Call Her Daddy - Grief: It’s OK That You’re Not OK

Episode Date: February 12, 2023

Grief comes in many forms - it’s a universal experience. But, do you really know how to handle it? Psychotherapist and grief expert, Megan Devine joins Call Her Daddy to discuss her own journey with grief after the sudden loss of her partner. Megan provides tangible advice to support yourself and others managing grief. She shares exactly what NOT to do when it comes to supporting a grieving friend and offers the best ways to show up and support someone. Megan speaks about the importance of setting boundaries while grieving and shares some personal boundaries she created in the aftermath of losing her partner. She talks about the feelings associated with grieving a toxic person, and has advice for navigating the mix of feelings that come with that experience. Megan challenges the idea that grief is something to overcome and normalizes - it’s okay to be really fucking sad. Whether you are recently grieving, years out or looking to support someone who recently experienced loss, Megan provides the insight we all need to hear.

What is up, