and more meaningful way than you ever had despite all of like, despite a stage 4 cancer diagnosis that you’ve been living with and all of that, like because there’s a lot of grief in that. And so to not really touch it until until recently. Yeah.

Victoria Volk
00:03:00 – 00:03:04
It’s a very timely book, I’m thinking, for you.

Kris Carr
00:03:05 – 00:03:16
Oh, definitely for me. And I you know, it wasn’t the book that I set out to write. It I’ve written 7 books. This is my 7th book. And you know, there comes a time when your publishers are like, Sue, we need to write another book.

Kris Carr
00:03:17 – 00:03:47
And it had been a minute, and there was this idea that I should write something that’s more mass market, more appealing. I’ve written books for cancer patients. I’ve written books about plant based living. Apparently, I like to tackle difficult topics, vegetables and disease. And so anyway, there was these conversations about me writing something for a wider audience, and I initially went to that.

Kris Carr
00:03:47 – 00:04:09
You know, what’s that self help, aspirational, inspirational book that I could write? Which at some point, I will probably write. But everything in my body and in my being and in my heart was like, I can’t write that book now. I don’t feel that way. I’m not inspired by that conversation.

Kris Carr
00:04:09 – 00:04:49
I am hurting. And so this was my father was diagnosed with cancer in 2016, and he lived for about four and a half years with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. And during that time, you know, obviously, it’s a big life change for the whole family. But I was approaching my milestone of living with my own stage 4 cancer for 20 years. My we were in the middle of a global pandemic, so each and every one of us was hurting in a whole new way and losing people left and right, losing our jobs, losing our former sense of selves, losing our sense of safety and security.

Kris Carr
00:04:49 – 00:05:37
And my business was struggling because I had taken the steps to pull back so that I could be more present with my family. And what I realized is I hadn’t life proofed my business to allow me to do that. And so I was going through a very difficult time. And my initial response, even though I’ve been doing been in the wellness world for 20 years, and so I’ve done a lot of my own personal work and I’ve coached a lot of people in 20 years. Even though I thought I had done this kind of deep healing work when it comes to our mental health and heart tending, it was a big blind spot for me because my go to is to hustle, is to solve, is to fix, is to get the job done.

Kris Carr
00:05:38 – 00:06:09
And I was in a time and place where there wasn’t a way to get the job done. Right? It was a much deeper, more spiritual, more impactful journey that I would have to go on. I couldn’t check a box or get something behind me, much like living with cancer. And so instead of trying to push the river or hold back the ocean because I was afraid it would devour me, I decided to go through it.

Kris Carr
00:06:09 – 00:06:37
You know? And I remember the moment I write about in the introduction when the dam broke when I was sitting in a parking lot at CVS and my mother had asked me to go get more insured because it was the only thing my dad could tolerate. And I am at the aisle not knowing how many to get because I don’t know how much time he has to live and I’m not consciously choosing those thoughts. But here they come. And it was that moment of pushing it down and working harder and all the things that I do to avoid pain where I couldn’t hold it back anymore.

Kris Carr
00:06:37 – 00:06:53
And I was running through the CVS to get back to my car so that nobody would see me cry. And I get in, I break down all of the emotions coming out. And afterwards, I feel this quiet in the storm. I start to feel a little bit better. I feel a break from the fever.

Kris Carr
00:06:54 – 00:07:13
And I think to myself, where are other areas of where are the other areas of my life that I am holding back the opportunity to feel better by just allowing myself to be with the emotion. And that truly was the turning point for me to say, oh, I have to look at this.

Victoria Volk
00:07:14 – 00:07:19
One of my mottos is allowing myself to feel is allowing myself to heal.

Kris Carr
00:07:19 – 00:07:20
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:07:20 – 00:07:30
Pretty much embodies what you just shared. I think the importance of just allowing ourselves to feel what we have to feel, even if it’s to go into our car and have an ugly cry.

Kris Carr
00:07:31 – 00:07:44
You’re so right. And for many of us, we’ve never allowed ourselves to do that. Maybe we don’t even know what we’re feeling. We just know that there’s some sort of disturbance in the force. We’re feeling off.

Kris Carr
00:07:44 – 00:08:19
We’re feeling unsettled. And perhaps that’s old stuff. Like, when we were kids and we didn’t have the words to describe what pain we were experiencing, what discomfort we were experiencing, we may not also have those words as adults. And so it’s an incredible exploration process to even say, what if I just start by trying to identify and articulate what feeling is up for me right now? I don’t have to fix it.

Kris Carr
00:08:19 – 00:08:23
Maybe I could just give it a name and start it there.

Victoria Volk
00:08:23 – 00:08:34
On your Instagram, I saw you had a picture of yourself as a little girl, which prompted me to read the caption. Can you share a little bit about that for our listeners?

Kris Carr
00:08:36 – 00:08:38
About being a little girl?

Victoria Volk
00:08:38 – 00:08:38
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:08:39 – 00:08:41
Having what you the exercise of taking your a picture of yourself

Kris Carr
00:08:42 – 00:08:42
Yeah

Victoria Volk
00:08:43 – 00:08:44
as a little as a child?

Kris Carr
00:08:44 – 00:09:17
You know, sometimes when we don’t know how to self-soothe, we weren’t given those tools. Many of us and our parents weren’t given those tools either. And certainly, we find ourselves in a time of mourning. Then if we don’t know what to give to ourself, I like to have that picture, and then it is the picture that I use up on my desk, or it’s, like, in my bathroom or it’s in my closet where I’m getting dressed. And to just check-in with her and ask her what she needs.

Kris Carr
00:09:17 – 00:09:40
And to allow her to say, what I really need is a little break. I actually need to play a little bit. I need to give myself more unstructured time, you know, because she’s still there. But all of the way that I put on masks or you know, I remember when my mantra was suck it up buttercup. Like, what a terrible mantra.

Kris Carr
00:09:41 – 00:09:51
Right? But it was one I followed. And if I’m willing to tend to her and say, I love you. I’m here for you. What do you need?

Kris Carr
00:09:51 – 00:10:04
I’ve got you. I can re-parent you. Then inevitably, I, adult Kris, start to experience the healing that comes from that.

Victoria Volk
00:10:04 – 00:10:31
Because in your book, you share how being a child of anxious parents. And because you mentioned it just briefly there a little bit, how that shaped you into adult life being a child of anxious parents. Because I have this theory that and reading your book, I’m like, okay. Well, that makes sense. Because I have the theory that a lot of children are carrying anxiety and fears that aren’t even theirs.

Kris Carr
00:10:34 – 00:10:34
Yeah.

Victoria Volk
00:10:34 – 00:10:37
That of their parents. And then I read that in your book and I’m like, okay. That’s kind of affirming.

Kris Carr
00:10:39 – 00:10:52
Yeah. I mean, we are these blank slates, and we pick up vibes. We pick up energy. We pick up behaviors. I think we come here, and we are then domesticated.

Kris Carr
00:10:53 – 00:11:28
And so much of what our job is in this lifetime is to unlearn and to come back to the original source, which is that self-love, love for self, love for others, love for life. And so naturally, if we’re raised by parents who are anxious, then anxiety is gonna maybe even go be one of our go to responses to things. So we’re kind of moving through life fearful. And anxiety really is a rumination about what may or may not happen. Right?

Kris Carr
00:11:28 – 00:11:42
It’s kind of taking fear and saying, I’m thinking ahead. I gotta cover my bases. I gotta have my own back. The world is unsafe. How can I get ahead of this situation so I can make sure I stay safe?

Kris Carr
00:11:43 – 00:12:14
And fear and anxiety serve a purpose. Right? I would say in the book and often try to remind myself that we can’t amputate any of our emotions and expect to be whole. So oftentimes, I think in our very black-and-white society, certain emotions we deem positive and emotions that we should strive to have and show, and other emotions we deem negative as if therefore, there’s something deficient about us for having them. And it’s sort of like saying, here are all the crayons in the crayon box.

Kris Carr
00:12:15 – 00:12:45
But, Victoria, you can only use blue, green, and red because all the other colors are bad. And if you use those colors, you’re bad. And you may be like, but secretly, I love yellow. You know? And so I think when we get a little curious about these emotions and what they’re here to teach us and show us, which we can talk about, then we can follow the breadcrumbs and understand how they work and why our brain uses them.

Kris Carr
00:12:45 – 00:13:00
Why did why are we designed to experience anxiety from time to time? How is it a benefit to us? How does it truly keep us safe? And how does it go awry? Right?

Kris Carr
00:13:00 – 00:13:18
What do I need to do when I’m finding myself spinning out, let’s say, before a CAT scan? I get checked every 5 years. There’s always gonna be some anxiety before I go in for my scan. This is the moment, 21 years later, when my doctor says, oh, it turned on. It’s finally aggressive.

Kris Carr
00:13:18 – 00:13:43
This is what we’ve been waiting for. And I’m I’m gonna have some anxiety, but I can develop some tools to soothe that anxiety. I can develop some tools to make sure that that anxiety doesn’t become a rumination that’s out of control that can even become almost like an addiction, like a hot spot that I’ll just go to. It’s almost like we’re going to the mental gym when we’re dealing with some of this stuff.

Victoria Volk
00:13:44 – 00:14:19
Those that may not be familiar with you and never heard of you, can you just briefly share? Because I know we’ve mentioned it, but we haven’t really said about your diagnosis. And then I’d like to move into how that anxiety and that fear played a role through your diagnosis and how that transitioned to when you became then a caregiver for your father. And then the moment that you realized, you know, the P there’s like 3, I have a note here. There’s 3 spiritual or 3 pivotal moments that led you to writing the book.

Victoria Volk
00:14:19 – 00:14:23
And so can we rewind and then fast forward a little bit?

Kris Carr
00:14:24 – 00:14:47
Yes. So, I was in a very different career and had very different hopes and thoughts and dreams for my life. And then on Valentine’s Day in 2003, I was diagnosed with a rare and incurable stage 4 cancer. And so the first doctor that I met with suggested a triple organ transplant. The next doctor gave me 10 years to live.

Kris Carr
00:14:47 – 00:15:30
The doctor after that suggested radical treatments that wouldn’t do anything. And it was that moment where I realized I had to become my own advocate, and I had to become, as I like to call, the CEO of my health. So as a CEO, the leader of our lives, it’s like, okay. I’m responsible for putting together the team, for hiring, for firing, for finding my second in command because the doctors work for me. And I was lucky, or actually just hardworking to find a great oncologist who knew the most about my very rare disease, who had his finger on the pulse of research, and who also had a wonderful bedside manner.

Kris Carr
00:15:30 – 00:15:46
So I was very surprised when he said, sometimes your disease can be slow growing. It can become aggressive. We just don’t know. We have to watch and wait. And while we’re doing that, we want you to watch and live.

Kris Carr
00:15:46 – 00:16:34
And I didn’t really know how to do that. So the first place I went afterwards was the grocery store because I figured vegetables were good, even though I hated them. And what I was truly looking for was some sort of control, some place to put my energy so that I could feel like I was participating in my well-being as opposed to participating in my disease. And that’s what started the work that I do first and foremost for cancer patients when I began and then later for people who are interested in not becoming patients, because I truly believe that self-care is health care and that we have more power than we think. And, again, it was this career is not something that I went into saying this is what I wanna do.

Kris Carr
00:16:34 – 00:17:05
But I think for many of us, our lives change in sometimes miraculous ways because of these warning signs or wake up calls that we have. And this is what I chose to do with my wake up call because, again, I live with stage 4 cancer. This is a marathon for me. And I’m very, very inspired to live every moment like it is my first, and I can’t wait to have another. And so where are we going after this?

Kris Carr
00:17:06 – 00:17:10
Where would you like me to take you after this? You had a 3 part question.

Victoria Volk
00:17:10 – 00:17:12
I did. I know. I’m I tend to do that.

Kris Carr
00:17:12 – 00:17:14
It’s okay.

Victoria Volk
00:17:15 – 00:17:26
Try to squeeze it all in. Just the anxiety of that.

Kris Carr
00:17:19 – 00:17:19
Yeah.

Victoria Volk
00:17:19 – 00:17:26
Diagnosis and the experience of going through that and then being hit with another rupture, as you call it in your book, of your father?

Kris Carr
00:17:27 – 00:17:53
So for me, like I said earlier, I am the person that’s going to pretty much try to put a plan in place. And I think it’s very helpful to do that. It’s one of the reasons why my work has helped a lot of people is because I help people and people who don’t wanna be patients just put that wellness plan together. But a lot of that came from my fear, and a lot of that came from my anxiety. So isn’t that wonderful, though?

Kris Carr
00:17:53 – 00:18:39
So fear and anxiety helped me out in a big way. The problem is when they take over and they shut you down, they paralyze you. They make it so that the only thing that you feel like you can do to cope is to numb because they’re just too big. And so that’s when all of our self-care principles and practices, the toolkits that many of us go through life trying to build, we wanna open the box and lean on a few of them, whether it’s through breath work, whether it’s with a therapist or a counselor, like, hey, these emotions are too big for me to hold on my own. Oftentimes there may be other things tied into them, past traumas, past grieves.

Kris Carr
00:18:40 – 00:18:59
One of the things that my therapist talked about and I wrote about in the book is she says, when the grief train pulls into the station, it brings all the carbs.

Victoria Volk
00:18:49 – 00:18:49
Mmm

Kris Carr
00:18:49 – 00:18:59
The stuff you thought you were over is behind you, and you’re just totally sideswiped. Brings up trauma. It brings up anxiety. It brings up shame.

Kris Carr
00:18:59 – 00:19:10
It brings up rage. For me, I went through a period where, you know, my number one emotion I was experiencing was not grief. It was rage. I’m like, where is all this hot energy coming from? Well, it’s old stuff.

Kris Carr
00:19:12 – 00:19:37
And so learning to live with stage 4 cancer for me is more of a mental game than physical game. It’s about learning how to work with my fear and anxiety as opposed to be overwhelmed by it because that those moments are going to come. I was talking to a patient the other day, and you know, I’ll go to, okay. I’m having this anxious moment. Let me get in my body.

Kris Carr
00:19:37 – 00:19:51
Because sometimes when I’m in a anxious spiraling out place, I’m having kind of an out of body experience. Right? So I could jump on my bike or jump in the water. You know what I mean? Like, right now, I’m in Florida.

Kris Carr
00:19:51 – 00:20:03
The ocean’s nearby. Like, why don’t you just go for a quick swim? And it’s gonna change the channel. It’s almost like we’re dogs with in brain rot, licking, licking, licking a hot spot. You know?

Kris Carr
00:20:03 – 00:20:13
What if the scan’s worse? And what if this and what if that? Well, in this moment, none of that is true. I like to say it’s not something until it’s something. So why don’t you get back to living?

Kris Carr
00:20:13 – 00:20:28
Or it’s been 21 years since I’ve been dealing with this. I know I’m gonna feel anxious. I’m gonna allow myself that day or the day before to go there. But before then, why am I wasting time? Now is it as easy as that?

Kris Carr
00:20:28 – 00:20:33
No. But for me, I’ve been able to work with my brain.

Victoria Volk
00:20:35 – 00:20:36
You’ve had a lot of time to practice.

Kris Carr
00:20:37 – 00:20:43
I’ve had a lot of time to practice. I’m like, come on. Let’s go for a bike ride. In this moment, how are you feeling? Pretty good.

Kris Carr
00:20:43 – 00:20:44
Let’s focus there.

Victoria Volk
00:20:45 – 00:21:07
So when there was kind of training ground for you, when this happened with your father, I imagine that you had to lean on a lot of those tools that have supported you in getting through your own diagnosis and the spiraling thoughts and all of that. And what did you learn about yourself through the process. And how did that change you?

Kris Carr
00:21:07 – 00:21:08
Thought

Victoria Volk
00:21:08 – 00:21:09
Your perspective, maybe of a lot of things.

Kris Carr
00:21:09 – 00:21:38
Very beautiful question. I mean, I think I’m still learning it. And, I think that it was all well and good for me to work with my own palate, which is me. But then when it come came to working with, you know, the potential of losing someone that I love very dearly, he’s my chosen father, so he adopted me. And that was really hard for me because what was coming up, what I didn’t realize was a lot of the old abandonment wounds.

Kris Carr
00:21:38 – 00:22:06
The core, you know, father wound was highly activated, the idea of losing him. Because whether I was conscious of it or not, what I was feeling was that he was leaving me. And that’s what happened the first time with my biological father. And that’s when you go, oh, I have an opportunity here to work with some really old stuff because he’s not leaving me. He’s dying.

Kris Carr
00:22:07 – 00:22:28
And I want to spend as much good time with him as I can. So because of that, it was inspiring to do the work and to go back into therapy. And and to initially, I was like, oh, no. Cancer’s not on my watch. You know, there’s one thing I know.

Kris Carr
00:22:28 – 00:22:55
It’s navigating cancer, and it’s not taking you. I got pissed and angry and called everybody I knew, and I got some wonderful people in my address book. The problem was is that he didn’t wanna do any of it. So the treatments that he was undergoing were really hard. So we could do enough to, you know, keep him as well as possible, but he wasn’t gonna do a full on lifestyle, save my ass technologies Kris Carr plan.

Kris Carr
00:22:55 – 00:23:38
And so I had to make peace with that and say, the best medicine that I can deploy right now is love and making sure that when I enter the room, love is leading the way and that the time that I have with him is filled with it. And so there’s a lot of gin rummy. There’s a lot of really wonderful times that we had. And I learned how to let go of more control, which was very anxiety provoking for me. And just to continue to show up with love even though my heart was breaking and breaking wide open too.

Victoria Volk
00:23:39 – 00:23:48
In this book, you really do speak the language of the work that I do in grief recovery, the grief recovery method. And you talk about how grief manifests in our lives and in our bodies and talk about keeping busy.

Victoria Volk
00:23:48 – 00:24:37
You essentially addressed the sense of grief and you essentially addressed them all like including stirbs or short-term energy relieving behaviors and these things that we do to occupy ourselves and distract ourselves from our feelings. And, and you’ve had so many years of sitting with and working through your grief before writing this book. Who were the people or the resources that have supported you and provided the information that gave you that new perspective. And I know you mentioned that book, on grief, but kind of even before that earlier in your, like, when you were diagnosed and as you were going through that journey, what were the things that helped you shift your perspective from, you know, woe is me to the self-driven mission?

Victoria Volk
00:24:37 – 00:24:43
Or was it just did perfectionism take over? Because I know you talk a lot about perfectionism in your book too a little bit.

