Ep 214 Jessica Fein | Creating Corners of Beauty Amidst Parent Loss, Sister Loss X2, and Child Loss

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:

Amidst the challenges of her daughter Dahlia’s rare condition, MERRF Syndrome, this week’s guest, Jessica Fein, also faced the crushing blows of losing her father and both sisters during the same trying period. Her story is a tapestry of sorrow and strength, woven with threads of love and loss that resonate deeply with the human experience.

The uncertainties surrounding her daughter’s diagnosis added layers of complexity to Dahlia’s health, making it a daunting task to predict her future. Jessica’s unwavering determination to advocate for her daughter, alongside the weight of her losses, paints a poignant picture of courage in the face of adversity.

As Dahlia’s health declined, necessitating intensive care and tough decisions, Jessica grappled with the harsh reality that not everything could be fixed. Her transition from seeking a cure to enhancing Dahlia’s quality of life reflects a mother’s boundless love and commitment to her child’s well-being.

Throughout the episode, Jessica’s reflections on witnessing her loved ones’ pain and her journey through grief and healing resonate with a profound sense of vulnerability and resilience. Her ability to find glimmers of joy and connection (with herself, friends, and spouse) amidst the darkness speaks volumes about the human spirit’s capacity for hope and strength amid hardship.

Jessica’s story reminds us of the intricate dance between love and loss, woven together with threads of grace and fortitude. Her journey embodies the transformative power of facing life’s most challenging trials with unwavering love, compassion, and a resilient spirit that shines through even in the darkest times.

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Embracing Joy Amidst Grief – Lessons from Dahlia’s Story

In our fast-paced world, the juxtaposition of joy and sorrow often leaves many bewildered. We tend to compartmentalize emotions, believing that happiness and sadness are mutually exclusive. However, life’s complexities defy such simplistic categorization. This profound realization came to light through a remarkable individual named Dahlia.

The Essence of Dahlia

Dahlia was an embodiment of joy despite her battles with MERRF Syndrome (Myoclonic Epilepsy with Ragged Red Fibers), a rare degenerative mitochondrial disease affecting about 2 in 1,000,000 people. Diagnosed at five years old after showing early developmental delays, she lived until seventeen radiating spunkiness and charm even as her condition worsened over time.

Her mother Jessica Fein shares how Dahlia taught her invaluable lessons on navigating life’s dichotomies—how it is possible to feel immense pain yet still find moments filled with laughter and love.

Balancing Joy And Sorrow

Jessica observed how seamlessly Dahlia managed to intertwine joy amidst suffering—a lesson reshaping our understanding of emotional coexistence:

“She was able to feel honestly everything there was—to feel like sadness or anger or jealousy—and still be joyful.”

This revelation underscores that embracing all facets—fearful anguish alongside fun-filled meaning—is essential for holistic living rather than viewing them as opposing forces.

Compartmentalization As A Coping Mechanism

One effective strategy shared by Jessica involves ‘compartmentalizing’ overwhelming situations into manageable parts akin to pointillism art technique focusing on specifics without getting daunted by the bigger picture:

“I consider myself proficient at compartmentalization which I view essential functioning amid overwhelming circumstances.”

Such mindfulness helps navigate daily challenges while preserving mental sanity during trying times like caregiving responsibilities coupled with work commitments simultaneously balancing personal aspirations too!

Episode Transcription:

Victoria Volk: Thank you for tuning in to this week’s episode of grieving voices. I’m excited to share with you today my guest, Jessica Fein. She is the author of breathtaking, a memoir of family, dreams, and broken jeans. And hosts of the podcast. I don’t know how you do it, which features people whose lives seem unimaginable and who triumph over seemingly impossible challenges. Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, Psychology Today, The Boston Globe, Huffpost, scary mommy, zippy zippy Maeg, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler,

Jessica Fein: kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler, kebler,

Victoria Volk: kebler, kebler, kiabler, and and, and more. And, more. And more. And more. Jessicaiahiah, and to a rare disease in twenty twenty two. Her work encompasses hope and humor, grit and grace, the tools that make up her personal survival kit. And thank you so much for your time today and sharing your story with my listeners and myself.

Jessica Fein: Thank you for having me.

Victoria Volk: And so I actually would like to start out by taking us back in time to how this rare disease came about? How you learned about it? What your daughter’s name is? First of all,

Jessica Fein: My daughter’s name is Dahlia.

Victoria Volk: Oh, what a beautiful name?

Jessica Fein: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So I have a mama three, three children. My husband and I adopted from Guatemala. So we had had kind of a long and twisty road to parenthood and ultimately landed in Guatemala. And we adopted three babies, not all at the same time. Two years apart, and then two years apart. And Dahlia was our middle child. And what happened was in terms of your question regarding the rare disease diagnosis, she, from a very young age, seemed to be developing a little bit differently and a little bit slower than I thought was probably developmentally appropriate. Let’s put it that way. So her speech was garbled. She was having balance issues. You know? I had that mother’s instinct and tried to get people to pay attention, doctors, early intervention. But, you know, I was told just give a time, she’ll catch up. And it wasn’t until she was four years old that I finally got the attention of a doctor who said let’s do a hearing test. And at that time, she was diagnosed with mild to moderate hearing loss. And that was a condition that would be able to be corrected by hearing aids. But there was a question which was why? Why did she have the hearing loss? Did something happen in utero? Did she have a virus early on? We brought her back to the Boston area from Guatemala at six months. So there were a lot of question marks. And we were sent for genetic testing, which really is a blessing because so many families have to fight for a really long time to get genetic testing. In this case, we got it very quickly, and that genetic testing led to a very clear diagnosis. Another thing that doesn’t always happen. And she was diagnosed at that time with a rare degenerative mitochondrial disease called MIRF syndrome, which stands for myochronic epilepsy, ragged red fibers. Again, she was five years old, and that diagnosis seemed like crazy to us. We couldn’t understand it, couldn’t wrap our heads around it. She, you know, while I had been concerned, never my wildest dreams? Did my concerns lead me to the possibility even of something that grave? And she was the same person she had been, you know, before the diagnosis. So it was very hard to understand. And and even technically, Nobody had heard of this illness. We didn’t know what mitochondria were. We didn’t understand what a degenerative disease meant. And so then we took off on a very lengthy journey that lasted until she was seventeen. Daria died one week after her seventeenth birthday.

Victoria Volk: Wow. And do children typically I mean, what is the life expectancy generally of this

Jessica Fein: Yeah, well, so to begin with MURF syndrome is extremely rare, it’s two in a million, so there’s not really much data to go on. Also, Dahlia had a secondary diagnosis later on, which made her one of six in the world. So the thing with a rare disease is you just don’t know. Now, when we look at MIRF syndrome, what we understand is that people can be impacted even within the same family in really different ways. So, for example, when I googled it that night, there was this long list of possible ways it could manifest. And it went everywhere from short stature all the way to death. So, you know, I did what any mom does, which is two things. Number one, I read the list and I decided it was a menu and I would choose, okay, she could be short. You know, I’ll take that one. I’ll take the hearing loss that I could deal with. But when it got to things like dementia and obviously truncated lifespan, those I wasn’t I wasn’t go anywhere near that. And I felt like, you know, look, I’m the mom. I’ll solve it. I’ll fix it. Right? Because that’s what we do. We think we can fix things. And that was a big transformation for me. One of the ones I cover my book, which is understanding that there are things we can’t in fact fix. What what do we do with a world that seems so wildly out of control? And how do we create any kind of meaning in that in that situation?

Victoria Volk: How did you do that?

Jessica Fein: Yeah. Well, it was a long it was a long journey because like I said, I decided I was gonna it. And remember, I didn’t even know what mitochondria were. So, I mean, the idea that I would fix it was totally fantastical, but and I really did try to do everything I could and I became a big advocate and I looked for every study, and I wanted to, like, travel the world and look for some kind of, you know, miracle. But ultimately, what happened was Dahlia’s disease being degenerative, was getting more and more serious. When she was nine, we were in the hospital for three months. And at that point, she had a tracheotomy which meant she had a hole in her neck with a tube that she began to that she could breathe out of because she had lost the strength in her lungs to breathe and she was ventilator dependent and she had lost her ability to speak and to eat and to move it walk it all. Ultimately, she lost her ability to move it all. But at that point, she was just in a wheelchair, she could move her arms, and she could shake her head in point and things like that. So she became too weak to participate in any studies. And I had a choice at that point because here was Dahlia, who just wanted to be a kid. Like, she wanted to have fun and snuggle and read and bake even though she couldn’t need and live a life and have a childhood. And as the mom, it was my job to facilitate that. And I learned from her in that respect, and I decided that I could not cure this disease. I would do everything possible to try to make the symptoms less to try to understand the nuances of how she could feel better with everything she was dealing with, but also to understand that I had three kids who wanted to be kids?

Victoria Volk: I’m sitting here and I’m just thinking putting myself, trying attempting to put myself in your shoes. And as a mother parent, it’s so difficult to watch your children like you said, the grief of wanting to give them their childhood, them wanting to feel like a child.

Jessica Fein: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: What were some of the things that I mean, I know you did your own research and what did that look like? How did you do that? And what were some of the things that helped you advice that people gave? I mean, did you connect with other parents who Yeah. Paid full time caregivers and you know, of

Jessica Fein: Right. So and first of all, yes. We seeing your child suffer is unbearable. And let look. Yeah.
I have a seventeen year old. And yesterday, I got a text a very healthy mainstream seventeen year old. Okay? And so he was at school yesterday and something happened in one of the classes and a couple of the kids were mean to him. And he texted me. I mean, he was not even that upset about it, but I was, like, wait, are they being mean to you? And and he was, like, kind of. And I was, like, you know, totally devastated if my stuff occurred. And I was, like, you know, wanted to, like, run into the high school and be, like, stuff. You know? So so that’s how we are as parents. Right? So what do you do when you have, you know, this this very serious, serious, as serious as it gets situation? And, you know, I did not at the time connect with too many other people. I did become part of my do action, which is the mitochondrial disease advocacy and research education group. And I’m actually on the board of that, but I didn’t at the time connect with too many other parents. I have since my daughter died connected with way more people in the community, partly because of my own podcast, partly because of my writing, So I now know so many people and I do know what a lifeline other people going through it can be. And it doesn’t need to be people go, you know, it’s not going to be in my case, other people whose kids have MRF syndrome. It’s too rare. But it’s other people whose kids are medically complex or have rare diseases, who are child loss, who, you know, have intense special needs, all those things, parents whose lives look so dramatically different than what they had envisioned. But at the time I didn’t, and there were a few reasons. Number one, I didn’t have time. I was working full time. My daughter was an eyes on patient from age nine to seventeen, which meant she was home but our home was an ICU of sorts and myself or my husband or a nurse trained specifically in her care had to have our eyes on her twenty four seven. He was very intense and I became a highly skilled medical provider of her medical needs. I mean, it was intense. And so between working full time and then being a full time caregiver and then trying to create this childhood and this environment for my three kids and also writing a book at that time, I didn’t really have time to connect with many people in the community. So to your question of, what did I do? I first of all, so, so, so lucky to have a great partner and my husband. And that’s not always the case. I mean, you have single parents going through something like this, or you have parents who aren’t on the same page. And we know that more than fifty percent of couples who have a kid with special needs, let alone living on the precipitously, split up. So that that was a real blessing, you know. And for us, that we had each other. And I have some other, you know, really close friends. I couldn’t I didn’t see people very much, but people that I knew were there were my corner. And also my husband and I try to give each other some space to have some time to ourselves because that can so easily get lost in this situation. And I will say, because I know we’re talking about grief in general, that a couple of things along this journey, I did lose all of my family members in terms of my family of origin. And that is part of my story in my book, which is losing two sisters and three parents, which happened a lot in the way. And so I’m very reluctantly familiar with all kinds of grief. And it’s not just the grief of losing somebody, but it is other kinds of grief, what I call non hallmark kinds non hallmark card kinds of grief. Right? So ambiguous grief, for example, was something that I became very familiar with. I’m not sure if that’s something that you’ve talked about much on your show, but, you know, there there are so much loss that can even precede or surround or be separate from loss that comes from a death. Howard Bauchner:

Victoria Volk: Yeah, I I just talk about grief. Whether it’s I the labels might be helpful, you know, to understand it, but Yeah. As far as, like, healing and stuff like that, I don’t know that I yeah. It’s just all grief to me. Yeah.

Jessica Fein: But for me, it was a real eye opener because I didn’t under stamp that there were other kinds of grief. And I didn’t feel like it was appropriate at the time to be grieving when my daughter was here. It was in front of me. It was alive. And I really, for me, it was such an important thing to understand that there are other kinds of grief. And it is okay. And we can grieve a life we had imagined. And we can grieve a voice we’ll never hear again. And, you know, all of these other kinds of things. We can grieve for somebody who’s still alive. And for me, That was very helpful because once I understood that this was valid and that this was real and that this had a name, it took away some of the power and it allowed me to integrate that grief and to move forward more effectively.

Victoria Volk: So you lost three parents and your two sisters during that eight year span that you it was twenty four seven.

Jessica Fein: Well, my I lost I mean, my my first sister actually had died when she was thirty. So that and I was twenty seven. So that was the first major major loss. And then my mother and my father and my father-in-law died during that time as well as my older sister. That’s a lot. It’s a lot. And, you know, it wasn’t like they were all together. It wasn’t like everybody you know, sometimes when you think about a whole family dying, it’s like, though, they were all in a car. Mhmm. I’ll take that. It’s not like a hierarchy. It’s not better or worse

Victoria Volk: than ever.

Jessica Fein: But this was like one one offs. And it was also not like there was something that was running in the family. This was like just, you know, all all different kinds of things. So it it’s it’s pretty inconceivable. And yet, that’s what happened.

Victoria Volk: And yet, here you said,

Jessica Fein: And yet here I sit and it’s interesting because I know it sounds, it’s like when I’m telling my story to somebody who I’m just meeting, it it’s like I now I have written about it. I can speak about it. And it’s so much to take in. And I have two friends who are therapists who said to me, my goodness, if you were to come and just be telling me all this, I’d be like, oh, she’s I don’t even know there were some like a diagnosis of like that can’t possibly be true, that can’t possibly be with that because it seems so crazy and yet when you’re in something like this and underlying all of it is this intense care and intense situation and this life on the precipice, you you integrate it and and move forward. Like, there’s no time to be to lay in the fetal position. Like, there’s no time to be on the bathroom floor crying. Twenty four seven. You can’t. You cannot.

Victoria Volk: One of the things that tends to go to the wayside when the life life, like, just throws, you know, the shit our way, basically, is our self care and just caring for the self. And so how what did that look like for you amidst all of that?

Jessica Fein: Was I’m really glad you asked that because and I actually talked about this in the book. Working outside of the home was important to me, and I did get judged for it because there were people, even medical caregivers in our home, who felt that it wasn’t appropriate for me to continue working. And to be clear, I was the primary breadwinner and this life was expensive that we were living and nobody questioned my husband working. But I will say that when we talk about self care, Part of that to me was getting out of the house and working in a job that I knew how to do that I had been doing before I became a mother. That was very helpful for my identity. And that was also I think an important break during the day. Mhmm. And I think it was able to make me more present when I was home. So that was one thing. Another thing for self care for me was I’m I’m not like a big exerciser, but I did start to do pilates and just having this like twice a week that I would get out of the house and do this thing. Was also a nice break. And then also when we talk about self care, I think that the writing was important for me. You know, I wrote the book while at my daughter’s bedside. And I think that that was a really important outlet. And it allowed me to tell my story my way, which meant I was able to make some order out of the chaos. So I think those were things, oh, the other thing for self care is that my husband and I as much as we could did a date night until COVID hit, we really kept that up. And it was complicated because in order for us to go out together, we needed to have two people at home, a nurse and a babysitter because we have these two other kids and also the nurse was not a babysitter. She does not be hired to entertain. So we would need a team of two. Which first of all is an expensive proposition. But second of all, we needed to make sure that they got a lot. I mean, I remember we had this one nurse and babysitter and the babysitter was like part of our family. And afterwards, she was like, I was really uncomfortable with that nurse. You know what I mean? So that’s like a whole other dynamic. So it was complicated, but getting out of the house for about two hours on a Saturday night was such a sense of normalcy for us because our lives were so abnormal. So to be able to do that. And every night, every Saturday, we’d get in the car, and we’d look at each other, and we’d say, we’ve never needed a date more. And every Saturday night, it would be true, even more so than the week before, you know? And so So there were those things. I think it was having I think what all of these things did, whether it was the writing or the Pilates or the date night or whatever is my work. It gave me an identity separate from being the mom slash caregiver. And I think that’s important, you know, for anybody in any situation.

Victoria Volk: When you were describing you and your husband getting into the car and recognizing that you never needed to date night more, I physically, like,

Jessica Fein: I just had this That is what we would do. Literally, it was that huge exhale and the looking at each other. And I always you know, it didn’t even matter, like, if we were engaging on that date night or if we were just sitting there in if we had the one restaurant, it was close by, so we knew we weren’t, you know, we do what we were gonna do. We would go there. We still go there pretty much once a week. And, yeah, just to have that that ability to be outside of all the other roles that had become such an integrated part of our lives.

Victoria Volk: I think that’s a key point what you said is to put yourself in a different role. And in that moment, you too could be husband and wife.

Jessica Fein: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: And connect.

Jessica Fein: Mhmm. Exactly.

Victoria Volk: And one thing too, like, people may be listening and something that comes up for me as I’m hearing you share is many people who experience a child that is a lot of care or what have you. They have that support system around them as in the parents. Sometimes even the grandparents move in to help support and care and you didn’t have that either.

Jessica Fein: We didn’t have that either. And I will say that That was another thing I was dealing with. So my eldest sister had lung cancer, and she was diagnosed in the middle of all this. And I was kind of her primary person, and it was insane. It was so out of the blue and that was a whole other ride. So I was really torn. I mean, we talk about the sandwich generation caring for our children and our elderly parents at the same time. This was like triple decker sandwich or something because I had the sibling thing too. And it was really hard and I did I did, you know, I think that what I was going through may just compounded, was compounded by the other losses and those became so much more present for me because I so wanted to be able to just like you know, cry to my mom and and, you know, be be parented. Right? And and when for a while, I was taking care of my parents. And then when they weren’t here, it was incredibly lonely.

Victoria Volk: And that brings me to the topic of friendships. I mean, you probably didn’t even have time for friendships, and maybe the friendships you had fell away because you know what happens too.

Jessica Fein: I will say, I’m very lucky that I have a circle of friends, people I’ve been friends with since I was a kid. And the reason I feel so fortunate about that is because I feel like meeting new friends when you’re going through such intense things. Is so hard. Right? Unless it’s people who are also going through intense things. But it’s too much to catch somebody up on. You know what I mean? It’s just like it’s a lot. So what we were going through was so unrelatable that people who knew me before, that became very, very important for me. Even knowing they were there, they weren’t in Boston, you know, they’re all over the place, but knowing that I had these people was important to me. And I think that we see in grief, right, how hard it is to maintain friendships because people are so awkward and they’re so uncomfortable, and they don’t know what to say. And God forbid, they bring up your kid’s name, which is all you really want to talk about. You know? But they just don’t know what to do, and this is such a problem is that we’re just, as a society, so uncomfortable. And it always blows my mind because I feel like grief is the single most universal thing.
Like, every single person is going to be a grieffer. And yet, we’re so awkward. We’re so weird about it, where it should be the great unifier.

Victoria Volk: That’s what I talk about. On the podcast, like, that’s what I talk about. It is the one thing that unites us all that none of us differ on. Like, we all like, we are all creepers.

Jessica Fein: We are all creepers. Every single week of us

Victoria Volk: at a

Jessica Fein: hundred percent, like, And and with all other life cycle events, we understand how to be there, how to show up, how to sit with somebody in all other life cycle things, and yet when it comes to the thing that is the loneliness. And the thing that is the most universal, we don’t know how to do it. We don’t know how to show up. We don’t know how to sit in the silence. Right?

Victoria Volk: And that brings me to the question of how were you taught as a child to grieve and express grief, and how was it what beliefs were passed down to you about grief in your household growing up?

Jessica Fein: You know, I don’t really remember too much from growing up. What I remember with every cell of my being is the sudden death of my sister when I was twenty seven and she was thirty. And she was my best friend and we had been on the phone this morning, that morning, excuse me, and she died suddenly that afternoon. And that changed my worldview, more than any other loss. Even more, I will say, than the loss of my child because by the time that I lost Dahlia, which everybody will say, the worst thing that can happen is losing a child. And I’m not saying what’s worse and not worse. I’m just saying that that first loss changed my worldview. Because before that, I saw the world through a bubble. Right? I was looking at a bubble every, you know? And that loss punctured the bubble. Then I saw the world through the clarity of the puncture, not through the hazy sheen of the bubble. Right? It changed everything for me. And I think that I probably then I was not living with my parents at the time, but I had them as models of how it is possible to carry on, which they both did. After losing their child. Right? And so it was forever altering for them. And they were absolutely different people on the other side of it and they carried on and they engaged in the world and they had lives, you know. And and I think that probably that somehow sunk in that it was possible to have an other side, to have, you know, life on the other side of what seems like, how can you continue on?

Victoria Volk: Is do you what’s your sister’s name? Both sisters.

Jessica Fein: Yes, my first sister and thank you for asking. Her name is Noomi and my other sister who died of lung cancer more recently is Rachel.

Victoria Volk: Do you speak about them in your book too?

Jessica Fein: Yes. Yes. I mean, you know, the book opens with the with the sudden death of my sister, Noomi. It’s not a big piece of it, but I couldn’t tell the story without starting with that because it was a life changing for me. And then Rachel’s a character in the book because that happened much more recently and so out of the blue. I mean, they were both out of the blue, but one was like totally out of the blue sudden and then of course lung cancer we know can happen you know, when you’re diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, often that means that you don’t have a boatload of time.

Victoria Volk: What were the lessons that you learned from the loss? Of the grief of your sister your first sister. Know me since that was the one that kinda cracked you open. Yeah. What are what are the things that Dahlia taught you about grief then too?

Jessica Fein: Oh, two very different answers and so important both of them. With know me, what I learned was I never would nor would I want to get over the loss of my sister. This is not something I was trying to put behind me. It was something I was trying to figure out how to bring forward in a healthy way with me because she is such a core part of who I am and it was very important that I mean, I I would never want to not be grieving for her. Like, I can’t even imagine that. So it was not how are you gonna get over it. It was how are you going to move along with it? And And that was, you know, a learning because I didn’t know much personally about grief before that. Dahlia, I learned everything. I mean, here was a kid who lost everything that a kid has. She couldn’t move at all. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t, you know, she couldn’t do all of these things.
And she did not become bitter, angry. You know, all the things that I think I would become. She wanted to continue to have have joy. And and not in a, like, kind of denial kind of way, but in a like, this is my life. Like, I want to be out there. I want to be experiencing it. So so watching her do that made me realize that joy and sorrow can live side by side. They can hold hands. You can have grief and you can have beauty. And all of these things that I would have thought were mutually exclusive, fear and anguish and anxiety and, you know, moving or all the things. And then on the other side, you know, joy and fun and meaning and all these things like they can all be intertwined. And in fact, I think they become stronger in the presence of the other.

Victoria Volk: I’m just trying to imagine how, like, did you compartmentalize, like, when you would come into the room and, like, just I mean, because you essentially have to, in some respect, like, set your your stuff aside, right, to fully be present with her

Jessica Fein: Okay. I think I’m the queen of compartmentalization. I think I’m like, I don’t even know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing or whatever, but I do think it’s key to for me to being able to function because, you know, here, the the situation was too big to take it all in at any time. It would have blown us down. We couldn’t do that. I compare it to a pointalism, you know, the the kind of art where when you’re standing up close, you just see the the dots. And you have to back up to be able to tell that it’s, you know, a canoe or a field or whatever it is in the picture. We couldn’t back up. We couldn’t take in the big picture. It was too big. We had to be real up close and understand what each point was and and be attending to each point. And it wasn’t until after Dahlia passed away that I felt that I could back up and begin to take in the enormity.

Victoria Volk: One of the things that I had a previous guest on, she is the author of always a sibling.

Jessica Fein: Yes. Andy Orangestein.

Victoria Volk: Yes. Have you read the book?

Jessica Fein: No. But I have it, and I’m about to speak, I I have an upcoming thing where we’re gonna be together,

Victoria Volk: and she’s coming on my show. So Awesome. Yeah. She is wonderful. And one thing that I didn’t really think about until reading her book was that and she came on my podcast, was that our siblings are the people that know us the best who they’re the longest relationships that we have. And so for you when you shared about Nomi and how that grief was harder, in some respect.

Jessica Fein: That’s right because I have never been a day on this earth without her. Mhmm. Twenty seven years she was by myself. For, you know, the second that I came into the world, she was, like, celebrating me. And we, you know, they’re they’re that connection.
There’s nothing like it. And I remember at the time and I will say, she had been married for five years when she died and she had been with her husband three years before that. K? So I remember so vividly thinking even right then, his goal will be ultimately to move on. Right?
His goal is going to be you know, here’s a young guy and they had a baby. And ultimately, I mean, he’d always remember her, but this would end up being an eight year chapter of his life. And his goal would be to move on. And I say that with all the love in the world for him, but that that was the situation. Whereas my goal was to hold on, I’d never wanted to let her go. And, yeah, I mean, a sibling relationship, I think it’s interesting that that, you know, Annie said that and and I understand it because you it is the longest relationship that they know you in a way nobody else will ever know. When you have a good, healthy, great, and in my case, when you have a sibling who’s your best friend. And also like she shared too, they fill the gaps of your childhood. Like, totally. There’s they know your childhood, like, nobody else. And that’s why, you know, earlier when we were talking about my friendship circle, I’ve got some friends that I’ve had since, like, eight years old. And so I think they now have stepped into that role, and they know all the players you know, and they’ll remind me. Remember when your mom, you know, because we all grew up together. And that’s why those friendships are so important. I mean, you know, for other reasons too, but but right?
They are the the safekeepers of your history.

Victoria Volk: That’s so true. Like, I have friendships since I was in five kindergarten. Like, we’re still close and I cherish those. Yeah. For sure. What is the one thing that you would say to parents who and I know we kind of alluded to it or kinda started this podcast talking about how you have three children. But so many parents I know we’re jumping around here a lot because you’ve had, you know, such a variety of losses, but when parents seem to struggle with the question who have lost a child, how many children do you have? And, you know, I

Jessica Fein: was like, well, do I say, do I even get into it if I had a child lost? Like, you know, if I have my kids with me and there’s there’s four, but I actually have five. And do I say I have five? Or where’s the fifth one? You know? Like, how how do you navigate that? Yeah. So what I would say is to every parent, It is entirely up to you at any given moment. How you want to answer that question? If you are in a place where you don’t feel that the person asking it is a safe place or if you’re with other people or if you just don’t want to get into it, say what you want. Say to if you’ve lost your third. That’s fine. You don’t have to feel guilty about that. This is up to you and it is how you are going to feel best and safest. I will say I am the mother of three. I believe I will always be the mother of three. I often think about it with somebody who had one child and lost one child, but But the inevitable next question always is how old are they? And then what happens is you find yourself apologizing to the person, listen, I’m sorry, this is gonna be really hard for you. Right? But I got because you know you’re about to make them so uncomfortable, So it is a total minefield as is so much else.
The question, how are you? Is a total minefield? Right? Like, what am I supposed to If I’m feeling okay in that moment and I say, oh, you know, things are good, then you feel totally guilty. Like, how could I answer the question that way? Mhmm. Right? And I mean, there’s so much we just there’s so much we make ourselves feel bad about, and we don’t need to do that. We need to do what’s gonna be in that moment. And you can run into two people in the grocery store and feel like you wanna answer that question two different ways.
It’s okay. It’s up to you. You know? I will find myself I I I for me, I just can’t imagine saying, I’m a mom of two. I can’t. Dahlia is such a huge part of who I am, you know? Just like it’s very, very hard for me when people say, oh, do you have siblings?

Victoria Volk: Yeah. Exactly. I was just I was thinking that too. It’s it’s kinda nice sort of thing.

Jessica Fein: Yeah. I always will have to I mean, I’m always I’m the youngest of three.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. Well, that actually brings up another question because I didn’t assume you had more siblings, but I thought maybe there was a chance you had more siblings and I didn’t ask. And now you’re in now it’s I

Jessica Fein: am orphaned. Yes. Yes. I know. And when my eldest sister was diagnosed, we had lost our parents and our other sister. And she said to me, I’m gonna be okay because no god would ever do that to you. And that’s what she believed. It would be There’s no way that reality that is my reality now that that could happen. And I suppose as I get older, it will be less shocking because it’ll be more in the natural order of things. But I’m nowhere near the age yet when one would expect that, you know,

Victoria Volk: That just made me well up. Yeah. I know on your website, you talk about you mentioned the personal survival kit, and you’ve talked about I think you have alluded to Grace the grace you give yourself, the grace you give others. But what does hope and humor and grit look like for you in your healing?

Jessica Fein: Yeah. Well, hope, I’m I’m a big believer in hope. And I think what we hope for changes all the time, for a while I hoped for a cure, and then that wasn’t going to happen. Then I hoped she wasn’t in pain, or I hoped we’d be able to have a successful outing that afternoon or I hope, you know, but but the idea of living without hope is not compelling to me. And I think that we get to choose if we want to be hopeful about things.
And we get to choose what we want to be hopeful about. As for humor, I think you can always find humor. I mean, as long as you’re willing to open yourself up to dark humor, there’s there’s humor. I mean, life is ridiculously humorous and, you know, ridiculously punishing and all the other things. But but I I feel like humor is important too. And and in my writing, I mean, that is probably one of the things I hear most often is, oh my god, I did not expect your book to be funny. You know, people will say, I expected to cry, I didn’t expect to laugh this much. So, you know, fair, fair, you know, warning or promise to anybody who’s gonna pick it up, hopefully, you will feel an array of things when you read the book. You gotta have grit to carry through. I mean, you have to be able to pull on the the the rain boots and get on, put yourself in the muck every day. And that to me was the grit. It was getting up and doing it again day after day after day.

Victoria Volk: And I would also want to ask because I I did think of another question. I’ll circle back to that. But were there any books that you because you had books on your thing too and you’re a avid reader and you’re a writer. So are there any books that you would recommend that you found most supportive to you as you were going through all of this?

Jessica Fein: Yeah. Well, I’m a huge reader and I would say that for me. And, you know, when you talked about self care earlier on, I didn’t mention, but reading for me. And and at the time, in particular, I just wanted to read fiction. Anything that’s gonna take me out of my situation. So I would say that for me. And then in the book, I do talk about three other books. One is or or three other authors who meant a lot to me. One was James Baldwin, who whose life situation couldn’t have been more different from mine, but wrote so much about people meeting tragedy and standing up to tragedy rather than letting it blow them down, and that was very important to me. Also Mary Oliver is an amazing poet, and her work just really, really was was very important to me. And then my father was a writer in reading his his words and understanding what he had to say about loss, having he had written a book about the loss of my sister. So that was very important to me as well. Yeah. It was and and I quote him quite a bit in my book.

Victoria Volk: That’s beautiful. You also have on their cores cores corners of beauty? What is that? Yeah.

Jessica Fein: And that’s a big part of my book as well, which is this idea that I’m talking about a letter that I received from my father. I he had left me some letters to read after he died. And we talk about creating a world of beauty and where that’s like a really tall order. And none of us really can do that effectively. We’re not that powerful, but we can create corners of beauty. That’s something that’s within each of our control. And that can be how you respond to somebody you see out in the world who maybe needs a hand. That can be how you make something out of a lousy situation, a horrible situation that can be having a candle light dinner in your daughter’s room next to the beeping monitors. You’ve created a little corner of beauty. So corners of beauty is something that I think is in all of our control.

Victoria Volk: That that’s juicy. That is really juicy. I think there’s something there for you to really dig into and elaborate on if you haven’t already. I’ve I’m not assuming you haven’t, but if you haven’t, like that that’s very intriguing to me. That’s I love that.
Thank you for

Jessica Fein: Thank you. Alright. So maybe that’s book maybe that’s the follow-up.

Victoria Volk: And also writing it down. And of course, because you had that on your website as well, writing it down, and writing was very much therapeutic for you. It sounds like at the bedside of your daughter. And Yeah. And having that emulated for you too by your father, I bet that was such a gift.

Jessica Fein: It really it really was. And, you know, one of the things that I learned from it was that his book was not a book about my sister, but he handed me the manuscript. He said he wrote a book about Noomi and I read it, and I said, this isn’t a book about Noomi. This is about your know me. If I were to write a book about know me, it would be a totally different book. And that was really important to me. I’m sure if my husband were to write a book about what we went through, it would be a totally different book. Right? I mean, people are so different for each of us. And even the very same loss or the same situation, you know, two parents of the same kid or two siblings of the third sibling. It’s a different loss.

Victoria Volk: Because all relationships are unique. Exactly. And so how can I ask this is my last question and because I you brought it up and I I actually wrote it down? Husband grief. Like, how Yeah.

Jessica Fein: He it’s totally different. I mean, he would never in a thousand a million years have a conversation like we’re having. Right? I find it I would talk about this all day long because for me, it’s an opportunity to bring my family, my losses forward, to have them be present, to tell their stories, to allow people to get to know them, So it’s very, very important for me. And I am so grateful for the opportunity to to do that. My husband is much more private, so he’s very supportive of me doing what I want to need to do, but think he doesn’t even like to come to my book reading. He still likes it in the background and maybe, you know, so he can sneak out if he needs to because he’s a much more internal private person. And I think that that’s, you know, we need to be able to respect that we’re all gonna go through it in our own way. And there’s no wrong way. And there’s no timeline. That’s a big thing. I see a lot of people. I see a lot of people out there who say, well, jeez, it’s been x number of to, you know, why isn’t that a person over it yet? And it’s like, no. No. That’s really why

Victoria Volk: I started this podcast was to, you know, banish the misinformation and the myths of grief and all these things that were taught like time heels and grief alone and replace the loss and, you know, these behaviors that we find ourselves doing to bypass our feelings and not feel them. Right? And to feel better in that period of time. And so, you know, what may have destroyed another couple sounds like it really just brought you two together and allowed you each to honor each other the losses and the way that you found helpful for you as individuals, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. Is there anything that you would like to share that you don’t feel you’ve got too that you feel is important?

Jessica Fein: No. I think that this this covered it. And you know, I love, as I’ve mentioned, connecting with people on these topics, and I invite people to connect me on social or well, first, please check out the book. You know, wherever you get your books. Whether that’s Amazon or BookShop dot org, Barnes and Noble, breathtaking. And, you know, I’m having some really interesting conversations with book groups who are reading it together, and I’ll go to any book group I’ll zoom in or whatever if if people choose to read it with with some friends. And then, you know, yeah, my website is where I keep up to date on everything in terms of, you know, other writing I’m doing, events that are happening. So, yeah, you can check that out at jessica find stories dot com and that’s fine at the EIN because post people hear it and think it’s the other way. So just the fine stories dot com.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. And we say fine and grief recovery. We say fine as feelings inside not expressed and that is not you.

Jessica Fein: So That is that’s alright. That’s very funny.

Victoria Volk: I look forward to checking out myself. I love me some dark humor. So thank you so much for being my guest. I will put all of the links in the show notes and thank you for sharing your warrior story. Really? It’s a warrior through grief. And, you know, we all don’t have to do some grand things with our grief and share it with the world. But if you can connect with other people, like, and create those corners of beauty like you shared, That’s healing. So thank you for sharing your story because storytelling is healing too. Storytelling is healing.

Jessica Fein: And I also, you know, I didn’t mention I do a column in psychology today called grace and grief. You can find that online. I write a lot about not only our own individual grief, but how you can support others in their grief. So if people wanna check that out. Thank you so much. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life, much love.

 

 

Ep 205 Ed Owens | A Veteran’s Heart Cracked Open By Child Loss

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY: 

This week, I had the privilege of hearing from Ed Owens, vice president of the Grief Recovery Institute, in a deeply moving episode of the Grieving Voices podcast.

As Vice President of the Grief Recovery Institute, Ed’s narrative isn’t just about loss; it’s about discovery—the kind that reshapes lives. From his military background to law enforcement tenure, he was schooled in emotional compartmentalization until life delivered its harshest lesson through his greatest loss: the death of his 3-year-old son, Ryan.

This wasn’t just a turning point for Ed; it was an unraveling—a catalyst that compelled him to seek healing beyond traditional avenues. The Grief Recovery Method didn’t merely offer solace; it provided clarity and purpose, revealing insights into male grief often shrouded by societal expectations.

Ed challenges us to look beyond labels like “toxic masculinity,” advocating for empathy over division. He sees our shared struggles as conduits for unity—emotional commonalities that can bridge ideological divides if only we dare to acknowledge them.

His message resonates with profound simplicity: Recognize your pain, own your choices, and rewrite your future—not as isolated chapters but as part of a collective human experience yearning for connection.

Join us in this conversation that goes beyond mere words into actions that echo across lifetimes. Let’s create ripples together, capable of washing away walls built from unspoken sorrows.

RESOURCES:


CONNECT:

  • Website
  • Email: edowens[at]griefrecoverymethod[dot]com

_______

NEED HELP?

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If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.

CONNECT WITH VICTORIA: 

Unpacking the Journey Through Grief: Insights from Ed Owens and the Power of Emotional Healing

Grief is a universal human experience, yet it remains one of our society’s most misunderstood and neglected areas. In an enlightening episode of the Grieving Voices podcast, we are offered a window into this complex world through the personal and professional lens of Ed Owens, Vice President of the Grief Recovery Institute. This blog post aims to expand on that conversation by exploring key themes discussed in the podcast and offering additional context and insights.

From Compartmentalization to Confrontation

Ed Owens’s background in military service and law enforcement epitomizes careers where emotional compartmentalization is often seen as necessary for survival. Yet, this approach can leave individuals ill-prepared for personal tragedies. It was only after facing his own profound loss—the death of his young son—that Owens realized how much unaddressed grief he carried.

The Turning Point

Owens’s journey underscores a critical point: sometimes it takes a catalytic event to force us out of our emotional defenses. For many people like him, traditional coping mechanisms—medication, substance use, or even therapy—may fall short when it comes to healing deep-seated emotional wounds.

Discovering Effective Tools for Healing

The transformative moment came when Owens encountered the Grief Recovery Method (GRM). Unlike other interventions he tried previously, GRM enabled him to process his emotions constructively—a significant breakthrough leading not just toward recovery but also toward helping others navigate their grief.

Key Takeaways from GRM

Through GRM training, two revelations stood out:

  1. Lessons Learned: Every life event teaches us something invaluable; recognizing these lessons allows growth amidst pain.
  2. Self-Worth: Understanding that you are deserving of love—and have been loved—is crucial for self-acceptance.

Societal Reflections: Male Grief Under Scrutiny

The discussion with Owens brings attention to male grief—a topic frequently overlooked due to societal expectations surrounding masculinity. Terms like “toxic masculinity” can inadvertently stigmatize men’s emotional expression rather than encouraging healthy vulnerability.

Impact on Suicide Rates

One cannot overlook how societal pressures contribute significantly to higher suicide rates among men—an alarming trend suggesting that failing to address male-specific grief has dire consequences.

Overcoming Division Through Shared Humanity

In today’s polarized climate, divisions run deep across political lines and social strata; however, at our core lies an inherent ability for empathy based on shared experiences—especially those involving loss or trauma. By tapping into this shared humanity rather than focusing on what separates us could be instrumental in fostering unity within communities torn apart by conflict or misunderstanding.

Call To Action: Embrace Empathy Beyond Differences

Owen’s message culminates in a powerful call-to-action urging listeners not only recognize but embrace our commonality as humans who feel deeply regardless sociopolitical divides—to build bridges instead connections understanding thereby enriching both individual lives broader community alike .

Practical Steps Towards Healing

Here are some actionable recommendations gleaned from Owen’s insights:

  • Engage with Your Past: Reflect upon your losses; acknowledge them without judgment.
  • Seek Supportive Communities: Whether through organizations like GRIM or local support groups—it helps share stories find solace together .
  • Educate Yourself About Emotional Health: Awareness around mental health resources can empower you take charge your own healing journey .

Ultimately , while each person ‘s path through sorrow unique , embracing tools such as those provided by institutions like GRI offers hope transformation . As we learn more about effective ways handle emotion pain —and encourage others do same—we pave way healthier future all involved .

For anyone seeking further information assistance regarding methods discussed here please don’t hesitate reach out directly via email at [email protected] visit official websites mentioned above . Let ‘s walk together towards brighter tomorrow—one where every voice heard heart mended .

Episode Transcription:

Victoria Volk: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of grieving voices. Today, my guest is Ed Owens. And before I go on my own spiel. I’ll just have you introduce yourself since I don’t actually have an official bio for you. Okay. Thank you for being here.

Ed Owens: Oh, it’s it’s great to be here, Victoria. I’m super thrilled. I’m looking forward to doing this with you for a little while. And thank you for the invitation. So folks for all of you listening. Thanks for tuning in. Obviously, these podcasts can’t happen without those of you that come back and listened and and tune in and We appreciate you. So my name is Ed Owens. I’m currently the vice president of the grief recovery institute. Which is kind of primetime prepayment method.
Now that’s just my current stuff. My life has had before all this. I had absolutely nothing to do with emotions. Emotions were not something I was comfortable with and helping people with recent loss was, like, not even on my radar. Very briefly, I had a dual career going on for most of my life. I was in the US military and would eventually retire at almost twenty one years from the Air Force reserves. Talk about more about that if you like to later. And then on the civilian side, I was in law enforcement for twenty three. So York City County State and with the feds for twenty three years. So I had this dual career going on. I’ve got professional background education also except none of it prepared me in life for dealing with emotional pain, brief, drama, whatever Trevor you wanna use, it’s all the same folks. And Yeah. But my path will eventually lead me here. So I’m a trainer with the Institute. I work my way up to a vice president of the Institute, and that’s now what I get to do. I get a look at reading people. All of this planet. And I’m just thrilled to be here.

Victoria Volk: And I am so grateful for the Griffin Care Institute and for John James and this beautiful body of work that he’s created because it changed my life. And I am certified as an advanced grief recovery method specialist at the Early Recovery Institute. So thank you for your contribution as Vice President, which must have been living under a rock because I did not know that. You were the vice president. So congratulations on that appointment. And obviously, you’re amount of great service and much service. So what was the loss that brought you to grief recovery?

Ed Owens: Sure. That’s a great place to start. Like I said, like, this is not something I ever thought I’d be doing. Whether it was military, you know, law enforcement, either one. Those were not jobs where we embrace emotions.
Right? Emotions can actually get in the way of getting the mission done or, you know, doing whatever we have to do in that terrible moment where you’re called to help somebody. Right? That’s not the time to be processing or dealing with emotions. So both of my careers taught me to compartmentalize and I just got really good at it. Both of my careers taught me to compartmentalizing and stuffing down all of that. And I could focus on what was in front of me, whether that was get the mission done or that was a call or whatever. And that’s not to say that life wasn’t happening that whole time. Right? Like all of us, we experience an enormous amount of loss events in our life, changes in familiar patterns of behavior in our lives that don’t feel good. Like, we got a lot of conflicting feelings around it. Like everybody else, I’m not unique, but I put it all in a box. Right? Or I’m all in a box. And I just did what society taught us. Right? I used all the same tools that we all were taught. To try and deal with stuff, keep busy, you know, grieve alone, all that type of things. I did all of that stuff. Right? And there’s a bunch of other stuff I’m not proud of either. I mean, like, I got into the bottle a lot, you know, especially in the military. And all of those losses kept accumulating. But to answer your question, the loss that brought me to the final, like, it all worked until it didn’t work. I’m not saying it worked well, but it was all working and I was able to survive life right, until the death of my three year old son. And that loss his death broke open. I would say broke open Pandora’s box all the stuff that I had been trying to carry around forever. And I was completely over with with the death of the man. And again, it’s not about getting into the details or anything else, but nothing I’d ever done in my life worked. Everything came rushing forward at the same time.
You know, world spun out of control. It spilled out into every relationship in my life. It literally felt like I was drowning. Something’s going on. And everybody told me, Victoria, oh, it’s a life sentence of pain. You have to learn how to live your new normal Right? And you’re never going to get over it and you never go you know, you’re gonna have to learn how to live with this and survive for the rest of your life. And as somebody who, like, with my careers and everything else, like, we need, I have to just survive. Now that’s not you you figure out a way to deal with this. So I went on a mission for five years to stumble around. Always looking and everyone kept telling me, I’m not gonna find anything, you know, or on one hand. You’re just gonna have to deal with this pain. Or on the other hand, but if you tried this, if you tried this, if you tried this, if you thought about this, like and I’m like, hey, I haven’t done that. I’ll give it a shot. Nothing actually worked. I’d might feel better for a day, maybe a couple of days, but it didn’t do anything with the emotional pain that I was carrying. And one day, somebody suggested Have you ever heard of degrees of carbonate? Like, nope. What’s that? I mean, because, like, seriously, like, I I did all things. Doctors put me on pills, didn’t like them. I felt worse. I I felt the first time, like, that must be what feels like be close to being suicidal. I’m like, I’m not taking those anymore. I did alcohol and I’m the pain, you name, and I did it.
And all the other stuff. Well, so lo and behold, my nope. So I had lunch. But somebody who’s a grief scrubber med specialist named by Russell, years ago. I’m like, wow. This I’m like, what I heard. Went home, looked it up. Oh, there’s certification training coming up in ten days. Now, I had no intention of being a specialist. I’m like, but I wanna go through this and they talked about, well, yeah, you can just do the personal work. So I signed myself and my partner up for it. I’m like, if I’m going, you’re going, well, let’s just for you. It’s not for me. I don’t need that. I’m like, well, if I’m going here, Helen, you introduced me to this, you know.
She’s actually her mom who’s suspicious. In all transparency. That’s my partner. That’s not. You interviewed her a couple weeks ago, I think. So we went together. And it was the last thing that I ever tried and the first and only thing that ever worked. And it still works to this day. And I’ve been able to use that in all of the other lessons that I’ve dealt with in my life. Go back and deal with, complete, and finish what’s unfinished. Hence, never stop working.