Kris Carr
00:24:43 – 00:25:01
I don’t know. Maybe sometimes. Oh, maybe sometimes. But I think so I practice what I call the 5 pillars of wellness. So they are basically being mindful of optimizing what you’re eating, drinking, thinking, and how you’re resting and renewing.

Kris Carr
00:25:02 – 00:25:32
And all of that sits on a foundation of stress management because we know that stress is really the number one killer. And stress comes in all sorts of ways, including heartache. And so that’s the basis of the lifestyle practice that I teach in my books and in my community. And that all came from all of my research as a first and foremost, as a cancer patient, what can I do to extend my life? Is there any way I can participate and help my longevity, help my odds?

Kris Carr
00:25:33 – 00:25:59
And it’s really the basis of lifestyle medicine, which has been around for a very long time. You know? And so all of that work for 20 years now has certainly taught me a lot about myself and my body. The big turning point for me, I think, emotionally was on my 10 year cancer versary when, you know, one of the doctors had originally given me 10 years to live. And here I am making it to the 10 year mark.

Kris Carr
00:26:01 – 00:26:21
And everybody was so thrilled except for me because I didn’t think that unless it was behind me, I could really live my life. So I was very frustrated, very angry. And so I was trying to cure myself since the doctors couldn’t cure me. You know? And it wasn’t happening.

Kris Carr
00:26:22 – 00:26:54
But I also wasn’t my disease wasn’t progressing either. And so it was just something that I was having to learn to live with. And there are many things for everybody that we might not want, but we have to learn to live with. And for me, it’s cancer. And so I remember thinking in that moment when everybody’s celebrating but me that I have to come up with a better way because I could live my whole life with this disease and I could waste it all.

Kris Carr
00:26:55 – 00:27:10
Because I wasn’t truly living unless it was behind me on paper. I got that stamp of approval. You’re in remission. And what if I lived? A whole lot of years healthy and happy, you know, if I allowed myself to be.

Kris Carr
00:27:11 – 00:27:25
But I didn’t get that stamp of approval. And that’s when I started to think about the difference between healing and curing. And that curing may or may not happen. You know, it happens in the physical body. It happens for some of us.

Kris Carr
00:27:25 – 00:27:49
Doesn’t happen for all of us. There are a lot of people out there who are living really big, abundant, wonderful lives with chronic illnesses, chronic shit pickles, just chronic stuff. And that’s okay. But healing can happen for each and every one of us. There is no timeline, and it can happen even beyond our physical form.

Kris Carr
00:27:49 – 00:28:09
And so I started to move more in the direction of aspiring to be on a healing path and to be loving and patient and caring with myself. And that, to me, when you say, okay. Where’d you learn this? What are the most inspirational resources or what not? It was actually that mental shift that changed everything.

Kris Carr
00:28:10 – 00:28:30
There are incredible grief resources out there. Right? You’re one of those incredible resources. And it was a world I wasn’t very familiar with. And then when we get interested, when we get curious, when we start to, you know, do the research, buy the books, follow the breadcrumbs, we start to find the voices that resonate for us.

Kris Carr
00:28:31 – 00:28:54
But the principles are still universal. You know, and that is that or at least I believe they’re universal, that our emotions are energy, we can’t amputate them, we need to allow them to flow. When energy is stagnant, it’s not good for your physical body. It’s not good for your mental health. And emotions are also filled with information.

Kris Carr
00:28:54 – 00:29:10
So if we can become a little bit more emotionally literate and curious, then we can start to learn how to tend to these crayons, these parts of ourselves that make up the whole beautiful picture that is us.

Victoria Volk
00:29:12 – 00:29:30
I’d love to talk about anger a little bit. You talked about a lot about emotions, but and you mentioned anger, and you mentioned anger quite a bit in your book too. And I didn’t address my grief until 2019. And that was at that point over 30 years. So I had a lot of time to build up a lot of anger and resentment.

Victoria Volk
00:29:31 – 00:30:12
And so to allow those floodgates to open, it was like, you know, if we imagine ourselves like a tea kettle and this pressure just keeps building and building and building, and if we don’t release that pressure, it like, we literally are dying from the inside very, you know, slowly and just deteriorates our bodies. And like you said, it’s stress. It’s physical stress, emotional stress, mental stress. Imagine that as is your body like a tea kettle. So allowing that rupture in that way, a good rupture, that’s a good rupture, you know, but you have, there’s a part I wrote here and we act out instead of crying out because anger feels powerful while grief feels powerless.

Victoria Volk
00:30:14 – 00:30:25
And you talk about caring for your anger and your grandmother had a motto, don’t cure the darkness, light a candle.

Kris Carr
00:30:25 – 00:30:25
Mmm

Victoria Volk
00:30:26 – 00:30:34
And I absolutely love that. But in talking about anger and the wisdom that anger has for us, what has anger taught you?

Kris Carr
00:30:36 – 00:31:13
My anger is very powerful, and my anger helps me to be a fighter when I need to fight. And it has protected me. It has inspired me. There have been so many moments, even as a female entrepreneur, when somebody has told me, you know, pipe down, ambition is not appropriate for women, Be satisfied with what you’re getting, even though I know other people are being paid more for the same work, where I relied on the wisdom of anger to say no. Right?

Kris Carr
00:31:13 – 00:31:41
And so I don’t want to vilify it. And yet, I definitely need to learn more about it because it’ll be a go to emotion for me if I’m not careful, thoughtful, inquisitive. My grandmother also used to say that emotions like anger and grief specifically were unbecoming for women. And she came from a very different time. Right?

Kris Carr
00:31:41 – 00:32:14
And so the chapter on anger is called Becoming, Unbecoming. And when I started to explore it more, and I have in my own therapy for many years, but actually starting to explore the mechanics of anger, almost like, you know, you’re approaching a research project, is that many people say that it’s a signaling emotion. Right? And it’s signaling to something else. It’s like the tip of the iceberg is what you see, but underneath of the iceberg is so much bigger.

Kris Carr
00:32:15 – 00:32:30
And so what is it signaling? What is it trying to point out to us? Sometimes it can be injustice. Sometimes it can be extreme pain. Like anger is saying, oh, this is not okay.

Kris Carr
00:32:31 – 00:33:10
And anger is also very protective. And so for me, if grief was something that felt so scary and so destabilizing. You know, there’s a reason why we go into fights, light, or freeze because it’s like a physical manifestation of us protecting ourselves. If an emotion like grief feels so unstabilizing to many of us because, again, we don’t necessarily have the tools for this, especially because we live in a grief-phobic society. Right.

Kris Carr
00:33:10 – 00:33:29
So few of us know how to talk about these things or want to talk about these things because we’re afraid of how people will react. Then an emotion like anger is going can easily step in and help you out. You know, like, oh, I’m starting to feel these emotions. I’m starting to feel out of control. I start to feel so uncomfortable.

Kris Carr
00:33:30 – 00:33:42
And then all of the stuff that can bubble up as a result of that, people will judge me. People won’t like me. People won’t wanna hang out with me because I’m a big downer. Boom. I got you, buttercup.

Victoria Volk
00:33:44 – 00:34:05
There was one part too where you where you talk about making yourself small. I can’t remember exactly how, how it went, but just to the, what you were just saying, how we make ourselves small, especially when we’re trying to express anger and then we’re told you’re too much or you’re too loud or, you know, be seen and not heard and all of these messages that we receive more commonly as little girls. Right?

Kris Carr
00:34:06 – 00:34:06
Yeah.

Victoria Volk
00:34:07 – 00:34:25
Do you see yourself as I mean, would you describe yourself as a child and like a free spirit, kind of wild, kind of like a poking the bear questioner, initiator of things, maybe initiator of other people? Do you just would you describe yourself like that?

Kris Carr
00:34:26 – 00:34:58
I think as a child, there was definitely a free spirit and a very creative little soul, and very imaginative, very caring. Somebody who’s I hopefully still have those traits. Very connected to animals in nature. And I don’t think I was a bear poker because I think I was very shy and very kind of like, I gotta figure out feel my way because the world isn’t safe. It wasn’t until much later in life that I became a bear poker.

Victoria Volk
00:34:59 – 00:35:17
Yes. Okay. That’s what I was gonna get to because when you start coming into your own. Right? Because you had a lot of grief in your childhood. So I just I saw myself in your story, and that’s why I asked that because, yeah, I just I felt like we’re kindred spirits in a way.

Kris Carr
00:35:17 – 00:35:41
Yeah. Oh, well, that’s wonderful. I mean, I think the more we don’t know if you feel this way, but the more work that I’ve done to heal my heart and befriend myself and really, like who I am. And I think one of the greatest things that you can ever experience in this life is the joy of your own company.

Victoria Volk
00:35:39 – 00:35:39
Mhmm.

Kris Carr
00:35:39 – 00:35:41
And I really wanna park on that for a minute because people don’t talk about it enough.

Kris Carr
00:35:42 – 00:35:53
I mean, getting to a point where you enjoy your own company is so big. We come here alone. We leave her alone. And we live in an epidemic of loneliness. We do need each other.

Kris Carr
00:35:53 – 00:36:00
We need community. We need support. We need our people and our true blues. But, damn, we need ourselves.

Victoria Volk
00:36:00 – 00:36:04
I think it goes back to what you said about self-soothing,

Kris Carr
00:36:03 – 00:36:03
Yeah

Victoria Volk
00:36:03 – 00:36:04
our ability to do that.

Kris Carr
00:36:05 – 00:36:30
I don’t think any of that matters unless we can do that, because all of it was temporary. You’re always gonna reach outside of yourself.

Victoria Volk
00:36:11 – 00:36:11
Mhmm.

Kris Carr
00:36:11 – 00:36:30
And then when a relationship ends, it’s gonna be so destabilizing. Because you never had that relationship connection with yourself first and foremost. And so to go back to your question, when did it when did I start to come into my own?

Kris Carr
00:36:30 – 00:36:49
It was more so when I said, I don’t really care what other people think about me. I don’t wanna be a jerk. And but I’m less interested in what other people think about me and more interested in that relationship and what I think about me and my ability to enjoy my own company.

Victoria Volk
00:36:49 – 00:36:56
I actually  I’m glad you said that because I actually had, are you someone who enjoys alone time?

Kris Carr
00:36:56 – 00:36:57
Why?

Victoria Volk
00:36:57 – 00:37:18
Maybe you even need it, because that was actually one thing I wrote on there because I love my alone time. I need it. I love my own company. But this is a great segue into having more 4 legged friends than 2 legged friends.

Kris Carr
00:37:19 -00:37:19
Mmm..

Victoria Volk
00:37:19 – 00:37:22
And the fact that you, don’t have children, but you had you know, buddy or dog, you talk about losing buddy your dog.

Victoria Volk
00:37:22 – 00:37:33
And I just kinda wanna talk about if you are open to sharing about the importance of the importance that animals played a role in your healing and as you were grieving.

Kris Carr
00:37:34 – 00:37:54
Yeah, they always will. They’re so a big a big part of my life. And I’ve had a lot of fur children. And you’ve you know this because you are in this world. And so I remember the first time that I got the concept that the other side of grief is love.

Victoria Volk
00:37:54 – 00:37:54
Mmm

Kris Carr
00:37:55 – 00:38:23
And the more that we love, the more we’re gonna grieve. But who wants to go through life saying, oh, no love for me because I don’t wanna feel that pain? So taking on all these incredible companion animals, you know that at some point, you’re gonna have to say goodbye to them. And several of my fur children were very instrumental at certain points in my healing. My first my cat.

Kris Carr
00:38:23 – 00:38:33
My dedicated my second book to my cat. My cat was the first person I told I had cancer, Kristal, I’ve got cancer. What are we gonna do? Right?

Kris Carr
00:38:33 – 00:39:00
And so she was a big part of that early journey. And then Buddy was a big part of making peace with not having children. And then here comes this big old hound dog who is, you know, near death, emaciated, we found on the side of a mountain while we were hiking and nursing him back to health. And thinking, wow, there’s love all around if I just choose to open to it. It might not be in the form that I think.

Kris Carr
00:39:01 – 00:39:21
And it’s in this case, it’s a big old hound dog. But boy, do I love him. And life is still good. And, then most recently, my dog, Lola, who is probably my number one soulmate. And so she was there throughout my dad’s journey and she passed after.

Kris Carr
00:39:21 – 00:39:45
And I think she stuck around because she knew that it would be so big for me. And I couldn’t lose them both at the same time. So we have all these opportunities. And the reason why I write about pet loss in the book is because I was actually shocked by a lot of the grief books and grief literature that didn’t either include it or dealt it dealt with pet loss in a way that felt very diminishing?

Victoria Volk
00:39:46 – 00:39:58
I actually just developed a pet loss program.

Kris Carr
00:39:50 – 00:39:50
Oh.

Victoria Volk
00:39:51 – 00:39:58
But it hasn’t launched yet. And, because I’ve had clients that I’ve worked with where they were seeing, it was a single woman. She didn’t have children.

Victoria Volk
00:39:58 – 00:40:17
She didn’t have a spouse. Her family were in another country. Like she came here with knowing nobody and that her dog was her everything. And so people don’t understand or even think about grief when it comes to pets. But it’s like, we can just go out and get another pet and the things people say.

Victoria Volk
00:40:17 – 00:40:29
Right? And it just yeah. It’s so this is why I started this podcast so people can learn. Right? So people can learn through people’s stories of the import of all the different ways we grieve.

Victoria Volk
00:40:29 – 00:40:39
But even if you’re listening to this and you, for whatever reason, can’t have a pet, get a plant.

Kris Carr
00:40:40 – 00:40:40
Mhmm.

Victoria Volk
00:40:41 – 00:40:44
I see a plant in your background. I have one right on my shelf here. I started actually, that was one of the things I think naturally came up for me.

Victoria Volk
00:40:44 – 00:40:52
And as I was starting my healing was I just started accumulating plants left and right. Like, you know, it’s nurturing something.

Kris Carr
00:40:52 – 00:40:53
Uh-huh.

Victoria Volk
00:40:53 – 00:40:55
You know, I think get a plant.

Kris Carr
00:40:55 – 00:40:55
Yeah.

Victoria Volk
00:40:56 – 00:41:00
Think of yourself as a plant. Like, what does a plant need? It needs water.

Victoria Volk
00:41:00 – 00:41:13
It needs sunlight. It needs I think it goes back to what is that, doctor Emoto with the water and the rice, the rice experiment where you talk to it. And, I mean, you could talk to your plants. You talk to your pets. Right?

Kris Carr
00:41:13 – 00:41:14
Oh, yeah.

Victoria Volk
00:41:14 – 00:41:41
But none of those things, like, judge, analyze, or criticize you. So you can say whatever you want. And I think that’s the different dynamic of that relationship is that and why the bond is so deep for so many people with their pets is that they feel like you said in your book, it’s like it’s like Christmas morning. Every morning, every day that you your dog sees you, it’s like you could be gone 3 minutes. Like, I can leave and be gone for 3 minutes.

Victoria Volk
00:41:41 – 00:41:51
And my dog, it’s like Christmas morning. I was perfectly how you said that. So, yeah, it’s I think it’s one of the most minimized losses, and so it is something that I’m looking to address. And

Kris Carr
00:41:51 – 00:41:53
I’m so happy to hear that.

Speaker  1
00:41:53 – 00:42:00
So I’m glad we talked about that. Let me look on time. Okay. So I’m just gonna can I just do, like, a quick run through of questions?

Kris Carr
00:42:00 – 00:42:02
Oh, yeah. Of course.

Victoria Volk
00:42:03 – 00:42:11
Okay. Maybe these aren’t gonna be quick answers. I don’t know. Let’s see. I loved how you said life is a terminal condition. We’re all going to die.

Victoria Volk
00:42:12 – 00:42:24
But how many of us truly live? And acceptance helps get you there. And I think you’ve really touched on that quite a bit, not as much of the acceptance piece, but I guess I’ll ask you this. What does acceptance mean to you?

Kris Carr
00:42:25 – 00:42:48
Acceptance for me means that I accept who I am and what my needs are, and then I have my back. I’m not trying to be somebody I’m not. I’m not putting myself into a box that was not made for me. And, that’s a piece of it, but also accepting when I’m going through a difficult time that this is what’s happening. I’m not sugarcoating it.

Kris Carr
00:42:48 – 00:43:08
I’m not trying to slap on an affirmation, even though I think affirmations are very helpful. I’m accepting that this is where I am so that I can do the healing work. That perhaps some of that healing work will help me get to another place. But if not, I’m giving myself which exactly what I need, which is some heart tending.

Victoria Volk
00:43:09 – 00:43:14
And even if just for that moment, you feel better, I mean,

Kris Carr
00:43:12 – 00:43:12
Yeah

Victoria Volk
00:43:12 – 00:43:14
that’s a win.

Kris Carr
00:43:14 – 00:43:15
It’s huge win.

Victoria Volk
00:43:16 – 00:43:49
As your dad was going through his cancer treatment, I’m just curious on this because I just I spoke with another end of I’m trained in the end of life doula. And I spoke to another gentleman just recently. And the big conversation was having your affairs in order and just preparing and all of that. And so I imagine, like, when you got your diagnosis and when your father received his, was that something that had you already is that something that you’d, like, made a mission to take care of, like, get your affairs in order? Is that something that your dad made a priority when you first diagnosed?

Kris Carr
00:43:50 – 00:44:14
When I was first diagnosed, I didn’t wanna get my affairs in order. And I had there was a lot of frustration around my unwillingness to get my affairs in order. And it’s one of the reasons why my biological father left my life again.

Victoria Volk
00:44:09 – 00:44:09
Mmm

Kris Carr
00:44:10 – 00:44:14
So I met him when I was 18, and he split again when I was not long after I was diagnosed. And so and I was partly around that.

Kris Carr
00:44:15 – 00:44:33
And so for me, it was like I will do this on my own timeline when I’m ready. I’m not ready to talk about this. And I’m not going to have it forced upon me. So, but, you know, obviously it’s helpful to have these things in place. It’s something that I’m working on now.

Kris Carr
00:44:34 – 00:44:55
I’m 52, and I really wasn’t ready to do it. And for me, it was a psychological block. And now it feels like, you know, my husband and I get on a turbulent plane, and we own our business together, and we run everything together. And it’s sort of like, jeez. Still a little stressed out that we don’t have.

Kris Carr
00:44:56 – 00:45:29
I mean so it’s like, let’s Just take care of some of these things, especially because it makes whether you realize it or not, it brings you more peace and clarity and what not. It’s also really important as our life does become shorter, because dying is a big job. It’s a big job. And we, as a culture, we are the first to throw the big parties and get all the gear and the showers and what not, for when a baby comes into this planet. And it’s a wonderful celebratory event.