Victoria Volk: What was your greatest aha in the method that just surprised you? When you first if you can think back to that time.

Ed Owens: Sure. I can’t. I can’t. I had a couple of two big ahas for me. Number one was the realization that my son’s life and death top me more than I would have ever taught him as a dad. Wow. And so that was super powerful. That awareness. And the feeling. Right? Just the feeling around even his his life was a gift. And as painful as his death was, it was a gift in my life as well. And most people would be like, oh my god. How could someone say that? About the death of the child.
And I’m like, I can’t say that because it’s allowed me to become a better his example to me and what he taught me and what I’ve learned through this whole thing has allowed me to be a better dad to my opportunity. That’s allowed me to be a better human being and to show up in the world differently. And I attribute that all to that experience coupled with the method guiding me through it. The other thing was after he died, I had a lot of misplaced feelings of responsibility. Right? I was beating myself up. Like, I didn’t think I want the military at the top. I didn’t keep my son safe. I failed to protect him. I’m not much of a man. I’m not much of a dead. I’m not being all the things, right, that I was beating myself up around. And going through the process, you know, without giving it away to all of our listeners who haven’t been there yet. But part of it is we’ve taken honest, really raw, deep, honest, and mostly look at that relationship between our And when we’re doing that, we if anything pops in our mind or on our heart more importantly, right? We we included. And I had this memory, and I didn’t know what it was about, but I was able to discover what it was about. The memory was rocking my son. Every night, I had rock hit me in our rocking chair before I put him to bed and stuff. And he would look up at me and I’d see myself reflected in his eyes. And it was just it was one of my favorite memories when it looks like one of our favorite little routines that ended. And I always blamed myself. Right? I would really I mean, that was the worst of it. It was, like, all of the things that we should have been better or different, or if I could go back and change this x y z, this, you know, all that stuff, like, in the y’s okay. But to realize, Ryan only looked at me with love and aberration and, you know, and he looked at me with unconditional. And I didn’t believe after he died that I was worthy of love. I was worthy of committing. And so to realize that I am the man that I saw reflected in my son’s thoughts. That I am, that person and dad that, you know, that I can accept love. Love for myself and love for others. That was huge.

Victoria Volk: What do you think is the state of I I listened to a podcast recently that was all about the state of men in boys today. Talking it went from suicidal rates. It went from talking about the importance of marriage. For men talked about, like, even divorce, for example, is huge for a man because if And if they’re not in a relationship or they’re not committed with somebody, and they’re not a father, what’s their place? Right? And so the whole podcast was talking about these different aspects of of, well, why is the suicide rate becoming so high among men? And how can we address these various topics? And talking about like the, you know, the empowerment of women and how so many women went from depending, right, on financially and economically on their a counterpart and to support them. And how that has shifted and changed and the impact and the ripples that has had on men in our society today. And so I’m just curious If you can speak as a man, just speak to what your thoughts are on on all of on I know you haven’t listened to the pod. Maybe I should’ve sent it to you beforehand. I didn’t I just thought of that now. I should’ve sent it to you beforehand. I’ll send it to you after and I’ll link it to you. Yeah. Because I think it’s an excellent episode I’m not even sure why I listened to it, but it really had me thinking about all of this. Anyway, what are your thoughts on The state of men and boys today?

Ed Owens: Yeah, that’s a complex issue. We could spend definitely more than an hour on that. Just alone, but high level thoughts. Right? Let’s walk it backwards.
Right, from that place where there’s so much suicide. And that’s and that’s an issue across the board, right, especially in western cultures. It’s a massive issue. Right? And everything we’ve ever been doing to try and prevent suicide, it’s a little wind here and there, but we are not stopping the trajectory. Like, every we need to do something different. Vote can’t keep doubling and tripling down and putting more resources into approaches that have not changed where the trajectory of this issue. One of those things is people get to a certain point, generally get to your point. But I think we need to walk it from that. The point where everyone is aware to how did we get here? There’s a quote from the Veterans Administration at least years years ago what veterans is. I don’t choose suicide because I won’t hurt anyone. I choose suicide because I don’t know what to do with the pain. And that is a really, I think, an important way for us to frame how do we deal with this issue of suicide regardless of the reason. These people get to a point where they are so overwhelmed. They’ve carried so much stuff they’ve put into their little backpacks, their little emotional storage tanks. Everything they’ve tried doesn’t work. And it’s something, you know, people who are hurting lack the courage to wanna feel better. They don’t. They’re always trying. Even if it’s not a smart choice, they’re still trying to do something. But they’re adding tools. So the first place to really deal with this right away fast is how can we get more people the right tools that will help them have another option that doesn’t include taking their life. Because we it’s gonna be a harder thing. They’re both hard thing. Like, teaching people these tools and helping them to trust them is is a hard sell. And the bigger societal issue. Let’s walk it back. Let’s talk about it from a guy’s perspective. At least from my perspective. And yet, this is I’m one person. Right? I’m one person. There are what? I don’t know how many billions of guys on the planet. So, like, there’s gonna be other people who agree with me. There’ll be people who don’t agree with me, but this just my take on it. Right? There’s a lot of mixed messaging that’s out there in the world. There’s a lot of messaging that says to be male is to is toxic.
Right?

Victoria Volk: Podcasts even mentioned that, even that phrase alone toxic masculinity. Is Right. A terrible phrase.

Ed Owens: Right. It it is a terrible phrase. I’d say whoever created it it was evil of their intention to create that phrase. Again, we’re putting a very negative label on a half of the population of the species and saying that if you are male, you have this and therefore you are bad. Well, that message will be internalized. Like, if we introduce the younger we introduce that concept to little people, Right? That becomes part of their belief system. Who’s the greatest authority on the planet folks when we’re five years old? Mom and dad And if mom or dad well, if you know, whoever it is or society or their teacher or whoever, says, oh my god. Little Johnny, you’re a male. Nails are toxic. Nails are abusive. Nails are you know, mail energy is bad, bad, bad, bad, I mean, he’s going to believe it because he’ll take it in at a hundred percent true. And now you’ve been seeing they’re creating a situation, whether it’s Johnny or Susie who’s being told this. Johnny’s internalizing, oh, I’m that person. And Susie is internalizing and believing that Johnny’s a bad person Right? We gotta knock off the labels folks. You know, it it there’s a lot of other terms. But for this, but again, when we teach children very, very damaging concepts. At a super young age, they internalize it and believe it is a hundred percent true. I’m not surprised that the marriage rates down. I’m not surprised that all these things I mean, there’s a lot of issues. Again, like, we can spend hours on this stuff one of my degrees is is behavioral science. So, again, like, we could spend a lot of time.

Victoria Volk: Part two,

Ed Owens: Sure. Sure. But we have created a dynamic where marriage is no longer or even, like, seriously committed relationships. Like, it’s it’s not the thing. It, like, that concept is dying. In granted, societies have all been changing, maybe that’s what’s necessary. I don’t know. That’s not for me to judge. But what we do have is a lot of single parent helps. Right? For one reason or another. And there’s so much research that what is needed to help in a healthy way develop a young person’s life, trajectories, balance, all of these types of things. This is by part two. Like, part one is we’re teaching all these young people that half of the species is bad because they happen to be a male. Right? And then the other part of all this is we have and again, there’s a lot of research on this. The lack of both energies the lack of a male and female energy. Right? In in the upbringing of a child, Right? And in particular, there’s a lot of research around them. It’s the lack of a male and in certain minority populations and those types of things. The lack of that is detrimental, physically, socially life choices that you know, on criminal crime, like, the lack of that presence in a young child’s life is almost like we’re sentencing down to have a bad life of the future. And again, like, I’m not I’m not playing a finger. I’m not saying anybody’s bad at all. I’m gonna say, like, there’s any of research on this. We need to have you know, let’s say, like, it takes a whole village to reach out. Right? So, but in a whole village, it’s like there’s a lot of males and females that become positive, hopefully positive role models and examples of these sort of lives. And if we don’t have that, and we only get one half of this of the situation, of the story, or the whatever. Right? It’s not balanced. And depending on what that messaging is, you keep it toxic.

Victoria Volk: And I think as young boys in particular, would you say, and even girls, or however you identify yourself,

Ed Owens: Mhmm. If

Victoria Volk: you don’t feel that connection in community within your own environment, you’re gonna look for it somewhere. You’re gonna look for acceptance somewhere. And and vlogging somewhere

Ed Owens: Correct.

Victoria Volk: Might not be the most healthy environment conducive of someone choosing healthier choices for themselves.

Ed Owens: Right. Absolutely. I hundred percent agree with all that. And all of this mixed messaging, all these different things. The bottom line is it puts boys and girls and and women in conflict with their own human nature.
And then we could like, hey. This is the top of where you explore over. But the bottom line is is when there’s mixed messaging, there’s mix. It’s like, I’m not for anyone listening to this. Like, I am not an advocate that any one gender or the other is better than the other. I’m not an advocate that either one can or cannot do this or that. I’m not that I have one hundred percent that what is it you wanna do with your life? Alright. Let’s do it. Because we are all capable of amazing things where we are empowered, encouraged, nurtured, and loved on that path.
Absolutely. But just like empowering a young person and loving them and encouraging them and helping them can achieve great results, teaching them that this is bad, and that is wrong. All of those type of things. Like in a toxic way. And again, I’m not meaning to use that term a lot, but what we do on this topic is toxic.
It’s damaging. It’s very destructive. And a lot of people are in conflict with their own human nature on it because of the mixed messaging. They don’t know what’s true. They they’re trying to they try and force themselves to fit into a box.
The problem is that box is always changing. That that labels always change That dynamic is always changing. If you can’t go, I don’t know, a couple of months or you can’t go a month without there being something being changed. You know, or this is the new term. Stop using term spoke. Stop using label. Right? And we have to have an honest conversation that presents both sides. I used to one thing I’ve learned over the years in my career examples. There’s two sides to every story.
But the truth is always in the middle. No side when you talk to two people. No side is truth is a hundred percent. They have their their stake, their biases, their beliefs, and everything else. The truth is always in the middle. And we need to figure out where that is and that takes both sides working together to figure out what that is.

Victoria Volk: I hundred percent agree. But, you know, as we come to a conversation, we’re always going to think that our what is what we believe is the truth. Right? We perceive it as truth based on, to your point, our personal life experience.

Ed Owens: Yep. And our belief systems.

Victoria Volk: And our belief systems.

Ed Owens: Yeah. We’re responsible. Yeah. And again, like, we’re doing some some deep waters here and you can edit this out if you like. But I think that this is also part of the bigger issue we’re facing, you know, here in the United States and around a little. Like, we are so incredibly divided. And again, I’m not saying one opinion is different than another opinion. I’m not saying one’s right or wrong, one’s better than the other or less than the other. Right? I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is, we are so incredibly divided, right, across the spectrum. And for me, that’s worrisome. I mean, as a student of history, I love history and everything else, when people are divided, then they start to you know, minimize and demonize and attack each other. Right? I don’t care. I’m not picking size on anything, but when we when we do that and we see the we see the other people as less than worthy of us or that like, they’re the bad people that allows us to then dehumanize the other side. Decrease in us versus them mentality. And folks, all you gotta do is look at history anytime it’s in us versus them mentality. Similarly that results in silence, unrest, wars. Right?

Victoria Volk: It happens it happens on a micro scale in our in house Absolutely. Within family units. Is this on a bigger stage?

Ed Owens: It is. It is.

Victoria Volk: It’s just a bigger stage.

Ed Owens: But that bigger stage is also making it harder for the individuals within their own families. Exactly. Right? Because there’s so many I mean, there’s been a lot of issues that have happened in the last five years. And then we don’t need to get into the pandemic for detail.
We don’t need to get into all the stuff that’s going on. Right? Again, I’m I’m not wanting to get into different issues. I’m trying people to see the bigger picture. So, ma’am, Right?
And that bigger picture is, you know, we have, like, almost eight billion people on this planet and all eight billion of those people have their own individual unique belief systems, and people believe different things. And even if we kinda I agree with you that this is a good concept, I’m still gonna have different ways I why I think that’s a good concept. Like, we can’t even all agree on the same thing all the time. And these bigger issues are they’ve we don’t live in a vacuum. In your household or mine, like, we don’t live in a vacuum. It’s not close the doors. And our little world is kumbaya and, you know, It’s nothing but rainbows and unicorns. It is not the way this works. Right? Everything that we’re impacted by all the stuff we see over here and that comes into our family, it comes into our relationships with our friends and our neighbors, our communities, And when we’re looking at the other person and all this stuff is magnifying, you know, all of what’s going on, Of course, it it does impact those individual relationships, the ability to form close intimate bonds and form a partnership, whatever that partnership is. Again, marriage oh, there’s a million terms for all that stuff. Right? But it interferes with it. And it increases us versus them mentality, which creates more division. The more divided we are folks the more by the way, I’ll say that’s pretty lonely and isolated. But the more divided we become, the more conflict we will continue to experience. We’ve got to get to a point where we don’t see other people, in our own household, in our own family, in own neighborhood, and community, we have to get to a point where we see people consuming things. And all of us as human beings experience sweet, joyful, and wonderful things in whats. And all of us assume names, experience, pain, loss, or whatever term you wanna call it, grief, trauma, I think, again, is it? It’s pain. If it’s emotionally painful, right, or emotionally joyful, we all can do this us. What make that’s the one thing I fully believe about her that connects us as a human species. Is our capacity to feel emotions and to feel the outcome when things don’t turn out the way we hope to predict. And if we could see each other as another human having human experiences who’s also earning, we don’t have to agree. We don’t have to agree with their their all things would agree with their societal issues. We don’t have to agree with their belief systems. But if we can recognize that people are humans within we’re emotional beings. We have the capacity for this. And we can try and figure out how to connect at that level, and then I think there’s hope. There’s more of that color.

Victoria Volk: I think there’s one question that people could be asked that would unlock so much for people. And it’s when you’re disagreeing with someone or you’re finding yourself in conflict with someone asking them, what happened to

Ed Owens: you? Yeah.

Victoria Volk: I think it’s simple question that when we go to the doctor and we have the aches and pains and you and I both know it’s probably grief and trauma manifest staying in the body oftentimes and the doctor never asks, well, what happened to you in your life? No. And I think when we’re finding ourselves, feeling activated about something emotionally and feeling ourselves, I hate the word triggered, but activated. Right? If someone were to ask you, what happened to you? What makes you believe that to be true? Well, that opens the door for compassion and understanding and listening and all those things that build and deep in connection. And I think that’s one of the things you’re alluding to is that we’ve lost the ability to connect Yes. Why have we lost the ability connect? And one thing I say oftentimes, I’ve said so many times on this podcast, is that we can only listen to others and be there for others to the capacity and to the depth that we’ve allowed ourselves to go.

Ed Owens: Maybe.

Victoria Volk: And I think what I love for the world to be grief recovery. I’m gonna make that a new word. The world would be a totally different place if it was all grief recovery. It’s grief recovery, the world. And Mhmm. You know, I think that by sweeping our own doorstep is where we can start in our in homes, in our own homes, within our own communities. Is we’re not projectile vomiting all of our stuff, I think, on other people.

Ed Owens: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Like, I can’t control the events of leaders all over the planet making choices Right? I can’t control that. You can’t control that. People listening to this podcast cannot control that, and it but it impacts us.

Victoria Volk: Mhmm.

Ed Owens: Right? We feel this very intensely. And so you’re a hundred percent correct. What we need to do is first individually make sure you call it, make sure your ports are swept. Right? I say we need to emotionally increase our capacity which means we need to emotionally get rid of things we’re carrying with this that no longer serve as well. Right? If it hey. If the pain you’re carrying for the last twenty years is serving me well, right. You can keep it. But if If it’s not helping, where it’s from spend my experience, it doesn’t help over time. Then let’s let’s emotionally get rid of some of that stuff. If it’s not serving your higher purpose, if it’s not serving your life well, if it’s not serving your relationships well, if it’s not serving you anymore, by keeping it. And if we get rid of that, then I have an increased emotional capacity now to be able to better be there for the people in my life. And whether that’s as a role model, as an example, I mean, I can’t count how many times, but I’m sure you’ve seen this too. Right? Where people say, god, you know, my this person in my family or my friends, like, after going through these these tools you teach, people have noticed the change in me. Like, this is very common because once you deal with this stuff and you have an increased capacity to better show up more fully in life, to be a better version of you, other people see it and ripples in a positive way. Wife. And that is, to your point, when we start with us, it ripples out into others. First, our little close nuclear family and friends and then it goes bigger and bigger. And again, that increased capacity that we have to better be there for others that allows us to make a difference in our communities versus I’m stuck with all these picky things that don’t feel good good. And the last thing I wanna do is get out into my community and do anything. I’m a little bit of work. I’m like, I’m home. I’m exhausted. Everything in life is a chore, a struggle. I just gotta get the day. And tomorrow is gonna be groundhog day. Or, again, we’re gonna repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Right? But that is not a life folks. That is not how you are designed to live. And if you find yourself in a situation where your life is about getting through the work day, getting through the things you have to do every day, being exhausted all the time, getting up and doing it again. If that’s your life, My heart aches free because we’re not supposed to be there. We are by design here to love other people and be loved in return. We are here to trust other people and be trusted in return. To human nature, We are here to form connections with other human beings and to have those connections be a source of positive love can, you know, part of a life. But what you’ve been experienced at this point is keeping you from experiencing life that way. You’re not living a life in line with your human nature. That’s not what for you.

Victoria Volk: As kids, toddlers even were taught cause and effect. Right? Oh, touch the oven, you get a burn. Right? Don’t do that again. You learn the first time not to do not to touch the stove.

Ed Owens: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: And it’s like, We have to understand that our words matter, our actions matter, that there’s a cause and effect.

Ed Owens: Yep.

Victoria Volk: And we can either be have a positive influence on the effect or we can contribute to the negative energy

Ed Owens: Yeah. Of Perfect. Yeah. Yep. And we also need to sit there when I understand that whatever choices that I make, or you make, or anyone listening to this, you know, we’re always a choice. I tell people all the time. You’re always a choice. Every day, you’re making thousands of choices. Mhmm. Right?
You’re always a choice. And that’s a good thing and a bad thing. It’s a sweet thing and a sour thing. Right? You can make a good choice. It has a good alpha. You can make a choice that maybe is not necessarily the best choice. And you’re getting less than an outcome. That’s ideal. And sometimes you make choices that can hurt other people. And again, like, there’s a whole loving myself, loving other conversation we could talk about too. But we have to also get to a point and I think there’s a lot of this missing in our society too. People willing to take ownership and responsibility for the choices that they make that might might be hurtful to another person. Again, I’m not saying that everybody makes choices whether it’s to have healthy boundaries in life, whether it’s not a good relationship. I need to get out of it. I mean, that’s gonna hurt. We all make choices that are the right choice to make But even when we make that right choice, we also have to folks be willing to take ownership and responsibility that I made that choice. Right? It’s not old. They made me do this. Mhmm. Now I chose this because I love myself enough to make this choice and not a but but an and I recognize that this choice Right? I have some ownership responsibility for how this is painful. Okay? I mean, it’s both things. That’s just one of the other folks. Otherwise, again, it’s us versus them. It’s we’re, you know, we’re playing this one up one down game all the time. And if more people would be willing to take some ownership or responsibility, even when I make a choice that’s painful and it’s hurtful, where it’s gonna cause knee pain, or other people pain, or my children pain, or something else, even when it’s a loving and correct choice, like getting out of bed waste. Change that example. You mentioned divorce earlier and not this whole concept. Even when that’s the right choice, we have to take ownership responsibility when we make that choice.

Victoria Volk: I know our time is winding down, but I really do want to give you the floor of the mic, so to speak, about something you and I both passionate about because I’m a veteran too, about the work that you are doing with veterans and the importance of grief recovery. Just in case anyone with some poll happens to listen to this.

Ed Owens: Right.

Victoria Volk: Well, you and I have both individually been working to do me on a local level, which is you know, door slamming in my face, but the importance of trying to bring grief recovery to the veteran community. And I would just love you to share what you’ve been working to do, what grief recovery institute has been working to do, and and where things are standing in there.

Ed Owens: So take a step back. So John was a big non veteran. So the first thing I wanted to hear is this whole thing was created by an old Vietnam combat vet. Right? So if you’re military and everything else and you’re thinking like, oh, I don’t know about this thing. You know, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. This was created by John with that was his background. He was also created from a place of he was hurting. He was emotional overwhelmed. He was about to take he contemplates taking his own life. And he wanted to find a different choice. Right? And I think that’s important about this military conversation. Is that this whole thing was created by a guy who was hurting, who wanted to have a different choice. Than what so many of his brothers and sisters would do. Alright. So that’s where we start with this. And the entire history, the grief recovery method, the grief recovery institute, we’ve been working with veterans and trying to work with veterans and trying to get this in front of them. The last eight years, take ten years, you know, we’ve had a lot of great inroads. Like, we’ve always done some good stuff with the military. Don’t get any wrong. But we’ve trained a few hundred, you know, chaplains and social workers and people within the military branches. Air Force and Army primarily, few navy, national guard, active duty, hand reserves, So we’ve been really fortunate to make some really positive inroads within the Department of Defense. We also made a lot of positive inroads and continue to train I would say, almost monthly people from the Veterans Administration across the country. And in the course, there’s different Veterans organizations we partner with and then train specialist with those organizations. And that’s all great. And we’ve made a lot of positive inroads. And so getting these tools and skills into the hands of veterans so that they have them to to use an easy aspect to rely on whether it’s a military service or whether it’s a personal relationships, which, by the way, the personal relationships is a high divorce rate and high alcoholism and all those other things. That is the behavioral outcomes and choices made because they’re hurt. When I hear people are going through all of these things, like you mentioned earlier, my mind and my understanding of things is what has happened. Right? I know that that going on is not happening in the vacuum. So that’s where we’ve really tried to do a lot of this. And there’s a lot of specialists like yourself. And others, right, who are either veterans or they’re not veterans, but they love working with veterans because their partners are veteran, or their dad and my dad’s or We gotta take our wins where we can get them. One here, one there, that type of thing. But I will tell you from the Institute’s perspective, we have trained. And in the last, I would say, eight years, a lot of specialists that are out there doing the work. Inside the military community and on a military basis. And we’ve had folks who in the military, who’ve taken a down range for those of you that don’t know what that term is, that means forward to pull out. Right? To hotspots. You know, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Middle East, still. There’s one maybe specialist that I know who was an advanced specialist like yourself, the word virtually. Doing things with the ships of fleet. Alright. So and doing what to what? So again, like, we’re slowly getting this more acceptable within the culture, military culture. And like anything else, it takes a long time to change the culture to any organization. Organizational behavioral changes challenging. Howard Bauchner:

Victoria Volk: And it’s not just veterans too. I mean, grief recoveries, kinda trick is starting to trickle into prisons and Yeah. First responders.

Ed Owens: Correct.

Victoria Volk: Wow.

Ed Owens: Correct. You know, we’ve got a write me a specialist working in all of those clinics, and jets, and hospitals, and senior centers. Stepary religious or spiritual type of group you can imagine. I mean, it’s going It’s very heartwarming to know that we have expanded into so many different parts of our society that historically we’re just not there. And we still have a lot of work to do. I mean, I still have people who tell me all the time when I talk to them, like, oh, well, what’s the roof cover method? I mean, again, it’s, you know, it’s We’ve been around for over forty five years, and that doesn’t mean that people know who we exist.

Victoria Volk: Exactly. Yep.

Ed Owens: And, you know, doing podcast like this helps to help raise that awareness. If you’re listening to the spokes and you’ve not had a chance, please you know, go to Victoria’s website, read up on some of this stuff. Go with every method, you know, dot com. And you can read it on stuff. The more that we become aware, that there’s other information, other tools, other skills. There’s things that we can do to educate ourselves and then make a choice. And we’re always a choice. Right? And I hope you choose to at least start learning more. And if it feels right, I always tell people all the time, folks you got to trust your intuition.
If your intuition says this feels right, I wanna keep looking. I wanna keep I wanna know more. And if your intuition says, now this is for me, then great. I wish you well, and thanks for at least being open for a moment to take a look at something. The more people can become aware of it, the more people that at least know there is something else, the more we can help. And by the way, we don’t just help adults. We help children. Getting back to this whole conversation, like, we were talking about earlier, like, folks we’ve got to do a better job. As adults, as positive male, and female both in the in the children’s lives whether that’s your family, your nuclear family, whether that’s your extended family, like we have to have be the positive role models. We have tools for you too so that you can teach them to children versus teaching them things which may or may not be the most helpful to them. Let’s create the confusing. Let’s create the issues. Let’s create a lifetime. I’ll try and struggle with it. Figure out what they’re they’re confident with their human nature. So we have those tools too. So, like, we do a lot of different stuff. And I would encourage you to at least pause and be curious. I think I wanna learn a little bit more about this. You know, that’s a great place to start. And then from there, folks you can talk to people like Victoria, you know, get on our calendar. Say, hey, tell me no, then let us have an opportunity to have a heartfelt conversation.

Victoria Volk: And I would add, what do you have to lose? Because like you said earlier, it’s what you’ve been doing probably isn’t working. Probably has been working for a long time. And that was me too, over thirty years. Right?
Like, I got this. I can DIY my my emotional trauma.

Ed Owens: Yeah. Right. I’m getting your again, I say that to people all time. Like, hey, look, if you like how your life feels, and you like how everything is and this is all good and it’s working for you? Okay. Cool. You can keep it? But the problem is most of the time when I’m talking to people, they aren’t happy. They don’t feel like they’re living as fully as they could be. They’re tired of feelings alone and isolated or sad or those days come around the calendar and it’s just ruins the week.
I mean

Victoria Volk: It’s like you said, surviving. It’s you can either survive or you can Thrive. Right?

Ed Owens: Right. It’s choice. Remember? See, there’s a theme here. It’s choice.
People can choose. You can choose to live your life in a survival mode, or you can choose to not let the experiences that we’ve had in our lives define us. Of course, we learn things from. Of course, we can learn. We can grow, we can become different people because of the experiences and the losses and the events in our lives would shape us. But folks, they are chapters in your life. They are not your life. And it doesn’t mean that whatever you’ve been through in your life is now the story of your life. You are a choice. You can choose how to write your own storing.
You cannot choose and control the events that take place in your life that impact you, you’re human. But you can choose how you show up after these things happen in reaction to what happened. It’s a choice to deal with the pain of whatever’s going on in your life or deal by the way, embrace and lean into the joy and happiness, it works both way. It’s a choice. Some people choose not to embrace and lean into joy and happiness and connection because they choose to isolate. That’s a choice. That’s a heart brain. Choice. Right? When I see that happening? But again, there’s a choice. We oops. How do you wanna show up? What do you wanna do?

Victoria Volk: The phrase that got me, I think, that resonated with me the most, was have the courage to take a chance to make a change.

Ed Owens: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: And it does take courage.

Ed Owens: It does. And people who are hurting their lack of courage, they just don’t know which choices they got. And again, we can only make the choices, but we can only, you know, choose what to do based on what I know. And I can only use the tools of information to make choices whether they’re good choices or not until I learn better skills and tools so I can make a better choice. Again, this whole thing boils down to that. If you like the way the tools are working great, if you don’t like the way they’re working, Let’s show you some other things that you didn’t know before, or maybe you’d heard, like, a piece of this here, a piece of that there, but we didn’t put them together. In a way that’s like, god. Why didn’t I think of that? You know?

Victoria Volk: That’s what I think about grief recovery is, why didn’t I think of that?

Ed Owens: Exactly. Right? So, yeah, we do the best we can. And this isn’t a judgment folks. All of you have been doing the best you can to navigate life with what you were taught up to this point. And that is not a judgment, right, at all. I just wanna give all of you just a big hug. And and because you’re listening to this, you’re curious about the potential tools and options. And things that you can make different choices with. And I applaud you for that. It’s because when you learn other information skills, tools, You can make different choices. You can have a different outcome. And or not, it’s choice. You can choose to be right and hold on to painful things that have happened in your life, or you could choose to be happy to join in type one. I hope you pick happiness. I hope you pick joy. I hope you pick connection, love. That’s what I would pick.

Victoria Volk: Beautiful way to wrap this up. I want to have I would love to have I desire to have a part two, possibly. I think after you listen to that episode, I’ll share it in the show notes like I said. Link your Great Recovery Institute also in the show notes and my information where people can find me as well. But where can people find me if they’re just listening to this where they can connect with you?

Ed Owens: So if you wanna connect with me, the easiest way is if you wanna put my email address in show notes. It’s n o ones, one word, at grief recovery method dot com. You can also go to brief for perry method dot com and go to the about us page. You’ll see about me. I also have a micro website on the on there. If you wanna just click my micro website, that allows you folks to send me a direct email message a calendar link to jump on my calendar if you wanna have a conversation. Love to talk to you about whatever news you wanna talk about, and you can read more about me that way.

Victoria Volk: And if you’re listening to this and you work with first responders or you’re in charge of first responder department or police department or EMS or veterans organization or hospice or anything like that and you want to bring grief recovery into your facility and organization and community. Mhmm. Ed’s your guy. Please reach out to him.

Ed Owens: I would love I would love to have a conversation with him if the audience who would like that. That’s conversation.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. The more people we get certified in this, the farther this can spread and I think that’s the goal here. So thank you so much for being my guest.

Ed Owens: It’s been an honor. I really appreciate the invitation. I look forward to part two. And for all of you that were listening. Thanks for tuning in.
Thanks for watching tuning in. See you next.

Victoria Volk: And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

 

 

 

Ep 196 Angie Hanson | Chapters of Loss and a Resilient Heart

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:

 

 

 

Embracing Grief with Grace: Angie Hanson’s Journey from Loss to Entrepreneurship

Grief is an unwelcome visitor that arrives at the doorsteps of our lives, often unannounced and always undesired. For some, like Angie Hanson, grief has knocked not once but multiple times, bringing along profound loss and heartache. Yet in the face of such adversity, Angie has managed to forge a path that not only honors her lost loved ones but also provides solace to others navigating their own journeys through mourning.

Angie’s story is one of remarkable resilience—a testament to the human spirit’s ability to endure and transform suffering into something meaningful. Her experiences have led her down a road less traveled: from working in banking and a taffy store learning about online business ventures, she now runs Butterflies and Halos—a greeting card company designed for those who are grieving—and co-hosts “From Loss to Light,” a podcast dedicated to sharing stories of hope after loss.

The Birth of Butterflies and Halos

The concept behind Butterflies and Halos was born from Angie’s realization that typical sympathy cards didn’t quite capture the ongoing support needed by those in mourning. After experiencing personal losses—the deaths of her toddler son, husband, brother Seth (who succumbed to a brain tumor), sister-in-law Brooke (who passed away due to alcoholism)—Angie recognized how vital it is for people in grief not just be acknowledged initially but supported throughout their entire grieving process.

Her greeting card venture offers messages that resonate more genuinely with what it means truly mourn—sometimes heartfelt; other times humorous because laughter can indeed be medicine even amidst sorrow. It challenges industry norms by advocating for acknowledgment beyond traditional timelines set by society.

From Banking To Empathy

Before tragedy reshaped her life trajectory, Angie had built a career within the banking sector—an industry known more for transactions than emotional connections. However, when faced with devastating losses consecutively—each leaving its unique scar on her heart—she pivoted towards endeavors imbued with deeper meaning centered around family values especially inspired by her daughter Gracie’s strength during tough times.

Gracie herself stands as an example of overcoming adversity; graduating college pursuing kinesiology aiming help others regain physical abilities reflects both mother-daughter duo’s dedication helping heal pain whether emotional or physical form.

Podcasting Through Pain

Together with Michelle another widow friend they started “From Loss Light” podcast explore rediscovery light after different kinds loss death divorce addiction among others becoming inspirational platform listeners find camaraderie shared experiences resilience against odds journey back towards hopefulness again book titled Chapters Resilient Heart encapsulates this narrative perfectly scheduled release May 2024 already available pre-order showcasing power storytelling healing process itself inspiration drawn trip Costa Rica current husband where realized strength lies opening up new chapters despite past closures inflicted upon us fate itself sometimes cruelly so yet never defining entirety our existence if we choose otherwise which exactly did choosing honor memories actions rather than succumbing despair alone powerful choice indeed one many could learn emulate difficult circumstances face daily basis across globe irrespective culture creed color socio-economic status universal language understood all – love remembrance perseverance face adversities life throws way time again without fail relentless pursuit happiness joy may seem elusive moments darkness eventually finds way back hearts willing open them wide enough let light shine through cracks created wounds old healed completely maybe never will entirely point isn’t forget move forward remember carry legacy forward too part ourselves forever changed encounter mortality close quarters intimately familiar contours shape absence leaves behind tangible void filled nothing else same measure value once held dear still holds true today tomorrow eternity long lasts memory alive us keeps going matter what comes next chapter waiting written pen hand ready ink flow freely page blank canvas awaits masterpiece creation patiently biding time until muse strikes chord resonates soul deeply felt core being essence captured words spoken aloud silence contemplation alike either case message clear loud unleash heart unleashing life itself fullest potential reached embraced grace given opportunity do so every single day blessed breathe air earth under feet sun sky above reminder precious gift given cherish treasure always end days come sooner later expected unexpected alike preparedness key unlocking doors future possibilities endless horizon stretches vast expanse imagination limit setting sail unknown adventures await discovery newfound purpose passion ignited flame rekindled ashes past experiences fuel fire burning bright beacon guiding ships night safe harbor refuge stormy seas tumultuous world live thrive survive testify beauty remains midst chaos confusion reign supreme ultimate victory claimed name lived well loved hard laughed often cried tears sadness turned drops wisdom gained perspective shifted priorities realigned accordance true calling found voice heard afar near touched souls kindred spirits bonded together common cause celebrate triumph over tragedy song sung chorus angels watching overhead smiling approvingly deeds done good earth reward heaven promised land dreams reality merge seamless tapestry woven threads golden silver intertwined perfection achieved mastery craft honed skill refined artistry displayed proudly gallery open viewing public private collectors aficionados connoisseurs taste discerning eye detail appreciate finer things offered sale purchase price tag attached worth measured monetary terms sentimental value priceless gem rare exquisite nature behold wonder awe inspire generations come leave lasting impression indelible mark history books annals recorded posterity sake remembering forgotten lest repeat mistakes learned lessons teach children grandchildren importance empathy compassion humanity whole greater sum parts individual contributions collective effort combined synergy effect multiplied exponentially reach far wide deep impact felt ripple waves emanating epicenter event occurred sending shockwaves reverberate echo chambers minds hearts souls awaken dormant senses alert presence moment mindful passage fleeting grasp tightly slip fingers sand hourglass counting seconds minutes hours days weeks months years decades centuries millennia eons epochs span lifetime blink cosmic scale grand scheme universe infinite expanding contracting breathing living entity conscious aware self identity separate distinct interconnected web interwoven strands fabric cosmos stitched seamlessly invisible thread binds together unity harmony balance order chaos juxtaposed side contrast highlight differences similarities paradoxical relationship exists duality dualistic approach understanding complex simplicity elegant design creator creation creature creatures inhabit dwell abide reside home planet third rock sun solar system galaxy Milky Way local group cluster supercluster Laniakea great attractor destination journey ends begins anew cycle rebirth renewal regeneration resurrection phoenix rises ashes anew stronger wiser enlightened illuminated truth knowledge wisdom imparted gifts bestowed upon worthy recipients chosen destiny fulfill prophecy foretold ancient texts scriptures holy sacred profane mundane everyday ordinary extraordinary simultaneously existing parallel dimensions alternate realities quantum mechanics physics laws govern observed phenomena natural supernatural spiritual metaphysical realms exploration curiosity leads discovery invention innovation progress advancement civilization humankind species evolve adapt overcome obstacles challenges trials tribulations tests faith courage determination resolve steadfastness tenacity grit endurance stamina persistence perseverance keep pushing boundaries limits expand horizons broaden perspectives shift paradigms break molds stereotypes labels boxes categorize define restrict confine imprison free liberate emancipate empower enable equip arm tools necessary succeed excel achieve greatness glory honor respect admiration acclaim accolades awards recognition fame fortune wealth material possessions secondary tertiary quaternary priority list topmost concern welfare wellbeing fellow man woman child animal plant mineral element periodic table elements basic building blocks constitute comprise make up everything anything possible impossible dream imagine conceive believe achieve manifest destiny stars align perfect alignment convergence synchronicity serendipity happenstance coincidence luck chance probability statistics odds favor favorable outcome result success victory win triumph conquest achievement accomplishment goal objective aim target bullseye hit mark spot on dead center middle exact precise accuracy precision sharp shooter marksman expert professional amateur novice beginner learner student teacher mentor guide leader follower team player individualist conformist nonconformist rebel revolutionary visionary prophet sage seer oracle mystic shaman healer witch doctor priest priestess cleric monk nun friar brother sister mother father uncle aunt cousin nephew niece grandfather grandmother ancestor descendant lineage heritage inheritance birthright claim stake piece pie share slice cake bread butter meat potatoes substance sustenance nourishment food thought mind body spirit soul triune trinity threefold cord strand rope chain link connection connector joint hinge pivot axis rotation revolution spin turn twist bend curve arch bridge tunnel passageway doorway entrance exit gateway portal dimension realm kingdom domain empire state nation country continent world globe Earth Gaia Terra Mother Nature Father Time Old Man Winter Spring Summer Fall Autumn Seasons Change Constant Variable Fixed Mobile Stationary Moving Dynamic Static Stagnant Fresh New Renewed Revived Restored Healed Whole Complete Integral Essential Fundamental Basic Primary Secondary Tertiary Quaternary Quintessential Ultimate Supreme Paramount Chief Principal Head Leader Captain Commander General Admiral President King Queen Monarch Sovereign Ruler Dictator Tyrant Oppressor Liberator Freedom Fighter Warrior Knight Paladin Champion Defender Protector Guardian Custodian Keeper Watcher Observer Spectator Audience Participant Actor Actress Player Performer Entertainer Artist Artisan Craftsman Craftswoman Tradesman Tradeswoman Worker Laborer Employee Employer Boss Manager Supervisor Director Executive Officer Official Representative Delegate Ambassador Emissary Envoy Agent Broker Dealer Trader Merchant Vendor Supplier Distributor Wholesaler Retailer Customer Client Patron Guest Host Hostess Innkeeper Landlord Landlady Proprietor Owner Possessor Holder Bearer Carrier Transporter Conveyancer Driver Pilot Navigator Guide Scout Pathfinder Trailblazer Pioneer Settler Colonizer Founder Creator Inventor Innovator Designer Architect Engineer Builder Constructor Fabricator Maker Manufacturer Producer Creator Originator Initiator Instigator Agitator Provocateur Troublemaker Peacemaker Mediator Arbitrator Judge Jury Executioner Punisher Avenger 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Ultimate Supreme Paramount Chief Principal Head Leader Captain Commander General Admiral President King Queen Monarch Sovereign Ruler Dictator Tyrant Oppressor Liberator Freedom Fighter Warrior Knight Paladin Champion Defender Protector Guardian Custodian Keeper Watcher Observer Spectator Audience Participant Actor Actress Player Performer Entertainer Artist Artisan Craftsman Craftswoman Tradesman Tradeswoman Worker Laborer Employee Employer Boss Manager Supervisor Director Executive Officer Official Representative Delegate Ambassador Emissary Envoy Agent Broker Dealer Trader Merchant Vendor Supplier Distributor Wholesaler Retailerm

Episode Transcription:

Victoria Volk: Thank you for tuning in to this week’s episode of grieving voices. Today my guest is Angie Hanson, and she shares her story of immense loss. Journey marked by the deaths of her one year old son, Garrett, her husband Jack, her brother, Seth, and her sister-in-law brook. In her own profound grief, Angie, Phones, and a mission to change the narrative around grief, to bring light into the darkest moments, and to offer genuine support to those walking the path of loss. She founded butterflies and halos in twenty twenty two a greeting card company that seeks to bridge the gap between sympathy and understanding, between condolence and companionship. Angie is also publishing her first book chapters of a resilient heart that will be published in May twenty twenty four, so it’s actually on preorder and coming out very soon as we’re recording this. And she also co hosts a podcast from Lost to Light touching on all aspects of losses and how people have found their light. Thank you so much for being here. And I love the podcast app title, and I love the book title as well. How did those come to be?

Angie Hanson: Well, honestly, for the podcast, I co-host it with a fellow widow friend of mine, Michelle, and When we started talking about doing the podcast together, we were just like, we wanted to focus on how people have found their light, you know, and through any losses because we know that losses are not just death. And we know that there’s losses from divorces, you know, drug addiction, abuse, anything, job losses, pet losses, And so we really wanted to touch on all those because and we wanted people to figure out and let us know and let our listeners know how did they find their light and it’s been so inspirational listening to how people have journeyed through their losses and they found their light and especially the people that have come through like the recovery of any drug addiction. Those are the ones that really just grab at my heart and I’m so amazed by them. So their resilience is amazing and so that kind of steps into my book title, chapters of a resilient heart. I kind of always love the name chapters. I’ve always wanted to own a bookstore named chapters. I’ve just loved that. And so I kinda had chapters of this, chapters of that. And nothing was just really settling with me. And then we actually were on a trip in Costa Rica, and we were sitting there talking about the title of the book and my husband that I’m married to now, the word resilient came up. And we were just like, well, that’s kind of everything that I embody is, you know, the resilience of my losses and what I’ve kinda you know, and what I’ve encompassed by doing what I’m doing now out there in the grief world is I’m leaning into that resilience of everybody. So there we are. My new book, chapters of a resilient heart.

Victoria Volk: I love it. What were you doing before?

Angie Hanson: Well, I actually was working in a Taffy store like saltwater Taffy. Okay. So there’s a little local store here. She’s actually an antique store and I kinda worked for her just part time doing some things, and she actually started this Taffy saltwater online Taffy company where she ships out monthly subscription boxes to people and you get Taffy, surprises every month. So I kinda learned a little bit of the online industry through her and through helping her and working for her. So that kind of just put me in motion to, you know, understand going forward with my, you know, with my business and all that. So Yeah. And then, you know, I just before my deaths, I actually worked in the banking industry. So I worked doing everything in a small bank here. So but then death happened and knocked at my front door, and I never turned back to that job.

Victoria Volk: As a way of doing that, doesn’t it?

Angie Hanson: It just Yes.

Victoria Volk: Then everything. And what were some of the questions, like, big questions you were asking yourself as you were I mean, because you’ve had a lot of loss and we’ll get to those. But, you know, what was coming up for you as you were going through this? And first of all, like, how did you even get out of bed?

Angie Hanson: You know, every day in the beginning after my I was working at the bank when my son had died. And The biggest obstacle for me was how, you know, moving forward in life and how do does that look like? And what does that look like? And it was it was very very hard, but my daughter was four at the time. And, you know, I just really leaned into wanting her to have a good life. And the life that she deserved and honoring her and, you know, just wanting her to be able to have happy fun times. And I had to figure out how that looked like and what that looked like. And so I just basically, every single day, it was, okay, you can get up today and today if you shower, perfect. Today if you just, you know, if you get to go outside and sit perfect. So the questions that I asked myself surrounding that, like, what what matters most now? Does does it working a nine to five in the banking world matter? Absolutely not. It didn’t matter to me anymore. You know, I didn’t I didn’t care. And my only kids were my family at the time.

Victoria Volk: Would you say in in some ways? I just in the conversations I’ve had over the last four years plus years of having my podcast too, it’s like, when you have other children that you have to get up for. They’re almost like you’re saving grace in a way I imagine. Is that Did you find that true for you too? Like, she was really your reason to get Yes.

Angie Hanson: Yes. And her name is Gracie. So she was she was my saving grace. And with, you know, I, you know, my husband and I, Jack, we definitely grieved differently. So he was more of a go out. We lived on an acreage. So he was more of a, let’s go outside and work work work, you know. Keep my mind occupied. Do that do that. And for me, I was just so lost. You know, I just I couldn’t think of how I could move forward. And but every morning when Gracie would come to me and I would see her, you know, I’m just like, this this is not fair for her. You know, she deserves to have this beautiful life, and so she she did. She saved me from going into a rabbit hole.

Victoria Volk: Was your son for those that, I mean, don’t know you or have never heard you speak or be on podcasts and things your son was one, Garrett was one. Was he sick? Much of that year, first year?

Angie Hanson: No. Garrett was the epitomy of health. He had just turned one, and he died six days after his first birthday. And he had just had his one year checkup on that Friday and he died on a Tuesday and he had a heart defect that went undetected. And it’s a very undetectable heart defect as well. It’s It’s got a really long name. It’s like ectopic origin of the right coronary artery. So basically his right coronary artery was kinked, And so you a person suffers sudden cardiac death in extreme arrest or extreme activity. And, you know, you’ve heard similar stories, maybe of athletes dying on a court or a football field, and that is similar to what Garrett had, and he was resting. He was sleeping. He was taking his afternoon nap when he died. And there really are no signs or symptoms, you know, because that was one of the things I had really asked our pediatrician was did I miss something? As a mom, I was just holding guilt. Did I miss something and nothing? I mean, he was He ate well. He was happy. I mean, joyful. I mean, his coloring. Everything was perfect. I mean, even the doctor was like, I don’t know how I could have missed that, you know. And we did talk to some lead cardiologists at our local children’s hospital when they said that there was nothing really that we could have we could have seen or noticed that would have show us that he was he had that.