Kris Carr
00:45:30 – 00:46:07
But dying is very complicated it takes a lot of energy and it leaves a lot of tentacles and yet it’s so scary for many of us that we don’t have somebody to walk through it with. And that’s when a lot of stuff can happen, I think, in families too. A lot of undue stress and tension and discord and even, you know, estrangements and whatnot. So my dad and I talked about it a lot. At first, it was hard to talk about though, and I wasn’t sure if he wanted to talk about it.

Kris Carr
00:46:07 – 00:46:24
And so I approached it very delicately. Is this something you’d like to talk about? And the answer was yes. And I worked on it with my therapist because I was afraid that I would fall apart and make things worse. And I said, I am willing to talk about these things.

Kris Carr
00:46:25 – 00:46:34
I might not always keep it together. There will be tissues. I might say the wrong thing, but I’m willing to show up. And he was grateful for it. And so we did talk about that.

Kris Carr
00:46:34 – 00:46:55
We did talk about his fears. We did talk about his wishes. And we talked about what he wanted at his celebration of life. There were absolute tears. When hospice came, they told us with him in the room, you know that this is not curative.

Kris Carr
00:46:56 – 00:47:11
We are making you comfortable. Here are the stages of what will happen. This is what will happen as your body starts to shut down. This family is what we’re teaching you and how to support. I’d never had candid conversations like that before.

Kris Carr
00:47:11 – 00:47:34
It was terrifying. I was grateful that we were in the middle of the pandemic because I had a mask on, and I would just pull it up really high. So that nobody could see that I was like, my lips were quivering and I was crying under the mask and whatnot. Because I was so scared to have that conversation. And I know people who, you know, whose loved ones have said, I’d really like to talk about what I want you to have.

Kris Carr
00:47:34 – 00:47:43
And they shut the loved one down and say, I don’t wanna talk about this. This isn’t positive. Oh, don’t worry about it. You’ve got plenty of time. La la la.

Kris Carr
00:47:43 – 00:48:07
That’s all coming from that person’s own discomfort, which I honor. But for the person who’s dying or struggling with mortality that you know, may have less time than you, it can be very isolating, create a lot more loneliness and a lot more discomfort. So it’s these opportunities that we have to really, like, grow up and show up.

Victoria Volk
00:48:08 – 00:48:11
Grow up and show up. Suck it up, buttercup.

Kris Carr
00:48:14 – 00:48:22
You know, you don’t want to. Like, I didn’t I really didn’t wanna put on my, like, big grown up panties, but I was like, I can do it now. When are you gonna do it?

Victoria Volk
00:48:23 – 00:48:32
But it is. It’s it’s the ability to okay. These are my emotions. I’m just gonna park them to the side before I walk in the store so that I can be fully present and give my loved one what they need.

Kris Carr
00:48:33 – 00:48:33
Yeah

Victoria Volk
00:48:34 – 00:48:36
And so that they feel heard.

Victoria Volk
00:48:36 – 00:49:09
And that is very difficult to do. And I think when you save those conversations for the death bed, that time could be spent having rich, meaningful conversations. And so I think it’s the importance of us planning for ourselves ahead of time so that we can have those deeper conversations and we’re not worried about the logistics after we’re gone. I think that’s the biggest service we can give our loved ones that we have power to do, I think.

Kris Carr
00:49:09 – 00:49:25
Yeah. The second intention so I wanna just I’ll remind that you’ve when everyone listening, the first intention that was helpful for me, I throw it out if it’s gonna be helpful for anyone else, is to lead with love. You know, like, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to show up.

Kris Carr
00:49:25 – 00:49:50
What would love do? What would love say? What does leading with love look like? And then just do that. And then the second thing is an intention that I set for myself, and this really helped me in the difficult conversations that I thought I would literally implode or come undone or just like, evaporate in my chair because they were so scary and big and hard in my mind was, how do I minimize my regrets?

Victoria Volk
00:49:51 – 00:49:51
Mmm

Kris Carr
00:49:53 – 00:50:11
What’s it gonna take for me to minimize my regrets? Am I gonna regret that I didn’t have the courage to have this conversation when my loved one wanted to have it? Yes. I am gonna regret that. Is that fear of that regret bigger than my lack of courage right now?

Kris Carr
00:50:11 – 00:50:14
Yes. There’s your answer.

Victoria Volk
00:50:16 – 00:50:19
The answers are in the deeper questions, really.

Kris Carr
00:50:19 – 00:50:20
Not easy.

Victoria Volk
00:50:21 – 00:51:03
You talk about caregiving and giving versus receiving, and being I loved how you said this, but being a giver you felt like nothing could ever be taken away from me. And you said, listen to the whispers before they become roars. And so just the act of like caregiving versus giving. And, you know, I think just in reading your story, reading the book, which I highly recommend everybody does because there’s so many layers to yours to your book that I would love to cover all of those in this podcast. But can you just speak to a little bit for those who are in the caregiving role and people who have always been the giver, giver, giver, giver, giver, giver, and then they find themselves in the giving role.

Victoria Volk
00:51:03 – 00:51:24
And then like yourself where you’re diagnosed and then you’re having to receive and the challenge of that. And then you’re having you’re you’re needing like, not needing support, but being faced with this grief of a different kind of grief right, with your chosen father. Again, here, I’m asking like, 3 questions in 1. Can you just speak to that giving versus receiving a little bit?

Kris Carr
00:51:25 – 00:51:42
Yeah. I think it’s helpful for each of us if we struggle with receiving, to really get to the nugget of the why. Because the nugget of the why has freedom for us. And for me, it was actually really as a result of writing this book. Because when you write, you have to figure shit out.

Victoria Volk
00:51:43 – 00:51:43
uh-huh mmm.

Kris Carr
00:51:43 – 00:51:57
You have to be able to articulate it. You have to be able to understand it. It’s not just an esoteric feeling or vibe that you have. And for me, I was like, wow. It wasn’t until I wrote that sentence that pieces of me came together.

Kris Carr
00:51:58 – 00:52:15
Yeah. And I knew that somewhere, but I didn’t really understand it. And it goes back to that core trauma of loss, of abandonment. So if I’m the giver, nothing can be taken from me. If I receive, something can be taken from me.

Kris Carr
00:52:16 – 00:52:32
So what does that hit? Big core wound for me. So if we if not everybody struggles with this, but if you do, you know, like, get to the heart of the tootsie roll pop. And you’d be surprised what’s there. And the oh, I can spend some time with this.

Kris Carr
00:52:32 – 00:53:00
And then it becomes easier to receive because we need to receive when we’re going through these difficult times. We need self-care practices. We need to keep our well not full because that’s not possible. But not running on empty that you’re going into burnout and then, you know, adrenal issues and physical illness and all the stuff that comes with it. So we’re not looking for perfection here.

Kris Carr
00:53:00 – 00:53:41
I have the full tank, and I’m all spiffy, and I’ve just had a lifestyle makeover, and I’m living my best life. It’s, like, not gonna happen when we’re going through a difficult time. But, boy, do those difficult times make us grow and evolve and become people we really wanna be. I think just to button up self-care, understanding why we might have resistance around receiving, and then as caregivers, making sure that we’re putting our masks on and we’re taking care of ourselves so that we can be as resilient as possible, as stress hardy as possible, because it’s a roller coaster. And I always encourage people to come to the day with as much as they possibly can.

Kris Carr
00:53:42 – 00:53:44
And we can’t do that when we’re on empty.

Victoria Volk
00:53:45 – 00:54:10
You talk about having 2 intentions for the book, like, for the audience, those reading it and for you to normalize conversations around the different emotions so that people feel less alone and crazy and that to heal the deeper parts of yourself as a result of this writing. And you kind of touched on one of those. But what did you learn about and heal for yourself while you’re writing it and since the book has been out?

Kris Carr
00:54:12 – 00:55:20
You know, you write the book and then you think it’s one thing, and then you talk about the book and it becomes something else.

Victoria Volk
00:54:20 – 00:54:20
Mmm..

Kris Carr
00:54:21 – 00:55:04
And, so the whole process is very illuminating. And I’d say my biggest growth edge has been my willingness to talk about really difficult things, even more difficult things than my own diagnosis. And you read that vulnerability is a strength, and it can be a meme and a TED Talk and all the things. But then I think for me, until I really allow myself to go to a more vulnerable place, And I did push myself in the book to tell the stories the way they were and not a polished version that would be more appropriate for Instagram, that I did find a real strength in that.

Kris Carr
00:55:04 – 00:55:17
And the strength in that vulnerability isn’t a hard strength. It’s a soft strength. That strength and that softness of vulnerability, something I’m still exploring and experiencing but really enjoying.

Victoria Volk
00:55:19 – 00:55:21
Do you have any regrets?

Kris Carr
00:55:24 – 00:55:51
My dad wanted to have a celebration of life on Zoom while he was still alive, in addition to the celebration of life that he had and we had when he was gone, and I couldn’t do it. And I said, I can’t do that. I can’t do that. No. And it didn’t happen, and I regret that.

Victoria Volk
00:55:55 – 00:56:01
Is there anything else you would like to share, or do you have a little bit of time where I can ask a few more questions?

Kris Carr
00:56:02 – 00:56:06
Yeah. I can definitely do a little more time? Yeah.

Victoria Volk
00:56:07 – 00:56:07
Okay.

Kris Carr
00:56:08 – 00:56:09
Maybe 5 minutes or so.

Victoria Volk
00:56:09 – 00:56:18
Okay. Let me just look here. I wanna make sure I’m picking the one I wanted to pick. Oh, yeah. This is one thing you hear a lot.

Victoria Volk
00:56:18 – 00:56:34
Like, especially after people pass away. They lost their battle to cancer or they’re losing the battle. Did you have moments that you felt this or was this outside messaging? And what do you think about this messaging?

Kris Carr
00:56:36 – 00:56:58
I think every patient is different. It is not my preferred messaging for myself because I live with cancer, so I don’t see that I’m warring with my body. I think that I have cancer in my liver and both of my lungs. Those organs need more support. Those organs are struggling.

Kris Carr
00:56:58 – 00:57:16
Why am I gonna beat them up? Why you know what I mean? I wanna learn more about them so I can care for them and see what they like and what they don’t like. And, again, going back to that part of, like, amputating parts of ourselves. I was worrying with my body way before cancer

Victoria Volk
00:57:16 – 00:57:16
Mmm..

Kris Carr
00:57:17 – 00:57:20
of you know, other things I didn’t like about myself or my weight or whatever it was at the time.

Kris Carr
00:57:21 – 00:57:36
Just always in a fight with my body. And it’s like, gosh, this body does so much on a daily basis to keep me alive. Things I could never even wrap my mind around. It’s a miracle. It’s like I wanna be on the side of my body, not fighting against it.

Kris Carr
00:57:36 – 00:58:07
So that, again, does not work for me. I think my biggest pet peeve is when people who don’t have cancer use cancer metaphors. Like, I don’t get triggered by a lot of things. I’m not a you know, I’m not a I don’t really walk on eggshells or things like this, but it does bother me when people use cancer metaphors of like, that behavior is a cancer or that person is a metastasis or you know, a lot of folks use that. And so I would say, don’t do that.

Victoria Volk
00:58:08 – 00:58:08
Mhmm.

Kris Carr
00:58:09 – 00:58:13
Doesn’t feel good for people who actually have cancer.

Victoria Volk
00:58:13 – 00:58:23
Right. Thank you for sharing that. What is something about you that many people don’t know? It’s not in the books. You haven’t said it before.

Victoria Volk
00:58:23 – 00:58:28
I guess you answered maybe the one regret. Maybe I have I don’t know if you’ve said that before, but

Kris Carr
00:58:28 – 00:58:43
No. I’ve never said that before. People don’t know about me. Well, I have said a lot of things about me because I do use my stories. My teaching method, I like to teach through stories.

Kris Carr
00:58:44 – 00:59:02
Well, I have been into Budweiser Super Bowl commercials.

Victoria Volk
00:58:47 – 00:58:47
What?

Kris Carr
00:58:47 – 00:59:02
In my previous career as an actor, and as somebody who did a lot of TV commercials and a lot of advertising, I was into Budweiser Super Bowl, bowl commercials.

Victoria Volk
00:59:03 – 00:59:04
That’s pretty cool.

Kris Carr
00:59:06 – 00:59:07
That’s cool.

Victoria Volk
00:59:09 – 00:59:17
Too bad it couldn’t have been, well, the Budweiser well, it was I thought the best one this past Super Bowl was the Dunkings. Dunkings.

Kris Carr
00:59:18 – 00:59:27
That’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I usually watch the commercials because it was just, like, a very big part of my career but I didn’t watch them this year. But this really is kinda like the Oscars of advertising.

Victoria Volk
00:59:27 – 00:59:27
Yeah.

Kris Carr
00:59:28 – 00:59:28
So

Victoria Volk
00:59:29 – 00:59:39
that’s that’s very cool. Okay. Well, I will leave it there. I think that’s a fun. We’ll leave it on a fun note.

Kris Carr
00:59:39 – 00:59:39
Yeah

Victoria Volk
00:59:39 – 00:59:53
And, because if I ask another question, it’s gonna be a deep run, probably. So you just have to read the book, my friends, because all the questions I’d probably ask her in the book. Anything else you would like to share, though?

Kris Carr
00:59:54 – 01:00:08
No. Thank you so much. This is a beautiful interview, and I’m so appreciative of the places that you took it. I really love having these transparent, honest conversations. Again, going back to how have you grown?

Kris Carr
01:00:08 – 01:00:16
What have you learned? And these are the conversations I wanna have. So thank you for allowing me to have one with you and with your community.

Victoria Volk
01:00:17 – 01:00:26
Thank you. I purposefully did not watch any of your other podcast interviews or listened to anything else because I just wanted to stay in my own lane

Kris Carr
01:00:26 – 01:00:26
Yeey!

Victoria Volk
01:00:27 – 01:00:29
because I can’t let’s see. Like, I have so much did you see the highlight?

Kris Carr
01:00:29 – 01:00:31
Oh my gosh.

Victoria Volk
01:00:31 – 01:00:59
I don’t know why I do that screen like that, but there’s so many. I’ve highlights and doggy ears, and it just really I really enjoyed the book. If people are uncomfortable with grief, I think it’s a wonderful story. You again, like you said, you I think teaching through story is the best way to share information. It’s something I think I personally need to do more of.

Victoria Volk
01:00:59 – 01:01:20
And so thank you for writing this book. I think it’s wonderful for people who are going through something that can maybe see a different perspective through a lens of someone who’s been living it for so long in so many different ways.

Kris Carr
01:01:17 – 01:01:17
Mmm

Victoria Volk
01:00:17 – 01:01:20
It’s a great example of grief and the many faces of it. So thank you.

Kris Carr
01:01:20 – 01:01:21
Thanks, Victoria.

Victoria Volk
01:01:22 – 01:01:24
And where can people find you?

Kris Carr
01:01:24 – 01:01:34
You can find me at kriscarr.com. You can find me on Instagram at @crazysexykris, and the book is available anywhere books are sold.

Victoria Volk
01:01:34 – 01:01:42
And I will put links in the show notes. Remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

Ep 166 Grieving the Loss of a Pet

Grieving the Loss of a Pet

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY: 

The global pet market is worth $261B. Additionally, U.S. pet owners will spend nearly $110B on their pets this year, with $490M on Halloween costumes alone. These stats (and more) are shared on this week’s episode and are provided by PetKeen.com.

More importantly, there are an estimated 14 million pet deaths each year in the U.S., which, when combined with the other 40+ losses, creates a lot of grievers annually.

It’s commonplace to replace the death of a pet with a new one. And as a society, we don’t view the death of a beloved pet in the same way we view the death of the humans in our lives. However, all the same, the death of a pet can be a tremendous loss for someone.

Considering how much we love our pets and how many of us are pet owners, you would think we would be more compassionate toward those who must surrender or say goodbye to a companion who held a pivotal role in their daily lives. And yet, there is still so much education to be done in grief – even when grieving a four-legged fur baby, bird, snake, or whatever creature has captured your heart.

RESOURCES:

_______

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.

CONNECT WITH VICTORIA: 

 

Victoria Volk: Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, whatever time it is you’re listening to this week’s episode. Thank you for being here. If you are liking the podcast and enjoying it, I hope you share it with someone you know or love who may benefit or leave a five-star review on Apple iTunes or wherever you listen and share a few thoughts if you feel inclined to as well. I read all of them and it’s always a joy for me to read how my this podcast is impacting the listeners. And that is you. So thank you for tuning in.

Victoria Volk: And today, I want to piggyback on the last episode with Maha Bodhi, we were talking about her pet loss. And so today, I want to dive into the topic of pet loss a little bit more and in more general terms. And as far as how the grief recovery institute, addresses pet loss, which is very similar to how we address the loss of someone we love or don’t love. Right? Because relationships with people are complicated and sometimes they are less than loving. But nonetheless, even if that relationship is less than loving, there likely is some complex emotions behind that relationship. Right? Because people can disappoint you, they can hurt you, and yet, well, if they’re your parent well, you should love them anyway. Right? You should be grateful that you have a parent. All these things that flood a griever’s mind when it is a less than loving relationship and sometimes too when it is a loving relationship. Right? Because relationships are tricky and challenging and complex. It’s not cut and dry. It’s not black and white. There’s many nuances to relationships because we are complex human beings. So you put complex human beings together, and where do you get? A hodgepodge of complexity.

Victoria Volk: So anyway, today we’re gonna talk about pet loss. And I’m actually going to start this episode by talking about some staggering statistics and trends that I was reading about in preparation for this episode, that I wanna share with you, that just highlight how much we as a society in this, I believe these statistics just apply to well, globally and in just the US. So globally, the pet market is worth two hundred and sixty-one billion dollars. B billion. B billion with a b. And US pet owners will spend nearly a hundred and ten billion dollars, a hundred and ten billion with a b, on their pets this year. Four hunt nook it. This is crazy. Four hundred and ninety million dollars alone will be spent on Halloween costumes. And when this podcast is airing, it is Halloween, so Happy Halloween to you in your little pooch. Who may be dressed up, this Halloween. And another statistic is in the last five years, raw food has seen a hundred and forty percent hundred and forty-seven percent increase in purchasing patterns. In the US, eighty-three percent of dogs and seventeen percent of cats are insured, which that one surprised me. I’ve personally looked into it, but I haven’t gotten insurance from my dog. He’s eight or is he nine? Anyway, he’s a senior citizen at this point. And his name is Gizmo and he’s a purebred habanese. And he’s actually relatively he’s pretty healthy. Aside from a few teeth that have had to been had to be pulled. I think he had two teeth pulled. He hasn’t had any issues, so I got very lucky with a healthy dog.