Victoria Volk: You mentioned your your husband had he had also passed away. And so how far out was that was the loss of your husband from when you both lost your son.

Angie Hanson: Garrett died in June of two thousand six, and then about a year and a few months later in two thousand seven, my husband Jack was diagnosed with cancer. So he had melanoma when he was twenty one years old, and so he had a molt removed, you know, some invasive surgery on his arm, but it was nothing that had spread. And then, you know, we’re fifteen years later when our sun dies. And I honestly believe the stress of our sun dying, you know, ignited those cancer cells on his body again. You know? And he was trying to be the strongest for all of us and that’s who Jack was. So he was diagnosed, let’s see, fall of two thousand seven, so just a little over a year after her son had passed. And then Jack, he was diagnosed with ocular melanoma, so he had a large tumor in his eye. And it had spread through his to his liver and his brain and a spleen. So you know, at that moment, we were told, you know, Jack was diagnosed terminal. And, you know, we didn’t know how long he would have with us, but we weren’t going to not fight. So we fought and fought and fought. He did chemo radiation, all the things. And Jack battled for about sixteen months before losing his life to the cancer. So he died in February two thousand and nine, so just two and a half years after our son had died.

Victoria Volk: And your brother, Seth, and your sister-in-law like this. I know. I don’t even like, it’s not like it’s not nervous laughter, but it’s just like it’s it you can’t even wrap your head around it.

Angie Hanson: Yeah. Yeah. It’s unbelievable sometimes when, you know, own people here it for the first time it is it’s unbelievable. My brother Seth had actually been battling a brain tumor for about five years. And him and his wife, they lived on our acreage with us. So we had like a big house and a little house My brother Seth and Joey, his wife, they lived in the small house. And when Seth was first diagnosed with his brain tumor, five years prior, he I was kind of his caretaker a lot because he lived there and, you know, right there and my parents were divorced. And so, you know, they had both remarried and kinda had some younger families, but I had no problems doing that. And then once he re once he married to his wife, you know, she was able to take care of him a lot, but it was about a month after Jack had died. So in March of two thousand nine, my brother just started having some issues, some headaches, and things like that. So he had his third brain surgery on March thirteenth of two thousand and nine. And he had always bounced back from all his surgeries because he was extremely healthy. You know, he was an exercise guy and, you know, he didn’t drink nothing. And it just came back this third time with a vengeance. And two months after my husband died, my brother died, he died on April seventh two thousand nine. So, you know, just he just they removed that brain tumor that third time and they were going to end up doing some chemo and radiation once he healed from the surgery, but the tumor just came back with a vengeance. And he he just died. And it was, you know, I at that moment in my time, point in my life, I was just like, what in the hell is happening? And I was so lost because and I didn’t know who I was grieving. You know, I didn’t know if I was grieving my son or my husband or my brother. And it took a lot of hard work for me to, you know, decipher who I was grieving for and, you know, separating those griefs and you know, still raising my daughter, Gracie, and just doing all the things that I could to survive.

Victoria Volk: And how old was she at this point?

Angie Hanson: Gracie turned so she was six in February when her daddy died, and then she turned seven and March. So yeah. So, you know, in between all that, you know, she has this wonderful birthday, but Yeah. It was just I, you know, I just really, really just wanted her to have this happy life, you know. I didn’t want her to be the victim of all these deaths, you know. And I didn’t want it to define how we survived and lived our life. So I had to really work on figuring out how to maneuver that.

Victoria Volk: And what did that look like? Because for people listening, like, growing up, we had a lot of loss early in I had a lot of loss early in my life. My dad, my mom had lost her mom within the year. And so there was just it was a lot too in my growing up. But as a kid, you know, there wasn’t a lot of talk you know, and this was back, you know, late eighties, early, you know, late eighties. So what did that look like for Yeah. What did that look like with Gracie? And, like, how did you talk about it?

Angie Hanson: Yeah. You know, we I’ve always been the one to just talk about it. Let’s say their names constantly, you know, talk about them, who they were, you know, listen to stories if people would tell us just so she could know who these people were, and what kind of people they were and if we could mirror how they lived life and that would help us and it has and we we live big for these people in our lives that have died and you know, I we went to some group therapy, and it was a lot of it was four kids, her age, we went to a local organization here in Nebraska and it was called grief’s journey or Teddy Bear Hollow at the time. I guess they’ve changed her name, but And that was really helpful for Gracie because I really taught the kids how what death looked like, what what it all look like. I mean, from just the artwork that they would do to teaching them. So that was helpful. And then she did see a therapist a couple times. You know, and every time I go, the therapist honestly thought she was doing really well. And we just had a strong support system around us. And, you know, our family was hard with our family because everybody was had lost the same people.
Right? But and we are all grieving differently. And we are all grieving, you know, different people. But we were able to come together and honor all these people just the same way that we could greet them. So everybody really wrapped their arms around Gracie.
And, you know, I journaled a ton and that was my therapeutic way of dealing with some of it was journaling. And, you know, I just like I said, still every day I’d get up and I’d make sure, you know what? Gracie’s going to have a good day today. How does that look? And, you know, it’s it’s not easy. I don’t have a magic answer for people because I know people want that magic fix because but we know that grief cannot be fixed whatsoever. And It’s just, you know, time does help whether people believe it or not. Time does help. It’ll never make it go away, but it changes and it evolves. And But that’s not going to be the first year or the second year or the third year. And when you’re having compounded grief like we had, it’s, you know, it’s hard.

Victoria Volk: When did you feel like you could breathe again? Although, you did end up having another loss in the mix?

Angie Hanson: Yes. Yes. You know, I feel like after about a year, after my husband and my brother had died was when I kinda started feeling better. I was feeling more hope And I had more faith in me because I had lost a lot of my faith. And but I was I was feeling that. And I was I was seeing glimmers of light and, you know, there were things just within my life that was just feeling good, you know, and size like, okay. Okay. We’re we’re gonna be okay. This isn’t gonna be easy still, but and yeah. So that leads to my, you know, my sister-in-law, my first husband’s sister, Jack, Brooke, she died in two thousand eighteen, so nine years after her brother had died. And she died from alcoholism. You know, and so that’s our choices that we have. You know, and I talk about the choices a lot. And My sister-in-law broke was an amazing human. She loved life. She was smart. She was beautiful. She had amazing drive, but she couldn’t deal with the deaths. And she didn’t live in Nebraska. She lived in Colorado. So she was away from all of us when we were all grieving, and she was dealing with it by herself in Colorado. And she had lost her job And she turned alcohol because when she would drink, that’s when she felt the safest, and that’s when she felt the best. And, yeah, she ended up, you know, her choice was to drink. And She ended up dying from alcoholism in June of two thousand eighteen. So, you know, that that left her parents without any living children. You know? And so it’s heartbreaking. And but that’s I talk a lot about you know, my daughter, Gracie, you know, we have choices. You know, I chose to live and I chose to honor our people and brook didn’t know how to do that, you know. And it’s it’s not any shame to her. She thought she was doing what felt right because the alcohol made her feel right. She just got she just got stuck into that trap and, you know, it’s sad and unfortunate, but it doesn’t define who she was as a person at all. Because if she could have just known, she would have she would have gotten past it.

Victoria Volk: You know, if and if she would have been grieving maybe with the family and had that support system around her to to witness other people and who could hold her to Exactly. To support her.

Angie Hanson: Exactly. It’s yeah. It’s it’s it’s really really sad. And so it’s like I said, it’s it’s all our choices that we have, and we really honestly just have to decide every day, how we’re going to move forward each and every day, putting one foot in front of the other, and it’s not going to be easy. We’re gonna falter. You know, we’re gonna turned to maybe stuff that makes us feel better and but we have to continue to journey forward healthy and positive.

Victoria Volk: And how is a gracie how is gracie adjusted into young adulthood now?

Angie Hanson: Yes. She actually just graduated college. So, Gracie’s now twenty two, and she just graduated college. And she’s doing amazing and I feel like with her she honestly has such a good head on her shoulders. And, you know, I think she’s just learned by watching. You know, that’s You know, I just always kinda tell her, you know, you can you can do whatever you want. You you know, we can be whoever we want. We can strive to do amazing things, be good. And I think she’s really just kind of taken those and really just become an amazing young lady. And she’s she’s we still honor and we still talk about our people, you know, we we giggle, and we laugh, and we tell stories, you know, now all the time about them and we support everything that our family members met to us and what they brought to the table for us, you know, the all our our grief has turned into this big gigantic bubble of, I don’t know, purpose and love, I feel like

Victoria Volk: What did your daughter choose to go into?

Angie Hanson: She is she got her degree in Kinesiology. So it’s sports medicine, basically. And so she wants to do, like, medical device sales. She wants to give people abilities to walk again, you know, use their arms again, things like that, whatever that looks like,

Victoria Volk: to take action in their lives. Right?

Angie Hanson: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, to move. So, yeah, she’s so she’s home with us.
It’s been a blessing because, you know, she was gone for four years. And now and she went out of state and she was fourteen hours away from us when she went. So she graduated high school in twenty twenty era, so she really didn’t have a normal graduation. And then she graduated just now four years later So now she’s back home and it’s so fun to have in our home.

Victoria Volk: So when did this greeting card company spark come up?

Angie Hanson: You know what, it was probably the end of twenty twenty one I am remarried now to my husband’s chance. And, you know, I would sit there and talk to him and just tell him, you know, the greeting cards you know, greeting cards are simple. They’re an inexpensive, simple gesture to support a friend. And I was just tired of seeing all the with deepest sympathy. I’m so sorry for your loss greeting cards. As well as intended as they are, they don’t hold any value in my in my eyes, you know. It’s it’s it’s an easy out for people. So I’m just like, why can’t we say something like this? So the very first card I had come up with was I don’t know what to say. Let’s go eat one of those damn casseroles. You know, so that’s what I would give to my friend who maybe had just lost her spouse. You know, I’m not going to give her with deepest sympathy card. And I just really wanted to figure out how we could change the narrative around grief and change the stigma that grief shows up in cards and, you know, at the stores, at the, you know, all the hallmarks. And I’m not bashing hallmark whatsoever. They have some wonderful cards, but they don’t have people that understand what griefers feel like. And so I came up with a list. I have about well, I have a hundred and sixty cards. And right now, and they are mostly all grief related. I do not call my cards sympathy cards because I feel like sympathy is something we give. The first few weeks after someone dies. And, you know, that’s the sympathy and understanding. And then moving forward, are we going to show up for our friends, weeks, months, years later, if we could send a card to our friend once a month. You know, just acknowledging their grief still and, you know, telling them that they are supported, I mean, That is what I wish I had. Would have had one I was going through the depths of the grief. If I was having a really crappy day, I’d walk out to my mailbox and if I had a card that just said, I’m thinking of you or some of the funny ones that I have, you know, I just wish that I would’ve had that. But I mean, that’s gonna change the whole day for your friend because they’re gonna be like, wow. Angie’s thinking of me again, and that means the world to me that I’m not alone in my grief, that people still are acknowledging this. And that’s my whole vision with this, you know. And like I said, it’s simple. It’s not going to fix them. Because like I said before, we can’t fix grief. It’s going to just support them and acknowledge it. And that’s all we want. We want to to still even years later. I still love hearing stories about my people. You know, if people will tell me in with writing this book, I’ve had people reach out to me that used to work with my late husband, Jack, and they’ve bought the book, and they’re just like, Angie, we are so proud of you, and they’ll tell me funny stories about Jack. And, you know, that’s fifty Jack’s spent on fifteen years, and I just think that’s absolutely amazing that people are doing that. And that’s what I want with my cards even.

Victoria Volk: Did you not feel supported?

Angie Hanson: I felt supported, yes, but I just think even back in two thousand six, when Garrett had died? People still didn’t talk about grief a lot. You know, I just feel like the whole movement of changing the narrative around grief has happened within the past couple years. Cool. Yeah. I you know, and I’m seeing this, you know, this brief community that, you know, where I even met you on, you know, on this socials, I just feel like, It’s evolving. And, you know, we are changing it. And I think, no, people I had support from my friends. Yes. But I just don’t think people knew. And they didn’t know if it was acceptable to still a month later or two months later or three months later, to send me a card. You know? I don’t think that they knew that or if it was acceptable.

Victoria Volk: And Or even to share the like, the dark humor

Angie Hanson: Exactly. Out

Victoria Volk: of, like, the visceral thing. Right? Yeah.

Angie Hanson: Yeah. And, you know, and then it It’s just and it’s okay, you know, and it’s I just want people to know that it’s okay to do that. But I just feel like even like you said, you know, when you had had your losses, you know, even back in the eighties, I mean, it was really taboo to really talk about stuff like that. You weren’t supposed to bring that up. You know, we honored and we kinda started our own after our son had died honoring him. But then, you know, here we are. Like I said, I think with the social media world that we’re living in, finding these grief communities where we are at and starting to change the narratives is so important. And I’ll give you an example of like, the sympathy versus the empathy, there’s a greeting card, and I this is nothing against anybody. I’ve kinda talked to them about it, but there’s a The Greeting Card Association, and they hold what is called the Louie Awards. And the Louis Awards is like the Oscars for greeting cards. So you submit, you pay per card to submit your cards. Well, so they only have they have so many different categories, but they have a sympathy category. And they don’t have an empathy category, but I submitted to the sympathy category. And so then I didn’t none of my cards won, which is fine. But then we received the feedback from the cards. And one of the comments that I received was very disturbing to me because they said, the cards are okay, but they make me feel uncomfortable.

Victoria Volk: So Then you’re uncomfortable with your grief, my friend? Yes.

Angie Hanson: And so that’s and then all of a sudden, I was just like, oh my gosh. You know what I so I actually made a real about it, like a funny real on Instagram. And that is my biggest it didn’t go viral, viral, but it went pretty close to being viral because people were astounded that this made this person feel uncomfortable, and it’s in a sympathy category. And that is why we need to change the narrative around this grief industry. You know, people need to know. This is why we can’t have people in a hallmark that have never had a loss writing or greeting cards, you know, and it’s it’s it starts. It starts right here, you know, and that’s that’s what I want to do.

Victoria Volk: You know you’re onto something special when you’re poking the bear and you’re giving a response like Right. Promise. Yeah. I actually designed a couple cards. And years ago, like, gosh, five years ago, and I put him on redbubble and, like, just randomly one day, I was like, where is this money from? So I bought the card. I was like, Yay.

Angie Hanson: That’s awesome.

Victoria Volk: I’m gonna be out there and I was, like, whatever, I’ll put it out there. Yeah. I’ve just been dabbling, but I’ve understood that too for years that people just don’t get it. And to bring some sarcasm in humor, into something that’s just so heavy. Everyone has that friend that will get it. Yes. You know what I mean? Like that it’s bringing some lightness to something that’s so heavy and you can’t even wrap your head around sometimes. Right?

Angie Hanson: Exactly. Yeah. Well, yeah. Because, like, one of them I have, you know, it’s the next person that tells me everything’s gonna happen for a reason. I’ll throw, punch him. You know, just I mean, you know, never would I do any physical harm to anybody, but you know what? My friend would she would appreciate that card, and she would, you know, she would understand it. So that’s definitely yeah. I I’m enjoying it. I enjoy the greeting cards.

Victoria Volk: Well, let me ask you this. So, I mean, you’ve shared a lot of, you know, backstory and how you were feeling and on supporting Gracie and all of that. But what overall has your grief taught you?

Angie Hanson: Really, you know, it goes it goes to resilience. It’s taught me that you know, we can have join happiness together that, you know, the grief and happiness can coexist. And honestly, I just it’s taught me to be obviously more empathetic. And I think through everything that I have been through, I am so amazed by the human body in our mind and what we can tell ourselves to journey through the grief, so that’s where the resilience comes in. And I don’t think somebody can be resilient if they keep on telling themselves that this is crappy. You know, it’s no fair. You know, why didn’t my person have to die? You know, if we tell ourselves negative feelings and thoughts, it’s going to be a negative journey. And you’re going to be stuck and fifteen years later, you’re still going to be stuck. But if we can tell ourselves that, you know, what we can be happy. You know, we deserve to be happy. You know, we have to have that faith and trust. And, you know what, that’s going to evolve throughout the years. And so then one year fifteen years and almost eighteen years out for my son dying, I can live an extremely happy life because that’s what I’m doing right now. And so I just think our resilience in our bodies and our mind is so powerful, powerful, and we just have to tell ourselves that we can.

Victoria Volk: When it comes to kids, when people say kids are resilient, when they’ve had losses, that’s always I’ll tell you this. It’s always rubbed me the wrong way because as kids, they don’t have a choice.

Angie Hanson: Exactly.

Victoria Volk: You know, it just I hate when people say that, oh, your kids are so resilient. They’ll bounce back.

Angie Hanson: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: And I can speak from my own experience, but you know, just knowing the grief that I’ve experienced. It has a child growing up as a grieber. It just changes over time and it’s it’s gonna show its face again and again and again and especially with loss in the future because we are human and you love and you lose. Right? And we’re taught how to acquire people and things, but not what to do when we lose them. And so you mentioned and you touched on your parents’ divorce, your son wasn’t your first loss. So you had other losses, I imagine, growing up and pet loss and probably maybe friends and moving and all of these other things. Can you speak to that a little bit and what you learned about grief growing up and maybe in hindsight what you took from those early experiences in your life.

Angie Hanson: Well, I did experience probably that my first traumatic loss was probably when I was about seven. My uncle was killed in an accident. And so I just remember that that feeling of wow, you know, and I would say, again, like, back in the day, we just didn’t talk about that. And so it was kind of hush-hush and different things. I mean, it was It was a very public accident. He was on the volunteer fire department and the rescue squad got hit by a train. And so three of the members had died and two had lived. And so it was a very public, you know, accident, but You know, we didn’t talk a lot about it. And then, you know, my grandparents died when I was younger, you know, and then my parents divorced when I the year after I graduated high school, And so through all that, I guess, I would say that I just really learned how to I guess, separate some of those losses and grief and just, like I said, I journal a lot and I read a lot and so I think separating grief and losses into what they are. So, you know, it’s okay. This is a bad accident. You know, I we can’t put blame on, you know, like, losses. I don’t like that. Like, people are like, well, why would God let this happened to your son. Why would god let this happen to your husband? Why would god let your uncle get hit by a train? You know, things like that, but God doesn’t allow that, you know. And I just he’s there for us when we when we go through these hardest things. And I guess, I just probably stuffed a lot of it sometimes when I was younger just because we were taught to do that. And so then as I grew and then as I come upon my first loss of my major loss that catapulted me into a losses that I never would ever, you know, turn back and be the same from. That’s when I really learned about what death was and how to journey through it. And I’ve learned now more so that talking about all those losses are probably the biggest thing that really helped, you know. And I just wish that we could have back in the day talked about those losses because I think it really could have changed because I’m certain that my parents divorce probably stemmed from a lot of the losses that they had endured. You know? My dad’s brother was the one that had died, so my dad didn’t deal with it. You know, they just didn’t talk about it. And so then, you know, my dad drank and then my parents got divorced and then, you know, it’s just it’s a cycle. And so how can we move forward in these losses in a healthy manner. And I guess that’s what I’ve learned to do is just do it with all our people in mind and keeping their memories alive.

Victoria Volk: Well, my next question is, one tip you would give other hurting hearts, and I would say that that’s a pretty good tip?

Angie Hanson: Yes. Yes. I would. Yeah. And I just I’ve always believed in the, you know, the choices. You know, the choices that we make. And If you’re if you’re hard if you’re really really hardening, you know, don’t don’t expect don’t expect change immediately. And I always, you know, say, you know, give grace because you’re going to have a great day one day. And then and the next day, you’re going to take a couple steps back and it’s going to take time for your heart to feel love again and normal again. And, you know, you can have it there. You know, I had love for my daughter the whole time, but I didn’t really care about the outside world as much. I didn’t care about the outside noise. And but it’s the choices that we have. So how do we choose to love and honor our people?

Victoria Volk: You had touched on a little bit about having lost your faith a little bit. And so the role of faith and spirituality through your grieving process. I know that was a huge aspect of my grief story. Can you share a little bit about what that looked like and how that changed over time?

Angie Hanson: Yeah. I talked it was really after my brother had died that I had lost all faith, you know. And I couldn’t understand how this was happening, why this was happening again and again, and you know, and you always hear the saying, why do all the good ones go? You you know? And I kind of just slowly journaled about it. I went to a group that was a Christian led group, and that is really what changed a lot for me. Is because I learned about death and how it is in the bible and God. And then I started putting my faith back into him. And I learned, like I said earlier, that you know, we are all built a certain way, you know. And so for my son to be born with a heart defect, you know, that was that’s just something that happened. And, you know, my husband and my brother are both with cancer. You know, they it’s just their genetic disposition. You know, they environmental things. We don’t know, but what I know is what I’ve where I’m at today is not because I am the strongest human in the world. It’s because I’ve been carried and something bigger than me is holding me through all this and they’re guiding me and I have to believe that and I have to believe that all my people are safe But for me, I just really leaned into reading a lot about it and just trying to understand what faith and death and god all meant.

Victoria Volk: What was the toll of grief on your health? Over the years. Do you recognize you did you have physical symptoms? Like, how did the grief manifest for you? Because in grief recovery, which is program I adore and love and change my life, but we talk about nerves, short term energy relieving behavior. So you were talking about alcohol and just how people use these outside things to cope. And so how did neither grateful manifest in physical symptoms or will turn to these things to help us to feel better for a short period of time. So what how did the grief manifest for you?

Angie Hanson: I would say that, you know, I you know, I after our son’s death, I really lost a lot of weight, you know. That was my kind of my health thing I just didn’t wanna eat, I didn’t care. After my husband had died and my brother died, you know, I just I didn’t really I didn’t turn to anything, you know, I didn’t drink a a lot more than I had normally. You know, I had drinks But my health wise, I just I just honestly like I said, I guess I just didn’t eat a lot, so I lost weight that way. But I was really just I think my mind was the biggest recovery thing that I needed to figure out how to be present, you know. And I had to be whole for Gracie. And I honestly didn’t turn to anything negative for myself. And I didn’t find I don’t have an addictive personality, so I don’t turn to, you know, that. But mine was mostly all my mind work. And how could I stay healthy? And the healthiest way I could be would be to work on my mind? And that was journaling and reading and, you know, I mean, traveling. Gracie and I traveled quite a bit. You know, we would go visit friends and just be in present. So, yeah, for me, I didn’t really turned to anything that hindered me from my process.

Victoria Volk: Well, even exercise can be a stirb. So it can be good things too.

Angie Hanson: Yes. Exactly. All of a sudden. Yeah. And, you know, I did not I did not turn to work. That was one thing I slacked on. You know, it’s just but yeah. Just I don’t know. Yeah. There’s not I don’t have anything. That’s that’s one of the things that I’ve kind of always been wondered about. You know, maybe I need a deep dive into that a little bit more, you know, to go back into those corners of my mind and really see about what I did. That’d probably be a good exercise for me.

Victoria Volk: Because there’s these myths of grief. Right? It’s keep busy, grief alone. You know, don’t feel bad. You know, there’s so many time heals all wounds, which you touched on time, but it’s not it’s not the time itself. It’s the action that you take within the time. You know, that Exactly. Matters. And it sounds like you were, you know, surviving but yet also doing what you knew to get more control or what have you of your thoughts and your thought process and it’s so easy to downward spiral, to allow your thoughts to downward spiral and Yeah. Take it You know, I just

Angie Hanson: I always you know, I had a friend of mine. She had lost her husband two years prior to me losing my first husband, Jack, and, you know, she was a she was a good resource for me, but when I would have bad days, you know, we would and we would do this with each other, we would just be like, okay. You’re allowed to have this one bad day. But tomorrow, you’re going to get up and you’re going to, you know, you’re going to change your thought process. And you’re gonna change, you know, your mind and everything. And, you know, just giving ourselves that permission to be because I feel like people, honestly, like, they want to do something to fix it. Even even ourselves as grievers, we want to we want to feel how we felt before. We want to feel the same way and, you know, we just can’t. But if we can allow ourselves that time to grieve or just to be or just to not do a single thing. Like I said, if if you wanna lay in bed all day for a day, lay in bed all day, there’s nothing wrong with that. And I feel that that is part of the whole healing aspect of grief is doing that. But you know what, then she’d say, she would check on me the next day. Okay, Angie. How are you today? Are you going to get up and shower and go? And yes, I would. And, you know, I, you know, just and also just yet, like you said, exercising and being outside with nature, but I just think giving ourselves permission to be and not rush. And don’t rush the grief process either. You know, you we it takes time. And I feel like a lot of people rush it.

Victoria Volk: Well, we are a you know, let’s just take a shot, let’s take a pill, let’s,

Angie Hanson: you know, let’s call Amazon, you know.

Victoria Volk: Herb side, like, we are such an impatient society. It is redontulous. Yes.

Angie Hanson: Yes. I agree a hundred percent.

Victoria Volk: How would you describe the ANGI before loss versus the ANGI after loss?

Angie Hanson: Well, that’s a good question. I would say that I was way more outgoing. I was way more friendly. And I and don’t get me wrong. I’m a very outgoing friendly person now, but it’s evolved and changed. I would it was easier for me to be friend. You know, now I feel like I don’t be be friend people easily and I think they don’t because I think I have this aura around me and people get scared of grief. So if they know about my story or any loss that I’ve had. They kinda run or turn their head or they just don’t wanna dive deep because I think they think it’s contagious, but it’s not but I’ve had a lot of strange situations with that. But I was I was very just more very laid back, more more easy going, and like I said, more friendly. And now I just I get a little bit more anxious. I, you know, I really deep dive in who’s going to be my friend and who’s going to be in my life. And that’s maybe something like of a protectant part of me, like, I don’t wanna lose anymore people. So if I if I don’t bring all these people in my life, maybe I won’t lose them. So, yeah, I would I would say I have a lot I have a lot more anxiety in that aspect and Yeah. I wish I had some of my oh, my my free thoughts that I used to have, you know, because now I don’t have those free thoughts as much. And I’ve just kind of adapted all my like I said, I’m I still have all those feelings. I’m still a nice person because I am, but they’ve all adapted differently than what I was before

Victoria Volk: I resonate with that a lot. I don’t know if it’s my resting bitch face or my aura, but probably my aura too, but I tend to I tend to poke the bear when I’m, you know, meeting people. And it’s it’s because It’s like you don’t have time for bullshit. Like, let’s cut the bullshit. Let’s cut the surface level talk. Like, tell me your deepest desires and your dreams. Like, what do you want what do you wanna do with your life? Like, like, those are the kind of the questions that I wanna talk about, and it’s like, it’s really hard to find those people, like the deep thinkers and the, you know, the thought provoking questions and the insightful you know, people, you know. And I think because we get so caught up in this, the mundane daily life, you know, the hamster wheel. We don’t even stop to think about the things that ignited us when we were kids. Right? Like, just actually one day just over Mother’s Day weekend. There was three little girls, and the semi truck just chewed its horn, and the girl’s just so kitty and just yeah, just like this. And it was so funny because I never shared that with anybody. And as I was sitting there, I was thinking, gosh. I was taken back. I was having some ice cream with my girls or seventeen and a half and six you know, fifteen already. Yeah. And I just was taking back in time in that instant to See, I saw them, like, you know, in doing that, my daughter does this still to this day when she gets excited. And Yeah. So it just took me back in time, but I don’t know where I was going with that.

Angie Hanson: Yeah. I just think it’s like, you know, the society the way society has grown and changed and evolved that, you know, we we are losing, like, you know, you the deep conversation with people. You know, it is hard to find those people that we can match up with and have those, you know, just sit there and talk about and walk away feeling just refreshed. You know, I leave a lot of conversations feeling icky. You know? And I don’t I haven’t pinpointed exactly why, but like I said, I just when people when I first kind of meet them in a situation and they ask me, oh, what do you do? And I’m like, well, I you know, I have this greeting card business. Oh, that’s awesome, you know, and they’re like, what kind of cart and I, you know, I tell them and they’re I’m like, well, they’re mostly grief cards and they’re would you do that? You know? And then I’m like, well, do you have a while? No. But, you know, so then I kinda explain And then I can see their whole demeanor change. And so then I just like and then I get sad sometimes because I’m like, There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m still I’m the same person but different, but I still want to have the deep cover stations, and it doesn’t have to evolve all around me. I wanna hear all about you, you know, and so that’s yeah. So I just I feel like in society and it’s it’s kinda like the fast and go of the world that we were talking about that people people don’t wanna take the time to learn and have those deep conversations anymore. And I feel like we have to get back to that.

Victoria Volk: Well, and I think they’re afraid. I think it’s fear. Imagine what people say to me. I work with Grievers. Like, I work with Grievers, and I do energy healing, and and all this weird stuff, you know. And she might, like, do some voodoo on me or she might, like, you know, get me to, like, confess and verb verb vomit, all of my grief. You know what I mean? Like,

Angie Hanson: explain my real feelings. Right? I mean, people they’re they’re scared of their real feelings.

Victoria Volk: I had someone actually just just word vomit just let it all out in a very public place. And I felt so you know, obviously empathy for this person. Right? But I was, like, a little bit, like, What’s the word? What is the best word to describe that feeling I had?
It was refreshing. It was refreshing. That’s probably

Angie Hanson: felt the same feeling. Probably.

Victoria Volk: It’s like it there is something about giving it a voice. And, you know, I think so many of us I’m gonna get into, like, some voodoo top voodoo voodoo talk. Like a throat wound. Right? I think many people have a throat wound, you know, especially if, you know, as females particularly or young girls that grew up and, you know, be seen and not heard and don’t use your voice and or or you’re too loud or you’re too much or you’re too much of this or too much of that. And so we just kinda minimize our voice and we don’t use it. And I guess that’s been the greatest gift for me and having my podcast. And maybe you can relate is that it’s helped me find my voice in what I experienced and in sharing stories with people and meeting people like you said just sharing in community with other other grievers

Angie Hanson: Yeah. A hundred percent. I yeah. I do. I feel like when I hear stories after people talk about their stories during the podcast and, you know, and then when I listen relistened to him and I, you know, I just I take back I take away so much.
You know, I take away from that initial conversation. And then when I re listen to it, I take away more and I hear more and I hear more of what they were saying because then I can listen to more tone. Their tone of their voice and different things like that. And then I have a whole different perspective of what they are feeling and going through. And it’s absolutely amazing. I mean, that’s why I just you know, we these platforms that we’re able to utilize such as the podcasts and, you know, writing our books, you know, and even our socials, it’s sharing our stories is so huge for everybody because it is bringing out so much for so many others that they’re maybe just sitting on the sidelines and they hear the podcast and then they they read about or if we’re talking about our books, they’re like, Well, I could maybe do that, you know, so it’s sparking stuff in people. And we are, like I said earlier, we’re changing this narrative, and I feel the evolution of this really taking place. And I’m really excited for what it’s gonna do for future grievers. Because I just feel like sharing our stories however that looks, you know, even if I’ve told people before, even if you write a full book and you never publish it, that’s okay because you shared your story. You know, you shared it and that’s you shared it within yourself and that’s okay too. You don’t have to publish a book to be great. You don’t have to have a podcast to, you know, you can just sit there, but you’re you’re growing by hearing stories.

Victoria Volk: And that is a form of giving it a voice too. Yeah. And journaling. You know, I journaled I journaled since I was fourteen.

Angie Hanson: That’s awesome.

Victoria Volk: I mean, quit, you know. It’s it was my outlet very early on too. So

Angie Hanson: Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s so methodic for people to be able to write down things. And I, you know, I just people are like, sometimes I’ve heard people say, well, I could never write a book. Well, no. You could write a book. Write it all out. I don’t care. Type it all out. However you want, but you don’t have to publish it. No. It’s you’re still doing the same thing I’m doing. I just excited to publish mine, and you didn’t. But we, at the end, we did the exact same thing.

Victoria Volk: That’s exactly true. Yeah. Like I said before when we started recording, it’s like, I think they people think to write a book, it’s this huge And it is a big project. Right?

Angie Hanson: And I’m

Victoria Volk: not gonna deny that or minimize that. It’s a project, but it’s not as scary as some people make it out to be. You don’t have to have a publisher, you can self publish, which there’s there’s so much free information out there I mean, actually, my tagline is Google that shit because I mean, I’ve learned so much by Googling and and I guess I’ve never been one that’s been afraid to, like, dive head first and let the rabbit hole, you know, swallow me all, but You know? I mean, that’s the fun of it. Right? Like, that’s and that reminds me of what I was telling with the story, with the little girls

Angie Hanson: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: A friend of mine I didn’t tell her about that, but she had the exact same story exact same story across two thousand miles away where she saw these two little girls and she saw them get so excited and hers she we’re in a in a box or group together and Yeah. We’ve known each other online now for, like, four plus years. But she’s one of those people, right, where we talk about stuff, like, we’re talking here, like, have deep conversations that she was, like, just never it was a reminder to me and she said to never lose that spark. Never lose that joy that you had as a little kid just seen, you know, having someone toot their horn and give you you know, and I told her my story, and it’s like, it’s like mind blowing, like, the synchronicity of that. It’s it was just a reminder again to me, you know, what brought you joy as a kid? How can you bring some more of that into your life as a grieber? In your adult life, you know. Yeah. It’s Yeah. I love that. Messages there for you. Yeah.

Angie Hanson: Yeah. I do. I absolutely love that because that’s the joy as a child is absolutely beautiful. And, yeah, we we need more of that in our adult life.

Victoria Volk: To play.

Angie Hanson: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Instead of just these schedules and these these deadlines and just the anxiety that life brings everybody if we could just let it go. And just be, that would be amazing.

Victoria Volk: So what would a day of play look like for you? Well,

Angie Hanson: you know, I’m actually gonna do it later on here. My daughter, since she’s back, we’re gonna go golfing. And so she wants to go she wants to pick up and learn golfing. And she wants us to learn how to play pick a ball. So it’s like, so, you know, it’s a beautiful day in Nebraska, finally today.I was like, you know what? Yeah. We’re gonna make time and we’re gonna go golf this afternoon. And so that’s what we’re gonna do. So today, and we’re just gonna have fun. And we’ll probably giggle because she will probably be I golf. So I do golf already, and I’m on a ladies league, but she doesn’t giggle. So we’ll probably giggle at the way she hits the ball and all that, and it’ll just be, you know, easy going. And like I said, having her home has brought so much life kind of back into our house that was missing, you know, not you know, my husband and I it’s just been the two of us and which has been great. And, you know, we’ve had an amazing four years, but having her here just brings a only different element of joy back into our house and laughter. And because she’s just you know, she’s a silly twenty two year old girl.

Victoria Volk: And the energy. Right? It’s a different energy

Angie Hanson: and Yes. Yes. And we’ve been taking she’s, you know, walks every day. So we’ve been going for walks every day and you know, it’s just it’s just been so amazing. And, you know, that’s just I’m learning to, I guess, slow down in a sense to, like, I don’t have to sit in front of my computer and do do do, you know, I guess I’ve built I’m going to build my career around my life, you know, and the way I want it to look like. So I’m able to do that right now, so that’s what we’re gonna do. And I’m celebrating that for you. Thank you.

Victoria Volk: You know? Yes. Is there anything else that you would like to share?

Angie Hanson: I really just want people to know that, you know, if you are if you are a griever and you’ve lost someone, you know, just really, just give yourself the grace that you that you deserve and do not rush your grief and your grief journey because it’s just it’s it’s yours. And you get to do it your way and you need to move through it and journey through it. So I just I really want people to honor those feelings that they’re doing as they’re grieving. And then if you’re not the griever, if you’re on the outside and you have your best buddy or anybody going through something tough. You know, meet them where they’re at and don’t try to rush ahead of them, you know, speak their people’s names, you know, just acknowledge them. Don’t try to fix them. And, you know, you will be the best support system that they need. And just always continue to reach out to them even if they tell you no twenty five times. You know, the twenty sixth time they’ll say, Thank you for reaching out to me. I needed to hear you today.

Victoria Volk: And just by twenty six of Angie’s cards and then Yeah. And then I’m like,

Angie Hanson: That will get you through two years.

Victoria Volk: Twenty six. Yeah. Yes. Definitely. So where can people find your cards and connect with you?

Angie Hanson: On socials, Facebook and Instagram. I’m at butterflies and halos, and then my website is butterflies and halos dot com. All my cards are there. I’m also if you’re an Etsy person and prefer that, I’m on Etsy as well, butterflies and halos. And you can order my cards there. I have some other stationery products as some stickers and notebooks. And my book will be on there for sale here probably within the next week or so. And, yeah, Everything’s butterflies and halos.

Victoria Volk: How does that mean?

Angie Hanson: Oh, the well, butterflies are assigned my sign that I’ve had since my son died. And so and then the butterfly is just the the symbolism of a butterfly and the trans formation that they make and the spiritual transformation that they make is something that I hold really dear. And then the halos are for all my people. So that have diets. And so I just I kinda meshed them together for butterflies and halos. Yeah. I love it. And then for anybody that is on here, if you use the code podcast fifteen, you can get fifteen percent off your first order.

Victoria Volk: Is it all caps, lower caps?

Angie Hanson: All caps podcast fifteen. Yep. And then that can be that’s accessible on Etsy or my website.

Victoria Volk: And I will add that to the show notes as well. Yeah. Yeah. How long is that good for?

Angie Hanson: It’s it’s never ending.

Victoria Volk: Okay.

Angie Hanson: Yep. Yep. So they can they can use it whenever.

Victoria Volk: Right. Thank you so much, Angie. For sure. You. For having this deep dive conversation with me for the work that you’re doing in this movement that you and I are both part of, I think, is is moving the needle.
Yeah. Moving the needle by little.

Angie Hanson: Yeah. Yeah. We’ll get there. But I appreciate everything you’re doing as well, and I appreciate being on here and sharing and just the beautiful conversation. And then, hopefully, we can have you on our podcast here in the next few months, and that would be amazing.

Victoria Volk: I would love that. Yeah. Thank you. Invitation. Yeah.
So thank you again for being

Angie Hanson: my guest. Yes. Thank you.

Victoria Volk: And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

 

 

Ep 170 Karla Helbert | My Son, Theo, Is Always With Me

Karla Helbert | My Son, Theo, Is Always With Me

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY: 

Society will often say to bereaved parents (or guardians), “I cannot imagine your loss…” when expressing their sympathy. However, these words can feel like a thousand paper cuts to the bereaved because, if they’re anything like my guest, Karla, they want you to imagine, even briefly. As Karla shares in this week’s episode, we are all capable of using our imagination; however, when it comes to child loss, no one wants to imagine it. Karla herself never imagined she would experience such a loss in her life. And today, her beloved Theo would be 18 and off to college.

Theo means “God,” and Karla never imagined how much her spiritual life would suffer when Theo was diagnosed at three months old with a brain tumor and died six months later. She needed God and her spiritual practice more than ever during that time, and yet all of the tools and teachings in her toolbox through her therapy practice, yoga, aromatherapy, and more were of no interest to her; she wanted nothing to do with any of it. That is until she was ready to face the one unimaginable loss she could not change.

Through this episode and Karla’s story, you’ll learn two important lessons her grief taught her, as well as her insights around balancing the fear of the world and something bad happening with living, and in particular, the challenges parents with other living children face after already burying one child.

We also talk about how her practice evolved with her grief and how it’s also enabled her to sit with other grievers, including other bereaved parents and guardians, in their pain.

When unimaginable loss happens, every aspect of our lives takes a hit. But when our spiritual life is bruised, finding meaning, which Karla explains is very personal, can be the fuel needed to get up in the morning and keep moving.

Karla lives her life with one thought: to live a life that would make Theo proud.

May we all strive to live our lives to honor our departed loved ones – in even the smallest of ways. 💛

_______

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: Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Grieving Voices. Today, my guest is Karla Helbert. She is a licensed professional counselor, internationally certified yoga therapist, compassionate bereavement care provider, certified yoga instructor, certified hypnotherapist, reiki practitioner, and an award-winning author. Her life changed when her firstborn child died of a brain tumor in two thousand six. Carlos Therapy Practice has a focus on loss, grief, and bereavement, working in particular with those affected by trauma and traumatic death. She is also the author of Yoga for Grief and Loss, The Shakras and Grief and Trauma, and Finding Your Own Way to Grieve a creative activity workbook for kids and teens on the autism spectrum. It’s a mouthful

Karla Helbert: Fill up.

Victoria Volk: And that’s amazing because I often see that even for myself personally, grief can either crack us wide open and, like, have us go down all these different paths that we never imagined, or it can really take us down in our lives and devastate every aspect of our lives. And we never meet our potential. We never see our potential, and we don’t take chances on ourselves and go after these things that are not only healing for us in the process, but also bring healing to other people, and that’s exactly what you’ve done through your grief and experience. And so I do have questions. But, often, like, even for myself with certifications and things, like, what came first? And I know that you were a therapist for many years before your son passed, but can you describe how things shifted for you with that experience? And share about your son too, please. Yeah, sure.

Karla Helbert: Yeah, sure. And when you were talking about, well, we can either be devastated or we can have this potential, there’s like this huge spectrum and you can be any place on the spectrum at all sorts of times because it’s certainly I mean, when your child dies. And there’s lots of other catastrophic losses. But anytime you have trauma and grief intersecting, it can be really devastating. So there was a lot of devastation. And I will say, I think that I was really fortunate just to being me. And I felt like I cannot turn away from this, like I had to be in it, I had to feel it, and I had to do something with that energy. And I think that’s a a big part of it when I work with other people or when you see situations where people are not growing in their grief or developing because it is really a developmental process and when you’re not being nurtured and supported and having that really fertile ground where to put your roots down so that you can then grow people often don’t. And it’s not always their fault. I hear like, oh, the choice. There are choices to be made sure. But also when you’re in a situation where you don’t have the personal strength maybe to stand up and say no, I’m not gonna accept this notion that I’m supposed to be somewhere other than I am or that I have to subscribe to the five stages, which we don’t really have to get into that, but it’s so permeated in our culture that we’re supposed to somehow lend the early follow these stages, and they’re not linear at all, and I know you know that, and get to the place of acceptance. And that means so many different things to people and also people don’t know. I didn’t know.

Karla Helbert: I took a whole semester long. I think that just makes me laugh. Elective course in counseling and death and dying and grief and bereavement in grad school. And when it happened to me, I still was sitting there going am I going through the stages like I’m supposed to? Am I fitting in like I’m am I grieving like I’m supposed to? And I just had this moment of like, what why they’re supposed to and that notion of acceptance at the end of the line makes some people just feel it’s insulting and like you’re supposed to there’s no such thing that closure. There’s no place where you’re done with this. And if you can’t understand that and integrate it and then stand in that truth for yourself and what it means, you often feel to squash down and if you are not behaving and responding, like, our culture says you should in grief, which is ridiculous, the expectations that are placed on grieving people, then you tend to just sort of keep it to yourself and then you have these emotions like shame, and that increases your sense of isolation and you don’t share and you don’t grow. And if you don’t have access to support and help and the nurturing and the love and all those things that go along with appropriate and healthy development then you might not reach those places. Like, there’s no, we hear a lot too right now in our in our world about post-traumatic growth it’s not a promise. And it’s also not a contest. And I know I’ve done a lot of stuff. But it wasn’t immediate. I mean, it took me a long time to sort of unfold that process.

Karla Helbert: I was a therapist. And primarily, I mean, I was working in a private school with kids and teenagers, with autism, and other developmental disabilities, which were co-occurring with lists of mental health diagnoses, but severe behavioral challenges. And I did that for a long time. And then my son died in two thousand six of a brain tumor, and he was a baby. And that was just a whole the whole thing from the moment of the diagnosis through his illness and the surgeries and the treatments and his death, it was just horrific. And then he died. And I thought because I had a lot of time. Well, we had five months between the time we decided to withdraw treatment, and he went home, and we had amazing support from pediatric hospice. But I thought oh, I’m gonna handle this better because I’ve had all this time to get used to it. And I’m grateful for the time I had. I mean, I certainly know many people people who do not have time. And it’s just this sudden thing that happens when you’re in immediate shock and it’s very difficult to even process. I had the opportunity to plan what I wanted for his funeral. I was able to be with him. I was able to had a lot of processing through those times. But when he died, like, I had no idea what it was gonna be like. I was plunged into this, like, depth of despair and everything I thought was true about the universe and my belief system was just like and I did not know what to do or how to put it back together. And I started taking because I maintain my license and we need to have CEUs. I decided, well, I’m gonna try to learn about grief. I’m gonna try to learn how to figure this out for myself. It wasn’t because I wasn’t gonna be a great therapist. And for me, support groups were incredibly helpful. I’m still I’m involved with the MISS Foundation, which we’re a nonprofit organization that supports families after the death of a child. And I was fortunate enough to have had a group already here. A lot of people think that I started the chapter in Richmond, but I did not where I live. And I went to the group. Every time they were meeting. And when the facilitator at the time found out I was a therapist, she wanted me to help her run the group and at first, I really didn’t want to because I was like, if I do that, I’ll have I won’t have space. But, like, two years in, I thought I can do it. I’ve gotten so much help. I know I can do this, and so I did. And then from there, I started doing some groups with local hospices and those people were asking me, do you have a private therapy practice that we can meet with you? And I did not. I was still working in private schools. But when my daughter who was born two years after my son died, which is about when I started facilitating those groups, went to preschool, I had time. So that was like four years in that I actually started a part-time therapy practice. And started writings and things as well. I mean, I’ve always written things, but for other people to read. Although I did keep a blog throughout his illness and wrote a memoir which has never been published and I don’t know that it will. I don’t feel like I need to at this point. But I hear a lot of people feeling when they come to me that they’re not doing enough, that they need to do something big. And really, like that whole idea of the tree and your roots, a lot of people when they go through something like this immediately want to just jump into this huge project, which is okay because you have a lot of energy to put into things, but it’s also not giving you a chance to establish your own roots and see, like, what you need. And so some people can’t, like, they can do both at the same time. But a lot of times, it’s just overwhelming. And for me, like, I did it just sort of unfolded. It was not a plan. It wasn’t a thing that I said I was gonna do and that’s just how my journey has been. Although, I will say, the yoga piece of everything I do, I started my yoga teacher training before I was ever pregnant with him. And those skills really helped me through a lot of that journey. Although when he died, they felt useless.