Victoria Volk: And also more than half of pet owners will or are willing to pay more for eco friendly pet care products. Another interesting statistic is that millennials lead the pack in terms of pet ownership by generation with thirty-two percent of people born between nineteen eighty-one and nineteen ninety-six being pet parents. Nearly one in three millennials has an animal at home and coincidentally, nearly one in three veterinarians in today’s working market are of the millennial generation. Pet ownership is next highest in baby boomers with twenty-seven percent followed by Gen Xers at twenty-four percent. And pet owner pet sitting is also seeing a rise. Two it’s a two-point six billion dollar industry as of twenty nineteen and is continually growing. Pet ownership actually, although it increased during the pandemic, the number of animals adopted from shelters has dropped by twenty percent and that was as of twenty twenty.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. It’s just crazy to me and even like just the pet food and market is valued at twenty-two point eight billion dollars. We all love our pets. Obviously, like, people love their pets. And so why is it in a society of people who love their pets? Is pet loss one of the most minimized losses? Why do people feel like they can’t express their grief when it comes to pet loss? I know not everybody feels that way, but for the most part generally speaking, you know, when someone loses a pet, they don’t feel like they can talk about it because it’s not a human. Right? And we have this hierarchy this unspoken hierarchy I think that human life is more valuable than than pet life or animal life. But to someone who has developed an emotional bond with a pet, of any kind, it doesn’t have to be a dog. It doesn’t have to be cat. Like, the common pets. I mean, a pet can be a snake that someone has emotionally bonded to. I mean, when I’m talking about pet loss, I’m not specifying dog or cat or anything like that, but I’ll just speak to dogs because that’s what I have. Probably more so than any other type of pet. But and I know plenty of cat people too, and I am not a cat person. They’re cute when they’re little, but I don’t know. Cat hair. That’s why I have a dog that doesn’t shed. I am not a fan of animal hair and cats are just they’re kind of rogue. They do what they want. They go where they want. I’m not a fan of that. So, therefore, I am a dog person rather than a cat person.

Victoria Volk: Anyway, we are in a society that minimizes these losses. As a kid, I had to say goodbye to several pets because either the neighbor was unhappy with the dog barking or it had to be tied up outside because I couldn’t have pets in the house. I would always try and bring in stray cats. I was always feeding the strays, trying to bring animals home, I had gone through so many pets. We actually did, this was before I have a memory of it, but apparently when I was really little, we did have a big dog, like a sheep dog, I guess, in the house. And supposedly, he was poisoned. I don’t know that was before my time, but I don’t know. Maybe that must have been really traumatic for my mom and my dad at the time and maybe they swore off no more animals in the house after that. I have no idea. Actually, I should ask my mom about that.

Victoria Volk: But anyway, I digress. Grief Recovery Institute actually has a pet loss program that has been made available by the Grief Recovery Institute and it is a program that I am certified to facilitate in a group or individually. And some might be listening to this and wondering why is there a separate group for pet loss, but like there isn’t a separate group for like people who’ve lost a child or people who are going through a divorce or things like that. The reason is because of something I’ve already mentioned, not the whole reason but a large part of the reason is because when someone who’s had a pet loss to go into a group setting, in particular, with people who have lost a child or people who have lost a loved one they may feel judged for being there, for having the feelings that they feel after losing their beloved pet. And again, it comes back to the societal idea of of this hierarchy of loss.

Victoria Volk: But what I was started to touch on before and I don’t think I finished my thought is that when you let’s say you’re a single person, you don’t have a lot of family around you, if any family. You don’t have children. You’re animal. Your pet is your significant other. Your pet is your child. Your pet is your everything. You do everything with this pet. If it’s a dog, maybe you take your dog everywhere you go. Your dog is very much ingrained, or your pet, is very much ingrained in your daily habits, in your daily life. And when that is gone, it shakes up everything for you because no longer is this companion there to greet you when you come in the door or is there for you when you’re feeling sad or we can develop these codependent relationships with our pets just as easily as we can with our humans with humans.

Victoria Volk: But the benefit of having a pet, right, is they don’t talk back. They love unconditionally, and that can actually make it easier to create this codependent relationship, this emotional codependent relationship where when that pet is gone, oh, you are so quick to replace it. And I think that’s what happens oftentimes in society and others have this belief that that you can just replace that dog. You can just you can get another gizmo. Like I when my dog dies, people probably will think, well, just get another gizmo. I can’t get another gizmo. There is no gizmo like gizmo. I personally trained him. I did a lot of research and how to choose an animal and how to train a dog. Because I wanted a lifelong companion in our home, for our family, an animal that would fit with our family dynamic. And I think with that going into it with that intention, we didn’t end up in the situation we had before, not once, but twice, where we had to rehome a rescue. Because the timing was not right, It just wasn’t very good timing. We weren’t a good fit for the dog, and the dog wasn’t a good fit for us. And I knew it. And the animal knew it. And so then we started seeing these behavioral issues. And I could just see that this and it comes down, maybe the breed or you know, because it was a rescue. Who knows what that what trauma that animal had before coming into our home? And so it just wasn’t a really good environment for the dog, and the dog wasn’t a good fit for us. And so that happened twice where we had to rehome pets. And I didn’t want to have that happen again. And so in finding Gizmo, I did a lot of research and investment of time, a lot of time to be intentional and to ensure that he would be in her home until his last breath. And it has worked out really well. And I would do it all over again, maybe or not. I’m not even sure. I can’t replace him. There is no other dog like him. And we can’t replace our parents. We can’t replace our significant others. We can’t replace our children. And you can’t replace your pet. There will never be another pet like pet that you had and the bond that you shared. And when you try to do that too soon without intention and more of a fear-based decision and more of an emotional decision without working through a lot of these things I’m going to briefly discuss (which are quite similar to what we do in grief recovery with human relationships) you find that you start at square one. Like my last guest did, if you go back and listen to the last episode with Maha, she talks about this. I didn’t even know that she had gone. I knew she was looking at a pet and I cautioned her to take as much time as she needed. But emotionally, that poll to replace that loss was stronger than her inner wisdom. I mean, I think if we sit long enough with our own hearts and minds, we come to the best conclusion for ourselves. But if we don’t do that and we’re just wrapped up in the emotion of the loss and wrapped up in ego. Right? And just wanting to feel better and ready to do about anything to feel better. That’s when we make decisions that are not the best aligned for us. And in this circumstance, the other animal or in a circumstance with a human, the other human, if you’re jumping from one relationship to the next without really becoming emotionally complete with the one before it, you’re bringing all that emotional stuff into that current relationship. Whether it’s a pet or whether it’s a human.

Victoria Volk: And so today, I’m just gonna share with you, this isn’t any different than going through grief recovery when you’re working through a loss of a a human. You still have those six myths. Don’t feel bad. Replace the loss. Grieve alone. Be strong. Keep busy. Time heals all wounds. Like, these are the six myths that are still applicable to pet loss as they are to human loss.

Victoria Volk: In the United States alone, it is estimated that there are more than fourteen million pet deaths each year, and death of a pet is an obvious heartbreaking loss, but and it can occur in many ways. Including pets that run away or are surrendered due to financial reasons. These losses combined account for nearly forty million new grievers every single year. So given these the dimension of the problem, you would think there would be a tremendous number of resources available for those who have lost a beloved pet, and you would be wrong. Maybe after a pet loss, you phone yourself googling how to get over the loss of a pet, and you discover that there’s probably very little effective guidance for grieving pet owners. There are first-person books in which grieving pet owners describe their pain, sometimes in very poetic language. And yes, there are other books that provides a measure of comfort by helping the griever not feel so alone. And yet, again, there are some support groups where people can talk about the pain they feel in a safe nonjudgmental environment, but those books and those groups tend to provide only short term not the kind of long-term completion of the grief caused by the death of your pet.

Victoria Volk: As I’ve talked about, compounding the problem is fact that friends and even family often don’t understand or accept the intensity of the grief we feel when our pets die. And that sad fact makes many pet grievers isolate from human contact for fear they will be judged. The main goal of grief recovery method in working with, within the context of human relationships is to become complete. It might reuse words complete or completion or working through what is emotionally incomplete. Right? And So we generally don’t have arguments with our pets, but we’re often left feeling unfinished with things we’d hope to do with them but never did. Or maybe that was a traumatic end to the relationship with a pet, maybe they ran away, or maybe you had to euthanize your pet as my previous guest Maha did. That is a really difficult decision to have to make and that’s where a lot of grievers find themselves kind of stuck in that emotional loss that the deep sense of regret sometimes over the loss of their pet. Part of what makes a relationship with their pets different from our human ones is that there aren’t usually as many things that would fall into the category of different as it relates to day-to-day interactions. When we say, within the context of human relationships, grief is that anything that you wish would have been different, better, or more. And so if it’s when you start thinking about some of the events that surround the end of your pet’s life or that end of that relationship that you might find yourself questioning decisions that you had to make. If you think about it, you’ll realize that those decisions which were often about medical concerns were not directly about your long-term emotional relationship with your pet. But since you felt responsible for your pet’s well-being. The end-of-life issues can become very emotional for you as you go over and over the circumstances that led up to the death, for example. After your pet dies, for example, you might have told the story of what happened at the end of your pet’s life many times to friends and family, yet you may still be having a difficult time adapting to your life and the changes you perceive as the result of the absence of your companion, you may have begun to realize that repeating the story is not freeing you from the painful feelings you have concerning whether or not you did the right things. So you get caught in this this loop. For many years. And sometimes even decades as you replay the circumstances over and over in your heart and in your head. As a result, you just tend to isolate further and further from people, and even other animals who are or might be part of your life. And so there’s so many different scenarios as to what happens at the end of a relationship with a pet that I’m not gonna go into and give a bunch of examples, but and it doesn’t matter. Right?

Victoria Volk: Because the loss of a pet is the loss of a pet. It doesn’t matter how that happened in the grand scheme of things because the process of what we take you through through the Pet loss Program is still the same. That doesn’t change. With Pet loss, we’re still gonna create a relationship graph, you’re still going to create the different components of the recovery categories. You’re going to write out your significant emotional statements and you still finish with the completion letter, none of that changes in the pet loss program as opposed to the grief recovery loss program for human relationships.

Victoria Volk: And even after the pet loss program, there’s still work to do, right? Because oftentimes after the loss of a pet or even a human being, right, there’s this cleanup work where looking at the outside reminders of the loss, some grieving pet owners hold on to everything that represents the pet that died. That is called enshrinement. We can actually do that with humans. Like, keep this is when you keep the bedroom the exact same way or, you know, create like this shrine really of the person that you lost with their things and their trinkets and whatnot. And so this is called what we call in grief recovery enshrinement. As Maha was going through the loss of her pet and grieving him before he even passed, as an end-of-life doula, with humans, I had recommended to her that she reach out to a local end-of-life doula who could support her in live in person through the loss of her pet because I knew how important her pet was to her and I’m however far away I am from California, thousands of miles away, I was unable to be present to support her in that way. And so she did that. She reached out to a local end-of-life doula And that was incredibly serving, helpful, and healing for her.

Victoria Volk: And so I would recommend to you too if you’re facing the loss of your pet and you just have no idea where to turn or what to do and lack the support either from loved ones or friends. I highly recommend see if there is a local end-of-life doula that is willing to hold your hand through that process and guide you through some maybe some painful things and emotions that come up, but also to help you in what Maha’s end-of-life doula did was create a ritual around her dog blake’s passing. She brought the dog home, they washed him, and bathed him, and just it was this ritualistic memorial service of sorts that she was able to honor his life in what he meant to her. And I think that wasn’t from what she described, very healing.

Victoria Volk: And so I would go back and listen to that episode and maybe feel some inspiration around that as being possible for you too. If you have found this information helpful, I highly recommend to dig more deep into the details, I would recommend getting a copy of the book, The Grief Recovery Handbook for Pet Loss. I will link to it in the show notes. I will also link to an organization or a company or business that actually creates memorials for pets and also a link to I think they create animal earns and things like that. A link to that in the show notes as well. Any other links I can think of or I will add in the show notes some resources for those of you who may be in this situation where you’re having to prepare to say goodbye to your beloved pet or maybe you had a pet that passed away or ran away or you had to rehome for whatever reason. I hope this podcast episode was helpful for you in recognizing that you are not alone.

Victoria Volk: Of course, there are millions of us animal lovers, pet lovers out there. And if there’s so many of us, clearly, that we’re spending billions of dollars on our pets and we love our pets fiercely, then why is it still one of the most minimized losses. Why are we still saying things to people? Like, oh, that’s okay. You can get a new dog. Just go down to the pet store, get a new dog tomorrow. We need to stop that. We need to stop that language and just hold each other with compassion. That just because you feel like you can just go down to the pet store tomorrow and replace your dog doesn’t mean the next person feels that way. So it’s honoring each other where we’re at and check out the book. I think you’d find it very helpful if you are wanting to work through a pet loss that you’ve had. I will put a link in the show notes as well to my program where we can work one-on-one online, and remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

Ep 165 Maha Bodhi | Part II: The Pet Loss & The Surrender That Cracked Me Open

Maha Bodhi | Part II: The Pet Loss & The Surrender That Cracked Me Open

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY: 

This week’s guest, Maha Bodhi, who previously appeared on the podcast in season 3, shares her experience of saying goodbye to her dog and the grief she experienced as a result. Having to choose what she felt was right for her pet versus hoping nature would take its course is a struggle many pet owners face when their pet reaches the end of their life.

Pet loss is one of the most minimized losses. Those who don’t experience pet loss, and many grievers, often see pets as being replaceable. Although Maha did attempt to replace Blake’s loss with another dog a month after his passing, she quickly realized it wasn’t the best decision for herself or the other dog.

In the following months, Maha was reminded of what she had learned through several Heart with Ears sessions with me, Victoria, while her dog, Blake, was preparing to transition. And that was that grief needs to be honored, felt, and addressed. One of the ways we can do that, which I had shared with Maha, is through the Grief Recovery Method, as described in The Grief Recovery Handbook.

Maha took herself through the method in the book and found tremendous value and relief. Although going it alone is not recommended for reasons explained in this episode, Maha gained new knowledge and tools that help her better support herself and others during times of challenge.

“The degree of your surrender is the degree of your success.” – Maha Bodhi

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Victoria Volk: Welcome listeners to grieving voices. Today, I’m excited to bring back a previous guest for a part two recording Maha Bodhi, we initially recorded, and you can I’m gonna link to the episode in the show notes, but it was from season three episode one zero nine, a quest for inner peace and freedom. And thank you so much, first of all, for coming back to record with me and the reason why I wanted to have you back is because since we recorded, you had a devastating loss that you’ve worked through and you’ve moved through. And so you’re here to share that experience. And also, what’s kind of just blown up in your world since in a good way. So thank you so much for coming back.

Maha Bodhi: Thanks for having me, Victoria. I’m so excited to be here. And I’ve been looking forward to our conversation to follow up on our previous podcast. So, yeah, I’m excited to be here.

Victoria Volk: I had actually met Maha initially at a women’s convention thing. And you’re a public speaker there and, I don’t know, we connected after and kept in touch, and I actually invited you on my podcast. That was that first episode. And after that, you had reached out to me because you blake, your dog was incredibly sick, and he was going to be passing. That’s why I wanted to have you back here too to speak to that experience because it hasn’t really been covered on this podcast before. But also because you’re kind of on the other side of it now, and I want people to realize the importance of that loss that it’s because it is so minimized in our society, and if you would mind taking it from here and just speaking to that experience.

Maha Bodhi: Yes, absolutely. So I really, you know, I’m a a yogi first and foremost, and I truly believe that the universe always gives you the right people at the right time in your life that can support you throughout your journey. And we have met in the Woman Business Summit in the Conference where I was a public I was, like, the inspirational speaker, the keynote, and that’s how we connected, and you have this great podcast in Europe. You’re certified in Grief recovery, and that’s kind of your area of expertise and your superpower. And when we did the initial podcast, I truly haven’t experienced a tremendous loss in my life, so I wasn’t able to really speak to that. And it’s interesting that we did our podcast and that’s it and we went our separate ways.

Maha Bodhi: And then my dog and he was such an important figure in my life. Like, my dog was or I don’t have kids and we were really we had such as deep on it and I know a lot of dog parents can relate to this, but we were inseparable where I go. He goes. I would always tell my friends he’s part of me like a limb. Like he’s just always with me. We travel together. We do yoga together. You know? I do everything with him. And if, you know, I have even if it’s a a work opportunity and they don’t allow dogs, like, I won’t go. Like, that’s how I refused to leave him behind. And when I got him, he was he’s a he’s a rescue. So we really didn’t know how old he was. They told me he’s two years old, and then I took him to a vet, and they said he the vet said he’s five years old. But we really couldn’t tell.

Maha Bodhi: But I had him for eight years, and I thought that I still had more time with him. So I was really I was not prepared. It was a shock to me, and it happened so quickly, so fast that I took him to the vet and they said he has kidney cancer and he has and he’s gonna and he’s gonna die. Like, be prepared to make arrangement. I knew that this was gonna be a big deal for me. And I knew that this thing can I didn’t want it to break me. So I knew that I needed support. And I wanted expert support.

Maha Bodhi: And so I reached out to you right away because I knew you were certified in Grief recovery. You also kindly suggested that I hire an end-of-life Doula, which I didn’t even know such job existed, which I am so grateful that it exists because it’s such noble work to help people in, you know, the most difficult time of their lives. And like you said, I really think that our dog’s passing the way is really underrated. Like, when you tell someone my dog is not like, oh, I’m sorry. And that’s pretty much it. But for me, he was my whole life. He was like my child, mine, everything. And like I mentioned, like, we wake up together, we sleep together with you. So then there’s this emptiness when he’s gone. It’s like, what am I gonna do when he’s gone? And I really wanted the support that I need. I wanted to process this in the healthiest way possible. I know it was gonna be painful. I know it was gonna be hard. And so I just needed support. And we did a few sessions together, and it was tremendously helpful. And the doula was because you’re not we’re not in the same physical location. So the doula was actually here in Los Angeles, so she was able to come over and really had really hold my hand step by step. You’re helping me there, and she’s helping me. So I really got incredible support, and I’m truly grateful. Because with pets, it’s not just that, oh, your pet is dying, you have to make a decision. The most difficult decision that there ever is is whether you help them cross over to the other side or you let kind of nature take its course. And that’s the most difficult decision. And I just felt like oh my god, not only am I grieving his loss, grieving his illness, seeing him suffering, but now I actually have to make this the hardest decision that I’ve ever made is like how you and it has to happen quickly. It’s not like, oh, you have time to think about this. You have it’s like he’s suffering and you have to think and it was against everything in my nature. Are you telling me that I’m supposed to, like, I’m just gonna say, like, kill my own dog, like, that’s not in my nature, that’s not. And but then you see him suffering And I and it was just like, okay, what do I do here? And that’s where you helped me. And she helped me.

Maha Bodhi: And I’m a deep meditator. And I tried to we even did Reiki with my dog together, and I really tried to tap into his energy. But I also knew him so well because of our bond. And I knew he was kinda done. He was done and who’s ready to go. And animals, they’re different. They don’t have the ego that we have the clinging on to the life that we as human have. Like, he knew that his journey was over and his soul was ready to leave his body and he was okay with that. And so I just had to hold his hand and help him pass through when I had to make that difficult decision with the help of the doula. So we did everything together step by step. I actually I didn’t want to do the unionization, but what ended up happening is that he ended up having seizures. Like really, really bad seizures. I could hear his, like, bone clicking. And I just was like, I can’t, like, if it was me and I’m having these intense seizures, I would want somebody to help me pass away peacefully. So that’s what I did. And it was an emergency because it was just hot. It was, like, at it was, like, at three in the morning and then and I called the doula. I mean, how amazing is she? She’s, like, I’m on call. My phone is, let me know, and I’ll come with you. And I call her, and we go at three in the morning, we go to the hospital, and the hospital was amazing, and I’m just so grateful that we even have these resources and we have these people and we have access to this support because I’m not originally from the United States and most other countries don’t have these kind of resources. They don’t have an animal hospital, an animal room, where you can go at three in the morning and the vet is there and the staff is there and and and they know what they’re doing, their pros, and they know how to help you. And they put me in a private room and we were there with him the whole time. And I will say that I don’t have regrets. I feel like I did the right thing to do because of my the meditations and the energy that I was tapping in. I just felt like this is this is just the right humane thing to do for him. And then we and in the hospital, they take they take the that they take the pet and they cremate him or whatever you decide you wanna do. But because I had my doula, I took him back. I took him back and we washed him at home, and we did a ceremony, and we did a vigil, and it was really truly healing for me. It really gave me that closure because it was really, really stressful before and I had to make the decision and it was just so and then once thou was over and I was really able to grieve and sit with him and sit with and pet him and he’s just there’s a put flowers around him and just meditate and process the pain. And I learned this from both of you to really give myself permission to breathe. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to feel pain. And I would sit every single day and just allow myself to cry and sit and really create space. And I’m like, I’m just gonna sit here and I’m gonna and I cry and I but until I don’t feel like crying anymore, I’m not gonna resist it. I’m not gonna try to distract myself. I’m not gonna try to run away from this pain. I’m gonna honor this, this like that came into my life. And I will say that it was really, really healthy and I kept seeing you and I kept seeing the doula after a few times and until I felt like, okay, I think I’m now in a good healthy place. And I’m ready to take the next step of the journey. So really thank you to you, Victoria so much you played a tremendous role in this experience that I had.

Victoria Volk: Thank you for sharing all of that. What people don’t really may not realize, like, you didn’t and maybe many other people listening don’t. Is that because I’m an end-trained end-of-life doula, and it hadn’t occurred to me either, even in my local area to pitch myself as an end-of-life doula to support people with their animals passing. Right? Like, as an end-of-life doula, we have this training that can transfer into these other areas of people’s lives like pet loss. And so I’m glad that you I’m glad that I had that idea to share with you and that you took it upon yourself to do that.

Maha Bodhi: I did not even I have heard of, like, the birth doulas that helped bring life into the world, but I did never heard about end-of-life doulas. And I think people need to know that there is support available and there is a healthy way to process this. You don’t need to do it alone.

Victoria Volk: And had this end-of-life doula, had she ever helped others, as a service in with pet loss before?

Maha Bodhi: Yeah. She’s Verint.

Victoria Volk: Okay.

Maha Bodhi: Yeah. She’s Verint. She works mostly, like, with people that are past in the way, but also she said, oh yeah, with animals and she also said that it’s very underrated and people think, oh, it’s just a dog, it’s just a pet, but that loss is huge for me.

Victoria Volk: Well, and just like people who have a spouse. Right? A spouse passes away. That person becomes very much a fabric of your daily life. You have breakfast together or you have dinner together or you mow the lawn together, regularly what are all these activities, right, that you do on a day to day basis with a spouse, you were doing with your pet. And our pets are involved in our daily lives.

Maha Bodhi: So it. They don’t talk. They don’t, pets are just so unconditionally loving. And there’s also a chemical literally, a chemical withdrawal that happens because dogs are known to induce dopamine, induce those happy hormones in the brain and the body. They say just snuggling with your dog induces all sorts of chemicals that induce happiness, induce joy. And there is a chemical withdrawal that happens when I’ve been living with the stock for eight years I come home, and he’s jumping, and I’m smiling. Now when I come home, like, I don’t have a reason to smile. I don’t have a reason to giggle, to laugh, to run around because there’s no one there. And so that’s like literally a chemical withdraw that your brain has been used to your body has been used to inducing, and now it’s gone, and it really drops your energy. But I mean, like I said, because of the grief recovery, and, like, your support and we’re gonna talk about this in a little bit, I was really able to to process it in a healthy way.

Victoria Volk: And I do recall after he passed, you were looking for another pet, which is also our inclination. Right? Like, we want to replace that loss and

Maha Bodhi: Who said, don’t do it?

Victoria Volk: Yeah.

Maha Bodhi: I’m just gonna be really transparent. I’m gonna be really honest and I struggled with this a lot. But I was looking for another pet and you told me don’t do it because you’re just gonna replace you’re trying to replace your dog. And it just doesn’t work first. And I think you even sent me an article and I read the article And I just I’m just so emotional. And it hasn’t been, like, maybe a month since Blake, my dog passed away. And I just saw this furry animal online, and then he looks exactly like Blake. And I was like, I’m just gonna go and get this dog. And I went and I got this dog and I mean, it didn’t work out. Believe it or not, because I’m a dog lover. And I was like, oh, I will love any dog. It’s unconditional love, and it’s and even though I was aware because I was educated by you and I read the books and I understood that they say, oh, don’t just try to replace the dog. And I’m like, okay, this is a new dog. He’s a puppy. Right? Like, when he passed away, it was older, it was mature, so it’s a completely different energy. This is a one-year-old puppy active hyper different energy. We haven’t bonded, this is a new completely new relationship And so I even though cognitively, like, intellectually, I was aware of that, and still the reality of it was very different. And so it was very difficult for us to bond even though I tried. And I would walk him and we’d try to do training sessions, and we and we did all these things and he and he was very high energy. If I wasn’t breathing, it would have worked out. But he needed a lot of energy and a lot of attention that I didn’t have the capacity at that time to do. He was chewing everything, chewing the furniture, chewing the remote, chewing my shoes, and Blake was beyond that phase in his life. And so that dog needed more training, more energy, more. And if I was in a like I said, in a good place, I would’ve probably would be more ready for that, but I wasn’t. And it was because then what I was looking for was an emotional support animal. And what this dog ended up being, I was the one who needed to support the dog. And so it just it wasn’t fair for the dog. And the dog didn’t bond with me. So the dog, they’re highly intelligent. They’re so they’re just feelings. Right? They’re all, like, just intuition. They don’t intellectualize. And so the dog felt like this isn’t right. And so we tried for two months we did trainings. We hired professional dog trainers. And it was just the dog was so unhappy. Would distract the house, would it would try to bite me, would try to like, it was just the I can tell the dog was like, you’re not my mommy, I don’t wanna be here, and it was really sad and I had to rehome the dog. And I will say that I always judged people that overwhelm the dog. And I would always say there’s no bad dog. There’s only a bad owner. And this experience allowed me to change my mind about a lot of things. It was a learning experience, and it was my mistake that I didn’t honor the process grieving and I didn’t give myself time to grieve and I thought this would be just a quick fix and everything is gonna be okay and it wasn’t and it was really really hard and I was ashamed I will say to rehome him because people will come, where’s your dog? Where’s your dog? And I just feels so like a really bad person to say I had to overwhelm the dog. But guess what? The dog ended up having exactly the parent that he needed. Right? He now he’s happy. I even asked the new mom. I was like, is he chewing? It’s just like, no. He doesn’t chew in her house. He doesn’t do destructive things at her house. And so it was the energy. Just wasn’t the right energy. And ever since I haven’t, I haven’t gotten another dog. I was like, when the time is right, it’s gonna happen, and the right dog will find me, and I will find the right dog.

Maha Bodhi: But it’s definitely been a tremendously growth experience that impacted the work that I do. I’m an inspirational speaker. I’m a yoga instructor. I live with retreats and teacher trainings and all these things. And it really added a level of depth of my empathy, of my compassion, to people, to loss, to grief, and to understand it instead of running away from it. So I will say, like, before that, I was very focused on positive mindset, positive thinking moving forward And this was kind of the missing piece of the puzzle because the ying and the ying, that’s really part of life. And it is superficial for us to just focus on, yes, positive, positive and moving forward is a great way to live life. But we also really need to honor and process the darkness and process the grief. And there is multiple healthy ways to do this. And if you don’t and if you try to skip steps and you’ve tried to hack your way through it, it keeps building up, it’s building up, and it’s gonna come out one way or another, and you’re just gonna make mistakes. And that’s the beauty of life. It keeps nudging you in the right direction and it gives you exactly what you need until you face, what you need to face. And that’s how you move. And it’s called I’m sure you’ve heard the spelling post-traumatic growth versus post-traumatic stress, that’s how you choose to grow instead of stress and get stuck.

Victoria Volk: Thank you for sharing all that because I did not know that piece that you had actually gotten another dog in all of that experience. So thank you for sharing that. I mean, for people listening too, it’s it doesn’t have to be a dog. I mean, this can apply to relationships too, friendships, spouses. Like, I mean, this is what we do. This is our like, are instinct to do. We, like, we just wanna we wanna get over the pain. Right? And so we just wanna feel better and it just doesn’t work to push yourself through it or to sweep it under the rug and try to just

Maha Bodhi: Gonna come out one way or another, energy. It’s literally energy. And if you don’t give that energy time to liberate itself to process, to move through you, right? We know that saying about emotions or energy in motion, so they wanted to move, they want to. The energies want to be liberated. It’s us that keep them stuck when we resisted, when we try to cheat, when we try to skip steps, that’s when things get messed up. But if we allow nature to take its course. And we honor the process that’s where growth in learning happens. That’s where opportunity really happens. And it builds care and it makes you a better human in life and it makes you then better in relationship in your future because you’ve healed and you’ve processed what he’s processing and you’re not gonna dump your expectations and your pain and all the past information on this new relationship. So it’s not even fair to the new relationship just like with my dog. It wasn’t fair to that dog, and the dog was happier with someone else. And it’s the same thing like you said, with the spouse, with the relationship, with the human being. So we’re always trying to avoid pain as humans. It’s in our nature to do whatever we can do to avoid the pain, to run away from no one wants to hurt. Right? But it’s kinda counterintuitive that the caves you fear to enter, hold the treasures that you seek Joseph Campbell said that. And I always say that in my teachings, but leaning into the pain and processing the pain and allowing it to feel your feelings I mean, I can’t stress this enough to feel your feelings. And I’m not talking about to feel the story behind the feelings, but actually to feel the sensations of the feeling, and a lot of people don’t know how to discern between the two. So, like, feeling your feelings is, like, oh, I like, oh, I’m feeling I’m feeling sad. I feel I missed this person. That’s an emotion. That’s still you’re still at the level of the mind. But to feel the feelings, it’s this what is this sensation? This you’re missing this person or you’re hurting. You’re grieving. You’re you’re experiencing loss. What is how does that manifest physically in your body? It’s a physical sensation. So if I pinch you, The pinch, it’s a physical sensation. So is it sharp? Is it heaviness in your chest? Is it hollow stomach is it a fidgeting, a shaking in the legs. So it’s a sensation and it really took me a long time to get this. And so when we feel that heaviness in the chest, when we feel I sometimes I used to feel like my arm goes numb. And so what happens is that when we feel the sensation, the brain freaks out, and it’s like, okay, solution, solution, solution. Let’s run away from this. What do I? Because the brain is creative. Problem solving. Okay. Get another dog. Okay. Let’s go shopping. Okay. Let’s binge-watch. Okay. Let’s grab the drink. Let’s grab the alcohol. Let’s let’s do something so I don’t feel this sharpness, this numbiness, this heaviness. But the secret is that you actually wanna lean into it. You wanna sit with this. You wanna hold your own hand. And be like, I’m gonna be here. We’re gonna stay here and it’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna feel the feelings. And I’m not gonna abandon you. I’m not gonna neglect you like how everyone did in your life, I we talked about my upbringing in my past. And so we learned this abandonment. It’s really your abandoning yourself when you grab the drink, when you grab, you turn on the TV or you grab your phone. You’re doing what people who abandoned you did to you and you’re just repeating the cycle. But if you say, hey, you know what? I’m not going I’m gonna love you unconditionally. And I’m not gonna leave you when you’re hurting. I’m gonna be with you when you’re hurting. And I’m gonna feel the hurt, and we’re gonna be in this together. And then this tremendous liberation of energy happens. When you tell your brain, hey, you know what? You can go offline. You don’t need There’s no problem to solve. Okay? Just it’s okay. It’s safe to feel.
You can just be quiet and I’m gonna feel my feels. I’m not gonna try to fix it. I’m not gonna try to change it. I’m not gonna try to solve for it. I’m just going to feel it. It’s as simple as that.

Maha Bodhi: And the moment you wholeheartedly do this at the liberation of energy because that energy that’s being consumed and overloaded and trying to find an escape is now liberated. And there is this sense of freedom, and that’s where really true healing happens. And it’s almost like a superpower because you’re no longer afraid of the pain. And that translates in so many areas in your life, Victoria. I mean, it translates it in you not being afraid in the world anymore. You’re able to take more risks because you’re not afraid of the pain. You’re not afraid of rejection. You’re not afraid of doubt. You’re not afraid of uncertainty. You’re not afraid of the unknown because, hey, no matter what life throws at me, I’m I’m okay with that. I’m okay with feeling the feels. I’m okay with feeling the pain. And that translates into confidence in the world that translates and you’re really wholeheartedly showing up. Here I am, whole complete, not perfect, but whole and complete, vulnerable. Yes, I’m a human being. Yes, I have flaws, but I’m okay with that. And I accept myself unconditionally, and it all starts with leaning into the pain and allowing yourself to feel the sensations in your body and not running away from it.

Victoria Volk: So good. And when people listening, they couldn’t see what I was seeing unless they’re watching this on YouTube, but you kind of gestured to your left shoulder, which energetically is grief and despair. In biofuel tuning, that’s where we see often is grief and despair is off the left shoulder. So I just wanted to share that with.

Maha Bodhi: And when we worked together, you touched upon that because we worked and you would ask me these things where do you feel it in your body, and I didn’t even need to think about it. Like, I mean, right away, for me, it’s always my heart and then my left sided. And all and if it’s intense, like, when like, that it goes all the way down to my left arm, to my left fingertips, and normally I would freak out, before I learned about going for covering the pond how it manifests in the body and all these things and feeling the feels I would be like, oh my god my arm is going numb. Like, oh, let’s call the doctor. Let’s, what’s happening. Right? But now I understand this. And I understand what’s happening, and I just literally bold myself. Like, it’s okay. I know you’re hurting right now, and it’s okay.

Victoria Volk: So when you had this realization that this second dog was not going to replace Blake, that you had to do something for yourself to get to move through this. What did that look like? What was that process for you then?

Maha Bodhi: I rehome the dog and I just took a few moments. I just took it one day at a time to be honest. I took it one day at a time once at that time. And, I’m a yoga teacher. I have a very strong yoga practice, and I embody yoga, not just, I don’t know, like, a lot of people think yoga is an exercise. It’s stretching and exposes and it’s so much deeper than that. And for me, I embody it as a way of being I believe that yoga is a science. It’s a science of being in the world. It’s a science of living healthy in the world. Not only in your body, but in your mind and in your heart. And so when stress builds up in your body, when your arm goes numb, when your chest is hurting, that’s energy in your body. And when we move the body in a very specific way, in a very mindful way, you’re helping that energy to process. You’re helping that energy to move. So yoga is deeply connected to the nervous system. It’s connected to the mind, to the brain.

Maha Bodhi: So I had just had my practices, and I check-in with myself every morning I wake up and I’m like, okay, what is the diagnose? How am I feeling today? Because sometimes if you’re breathing too intensely and the body is too overwhelmed, you actually don’t wanna do the invigorating sweaty power yoga classes. You might wanna move a little bit slower and a little bit more gentle and do the more gentle flow. So I would every morning wake up and check-in with myself, how am I feeling today? Do I need to pick it up a notch? Do I need to slow it down? In the evening, I always journal to process my thoughts, so they’re not just floating in my head and overwhelming. So I always write I always start with gratitude because we do have a negativity bias that the brain automatically wants protect you from danger. So the brain is always looking around what can go wrong. And so practicing gratitude is grabbing the steering wheel and be like, no, no, no, yes. There are hard things in life, but there’s also really good things in life, and let’s not lose track of those good things. So I would right away start to write three things that I’m grateful for, and they could be as simple as, I don’t know. I had a a nice smoothy today. You know? It’s it could be just as simple as that. And then if there’s something that I’ve been struggling with, I’ll key I’ll start to process it and I’ll start to write it down. In the moment you start to write things down, you it creates a little bit of clarity and you will start to really see things and you start to see even patterns in your journal and you start to see, okay, this is just, me in my default state and I actually have control in in the way that I process information in the way I process the world.

Maha Bodhi: So I always say we see things not with our eyes. We see things with our mind. And it was Dr. Wayne Dyer that famously said when you change the way you look at things, the things that you’ll look at begin to change. Right? And so and that’s what journaling does for me. It changes the way I see things, it changes the way I process information, and it gives me an opportunity to make a choice because we always, always have a choice even though when it doesn’t look like we do, we have a choice.