Karla Helbert: So I had to sort of integrate that and figure out, like, well, when I wrote the Yoga for Grieving Lockbook, it really came from me spending a lot of time and looking back and seeing how all the skills that I had learned really were supporting me through all of that, and I just didn’t realize it. Like, yoga is a lot of people think that it’s depositors, and it’s so much more than that. Which is what the book is really about is the takes the branches of yoga each chapter is about a different branch of yoga and talked about how the tools within each of those branches are really incredibly helpful in grief. And the yoga postures are like this much of it. They’re only part of two of the different brands of the yoga. And the rest of it or it’s philosophy, its spiritual practice, it’s meditation, it’s self-inquiry and awareness, it’s a lot of different things that I realized later, really were carrying me through. So I’m not sure I answered your question. But it for me, that whole journey of becoming and I’m still doing it, still unfolding was a slow thing. It was not a planned thing. It’s just kind of how I ended up getting to know my own grief better. And for me, the motivation because that’s when we talk about finding meaning or creating meaning, that’s such a personal thing. And if something you have to explore on your own for me, the overall motivation is you have to help people, but I was already doing that. It’s really to me creating a life and living a life that my son would be proud of. And sort of doing things in his honor even though I don’t even really, like, talk about it so much, but it is the motivation behind what I’m doing.

Victoria Volk: What is his name?

Karla Helbert: His name. Everybody mostly knows if it’s Theo, but his name is Felinious Luther Helbert.

Victoria Volk: That’s beautiful.

Karla Helbert: It’s a big mouthful. But that Thelonious Monk, my husband is a huge fan of Thelonious Monk and the whole time I was pregnant, I really thought, well, not the whole time. Until I got the twenty-week ultrasound, I really was sure that he was a girl. And so I had only thought of girl names, and I was like, when I found out he was a boy, first of all, weird. I don’t even have a penis inside you, like, twenty-four hours. Sounds like Oh My God, I really have to adjust my thinking around it weird. And I didn’t know what to call him and we were looking at an album cover and I thought that’s a cool thing. Well then, what about Thelonious? And my husband was thrilled with that. And my dad’s name is Luther, and his father’s name is Luther. So that was his middle name. Mhmm.

Victoria Volk: Oh, it’s beautiful. Right.

Karla Helbert: Everybody mostly called him Theo

Victoria Volk: And you had shared that he would be eighteen now.

Karla Helbert: He would be eighteen now.

Victoria Volk: When was his for when will his eighteenth birthday be or when was it?

Karla Helbert: Well, it passed till this coming year, his birthday is on May Twenty-sixth Twenty Twenty-Four, it will be nineteen years. And he died nine months old. He wasn’t a year old. He didn’t live to see his first birthday. So the death date when we get there in February will be eighteen years that he’s been dead, but then nineteen years of his birthday following way though.

Victoria Volk: And when I hear something cocky?

Karla Helbert: Crazy for me to think about that sometimes, they’ll just tell me.

Victoria Volk: So my son, his name is Xavier John, and his due date was May twenty-six two thousand five, but he was born May twenty-fourth.

Karla Helbert: Oh, wow.

Victoria Volk: So we were pregnant at the exact same time.

Karla Helbert: Oh my goodness.

Victoria Volk: And gave birth around the exact same time.

Karla Helbert: Wow. That’s amazing.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. That’s never happened before in an interview. So

Karla Helbert: Wow.

Victoria Volk: I know it. So

Karla Helbert: Thank you so much for sharing that with me.

Victoria Volk: And thank you for sharing you didn’t mention it, but the Reiki, how has that served you in learning? Because I know how beneficial that has been for me just to learn about energy at self in the energy of emotions? Can you yeah

Karla Helbert: Oh, yes for sure. And emotions are energy. Mhmm. Absolutely. Well, you know, everything is energy. But it’s interesting because I’m trying to think of when it was one time and then, like, late nineties. A group of my friends all went to go get Reiki trained. And it’s totally a thing that I would be down with. I mean, I am, but they asked me to go and I didn’t do it. I just I don’t know. I really can’t remember why I said no. Because it sounds like a thing I would be like, oh, yeah. Let’s I wanna do that with y’all, but I didn’t. And I was the only one out of this group of friends that I hung out with a lot that didn’t do the Reiki training at the time. And they were all coming and breaking me afterwards. And I was like, oh, cool. And I just, like, let it go. And I really think it’s because I was gonna need it a lot more later.

Karla Helbert: But so in twenty thirteen, I guess, I went another thing that I’ve been really interested in for many years is essential oil and aromatherapy. I’m not a certified aromatherapist I’ve been working with them for a long since nineteen ninety. And a friend of mine said, oh, there’s this weekend workshop about a Aroma therapist, but aroma therapy for therapists do you want to go? And I thought, well, okay. And so for me, a lot of things after he died, just I’ve always been a very spiritual person. I always call myself spiritually promiscuous. Like

Victoria Volk: I love that.

Karla Helbert: Sort of, like, avenues and studying different religions and paths and stupid interested in so many ways. Like, I really believe that the yoga that I’m trained in, which is integral yoga, our motto is truth is one and path are many, and I absolutely believe that. So I’ve learned a lot about a lot of different things over many years. But when he died, it was like none of that meant anything. It was just that loss of my spiritual self. It’s still makes me cry. I was just like, who am I now? And the only thing that really helped me then was I and I’m again fortunate in this because I’ve worked with lots of people who say that they cannot. They hear all these things about signs and connection and communications and they don’t have it and they can’t feel their children or their other loved ones and but I knew he was around. I knew he was there. I couldn’t believe in anything else. It was all gone, but I could believe in that. And I could talk to him until the o means god, sort of male, like, okay. Well, if he’s around and I feel that, then somewhere, there must still be this divine presence. I just don’t know where it is. It was truly this dark night of the soul space. A feeling disconnected totally separate from that source. It was awful. I stopped doing yoga, the awesomeness. I did chant. That was one of the things that got me through chanting, and just being taking a lot of bath, a lot. But so many things that were who I was just were gone. And I had hundreds of dollars in essential oils. Just hundreds and hundreds just sitting on a shelf doing nothing with them. Because for me, that was also part of my virtual practice, like using them in a spiritual way and in ritual and add mixing them together and potions really, but, like, ways that for me, like, really carried the energies of the plant. And I just didn’t want anything to do with it. I would put lavender on a cotton ball vacuum. That was about it. But I said, well, okay, I’ll go to this thing with you. And it was like a turning point for me. It was really really what I needed in that moment. And the two women who were putting it together the wrong therapist was named Katiebugs. And I love her and she and I became really close over the years and she’s become like a mentor and the other woman, Barbara Davis, is a licensed therapist and also a Reiki Master. And that’s the first time I met her and she became a really important person for me and I thought, okay, it was funny because at that weekend workshop, mostly everybody there were, like, bodyworkers and acupuncturists and massage therapists me and one other person were psychotherapists, and it was like, I don’t even have them in the right place, but we had to learn some certain acupressure points and work with the oils and work with people. And one person I was working with that, are you a reiki person and I was like, no. And she said, are you sure? And I was like, well, I’m pretty sure. She said, but I can feel the energy in your hand. And then I said, oh, okay. And then I looked into it more after that and went to train with Barb Davis. And it really helped me regain a spiritual connection and a spiritual practice. And I think had I done it all those years ago with my friends that wouldn’t have happened. And I think something in me or something in the universe just new, the right time for this is gonna be later. And so that was in twenty fourteen. I did my reiki training level one, level two, and worked with it on myself a lot. And on some clients, but I didn’t really, like, get into really using reiki with a lot of other people until the pandemic. And to my reiki master level in twenty twenty or maybe twenty twenty one. It might have been, like, right at the change of the year. And started working with it differently in a way different way. I mean, for people who are who under who know about Ricky, I would use punchalization in and send it decently, like, just a prayer list? Like, I’m sending this to you. I’m sending but I didn’t start working decently with people really in session until the pandemic when we I was doing the master level and working with it in that way because I really couldn’t wasn’t seeing people in person. And it was a profound experience. And many people that I’ve worked with distantly have said, the feedback from them is even more powerful than what you get in person, which has been an interesting experience for me.

Karla Helbert: And then last year, I started teaching some people. I haven’t done tons of it, but it is incredibly powerful experience every time I do a reiki training and the right people show up. You know, once you are supposed to be there in that moment and the groups are just so cohesive and they stay in touch, and it’s just really interesting. But that part, I think that weekend was really I’m gonna know because I can feel the difference. Really profound. And then from there, the reiki journey started. And I’m really grateful for it because I think it wouldn’t have been the same. Had I done it earlier. I can’t know for sure but

Victoria Volk: Mhmm. Well, and I had similar experience, although I did my reiki master, I think, twenty nineteen. And then I did Corona Holy Fire Rakey Master. And then I phoned biofield tuning, which is his tuning fork, so I got certified in that. And so, yeah, it’s what I’ve heard you saying up to all this point is that it’s like when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Right? And it’s being open to receiving what it is that is there for you to learn about yourself, about healing, about whatever it is that is peeking your curiosity. And where I think people come into our lives too just to nudge us like they’re brought into our lives to nudge us and then we might not ever see them again or speak to them again. I’ve had so many instances of that one off conversations that just, like, change the trajectory of my life sometimes. I’ve published a book because of one off conversation with someone. It’s been bizarre. Yeah. And I think the message that I want people to hear and what you were sharing is that to be open, really, it’s important to be open to support and be open to the nudges and to getting out of your comfort zone. Because I think we can become very comfortable with our suffering too.

Karla Helbert: Oh, yeah. I think you’re right. That’s true. And then it’s scared to what is it that the devil? It’s easier to stay somewhere than to face the fear of something that’s different. And it is scary. And I think I’ll stay often to people in grief. We often feel like we don’t we don’t wanna move. We don’t wanna literally go out. We don’t want to do anything. And I’ll say, go when people ask you to do something, drive your own car so you can leave, but try. And just yesterday, I was talking to a friend of mine and we’re planning a webinar, and we’re talking about just, like, basic tips. And I said, you know, when somebody that you love and trust sent to you. Let’s go take a walk or maybe you should take a shower. Just listen to do it. Just do it. You just never know how one little thing might really shift how you’re feeling in a moment. And sometimes, just taking a shower can really, like, change how you’re feeling or going out and walking around the block and getting some sunlight. I mean, those things are so basic. But so important. And especially really early on when you’re in those spaces of devastation, we often don’t want to do anything. You don’t care to take care of yourself. Like I talk a lot about self-compassion, and self-care. And when you’re in those places, you don’t care to have compassion for yourself or take care of yourself. And so really, you’re right. Like, that just do it anyway. Like, just take this moment and listen when somebody gives you a little bit of a nudge. Because you don’t know how just this one little shift can change the energy of your emotion. Because as we said before, emotions or energy. And I’ve shared many times that word emotion comes from the Latin verb, a move air, which means to move. Emotions are supposed to move. We’re not supposed to just, like, hold them tight and just But I know because when you’re in pain, like physical pain, you just don’t wanna move, but everybody knows if you don’t move that arm that’s hurt, it’s gonna freeze up. You have to take those little steps to allow on an emotional level, also the pain to move. It doesn’t mean you’re gonna be fixed or cured or you’re not gonna grieve do grief stays with us forever? I mean I was just I can if I talk to you about it, it’s right there. It doesn’t go away. I just now am strong enough to carry it that building your emotional muscle and all of those things are energetically motivated, but it includes the physical aspects too of taking a shower, going for the walk, taking the chances and having lunch with a friend. And it’s scary because we don’t know you don’t know from one minute to the next sometimes seconds, what’s gonna just bring you to your knees any moment. A song, a look, a kid that looks like your kid or you never know and they’re everywhere, these dangers. And if you don’t make the effort to become strong enough to handle them when they show up. You never leave that safe safe circle it’s how your world gets smaller and smaller. And I don’t think that’s a good way to live. Mean, I can’t I’ve had conversations where people say, well, who are you to say? I’m I can it’s my business if I wanna keep my world that small. You’re right? You know, that’s true. You can’t ever make anybody do anything. But I don’t want to live in a little tiny box. Know, so in order to be able to expand, you have to, as you say, be keep being curious. You’re curious about something. Go find out. Like, curiosity is a very healthy place to be always.

Victoria Volk: And that’s the hardest thing I think when being, like, on the therapeutic side of it or renew assisting others in grief And for a long time, I just felt this like, I just wanted to, like, help everybody. Right? And you can only help those that really are ready to help themselves who are ready to be open, right, to the support. And that was the hardest part for me when I first started this my work of working with grievers too is being on the other side of it. Right? Like, you just you just wanna bring everybody with you. Like, there is hope. There is support. There is a path forward. There is joy and happiness waiting for you.

Karla Helbert: It’s hard believe sometimes, I mean, I remember vividly being in the space of thinking, okay, well, I’m never gonna feel joy again. I guess that’s alright. I mean, I’ve had little kind of burst of oh, I feel happy for a minute. That’s okay. I mean, I had accepted that was weird when that first happened, but I’m never gonna feel joy again. I mean, who knew? You can. It’s not and so, you know, the for me, the most profound thing was really real. And it was did not happen overnight. Is being able to hold grief alongside other emotions. And it’s hard to do because grief, especially traumatic grievance and the trauma aspect of it really has to be worked on, like, how do you deal with post-traumatic stress issues when they come up. Like, that’s a different thing, learning how to calm your nervous system down and understand how it works. But the grief itself does not need to be healed. It’s a normal and a natural response. And in the beginning, It is so overwhelming that it’s impossible for other things to come in and feel. But the more you learn how to carry it, the more than you’re able to have that space for other things, it doesn’t mean that this is gonna go away. It doesn’t. And then that not being afraid of learning that grief isn’t your enemy, that was huge for me too. But and I remember talking to a really good friend of mine. I was on one of the death anniversaries, and I was saying to her, I hate this so much. I hate this grief. I hate it. And she’s like, you don’t hate it. And I was like, yes, I do. No, you don’t hate it. And I was like, oh, I totally do. And she said, no. You hate that he’s dead. You don’t hate the grief. I was like, okay. That is true. That’s true. The grief is just there because he’s dead. Like, there’s Of course, it is. And so, like, that for me was another little turning point of really realizing, okay, I don’t have to try to get rid of it. How can I, like, make friends with it a little bit? It’s a constant companion. You know, it’s always here. Even in that the the metaphor of sort of, like, this thing being huge and you can’t see around it at all and or you’re just blind to buy it. And then eventually, it moves out here and you can see around it or under it and then it’s here and so it’s always right there. Or maybe it’s like right here most of the time and oh, I know you’re there. If I wanna come get you. And then there’s those days where it’s like, oh, look, here I am. It’s never like this for me anymore. And his grief isn’t. And I,really feel that the only thing that scares me and it’s that true for a lot of grandparents as my living child. Then I don’t know what will happen to me if she were to die before I die. I just hope she won’t. But here, I’m all I’m pretty confident that I can handle anything grief-related that comes my way in regards to his death. I can I can handle it even if it’s here? and it doesn’t stay here very long. It’s just like, okay. I know. And then it goes back here. But it’s always part of me. And in the beginning, had you told me that’ll be like, I don’t want this, and I understand that completely that impose to protest and to push this away and to not have this be your reality is absolutely how you feel. And I get it. And so you’re right with the where people and people are ready. And in this job, in my job, I No. There’s nothing I can do to help you. I can’t fix this. Like, I can’t fix the grief. I cannot change how you feel. I can offer you suggestions, I can be there with you, and it doesn’t scare me. And so now in a lot of ways working with dramatically grief people, I don’t I’m not responsible for their healing. I can just be there with you in it, and I’m really good at that now. And I think a lot of people who do this work, including lots of therapists, are not comfortable in that discomfort. It’s also a cultural issue. This is much fun with culture. Like, our culture is not comfortable in the face of other people’s pain. They either, like, don’t wanna be seeing that. Or they want the person that they care about to be who they used to be, which is also impossible, or they wanna fix it for them and take like, when people say, oh, if I could do take this away from you, I would never want somebody to take my grief away from me. It’s inexorably connected to my love for my child and you’re not taking my breath away. It’s impossible anyway. But even early on, I knew that. Like, I had to feel it. But if this it is a developmental process and a journey, like, nobody overnight just as like, okay, I’m ready to be healing now. I mean, just and for me, I don’t even really use that language because I think the idea is that grief can be healed and it doesn’t need to be. And I’m never gonna be healed from that trauma, relationship problems with other people that show up, physical issues. A lot of times, this can be healing, all that depending on what has happened. The immune systems are depleted. People have autoimmune problems because of extreme amount of stress that their bodies are under. And once you start dealing with the emotional peace and find the right physical support, that stuff can be healed, but the grief doesn’t need to be. It’s a learning process too with all of those things growing, learning, developing, but I don’t need to heal from it. So but other I don’t suggest other people use my words, but figuring that out was also huge because for several years, I thought I needed to heal. And I tried and tried and tried and thought about it and wrote about it and finally, when I started thinking about it in a different way, it was a relief to just be like, oh, and god, I don’t have to heal from this because I’m not.

Victoria Volk: I have a lot to reflect on that because it is. It’s like this, it is a constant wound. Right? Like, there’s nothing ever that will bring your son back and Right. Or any loss that anyone experiences or any traumatic experience that someone has, there’s nothing we can’t go back in time. We can’t change it.

Karla Helbert: Right.

Victoria Volk: And so it is this ever present wound. But like in grief recovery, what the language And I use healing but more towards, like, energy work. Mhmm. But when it comes to grief, it’s more of the a sense of recovery. And almost like, you know, like the twelve-step programs of alcohol or substance abuse disorders and things like that. But for me, personally, it was recovering from the pain. Mhmm. It was and that’s what I feel like grief recovery addresses is the pain so that when you have those moments that show up in your life that remind you you’re not pulled back to the pain. Mhmm. Your relationship changes because your relationship continues with your son. Your relationship continues who never passed.

Karla Helbert: Absolutely. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: And so it’s and she’s yes. So grief recovery. What it did for me and what I see it doing for clients is it helps them change the relationship moving forward? Because I think there’s a lot of you know, what’s the loss of hopes, dreams, and expectations and anything that you wish would have been different better or more. And I think that’s the story on repeat in a lot of people’s minds and hearts and that’s really difficult to let go of.

Karla Helbert: Oh, totally. Yeah. And that’s for me and a lot of other bereaved parents. And in a lot of ways for anybody who’s the loved one, but that those ideas of, like, what we what would have been if he would be now. Like, I was not expecting, for example, fact that school stuff has been with hard for a lot of years. But I didn’t even really think about it. All the kids going off college this last summer. And I was like, oh my god. Like, it went it’s interesting. I looked at it. I was like, wow. And a lot of the things I was reading from a lot of mothers being devastated and grieving. And I just thought, oh, gosh. Yeah. I’m not gonna I can’t I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t comment on anything. I didn’t because I just thought, okay. It was it was very hard to read. And I don’t know if he what would he be doing? Will he take a gap year? I don’t know. Would he be going to college at all? What would he be doing? I don’t even I don’t know. All things you don’t know. That’s all still there. But for me, yeah, like, you know, language is so important how we talk about things and what we think about words. I mean, I’m a big word nerd. So I mean, to me, I’m always like, look up the ophthalmology of this thing and see where it comes from. But that’s why healing and the thought around that. But it really is how we because the way you’re talking about grief recovery, like this resonates with me. I don’t like that word because I think in a lot of places, people assume it means you get to go back to who you were before and you don’t. And I know you know that. Mhmm. And so it’s hard to our language is still limited to on how we can really express it’s hard to talk about. I write a lot about grief. I mean, I have written a lot about grief and there’s still no words that really can describe your actual experience in it.

Victoria Volk: Can I read something that you shared with me in your application here?

Karla Helbert: Oh of course.

Victoria Volk: Because I feel like a lot of people listening who have lost a child will resonate with this. So I asked, what would you like to scream to the world? And you had said that others who did not know this pain could fully you wanted them to fully feel the catastrophic immensity of not just my pain, but the totality of living with such traumatic loss and the ongoing experience of what it is truly like to live without the person you love and cherish most. I wish they could experience it so they would know and if only for a few minutes what I was going through, and I imagine that as a feeling that you have kept all these years. Even when you’re reading those messages of the moms when their children were going off to college and things, I imagine, like, it really touched me. That’s why I wanted to bring it up.

Karla Helbert: I can I didn’t remember what I wrote in the so but that’s true? Because, you know, people will say. And this and it is I do concur. I would not wish the death of a child. On anybody. I don’t really have any enemies, but if I did, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, people say. But I do wish that for just an instant, people could really feel it. Because I don’t think I mean, I know. So I also have this thing that I don’t like it when people say I can’t imagine because human beings have the capacity to imagine anything. Like, we’ve imagined worlds that never existed. Galaxies far, far away and all these things. And it and I think what it means when people say that is they don’t want to imagine it because it’s new scary because if you really really. And I know you can never if you’ve not experienced it, you cannot know what it’s actually like. But people don’t want to try to imagine. And I haven’t had a conversation with my mom not too long ago. Which was really interesting because she’s one of the people who just have historically over this whole period difficult to talk about this with. And she’s gotten so much better over the years. She’s really, like, taken in a lot and I think learned and had I’ve seen her deal with grief with friends and other aspects, and she’s gotten so much better at it. But she asked me something about how do you work with all these people’s pain and what how do you do that all the time every day? And I was trying to explain it and and that this conversation went into the phase of that because that was happening at that time, everybody’s children were going off to college, and I was talking about it. And she said to me, oh, bigger. She said, well, when you went to when you went off to school, I cried every day from month to month, it was awful. You just have no idea and I was like, Okay. Now imagine, I’m an only child. Imagine if you would never speak to me again, never see me, never hold me, never touch me, never hear my voice, never mail me, but I don’t want to hear that. And I was like, okay. This is what I’m talking about. And I didn’t you know, we were we were out at our house. I was making dinner and all. I just went back. And it’s interesting too. I like that I mean, for me that moment, if that had happened fifteen years ago, I would not have been able to even talk to her. I would have had to leave. You know, it was just no, it’s interesting, and I remember miserably in those moments. Early on in grief. Just wishing that people could feel how I felt. Just for a few seconds even because grieving people and I experienced it too are so judged. It’s like I mean, yeah, you’re tired of our grief, oh my god. Imagine having to do it every single second. We’re sick of our shit too. Oh my god. We can’t do anything about it. And then for that gets back to that, what you said earlier, it’s a choice to do something. It’s so hard. So I have so much sympathy and sympathy for people who are in those places, and I work with people who it’s protracted. And it’s just, okay. You just keep doing these things, and then there might be a little shift, a little shift. And I had a woman once. It totally sticks out to me. Our son took his own life. She came in, she walked on my sofa, she’s just crying crying crying. And for, like, twenty minutes, all we did, she sat there and told me how she can’t do this. And I said, but you’re doing it, but I can’t do it anymore. But you’re doing it. This went on and on and we had a lot of conversations around, okay, what are your options? And to killing herself, completely just like taking every drug and just staying high and she didn’t like any of those options because all of those had bad consequences. And I thought well, Okay. We’re doing it then. And then we shifted the conversation and we’re talking about other things. And when she left, she was laughing about something and we were just it was not we’re having a great little time, and I said, you know, I want just want to point out to you. This isn’t to say that some great healing moment happened but look at how differently you feel right now as opposed to how you felt just like an hour and a half ago. That doesn’t mean you won’t have those moments again, but you’ve got through it. And now we’re in a different place totally. Just remember that. It can change. It can. And people just don’t believe that often when you’re in those places of just total pit darkness, but it can’t.