Maha Bodhi: So those are my practices for the longest longest time, yoga, journaling, and my work, my work is really participating and helping people and being of service and contributing to society. And so because my work is deeply integrated with my personality, there’s I’m very fortunate. And you this. I used to work in the corporate world, so it wasn’t always like this. I used to have to be two separate people. I used to be have to be, Maha at home and then Maha at work. But because of now I’m so fortunate that I get to do what I love, and I am a living, breathing embodiment of what the practice of yoga is, there is no separation. So it’s either I’m either practicing yoga or I’m teaching yoga or I’m creating something around yoga. And that I really heal through the work. When you do meaningful, purposeful work, you heal through the work and then you see people come to me and I can be just saying something so simple and they come to me thank you so much. You have no idea how much I needed to hear that. I don’t know how you knew what I was going through. And I’m like, I didn’t. No. But you need but you heard exactly what you needed to do. And yoga is so universal that it applies to literally almost every person no matter what you’re going through.

Maha Bodhi: So really that’s that’s how it helped me through. It wasn’t until recently that I actually did the grief recovery program. And I know when we were working together, you were telling me, and it was honestly thanks to you because I didn’t even know it. It even existed. I didn’t know much about grief. I’m gonna say that during those things to you that I really am now educated. You recommended. You and you kept drilling it. You’re like because we log in and we’d have a session like this, and I’m just, like, complaining complaining complaining. Like telling you about all my pain and what I’m going through. And you keep telling me you have to do the program. And I think I was just in so much pain at the time, and enrolling in a program felt overwhelming. And I was like, oh my god. I am dealing with this, and now I have to do a program, and I have to, like, write things and all these things. And I was like, I just don’t have the mental capacity to do it.

Maha Bodhi: So again, I was trying to skip steps. Again, I was trying to cheat my way through. And like I just mentioned earlier, there’s it comes out one way or another. That energy is gonna be dispersed. It’s gonna slowed one way or another. So it wasn’t until very recently, and I think it’s been, like, more than a year since we did our sessions. And it wasn’t until very recently that I kept feeling this level of grief. And you know grief is not like, okay, my dog died and that was a horrible thing, but it’s not it’s not just that grief. It’s all the griefs that you felt from the day you were born, one on top of the other, on top of that that you never processed in a healthy way. So that energy kept building up, building up, building up until, the dog dies, and then it’s and then it’s an explosion. And so then that just kept happening. I just noticed that I’m very sensitive and I’m very easily I don’t like the word triggered, but I just I I just wanted to I I just wanted I’m like, okay. There’s something off here. There’s something off here, and it just won’t go away. And I noticed because of my love of awareness, this voice in your head or this pain in your body. If you don’t pay attention to it, it just keeps getting louder and louder. And louder until it forces you to stop and drop everything and look at me. That’s what it’s saying. It saying, look at me, I need your attention. And that’s really just reached a point where it happened, and I can’t tell you that it’s like a specific incident. I think it was just an accumulation of events. And I was like, you know what? I need to nip this in the butt. I need to find the source of this grief and process it in a healthy way. And I remembered you and I remember the grief recovery program. And I was like, let me look this up. And I looked it up, and I found the book, and I bought the book, and I started reading the book. And I just started doing the exercise because it’s literally a workbook and it’s a step-by-step workbook and I just kept doing it. And I’m not gonna lie to you even though, I’m in this field of healing. I’m a yogi and all these things. It’s not for the faint of heart, and I was nervous. And I honestly see the value of having someone like you a guide to guide you through. I just thought I was like, I’ll just do it by myself, and I just did it by myself. And in the book, they always say it’s better. So much better to work with someone, but they also give you an option to to do it on your own. So I just follow the instructions to do it on my own, and I drew the graph the timeline of my and it always usually starts with your parents because that’s, like, the oldest grief ever. It always starts there. And so I did that and I did one for my mother and I did one for my father and I was so scared and because they tell you to write things, to process, to write the statements. I’m like, are they gonna tell me to show them this statement?

Maha Bodhi: And I was like, I almost stopped at that point because I was my subconscious mind locked in that fear, just locked in and I stopped at that crucial point, which I’m not supposed to stop. And I stopped, for a couple of days, I stopped just like, oh, tomorrow, tomorrow. Like, you know, like, I’m just so scared. And then and then I felt that the energy. Right? It’s like it’s like it wants to be released, and it’s like I’m like I stopped in the wrong moment. And I’m like, this is not gonna go away until I cross the finish line. I need to cross the finish line. And I need to trust. I need to trust the process. This grief recovery program was built in the eighties or something. Right? So it’s time-tested.

Maha Bodhi: Over forty years. Yeah.

Maha Bodhi: I don’t know, like, how many thousands and thousands of people have been, you know, went through the program and it’s highly highly recommended. So I was just like, You know what? You have to trust to this and not trust your fear. They know what they’re doing. Let’s just finish it. And if it ever gets too scary, you could always stop. So then I finish it, and it’s funny the moment I opened the book. It’s like the only I read, like, flipped to the next state. Exactly. You should never do not send this letter to the person that you’re, you know, mad with or grieving with or and I was like, okay. There’s no confrontation. This is really more about me and my feelings and my grief, and my personal journey because really that’s what it’s always about. It’s your relationship with yourself more than your relationship with other people. It’s your relationship to the grief. It’s your relationship to the pain, not the person that caused the pain. And so I did I finished it all the way to the end and I instantly instantly felt a weight lifted off my shoulder, off my that literally, that physical pain that I told you in my chest, in my arm. It was like, like, lifted, like, immediately. And I was like, oh my god. Why did I wait this long? Why did I not listen to Victoria?

Victoria Volk: It’s never too soon. It’s never too late.

Maha Bodhi: And just because, like, well, why did I kept torturing myself for this long? You know, and I’m very strong. I’m a very strong person. I think that didn’t serve me because I’m like, I’m strong. I can handle this. I can do this. But there’s no reason to suffer. There’s no reason to power through this, and they talk about this in the book, like, if you have a cut, like, if you’re hurt, are you gonna wait? Are you gonna, like, oh, next year, I’ll deal with it. I’m like,

Victoria Volk: Let me just let me just let it let’s just let it fester and ooze with bacteria first.

Speaker 1: I’m strong. I’m tough. I’m gonna tough it out versus, like, you immediately wanted to clean it up and you wanna nurture and intend to and allow it to heal in a way that it deserves to be healed.

Victoria Volk: Well, and thank you for sharing that because I didn’t know that either. And so to have you share the testimonial of the process for you is beneficial for the listeners to hear. I do want to share that so I tried it alone too. I was just like you. However, I was not I wasn’t as what’s the word? I hadn’t evolved myself and my growth to the point where you had been at the time that you did this on your own, for me to have this awareness of myself to do it on my own. I tried to do it on my own and I realized really quickly that I needed, one, the accountability because for exactly the reason you said, Yes. Because this and even in the program when I’m working with someone in person or online, I tell them you know, next week, you’re not gonna wanna get on Zoom with me. You’re not gonna wanna put your shoes on and get out the door. And I’m telling you, do it anyway because when you’ve already pulled off that scab. Right? And if you don’t tend to that wound, this is when those old behaviors and these old patterns start to come back. And it can actually put you back in progress. Like, you can actually go even it’s like when you lose fifty pounds and then you gain a hundred. Right? Because you fall off the wagon and you just give up on yourself. It’s the same way in this work. And so I don’t encourage anybody to do it on their own for those reasons. Because it can

Maha Bodhi: Of course. I agree. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: However, you’re different. Everybody’s different, but you are in a different place in your own evolution of where you were too. Yes. And you were you I know I feel in my heart that had you felt yourself stuck in that place that you would have reached out to me.

Maha Bodhi: Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: Or another grief recovery specialist that you could have finished that work with?

Maha Bodhi: Yeah. Absolutely. Yes.

Victoria Volk: So I think it’s important for listeners to know, yes. Grab the book. Learn a lot because you will. You will learn a lot. But don’t go into it, adamant, hell or high water, you’re gonna do this yourself because you don’t wanna set yourself up for, first of all, that disappointment. Right? And then there’s shame in that too. Right? Gosh. Canning. I can’t do this. I just I can’t even heal. I can’t even do this myself. Like, you know what I mean? Then that

Maha Bodhi: Absolutely. Yeah. Now it’s it’s absolutely better to do it with with another person for accountability. Also for perspective to things that maybe you can see sometimes we get too caught up in our pain, in our shame, like you said,

Victoria Volk: Can’t see the label from inside the jar.

Maha Bodhi: Yeah. Exactly.

Victoria Volk: And for anyone listening to, it might be let’s say you’re in a household of people. Right? You live alone and not everybody lives alone. And so you might be afraid somebody might find your writings and things like that. Right? That can be a worry for some people. I actually just discovered an app. It’s called day one, and it’s for journaling with your voice. Okay. So for a lot of people, if they don’t feel like they can just for the journaling piece. Right? Like, I don’t suggest doing using day one to do this grief recovery work. But, I mean, if it helps you move forward and helps you get to a place where I can finally reach out for help. Right? Because sometimes we just need to realize, I can’t do this alone. I do need support because that was me for over thirty years. Right? I got this. Like, I can do this myself. You know, the DIY or that was me. But so how has this work going through that process now and being on this side of it, which I really fully wholeheartedly believed eventually some day you would circle back to. Because that’s what loss does. Right? It just kinda worms. Because I was even gonna ask you what loss like, what came up for you that would have been a better lead to the squad to you talking about that. But what losses came up after you lost Blake? But you just described that. But how has this work now? You mentioned briefly that it’s influenced or maybe it was before we started recording. It’s influenced your work and what you how you work with people today. But, yeah, what’s happened for you since doing this? How does it change things for you?

Maha Bodhi: Change my yeah, definitely with the work that I do, you know, I lead teacher trainings and these teacher trainings are trends formational, and they’re long, and they’re challenging, and they’re physically demanding, and it’s a two hundred hour train, and you go throughout and you go through this journey of ups and down. Sometimes you feel triumphant and sometimes you feel like, oh my god, this is too hard. And it could get emotional and your grief can come up because the mind and the body are deeply connected and we just talked about how the emotions manifest as a physical sensation in the body. And with yoga, what happens is that when you hold the pose because of the nature of the practice, you hold the pose, for a little bit longer than you would do in a gym and other workout. And you’re you’re guided to be present in the pose. And to quiet the mind because it is a meditation first and foremost and we add the poses to the meditation. So a lot of people get it mixed, and it’s just a workout. But if yoga is, first and foremost, the removal of the fluctuations that disturb the peace within the mind. That is the very definition of yoga according to Potentially in the yoga sutras. And so when yoga is taught, traditionally and properly, you’re in the yoga pose and it’s, yes, it’s challenging. Some can be very challenging. And you hold the pose, for a minimum five breaths. And you’re guided to breathe. You’re guided to quiet the mind. And be present to the challenge and not escape the challenge, which is literally a rehearsal. That’s why we call it a practice. Because it’s a practice for how to live life. It’s a practice of how to quiet down the mind and to be peaceful in the mind. And to be present in the heart and present in the body and present with the challenges and that’s how you kind of cross that threshold because it it challenges you to go be a little bit beyond your edge. Right? And that’s where growth happens. That’s where transformation happens.

Maha Bodhi: And so I see people when they struggle, sometimes you see people break down and cry, especially if they have trauma, if they have unprocessed grief, and they’re going through this journey. And there is this, they crying so sweet. They’re like, I’m so sorry and I’m like, why are you apologizing? Like, there’s nothing to apologize for. This is a beautiful opportunity for you to process what’s being demand it to be released, that your body has been probably craving a moment like this, a moment of liberation of this energy that has been stuck for, God knows how long in your body. And this is the only time that you’re able to be still enough and present enough and quiet enough for it to be released. So, cry. Go deeper into this pain. Don’t run away. Don’t apologize. Don’t try to fix it, don’t try to rush through it and just be with it.

Maha Bodhi: So literally what yoga is, it’s like an embodiment, a process, kinda a metaphor for your whole life. And so that’s the level of compassion and the level of understanding for me to recognize brief in others to recognize pain in others. And I know you know this. That loss is not always just loss of, death loss. So many things are considered lost, a grief of even just a dream you had, a potential that you thought is gonna be your future, and then it disappeared. That’s a loss. That’s a great losing a job is, you have to grief that. Losing that relationship. Even if it’s a brief small relationship, it’s the dream behind the relationship. That that’s what you’re grieving. So it can it can be so many different things and that just deepened my level of understanding of grief in that. And before that, before this experience that I had, I would probably be like, hey, you can do this, like, just breathe through it. Let’s you know, you’re stronger than you think you are because I’m such a motivational, inspirational person, but now I’m like b with this. Be present with this. I’m right here. I’m not running away. I’m gonna be here, and that’s okay. And I and I think that’s in a much healthier way. And like we talked about the balance of, yes, the lightness and also the darkness. And we wanna honor the darkness just as much as we’re honoring the lightness. And you see that symbol, I love it because it explains everything. Right? It’s the yin, the yang, the lightness, and the darkness. But within the darkness, right, there’s a little bit of light. And within the light, there’s a little bit of darkness. That it all belongs and it’s all part of the holistic experience, the holistic human journey. And once we understand that and we embrace that and we accept that as a whole. Really your life experience, the way you navigate through life, becomes way more graceful, way more peaceful, because you’re no longer grinding, you’re no longer hustling, any fix it mode, trying to change the world around you, and you’re literally flowing with the current. Right? Like, paddling down a canoe down the river and you’re letting that river kind of carry you through and you’re just in it for the ride. Yes, you’re navigating. Yes, you’re choosing where you’re going. But you’re literally trusting the current of life.

Victoria Volk: Trusting the current of life. I love that. Yeah. We have really difficult time trusting. Right? Trusting ourselves. And so we have a difficult time trusting others and trusting the process. Right? of of

Maha Bodhi: But that’s the level of them. It’s always trying to some. And the truth, it’s like so useless because that’s the energy that’s just being consumed and depleted and drained and really use useless way of using your mind, using your brain. It says that, like, the most sophisticated technology in the entire universe exists in your brain. Right? And no one gave you the manual. And everyone is using their brain in wrong. It’s so sad, but everyone is using their brain wrong, solve it, solve it, solve it. How can I fix it? How can I control the world around me? You cannot control the world around. People are gonna die, your heart is gonna get broken, bad, things are gonna happen, and good things are gonna happen and then you’re gonna grow and you’re gonna be stronger and you’re gonna succeed and you’re gonna laugh and you’re gonna love and you’re gonna be all these things are part of the human experience, but you trying to control it is a waste of energy is a waste of time. But being present for the experience and seeing what’s unfolding in front of you and then participating in this unfolding whether it’s positive or negative I’m not checked out. I’m going to participate. I’m here for it all.

Victoria Volk: And there are tools to help you do that.

Maha Bodhi: Absolutely. Yes. And I know you have you know your your grief program. I have my yoga program, and it’s not one size fits on. They’re all these they’re multiple tools and yeah. I’m a yoga teacher, but I need a grief recovery coach. I need an end-of-life doula too. Like, you need different things for different experiences that you have in your life. And there’s plenty of that. We are so fortunate to live in this day and age where we have, you know, access to resources and information.

Victoria Volk: And so please share with my listeners some of your tools and where can people find you and work with you. When you got cooking.

Maha Bodhi: I can

Victoria Volk: know you got something to know better.

Maha Bodhi: I will say that the most, like, in-depth and premier experience that you can have with me is my yoga teacher training. My yoga school was accepted by Yoga Alliance under elevated standard. It was unprecedented. They’re, like, a yoga they were, like, this is the fastest that we’ve ever accepted a yoga school. I put so much thought and so much work into it. And it’s really the work of my entire life that led me to this moment. So all the pain, all the grief, all the growth and all the strength that I accumulated in all the education throughout my life. And I truly believe that this is my offering to the world and this is the reason why I am here in the world is to teach the science of yoga, which is a science of how to be in the world. So it doesn’t really matter if you wanna be a yoga instructor, It’s a way to help you, like we talked about, navigate through life with more of a embrace, and you literally take your power back, you take your mind back, you take, control of your not external environment, your internal environment.

Victoria Volk: So where can people find you to learn that?

Maha Bodhi: Yogimaha.com. It’s my website. All my events are there. So my teacher training, the dates, all the details, how you can sign up, is there I lead yoga retreats, from time to time. So if there’s any upcoming retreats, you’re gonna see it on my website. I’m on social media, @yogimaha108, so you can follow me on Instagram, on Facebook. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: Thank you so much for sharing everything that you’ve shared today. And I loved this follow-up in this part too. I think it was much needed. Because we can see, we can have this bird’s eye view or this be the, like, the fly on the wall of a conversation of someone’s life. But to see it in this stent. Right? Like, to see the I always wonder, like, sometimes when I hear a story, oh, I wonder what happened to so and so. And so I think it’s important that we share the darkness in this light. Right? Because you had that in your first episode, but then life continues. Right? And it stuff gets are on our way and challenges happened. And so thank you for sharing about Blake and how that experience just really opened you up even more to this deepened learning and experience. So thank you.

Maha Bodhi: So honor Victoria. Thank you so much for having me, and I’m so glad we were able to have this follow-up.

Victoria Volk: Check out Maha’s website, yogimaha.com. I’ll put the links to everything in the show notes. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

Ep 58 | Sherrie Dunlevy

Sherrie Dunlevy | Infant Son Death & Pet Loss: A Story of Refusing to Lay & Decay

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:

As a former news anchor, Sherrie Dunlevy delivered bad news on a daily basis.

However, it was the news of a personal matter that would shatter her heart. Sherrie knew she would be delivering her son who would be born with complications and quickly swept away for medical care immediately after being delivered via caesarian. She and her husband would then spend the next 29 days holding their son until he passed away.

The years that followed led her on a path of trying to understand why people abandon those who are grieving. And, set the wheels in motion of a journey that would lead her to write a book and doing everything she could for herself to not live the rest of her life as nothing more than a grieving mother.

Wanting more for her life, she’s found a way to live fully into who she was called to be, and even after the death of her beloved pet during the pandemic, learned the power of addressing and feeling the grief when it comes.

RESOURCES:


CONNECT WITH SHERRIE:

Victoria Volk  00:00
Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices. Today my guest is Sherry dunlavy. And she is the author of How can I help and founder of graduating grief and host of the graduating grief podcast. Thank you so much for being here.

Sherrie Dunlevy  00:18
Victoria, it’s my pleasure.

Victoria Volk  00:21
And today is a very special day as we are recording because what brings you to grieving voices is the loss of your son.

Sherrie Dunlevy  00:30
Yes, today would have been my son Brandon’s 22nd birthday.

Victoria Volk  00:35
So this is a very special full circle podcast moment.

Sherrie Dunlevy  00:40
Yes, absolutely. Kind of surreal.

Victoria Volk  00:44
I’ve had my own full circle moments lately to tomorrow is 34 years. My dad is gone.

Sherrie Dunlevy  00:52
Oh, my.

Victoria Volk  00:54
Yeah, yeah, no. Is it tomorrow? What is the date today?

Sherrie Dunlevy  00:56
29th

Victoria Volk  00:58
31st on wednesday, actually. So thank you for being here and sharing your story about Brandon. And so let’s start there.

Sherrie Dunlevy  01:10
Okay. Well, 22 years ago, my husband and I were headed to a hospital to give birth to our second son, Brandon. At 18 weeks into the pregnancy, when we went for our first ultrasound, we that’s when we realized that there were complications. So it was a very bitter sweet. No, it wasn’t a bittersweet day, it was a very scary day, because I knew that as long as he was inside of me, he was safe. But all bets were off beginning today. And I’m just really emotional today, I guess. Because I don’t want to have happy memories of this time, we knew there were complications, we knew they were going to whisk him away, I knew I was never going to get to hear him cry, I was never going to get to hold him, they whisked him away to another Children’s Hospital. I mean, I had nine, nine doctors, you know, in the delivery room with me, and I had to have a C section. And so, you know, I knew all this going into it. And so you know, you just all bets were off. And, and my son lived 29 days. So it was just very, I don’t have those happy memories that most moms have going into labor, I didn’t even get to hold my child that day, you know, I got to hold my child as he was dying. So I think that’s that’s what makes this birth, these birth days a little bit more different than if you’ve had someone and you’ve been able to love them longer than what we have, or you’ve had the experience of welcoming them into the world. So I don’t really have a lot of fond memories. So I don’t look back a lot. But these anniversary days, kind of you have you do look back, I glanced back. It’s too painful to stay back there. And there’s no reason to because it doesn’t serve any purpose other than extending suffering. You know, I live now in this moment. And so it’s just very challenging to process all of this. I mean, my son’s life and death has has had such an amazing impact on my life and transformation that has come from it has been absolutely amazing. But I really don’t give myself the time or the pause to look back except for these few days, one in March and one in April when he was born and when he died, that I allow myself to go there. That makes sense.

Victoria Volk  03:59
No, it absolutely does. And I think that’s an aspect of grief that even I have forgotten or maybe didn’t give much thought to, in that. You can have a loss that where you don’t have those fun memories at all. Right? And in a way that’s a lot of those fond memories are what kind of bring you peace or can bring you peace. Right? Right. So I’m warm, I’m holding you in a hug today. Thank you. And I know we talked just very briefly before we started recording that you plan to really take today to 10 your heart and give yourself the time and space to do so and it’s very important. And

Sherrie Dunlevy  04:55
It is but you know I mean like I was saying I’m gonna give myself some time. It’s some time, I have a feeling that subconsciously I over schedule myself on these days. And I just wonder if that’s a way to like say you don’t have to think about this if you don’t want to, or that you don’t have the time to think about this. I mean, like I did, I actually added to my schedule this morning, like, and then I’m thinking, what are you doing? And then I’m thinking you knew exactly, I know exactly what you’re doing. So that’s when I decided I really cannot add anything else, I really need some time, some space to just process this a little today and spend some time with it. Not a lot of time, not a lot of time to dwell, but just process the feelings that I’m feeling, you know, allow those to come, they’re legitimate.

Victoria Volk  05:52
And then let them pass. Right? Yeah, instead of stuffing them down with work or other means that we do and the body. The body knows, I was just talking with someone not that long ago, and even 20. Some years later, it’s like, around this time every year, yep. And all these years later, you know, you find yourself, you know, maybe getting rundown, or, you know, what shows up differently for everyone. But I think it’s a, it’s that to have that awareness, though. And to maybe even plan for it. Vance, there was one woman who shared how she had this, it’s like a daily book, just kind of really just to give a little hope and insight and about grief, but it was it can’t remember the title of it. But she said that’s in its 365 days, you know, a phrase or a saying every day, and she said that’s really, really helped her in her. She was a widow, right young children. But she said that was really helpful for her, but she found herself having to plan, you know, for that time of year. And so, what, especially when those in those early days, what were some of the things that kind of added to that grief, the fact that you didn’t have the any joyful memories and things like that. But any anything that people said, or comments or ways that people didn’t support you that you hope they would have.

Sherrie Dunlevy  07:39
Yeah, I mean, there were. I was a television news anchor at the time. So I not only went through this, but I went through this all publicly, right. And so it was it was very, it was very challenging. And it was it was very surprising. Because there were people who showed up for us in a way that was indescribable that really I did not know who they were they they knew who I was, but I did not know who they were. And so that was surprising to me, but was also surprising to me were people who were closest to us who were not there for us. And in fact, I had one instance where one of my closest friends, I thought she was gonna say to me, I’ve got a sitter for the kids. Hang on, I’m coming up. You know, I’ll be with you. We’ll get through this together. And instead, I just couldn’t believe my ears when she said I’m sorry, I can’t do this. And she we ended the conversation and and I didn’t hear back from her. And then one day, six years later, the phone rings and it’s her and she just kind of wanted to catch up. I’ve been thinking about you even on my mind. I was we first of all, like, that ship has sailed. We you know, I was kind of like, honestly my first reaction was like you’re kidding me, right? Like you are seriously kidding me. I was kind I was not rude. I probably was a lot more quiet than what I was. But then when I came off of that call, I really started to think what was this about? Like, why all of a sudden and you know, and so that started me on my journey of wondering why people would abandon you when you need them the most and maybe they don’t even see it as abandonment but that’s what it was. Maybe they just see it as they didn’t reach out you know, but it was and I came up with three scenarios. The first one was that maybe it hit too close to home. You know when you have children and you are giving birth to children and and you’re one of your dearest Friends looses one of theirs, you just automatically think about, oh my gosh, what if that happened to me, and it’s just so frightening that you can’t even think about it and like to even address my sadness makes it too sad for you. The second thing is that maybe you just have never, ever had to deal with this before you don’t know what to do or say, it’s never really been modeled, no one in your life significant has died, or that you know, has died. So you just truly don’t know. But I think the more common one truly is that people really want to do or say something, they’re just afraid it’s going to be the wrong thing. They’re going to screw it up somehow. And so better to be safe than sorry, better to just not say anything, then say the wrong thing better not to do anything, then do something that they think we’ll bring on more pain. That being said, that’s when I started, I don’t know why like this furious search for resources. Because I just kept thinking, there’s got to be something out there to help people with this, this is just crazy, right? And I started to Google it. And I would go on Amazon looking for it. And I would want every time I was going to go past the bookstore, I would go in and look for a book. And I felt this calling and literally like, I don’t know that I had this voice. But there was this knowing voice that said to me, if you’re you can look all you want. But until you write it, you’re not going to find it. Oh my gosh, I don’t write books. You know, like I don’t do this. But the thing I always tell people, the thing between the difference between a good idea and a calling is that the calling doesn’t stop. And it just kept calling me and calling me and calling me and I don’t know how to write a book, well, then, how can you find out how to write a book, you know? And so it just every time that I said yes, another door opened and another door open and another door open. So I really do feel like it was divinely guided. But needless to say, many years later, I wrote a book called How can I help your go to guide for helping loved ones through life’s difficulties. And it is that resource guide that helps all three of those people know what to do and say, to help those that they love and care about go through difficult chapters in life, whether it’s the loss of someone they love through death, whether it’s divorce, whether you’ve just been diagnosed with something that’s terminal or chronic, whether you’re had to quit your job to, you know, take care of a sick child or a ailing parent, whether you’ve lost a job, whatever the scenario of loss is, what can you do to help and support your friends during this time. And these aren’t just my suggestions. Now I realize oh, okay, that’s why you were on television and a reporter, you know how to interview people. And so I interviewed people who’ve gone through all these scenarios, because I found out that this isn’t just death, this is any difficult chapter in life. Some people are there for you, and some people just aren’t. And so I wrote this book, and I’m very proud of this book. And it’s a number one bestseller, and I love this book, and I love talking about this book. But this book is not I was hesitant to release the book because I didn’t want the book to feel like it was pointing the finger at people. I don’t want to point the finger at people. It’s not about that at all. It’s I know you love your friends, I know you want to support them. So I know you’re scared. Okay, so this isn’t about you. This is about them. So let’s let’s make that mind shift first, that mind that that change that mindset, and then let’s talk about what we can do that will really help them. Because that’s what I wanted to know, when I interviewed all these people, what was it that your friends and family did? That was helpful to you? That they gave you what you needed to get through this? And what were some of those unique things and what were some of the things that maybe weren’t so helpful because I didn’t want to say wrong. Because I want grieving and hurting people to realize that sometimes your friends will say things that say sound bizarre that that could be offensive. But I asked the hurting person to take some pause and extend some Grace is the intention of their friend to hurt them, or is the intention loving and it’s just awkward, right? Because we don’t know what to do and say and they’re just trying to pull a rabbit out of it. To make you feel better, right? Or they’re, they’re relying on a cliche to make you feel better. I mean, we all know that, you know, they’re not in a better place we, because we feel their best place would be with us, right? But I just really chose during that time not to get all weirded out over the awkwardness of what people say, because I just feel we’re awkward because we don’t talk about this enough. So that’s kind of why I do what I do so that I get the conversation started. And I say, Listen, this is why we’re awkward. So let’s start just stepping up and doing this stuff. And do it afraid. And, you know, extend grace to one another for heaven’s sakes.

Victoria Volk  15:45
Yeah, you speak my language. You know this because I’m, you know, as a grief recovery specialist, and I know that you’ve gone through grief recovery yourself. And my mission is the same. Let’s talk about grief. Like we talked about the weather. That’s, you know, the podcast was my calling. And that’s why I have people come on, like you to share what was helpful. What was unhealthy, you know, what was unhelpful? Same, same idea. So we speak the same language? Yes, for sure. Um, so let’s speak to that the grief recovery, if you don’t mind for a moment, in when you discovered that and how it helped to transform your grieving experience?

Sherrie Dunlevy  16:29
Well, you know, I came late to the party, about grief recovery method. Actually, it was in the process of writing this book. And I had something I had a coach that was coaching me in my business. And he is, uh, he asked me if I knew what a clairaudient was. And I said, No, I don’t. And he said, a clairaudient is someone who receives messages. And the last two times we’ve met, I’ve been receiving these messages. And if you’re open to it, I want to give you this message. And I said, Okay, and he said, I’m just being told that until you deal with your grief, and you know, none of this, none of the things that we’re working on now are going to work. And I said, Who did you talk to, because I hired him as a business coach, he had he, he knew I was writing a book, but I never told him what my book was about. And I didn’t in in, he just had no way of knowing, right? I thought he had a way of knowing, but I’m like, Alright, and so he said, You know, I have a friend who coaches this, and I would be happy to introduce you. And so she was a grief recovery method. I don’t know what you call yourself, coach, facilitator, whatever. And I met with her. And it’s so funny, because my grief was two pronged. My grief was, of course, not dealing with the grief of the loss of my son, Brandon. But my son, my surviving son, Trey, was graduating college and leaving, graduating high school and leaving for college. And so I was losing another son, technically, right? in a different way, of course, but I had just devoted my whole life to being his mom. And this was my mission now. And so it was just very, I was like, Oh, he’s right. I do need to deal with this. And once I found out about what the grief recovery method was, once I got the grief recovery method Handbook, once I went through the process of oh my gosh, this is like, these are the most amazing tools. And I think one of the things in the earliest chapters was, you know, if you had a heart problem, you would be going to the doctor to take care of this. Now what is so different about your grief? And truth be told, you know, when I had my first son, Trey, I had postpartum depression. And so when Brandon was born, and he was in my doctor, I’d already known that I had gone through postpartum depression, and he was critical. critically ill. Well, automatically the thought was, we want to get you back on the antidepressants. But the thing was, is that I was on them for 13 years. And I kept thinking, I know it’s down there. I could feel it. I could feel it in me, but I had I could not bring it up and bring it out. I had no way of doing that. And it was just weird. So I just, I just carried it with me. It was it was below the surface. At the time I was doing the grief Recovery method though I have come off my antidepressants. So it was just like perfect timing. Because I was able to get there, I was able to get it. And I was able to extract it. And I was able to look at it. And I was able to deal with it. And then I was able to release it. And it was the best gift I’ve ever given myself.

Victoria Volk  20:25
And it is the gift that keeps on giving.

Sherrie Dunlevy  20:29
Yes. And yeah, yes, because the tools are always there. The tools are always there.

Victoria Volk  20:35
And I want to touch on to something that I mentioned when I talk about grief recovery is that the sadness doesn’t go away. You know, your son still has not been with you. That doesn’t go away. No, it is, but it doesn’t have the impact of it. Right? is greatly lifted, maybe reduced. Maybe even the impact is lifted and removed.

Sherrie Dunlevy  21:03
The pain is pain.

Victoria Volk  21:05
Yes. The impact of the pain, like the crippling emotional pain.

Sherrie Dunlevy  21:11
Yes, yes, pain is lifted, you are able to like I said, You know, I don’t have you, it doesn’t like what I say when I started graduating grieve, it doesn’t mean that you’re never ever going to be sad again. And they’re like, I got this I’m good and never to be revisited again. It just means it no longer has its power over you. It doesn’t not have the power to cripple you and take you under and keep you under and hold you under any longer. You know how to get back to the surface. You know how to see the sunshine, you know how to bask in the sunshine, you can seek your joy again.

Victoria Volk  21:55
It is possible.

Sherrie Dunlevy  21:57
It is that’s what I want people to know it is possible, but you have to choose it.

Victoria Volk  22:06
What would you like to scream to the world. And wish people knew about your grief?

Sherrie Dunlevy  22:17
Well, here’s what I’d like to scream for the world. Every life no matter how long or short it is, can make an impact. And my son lived 29 days and here 22 years later, he’s still making an impact. So what I want to scream to the world is your life can make an impact too. And the longer you are imprisoned by your grief, the less impactful you can be, the less you can make your impact on this world.

Victoria Volk  22:57
I 100% agree. 100%.

Sherrie Dunlevy  23:01
That’s what I want to scream is that I had to realize that my son’s life and death was a chapter in my life. It wasn’t my life. It wasn’t what defines my life. It’s not the label, I’m going to give myself the rest of my life. I am Brandon’s mom. I am tres mom. I am Rob’s wife I am Cherie, I am an author. I wear many hats, right? Why do I want to hold on to grieving mom as the total definition of who I am. I don’t want to get you know, I’m I’m a believer. I don’t want to get to the end of my life. And God say Sherry, would you do with the 5060 years I gave you after Brandon died? And I said, Well, you took my son and I laid in the fetal position and cried the rest of my life. That’s like burying your talents. You know what I mean? Like, no, I gave you this life. Why didn’t you do anything with it? Right? At least help someone else that’s there that has gone through it. Right? So I, I don’t not that I necessarily felt responsible for other people and their loss. I don’t. I just feel that I’m supposed to be a light. My life is supposed to be a light shining on hope and healing. That’s just what I feel like my life is supposed to be.

Victoria Volk  24:33
I identify with that. That’s exactly how I feel that’s and I feel like often it is our experience that leads us to our passions and our work often. Not always, but often. I think it’s just an evolution of who we are. But you like you said it’s the impact, right no matter how long or short that experiences and even more What we think might be insignificant to someone else like, and I’m just going to bring this up, I know we’re not talking about this, but pet loss, right to is, for a child can be very significant and impactful. But to many adults, it’s like, it’s just a dog, you know. And that’s one of our first experiences often as children is how and how we learn how to process grief, or deal with grief, or, well, it’s no big deal, you know, get over it, get another dog, you know.

Sherrie Dunlevy  25:30
Yeah, it’s, I, yes, I agree with you, 100%, I lost my beloved dog in January, probably these next to the loss of my son, the worst loss I have ever gone through. Um, and I’m not, I’m not gonna say it’s ridiculous, it is very true, I was very connected to him. And we cannot shield our children or people from this happening, I think one of the most amazing things that my mom did, and that’s what we tried to do was we tried to shield our kids from this, and then they can’t handle it, and then they are adults that can’t handle it, and then we eat too much, or we drink too much, or we try to numb the pain in an unhealthy way. Because we have no idea, any healthy way of dealing with grief. But you know, it’s scary. And even to a child, a dead body is scary. And I remember even as a child, the thought of forever, you know, whether a life ending forever, or an everlasting life forever was scary, I couldn’t put my head around eternity, right. And so those concepts are and then you and then you have the scared of a dead body kind of thing. So one of the things that my mom that I thought was was wonderful, in hindsight, is I remember when I was like, five years old, and one of her friend’s mother died. And there was a viewing. And my mom took me to the funeral home. And so I witnessed my first dead person, my first funeral without being emotionally attached. And so it got the unknowns and the fears of the unknowns out of the way. And so then the next time when that was a family member, or a friend, well, that kind of fear wasn’t there, it was just the emotional, right? And so I didn’t have to deal with all that. And I think as parents, we just try to protect our children from so much. So I would really advise you know, any parent out there exposure children to death in a way that it there if you can, as early as you can, and unemotionally as possible, because then that just helps it make a norm make it a normal part of living. Is that make sense?

Victoria Volk  28:12
Exactly. Yes. Yes. Yes. I mean, it’s, it’s normalizing grief, when you when you have a conversation, when you bring it to the forefront of it being a part of life, you know, we grieve because we love, whether it’s a pet, baby relationship, whatever it is, right? loss of a dream, a passion, a career, right? A home, I could go on and on. There’s more than 40 plus types of losses. It’s not just about death, but it’s the death of loss of safety and security, so many things, so many things that childhood sets the stage for how we address and deal with those things, for sure. I’m glad the conversation went there. I thought it was very helpful, what you shared and I absolutely 100% it’s in line with grief recovery. Throughout your grief experience what has given you the most joy and hope for the future.