Victoria Volk: You just highlighted a very important point is that especially in those moments when you’re sitting in it and you’d have don’t see a way out of it. You can’t see the label from inside the jar. This is where you need support, you need someone else to light the way for you, to show you that you can shift your perspective in an instant.

Karla Helbert: It is variable. Don’t have that Yeah. Right. And a lot of people don’t have that. They don’t have that help and support. And it’s it’s hard because a lot of times people who may not be the kind of person who would reach out and go find it are the ones who need it the most. I mean, you see this, people who are help, seeking people just naturally be like, I I need to go to a group or I’m gonna go find a therapist or whatever. And now I’ve said a few times on different podcasts. Now what is so helpful? Even more it’s I mean, it’s been almost twenty years, which seems like a long time, but it all those things really fast. Then, like, there was very little support. Now, you can and social media can be really devastating for many people, and it can be really helpful but there’s so much more. And you need to be discerning because not every place that’s supposedly helpful and supportive really is and there can be a lot of toxicity, but this is where you knowing yourself and learning, having that self awareness and starting to pay attention again to your own wisdom, finding the places where you feel safe and comfortable there’s so many more out there now than there were even when I was going through it. I felt really alone. I mean, it’s really thankful for the miss foundation and the group that was here. And that’s one reason I’ve stayed so connected and and still very much active with with the foundation. Is because it’s what really helps save me. So having that support and there’s so many more options now and that’s really, really good.

Karla Helbert: When I wrote that book yoga for grief and loss, Actually, the the other book defining your own way to grief book that’s for kids on spectrum, that came from a story that I wrote one of my clients is for my son, any of this happened with him. This kid was a new kid to me. Both of his grandfathers had died. And one of those grandfathers was, like, his person. And there was nothing anywhere. I could find no resources. So I wrote him this little story that’s at the beginning of that book, but then turned into chapters because I couldn’t find anything out. And now, there’s more support for people on the spectrum. There’s more support for grief parents. So I remember finding there was one book that I found that was for marine parents at the time. And then there were a couple more, but there really weren’t that many resources even for bereaved parents. There was nothing for siblings. So, and all of this has grown a lot over the last fifteen years. And there’s so much more out there. It’s easier to find support than it was, but you have people that it’s hard for them to reach out. Which is why I say also to other people don’t stop reaching out to the greeting person. They may not come to lunch, keep asking them. And a lot of times, what happens is this victim blaming kinda thing, oh, well, she doesn’t wanna come to let her sit there. It’s part of it is because they don’t understand how grief is not a disability or a disorder, but it can be debilitating. Had trauma with it, you have all of that combined. It can be terrifying to walk out of your house. And they need support. You need people who the people who love you who are gonna keep coming back instead of getting annoyed with you because you’re not getting over this. Are you still sad about this? It’s been six months or less? I mean, it’s just like amazing. So for me, if people could’ve veld it, just for an infant, maybe they would have more other lips.

Victoria Volk: And zip their lips. Right?

Karla Helbert: It’s like impossible. I get that it’s impossible.

Victoria Volk: It’s like I equate it to society’s response to grief to grievers, like a thousand paper cuts. It’s like every little comment, every little inciliation, every judgment, or every whatever it is. It’s like just another little paper cut on a griever. And the thing is what this is why I started this podcast is like nobody has to die for you to be a griever, for you to grieve. Like, I guarantee you these people that say this stuff, this un these unhelpful things, have a lost dream, or have a less than loving relationship with a parent. I mean, we grieve, have a loss of career or finances. Maybe the less they’re home, everything went up in flames. Like, we all grieve something as we just forget. We forget.

Karla Helbert: Yeah, well, maybe that forgetting. I don’t know. Because when you’ve had these huge losses, catastrophic losses, you can’t forget. And I don’t know. I mean, maybe when people have those other those other kinds of grief and those other losses and they forget, they sort of think, well, I got over these things. I mean, and people equate these things together, they do. I mean, I’ve seen it. Like, it’s amazing. Oh, I know exactly how you feel.

Victoria Volk: Oh, yeah. Mhmm.

Karla Helbert: Because my grandmother died, my dog died, my whatever died. I mean, it’s like

Victoria Volk: My aunts, cousins, brother, sister.

Karla Helbert: Yes. Whatever, you know. I mean, it’s just like,

Victoria Volk: trying to relate and trying to relate you’re creating more harm. And Yeah. You talked a lot about support and making sure that grievers seek support and you talked about ways that you found support and what you looked for and what helped you. But overall, what has your grief taught you?

Karla Helbert: I don’t think you asked me this ahead of time.

Victoria Volk: It was on the form and you selected it.

Karla Helbert: Oh, well. Okay. Okay. Well, today, I think well, the thing that came to my mind very the first thing is that I’m not special. Like, I so in the beginning when this first happened, one of the things, right, that was, like, universe shattering and this idea somehow that I was protected and special. Even if I didn’t really say that to myself and I think like a lot of people walk around with this assumption that they’re exempt. They know bad things can happen, but somewhere they don’t think it’s gonna happen to them. And I was just, like, with the why, why, why, why, why. And then I just had this, like, thought, but this was really early in. Oh, why not? I mean, like, why not? Why not me? What’s I’m no different than anybody else. I mean, I’m just I’m special. I’m just special and I’m just as not special as anybody else. And I think it also had taught me And that was really eye-opening. I was like, okay, what does that mean now? What do I how do you navigate the world. And it’s scary. How do you navigate the world when you know for sure these terrible things can happen? And I’ve had to learn how to balance that fear? Because it’s still there. I mean, I know all the things can happen. So it’s how do we balance that fear and then at the same time knowing that. And maybe it’s the curiosity piece because I’m I’ve always been, like, very curious and open to lots of things. It’s like, well, if I know that, then how do you make the most of this one this moment that’s happening now. Right now, as far as I can tell and everything I can do, everybody that I love is safe. Everybody is okay. Now what do we do? We live in this moment. We live in this present moment as much as we can. We plan for what we can plan for. But you can’t control everything. And that’s been really hard. Like, I’ve tried my best and I’ve really have tried my best. Some people say that and I don’t always try my best at everything. Try my best. To try to be the kind of parent. That I think I would be if I didn’t have a dad child, but learning how to, like, let her go into the world she’s gonna be fifteen on her next birthday. Oh my god. She’s gonna drive a car. Like, how it’s ongoing. How do you balance this stuff? It’s taught me how to be able to live a more balanced life to let go of what I don’t control or hang to how to really surrender to things how to learn how to surrender to that grief because it cannot control it. And then how to then take the steps to continue learning and growing. I mean, those are the things I’ve learned from my grief. For sure.

Victoria Volk: I’m glad you touched on that with your daughter, like, you know, that fear of I mean, you’ve lost one child. Right? That fear never goes away. Right?

Karla Helbert: Now when I know many, many families who’ve lost more than one child, it’s it happens a lot. And it’s a real fear and a real possibility. So how do you live? And that’s the thing I address with lots of parents that I work with who have living children. How do you live with this? Without being crazy, without being super controlling, letting them have and have made mistakes, I’m sure not definitely not a perfect parent. I do feel I’ve tried my best to not control her and let her have experiences climbing trees. Oh my god. I used to love to climb trees. Nobody paid any attention to me. Climbing the trees. I was so scared to deliver climb trees, but I let her do it. Thank goodness she was not like a daredevil child. Really glad for that, but it was really hard. But I wanted her to have those experiences. And I’m gonna have to let her drive a car at some point. That’s worse than climbing trees because there’s other people driving cars and on phones and drilling and drag all these things. So it’s just like to terrifying. Is scary for non bereaved parents?

Victoria Volk: It is. Yeah.

Karla Helbert Yeah. It’s a it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge. And it’s ongoing. I mean, their times when it’s harder than other times. So, like, that’s a skill. Right? So, grief has taught me many skills to move through my days.

Victoria Volk: I do have one question kind of on that topic. What would you say to parents I have this belief system too that, like, a parent’s anxiety can become their child’s anxiety. How do you express that to parents in a loving, compassionate way. I know.

Karla Helbert: I mean, in my kid. I do. I mean, I see it in my child. And and there’s so much, like, we knew nature or nurture all these things. Like, she’s her own person. She has a lot of anxiety. That I never had. Really, we’re very different people. You know what I mean?

Victoria Volk: It’s a very different time too.

Karla Helbert: Yes. Yes. There’s so many things. Like, I would never wanna be a teenager right now. It’s just so scary the world that they are living in. And so there’s that, I mean, when they do active shooter drills at school. I mean, she’s terrified, but there was one day that this is a middle school. And she that happened and then she had a nightmare that night that there was a shooter in her school. And she didn’t wanna go to school the next day because she thought that it was gonna come true. And I said, I mean, we had a long talk about it. And I said, because I can’t tell her it’s not gonna happen. I can’t. I know people whose children have been killed in school shootings. I know them. And I can’t tell her it’s not gonna happen. But I told her, I said, I understand that you’re scared. I know. And she knows of the children that I know. I mean, she’s aware. She knows what I do. She knows a lot of things. And I said it, but it’s like lots and lots of accidents happen in cars every day, and it’s scary to drive a car. But what if I say, we’re never gonna get in a car again because we might be in an accident. We would never go to go anywhere. We would have to be only where we could walk, and I send this to her, that would make our world a lot smaller. I know it’s scary. But we have to figure out how to breathe through our fear, do the best we can, protect ourselves, and take care of ourselves. But also live our lives. You’d have to live your life. You’d have to go to school. And it was so hard sitting here in a school. And every time this happens, it’s like, mean, I think of it all the time when she goes to school. But, I don’t know, there’s not even a but. It’s a very, very difficult. She does have a lot of anxiety and some of it is the world. I mean, the pandemic was horrible, living through that as children and teenagers. And what that had done. And we were terrified during the pandemic for her to catch it, like all of these things. And when she was a child, I mean, I know when I was pregnant, I was terrified. There’s only so much you can control and even in terms of, like, what anxieties rub off on her? I’m like, I’ve talked about my husband’s fears. He’s been through the same stuff I’ve been through, and he’s a different person. And the way he deals with trauma is very different. She’s living with two traumatized parents. And grief stricken parents. I mean, I even didn’t even know how I thought I’m gonna bring the child into this house that’s still with grief. Is that the right thing for me to do? And I did. And I think I do think too that she’s a more empathetic person she does not have hang ups about grief at all. It is normal part of her life. I also tried. I didn’t wanna push a relationship with her brother on her. Like, she never knew him. Let her come to her own sort of thoughts and feelings about it. I have a hundred percent sure. Like, none of us, grievers are not can avoid our own stuff coming off on our children. I just think being as self-aware as possible and as open as possible to your own feelings. Like being telling yourself the truth about stuff is number one important thing. Okay, how am I affecting her right now? Can I need to manage myself first before I can manage the whole oxygen put your own oxygen mask on first? But I know that it’s impacted her. It can’t not have impacted her. I don’t know how much of her anxieties or because of me or my husband or whatever stress or whether she absorbed in utero. I don’t know. I can only do what I can do and try to be as aware as I can, as loving as I can. Come back to her when I’ve made mistakes. I’ve done that too. She’s a really good kid and she’s very smart. She’s funny. She’s creative. She’s finding her own way. And I just do my best to do my best. I don’t know.

Karla Helbert: There’s not a lot I can say to people because I get it. I understand. That fear and that learning to balance it is hard. And we don’t always I don’t even know what success looks like in that, but your kids as much space to be themselves. And we’re guiding all the time and once she’s an adult, to get out of the way and let her live her life. I mean, I’ve always thought like our job as parents is for them to not need us later. Hopefully, right, for her to be able to be on her own in a contributing adult in society and be as happy as she can be as content as she can be with who she is. I mean, I hope that I’ve done that. And I think some of that is unavoidable.

Victoria Volk: And to piggyback on that, I think the best way we can do that is, like you said, have a self-awareness about ourselves and sweep our own doorstep and look at our own parts.

Karla Helbert: Yes. Do your own work. I mean, that’s really important. Because if you don’t if you if you’re not aware, then nothing can change. Like, that is the first part, self-awareness. That something needs to change or it never changes.

Victoria Volk: It’s a great way to end this podcast, I think.

Karla Helbert: Thank you so much.

Victoria Volk: Yes. Thank you. And I’m gonna put links to the books to your everything in the show notes, but where can people find you if they’d like to connect with you and work with you?

Karla Helbert: Oh, for sure. My website is the best place, and you can always any any of the contact forms come straight to my email. Also, I’m not sure whether this is gonna air, but we’re a friend of mine, animal rogers who’s also a bereaved parent. Her story is very different from mine. We’re doing a free webinar for marine parents on December fifth. And that is gonna be from five to five thirty seven eastern time. Yeah. And that information is off the on my website. And you can just click there. It’s free, but you do need to register just to get the link and everything. I think that’ll be a really helpful thing for people. My website is just my name. It’s www.karlahelbert.com. It’s Karla Helbert. And all the stuff I do is on there, and any email that you send come straight to me, and I will write back.

Victoria Volk: I will put that information in the show notes. And I

Karla Helbert: Can also find me on Instagram. I’m also on Facebook. I don’t do Twitter so much anymore. X. No. It’s really not there anymore. So Instagram and Facebook are places to find me. And also my website, you can just email me and I would love to hear from people about reiki, about bereavement, about whatever. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff that I do about yoga. So Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been really, really great talking to you.

Victoria Volk: It’s been my pleasure. Thank you for sharing your story. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life much longer.

Ep 149 Q&A | My Son’s Death is the Elephant in the Room

Q&A | My Son’s Death is the Elephant in the Room

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:

Today’s Q&A is a great reminder for all of us that we express our grief differently and in our own timing. However, when emotions run high, and the loss seems unbearable, as is often the case with child loss, more grief will often add to the pain and heartbreak within family dynamics.

We must remember that 75% of how we respond to life’s challenges is learned by age three. By age fifteen, we’ve learned the remaining 25% of how to respond to life’s challenges. These are impressionable ages, and the lessons in our youth are what we fall back on as adults.

So when life hands a family a devastating loss, everyone brings their unique perspective and feelings about the person the family, as a whole, is grieving. This is why family dynamics have the potential to create more togetherness or more grief and separation in the wake of devastating loss.

However, less would be taken so personally if we all took the time to understand our loved ones better and honored each individual where they’re at in their grief experience.

RESOURCES:

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NEED HELP?

  • National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
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If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.

Are you enjoying the podcast? Check out my bi-weekly newsletter, The Unleashed Letters.

CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:

Victoria Volk: Hello. Hello. Welcome to grieving voices. Today is episode 149, a Q&A episode. But before we jump into the question today, I just wanted to share that this is the start of season 4. It is absolutely bananas to me that I’ve been doing this going on four years. I never anticipated that I would be having this podcast this long. I really didn’t know what to expect. It took me a good year to even really just decide and do it and learn along the way and it’s been an amazing experience of connecting with people from all around the world hearing people’s stories and being able to connect with people in a way that still truthfully blows my mind because I have clients that find me through this podcast who listen to my podcast and it’s a great joy that people feel connected to me in this way.

Victoria Volk: And can feel connected and supported even if I’m not working with you listening one on one. I hope that this podcast first and foremost helps you feel supported and that you’re not alone. And also is a resource of information that you can count on to be true and helpful and yeah just not more of the myths that society seems to perpetuate. So thank you again for being here and for just supporting the podcast, for sharing, for liking, for leaving a review. And if you’ve never left a review, but you love the podcast, that would be I would be immensely grateful if you took a few minutes to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Share your thoughts. I would love to hear how the podcast is helping you. If there is something in particular you want me to address, you can send in a question just like others have at [email protected] or reach out to me on social media. And I will bring your question to the podcast. And you can be anonymous if you prefer.

Victoria Volk: So anyway, with that being said, let’s move on to today’s question which comes from Amy and she asks, my twenty eight year old son died unexpectedly five years ago. Many people say I shouldn’t be so emotional after this long when I talk about him. His brother and father don’t talk about him because it makes me emotional. I tell them they just need to give me a box of tissues, but we’ve never had a talk about him as a family since his death. Is this unusual?

Victoria Volk: First of all, I can’t imagine what it is like to lose a child and you know, we had a scary moment with my son where we didn’t know what was going to happen. And I can speak to that fear but to actually lose a child. I imagine that as a heartbreak that any parent never really truly gets over. Right? It’s like it I don’t know that that phrase is even honest. Right? It’s not even an honest phrase that you need to get over. A death of losing a child. And really if people say that, it’s quite hurtful and harmful. Grief is unique and the pace that people experience, the emotions of grief, there’s a direct relationship to how they normally react emotionally to other life events. So this question is great for anybody listening because you may have people in your life who seem unaffected. Or they may not be as expressive emotionally about a loss that was maybe close to both of you. We all display our emotions differently too. And our grief is unique because our relationships are unique. And so this is where a lot of misunderstandings can happen within family units. But for Amy, if it’s your natural inclination to be more emotionally expressive and that’s your natural style to be open and emotive. It would be normal for you to still have feelings five years later. As it will be in ten or twenty years. If that’s true, then that’s great. This is a normal and natural response to the death of someone important to you as a unique individual.

Victoria Volk: And I want people listening to keep this in mind who may not be as emotional may not react to life in a more emotionally expressive way that just because people in their life do doesn’t make them wrong or bad or, you know, just like they should be over it.
Because I can actually speak to this even as a child. I’m very much a feeler. I’m a feeler. I feel things. That’s how I actually make a lot of decisions. How it makes me feel And so when something tragic happens, I’m really wound up in my feelings and especially children can be said that told that they’re cry babies or this is where this whole, like, if you wanna cry about something, I’ll give you something to cry about and this is where children who are emotionally more expressive who maybe wear their heart on their sleeves, are shut down as children, where we’re not allowed to speak to the fear, speak to the anger, or speak to the sadness, or express it. And so you can be a very emotional person, but if you’re shut down as a child, imagine what that does to you as an adult when you’re shutting down your natural inclination of how to respond to life’s challenges. Do you think you’d probably experience manifestations of physical nature like migraines or overall body pain or gastrointestinal issues, things like that. So I just want to highlight that because the way that we express ourselves and emote as adults is probably what we learned as children.

Victoria Volk: But back to the question, we can become sad by the nonactions of other people in our lives, in this instance, the brother and the father, in not talking about the sun, even in their incorrect belief that they’re protecting you from your own feelings. They actually rob you and themselves of sharing the very emotions that are helpful for you to feel and express. So that’s not to judge them because grieving people need and want an opportunity to talk about what happened. And their relationship with the person who died. But sadly, that’s not unusual for families to avoid or ignore the emotional pink elephant in the living room. Right?

Victoria Volk: And while I would love to encourage you to suggest to the brother and the father that you have an evening of memories about your son who meant a great deal to all of you. I don’t know that they’d be at all receptive. And then there’s that feeling of being rejected, right? Of not feeling like you’re in how do I say that? Like, in communion of grief with your loved ones, like, it’s not it doesn’t feel like it’s this shared experience. And that’s another brief experience after the loss, right? That so many of us can experience within a family unit or family dynamics So if that’s the case, if you have loved ones who are apprehensive about their own emotions and are afraid to let it all out. And if that’s the case, and they don’t want to have the joy and the sadness and other feelings in relation to the person who passed, then you need to look around your extended family. For people who know you, who knew your loved one, in this instance, your son, who might be open to sharing stories and feelings. Because it is important for those who are more expressive to not isolate and don’t shut other family out just because you’re grieving differently. Your life experience has shaped how you respond to life’s challenges. This is where we honor each other’s grief because all grief is unique in individual, and all relationships are unique in individual. And it doesn’t make one person right. It doesn’t make one person wrong. It’s honoring what your needs are as the individual in your grief experience.

Victoria Volk: And I’ll tell you many times, you will not find that person within your family unit. So I really highly suggest that anyone listening to this to try not taking it personal because we all just express ourselves in a way that we’ve been taught or we’ve learned and there’s no right or wrong of that. It’s just different. And so even just accepting that can really ease the pressure and expectations that we place, not only on ourselves and how we grieve, but on others too and others that we love within the family who mean be going through their grief differently than we are. And so I hope this was helpful in helping you, Amy, and others listening understand that there is nothing wrong with you, that there is nothing wrong with those that you love who just simply don’t express themselves in the same way.

Victoria Volk: So I hope anyone listening can find that person who can share in the love and in the joy and in the challenges of their relationships, mutual relationships of someone who has passed. And if you are struggling to do that and you need to heart with ears, where you will not experience judgment, criticism, or analysis. Then I am here to support you whenever you are ready. I actually have an opening for a one-on-one client right now in my Do Grief Differently program, which is 12 weeks long. And in this program, you work through two of your most painful relationships. And not all relationships give pain, right? Many do. And in fact, most do. I mean, I’m sure you can find things that or ways that people have hurt you in your life even if it was a loving relationship. But through Do Grief Differently, we work through all of that. And I would challenge anyone who thinks they don’t need to dig up the past to move forward. I challenge anyone who believes that because I guarantee that there are many aspects of your life where the past is dictating your present and will highly influence your future. And so it’s only when we become emotionally complete with the relationships of those we have loved and lost. Or who may be challenging to love and are still in our lives, whatever the case may be. Right? Because all your relationships are unique. That this is a wonderful program to address those things in a safe and in a safe way. So I hope this was helpful. And if you have any further questions about this topic, please reach out to me. And in the meantime, remember when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

 

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