Sherrie Dunlevy  29:17
What has given me the most joy, stepping into who I’m supposed to be becoming a little less. I don’t want to say less fearful, you’re always fearful, becoming more courageous in living and living and living. I remember when my son was growing up, I’ve tried to keep him protected. Physically, I just you know, he would climb up to the top of a sliding board or, you know, climb up on a ladder and I lost one child, I can’t lose another you know, and I realized I was inhibiting his growth and probably putting some fears putting my My stuff on him, which probably wasn’t, wasn’t the right thing to do. I understand why I did it now. And so I try to talk to him about that stuff. You know, I just tried to be open and honest about it. And I really, the joy that I have is being able to just let people know that you can live a beautiful life, it’s possible. And I think just by the joy that I get from talking about this, so that people realize it’s possible. I want them to know what’s possible. And that’s what gives me the joy when someone says, Oh, I never thought of it that way. Oh, that’s gold. That’s gold. Because maybe there’s, there’s that breakthrough. Because I just think like, we all have these gifts, talents and abilities they’ve been given to us. And fear always holds us back. And if we can step into who we’re supposed to be, this world can be beautiful. And we’re all holding piece of ourselves back because it’s been hurt, or it’s been trampled on. Or it’s been, you know, something happened to us. And so we’re trying to protect that, and keep it from happening again. But we can’t, we can’t. And so we just have to learn how to move through it. But moving through, it can be a beautiful process. I didn’t realize this until a couple of months ago, I did not know that there was a term for this. But we always talk about, you know, the post traumatic stress that horrible things that happen in your life can cause you. But I think in my case, I’ve had post traumatic growth. And I’ve had, I’ve been able to see the beauty in life, and to see the goodness in life, and to be able to want to embrace that, and put my eye on that. So a lot of beauty came out of this. A lot of growth came out of this, a lot of transformation came out of this. So that’s the biggest joy I have.

Victoria Volk  32:10
About that I would like to talk a little bit more about that post traumatic stress, or post traumatic growth. Yeah, because I’ve heard that float around to on social media and stuff and and i think that also has comes with its own grief because we can lose relationships, based on our growth, we can have an awareness of, Okay, well, you know, you cannot come along, I’ll bring you with me. But if you’re not going to come along, and you know, you can lose relationships. Yeah. And that way you can have an awareness that you didn’t have before that can bring to light Wow, that’s kind of a toxic relationship that’s kind of a toxic person or that careers toxic or whatever, what have you, whatever it is, and there’s grief that comes with that maybe even where you live, you might realize what I really want is this, that this is where I’m at. And now there you have a lot of change.

Sherrie Dunlevy  33:11
Well, that happened to me with my career, I left a you know, very established well established career in broadcasting. And left it I was like, Oh my gosh, this, this is not good. For me. This is not a good career. For me. I was wondering why I was so miserable, tried to get I was able to compartmentalize the the day’s news and come home and still be mom still be alive, still be happy. But after my son died, that’s when Columbine happened. And then two years later, that’s when 911 happened. And it was like I could not compartmentalize anymore the worlds of grief and pain became mine My pain, you know, I could not differentiate between any of it and it just became too excruciating. To remain there. I tried it for a year and it didn’t work. And and I couldn’t get out of it. I counselor actually said you can leave you know you’re allowed to leave I had to have. But that’s the thing. I didn’t give myself that permission. I had to have a counselor and now I try to do the work myself so that I can give myself the permission to move ahead as I need to move ahead, to grow into who I was created to be. That’s what we’re born for. This is to grow into who were created to be.

Victoria Volk  34:35
I’ve often wondered that as I watched the news, you know everything going on and I try not to leave. My husband leaves in the morning it’s off turned off. Yeah, it’s on in the background, you know, in the mornings and stuff. And I’ve often wondered that though, about the people that that’s their career to report the bad news because it’s not all sunshine and rainbows in the news. It’s rarely a Rarely happy news. And so I’ve often wondered about that, like, if what kind of support news anchors have or if any, is that even a thing?

Sherrie Dunlevy  35:10
Not when I was in it now, now and we’re the gatekeepers. So for eight hours I’m looking at I was a news producer, anchor and reporter. And so I, if I produce the news that day, I was taking in all the news from the network’s from the different states from the different countries, and then I would decide what I was pushing out to the audience, right? So for eight hours, I’m taking all of this in, so I’m taking in much more than I’m pushing out to you, right, I’m taking eight hours in and pushing out 30 minutes to you. And so, you know, 16 years of that, think about that, you know, I call myself a recovering news anchor. I I rarely watch the news, maybe I don’t even think it’s once a week. During the pandemic, I’ve maybe two times a month, enough to stay informed, right? You know what’s going on, I mean, believe me, you know what’s going on. And so I mean, if I need to find something out, I know where to find it. But to sit and be fed your 24 hour news cycles. 24 hour news stations, quite frankly, in my opinion, do more harm than good. They disrupt it was never meant to be taken in for 24 hours, it was meant to be convenient to catch the news, as was convenient for you. Okay, but now they’ve done all these tricks with the teasers to keep you staying tuned in for the advertising dollars and whatnot. And, and so they want to keep you there as long as they possibly can. And so how can you not if you feed yourself, this steady diet of all this negative news in the world is bad. And every child every every child is being as a target for abduction. And you know, just like you, how can you think that we have a beautiful world out there, right, you got to turn off the TV and you’ve got to get out and you’ve got to meet your neighbors and you’ve got to listen to the birds and you’ve got to feel the sunshine on your face. And you’ve got to feel the breeze. You’ve got to see the leaves and you’ve got to you know, get to know one another and see what real life is all about.

Victoria Volk  37:36
See feel see feel. Yeah, yeah, smell the goodness that is there. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I love that the conversation went here, because I think that’s so important. With so much focus on mental health today. Yeah. Who is talking about the 24 hour news cycle? No, buddy. Yeah, on the news. Like maybe we are contributing to this mental health issue going on with our teenagers and you know, the constant phone access and all of this stuff. When you already have grief, which I would beg to differ that each and every one of us grieves something.

Sherrie Dunlevy  38:16
No, every single one of us going through this pandemic right now is grieving, whether you want to admit it or not. You’re grieving something.

Victoria Volk  38:24
Yes. Loss of health, loss of career identity, whatever it is for you. To me. Yes. Freedom. I mean, there’s so many connections hug. Yes, yes. We could go on and on. Right. So yeah. Is that? Is that serving you to watch this 24 hour news cycle? Absolutely not. Do you feel better after you’re watching it? No, probably not. So yeah, thank you for sharing all of that. I appreciate that. So what would say to someone who, like you had experienced a loss of in such a way that you didn’t have those experiences of joy in the meantime, did you do anything that was helpful for you? Immediately or during that time that you

Sherrie Dunlevy  39:13
that I can remember? Hmm. I, I allowed people to love me. And what I, anybody who showed up for me, even if it wasn’t an awkward way, I just accepted it is loving kindness. And I really tried to focus on the people. Just the gift of healing that other people were offering me in the ways that they could offer it, I guess is the best way to say it. I leaned on my family, you know it can pull a marriage a partner can strengthen it and it really strengthened my marriage. We my husband, and I just You know, like today, we just had the conversation. I said, How are you doing today? He says, I think I’m doing okay. And I said, he said, How are you? I said, I don’t think I’m doing so okay. And that’s just how it’s been through our marriage is that he’s strong when I need him to be strong, and I’m strong when he needs me to be strong. And so we honor that, and we talk about it. And we check in with each other. And so that’s what I say is just to, to be open and honest and vulnerable. And you know, I’m not fine is an okay answer. I’m not fine as an okay, answer. And I know this is off the subject, but I just want people to know that there’s nothing that you can say or do that’s going to make it all better for someone. So take the pressure off of yourself and just show up in love. Right? You can’t there’s no magic words. This is just something you have to get through. And so that’s I guess, you know, I focused on the good things in my life, I focused on where the love was I focused on my three year old son I focused on the people who were loving us through it was just trying to focus on the good that I that was still there in my life. And there is still good there in your life. You just have to look for it.

Victoria Volk  41:21
Look for it. Yeah, yeah. And I want to circle back to to the loss of your pet because that was very recent. Mm hmm. And there is a pet loss program. And that’s how important the grief recovery Institute feels pet loss is in our society to many people. How have you allowed yourself to kind of work through that and how have you been working through that loss?

Sherrie Dunlevy  41:49
It was a shock. It was something that was unexpected, and the feelings were coming up fast and furious, which was something that you know, it was different because my son I knew from 18 I had anticipatory grief with my son, right? I didn’t have it as batory grief. So this was just sudden, and he died in my arms and I was just shocked, you know, and the feelings came up. And I just thought they’re coming out. And I remember just sobbing and my husband and my son were sitting there and I said, I am totally committed to honoring this grief and this process. And I’m just gonna let you know that I’m honoring all parts of it. I am going to be vulnerable and when it comes I’m going to feel it and if that makes you uncomfortable or make someone else uncomfortable, that is a you problem that is not a me problem.

Victoria Volk  42:57
I love that

Sherrie Dunlevy  42:59
And I honored that and I stayed true to that and when I want to cry, I cry for my dog. And I literally just I felt release I mean I felt like this, I did it healthily. I use the tools I journaled I did all the thing you know what I mean? Like I did all the things that I needed to do to go through it I didn’t try any shortcuts. I kept saying I’m not fine, but I know I will be I’m not fine now. But I know I will be and just knowing that I will be allows gives myself the permission to get through it the way I need to. And that’s what I want people to know is that when it comes to grief, you think you’re you’re fooling Who are you fooling? You know, like who are you trying to pull the wool over their eyes, you’re not your body knows you’re hanging on to it. You know, it will come out it will come out as anger it will come out as frustration it will come out as addiction it won’t but it’s gonna come out. So why not do it? The way you do it in the most gentle say the right but do it in the way that’s most healthy for you. But that scares us every I remember telling people this when I before I did the grief recovery with my son. I’m afraid that if I ever attached to that, that grief that I will never be able to release it like once I start crying I’ll never be able to stop but that’s not true. It’s not true. You will some day at some point of some day cried enough, right? It doesn’t mean that you won’t ever cry again. But the crying will come to end.

Victoria Volk  45:07
Crying from the pain is is a very different kind than crying from the sadness.

Sherrie Dunlevy  45:14
Yeah. And there is a difference.

Victoria Volk  45:17
Yes, like crying so hard that you think your head is gonna explode like you can’t take it anymore type of Yeah, very ugly cry Yeah, yeah, remember my very ugly cry? Yeah worked on my relationship and grief recovery I was very ugly because that was like, many, many years of buried stuff.

Sherrie Dunlevy  45:36
Right.

Victoria Volk  45:39
I want to just touch on one thing, too. I’ve heard on social media recently I read something where someone said, you are entitled to your grief? And I’ve struggled with that I struggle with that, too. Yeah, I struggle with it. Because to say that to someone who is grieving. And you’re obviously you’re probably there, obviously, they’re looking at the account, they were aggrieved or to, you’re entitled to the grief? Well, you’re entitled to your feelings, yeah, knew you’re gonna have your grief. But to say it, I think and communicate it in that way. It like it just speaks to that attachment.

Sherrie Dunlevy  46:26
it’s gonna say attachment.

Victoria Volk  46:28
Yeah, yeah, it’s like this, like your Velcro to the grief.

Sherrie Dunlevy  46:32
Right to the wall, your label. And I have a real problem with that at that’s what I was finding. I think that support groups can be a beautiful thing. But at the same time, I also think support groups can make you believe that you that you are entitled to your grief.

Victoria Volk  46:58
Well in such a way that it’s this is how it is just going to be.

Sherrie Dunlevy  47:02
Yeah. And it’s and that is why I have graduated grief because I do not believe that. I, I I you know, like, that’s why I started graduating grief because I had been doing some other grief work. And I had been going into these grief groups, and it was breaking my heart that people were being told this that that, you know, just because that’s how someone else believes doesn’t mean, you know, I that would have horrified me. If I had gone into that believing that because I lost a child, I will never be happy again. Or that I will have to carry this dark cloud over my, you know, like, live with a perpetual dark cloud over my life forever. I don’t know, no, no, no, no. And, you know, you look back at remember when the widows used to wear black for a year, but then once the black was removed, right? There’s symbolism in that, that you carry it for a while, but then you read it, you release and you step into who you’re supposed to be. And that’s what I want people to realize, with the graduating grief that that I’ve started is that I want you have to do the work to step out of your pain. So that you can step into loving your life again. Now, that doesn’t mean that that’s going to be an overnight thing, right? Because you’re still going to have fears and you’re still going to have guilt. And you’re still going to feel you know, like all these feelings around that because I did too. But wouldn’t it be nice to be in a community where people are cheering from you for you, and people are encouraging you. And people are saying, you know, I’ll hold your hand and we’ll journey together. It’s what I always tell people journey together. We’re not trying to drive our car in a forward motion. By only looking at our rearview mirror, I want you to see your life ahead of you. Some woman told me the other day, the thought that I have to live the rest of my life. I’m counting the days How many days I have left to live without so and so. That’s a horrible way to live. That’s why would you choose that for yourself?

Victoria Volk  49:18
Because they don’t feel like they have a choice. And that’s what griefs makes us.

Sherrie Dunlevy  49:21
But you do!

Victoria Volk  49:22
I know you and I are the same train.

Sherrie Dunlevy  49:28
Yes, you do have a choice.

Victoria Volk  49:30
Yes, you do. Yes. We’re so on the same train. And I want to bring back to what you said in the visual of wearing black for a year and yeah, you know, you have this veil. And it’s like, yeah, you can change the dress, change your different color, but if you still have the veil, you’re still not going to look in the mirror and see who you could be without that grief. I like to use the analogy or the comparison of a veil like grief is a veil over our faces. We don’t see other people The same way we don’t look at ourselves the same way. It blocks us from who we are. We forget who we are even in that grief and trauma and all those rocks that we accumulate.

Sherrie Dunlevy  50:14
And the physiological, you know. That’s why I was like, Why? Why don’t people know about this? You know, first of all? And secondly, why wouldn’t you immediately try to do something to feel better?

Victoria Volk  50:33
Right? I gotta, I gotta, I gotta point on that. And this is, this is my, my stick on this. So in grief or suffering, you suffer, you feel like you’re just suffering? Why not suffer? But move forward? In the process? Mm hmm. You’re suffering anyway. Right? The worst has already happened. You lost your loved one. There’s only one way but up. How can you get any? I mean, you could get lower, I guess, if you allow yourself to keep doing that.

Sherrie Dunlevy  51:10
Well, I have I have a saying for that. I say if you lay you decay.

Victoria Volk  51:14
oh, that’s perfect. That’s gonna be your quote card.

Sherrie Dunlevy  51:20
If you lay your decay, just like anything.

Victoria Volk  51:23
Exactly, you lay you decay.

Sherrie Dunlevy  51:26
So you’ve got to get back up. So that’s what graduating grief is is kind of like, it’s twofold. It’s like I was thinking about it. When I was in my support group. When I told my husband, I did not want to go back anymore. And he’s like, why they’re lovely people. And I said, because I don’t want to be sad every other Tuesday of the month. Like I don’t want to be in deep suffering and pain. I wanted to start feeling better. This was before I knew about grief recovery method, right? So I, so I thought, well, what was that I was ready to graduate to the next level. That’s so so that’s part of it. I was great. So what is the next level, all there is none. So that’s what I created, right? So that’s what my support community, that’s what my podcast is all about. But it’s also you think about the grief and you’re laying down in the fetal position and it’s dark, and it’s lonely. But then there’s this gradual, you sit up, and then you look around, and then you have to decide maybe kneel and then you put one foot up and then another foot up, and then you’re standing and then you can turn towards the light and start taking steps into the light. So it’s a gradual process from here to hope. Right? So it has a double meaning, but it’s possible but if you lay there you’ll decay. You got to get up. You got to get up.

Victoria Volk  52:52
I think two people are afraid. I mean many people are fearful of change. And so if we have this awareness of Oh, I guess I do have a choice. I guess though there is something that might help me Oh, well that can be uncomfortable too. And I think that’s it’s the fear of not knowing what it’s going to lead to or how it’s going to make you change or not make you change but change you in the process.

Sherrie Dunlevy  53:17
Yeah, yeah, I was I was the most it’s it’s the craziest thing how I’ve become a much more positive person since the death of my son than prior I was the most negative resistant to change if it’s not broke, why fix it? everything in my life, I did not want it to change. I wanted a comfort zone, right. And then when my son died, I’m realized that the comfort zone does not exist. Like it’s the biggest lie like it will change life will change whether you want it to or not. And my son’s death was proof of it. So now how do I want to operate? Right? It’s gonna change whether I want it to or not, and it and you’re not always going to like the change, but it’s still gonna change. Even if you say I’m devoting all your time Sherry to raising your other son now, well, guess what, you’re going to grow up and he’s going to leave. And so he’s changing, everything changes. So you can either change with it, or you can stay in a state of suffering. Because that’s what you’re going to do. The more you’re resistant to the change the more you are suffering you’re in a state of suffering.

Victoria Volk  54:28
What we resist persists. Yeah. Ah, so good. We’ve covered a lot. Time flies. Where is there it First of all, is there anything else you would like to share today?

Sherrie Dunlevy  54:48
Oh, my gosh. I think that I don’t know how there possibly is I’m sure there are I’m sure we could probably talk for another two hours. But I think that I think I just want people to realize, you know, you have to decide you have to decide what you want to do and you in, the longer you deny it, the more you will suffer. So why not just, you know, do the work, it’s going to be painful, it’s going to be so worth it. There’s a freedom that comes in a release that comes. That is absolutely amazing. So do it, you know, just do it.

Victoria Volk  55:23
And like you’ve touched on earlier, too, it’s like, when I started to really do the work on myself, that’s when opportunities opened up. And I was more, I was saying yes, to things I never found, I will say yes to right, speaking in front of people and just the podcast, like, I don’t know how I’ve never done it. Well, I’ll learn I’ll teach myself. You know, it’s like, what’s the worst that can happen? Right? Like,

Sherrie Dunlevy  55:50
I think that’s the philosophy that I have adopted, what’s the worst that can happen? It already has, so you know, and why not live?

Victoria Volk  55:57
Yeah. Exactly. And you find yourself putting yourself out there in ways that you never thought either because like, what’s the worst they can say? No. Right? You know, it’s not living a half life, like someone had shared with me a while back, and it’s kind of stuck with me. It’s like, do you want to live a half life? Or do you want to live a full life? Right? Where can people reach you?

Sherrie Dunlevy  56:28
Sherrydunlevy.com is probably the, you know, the most common way you can find information about my book. I also have a quiz at graduatinggrief.com just to see if you’re ready. You’re ready to graduate from your grief. And I started the graduating grief, podcast and group on Facebook. So join us there if you want to live encouraged after loss, right. So that’s we journey together and to create beautiful lives that we were created to live.

Victoria Volk  57:02
Amen to that. Yeah. Yes, love that mission. Thank you so much, Sherry, for being here. It’s been wonderful. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

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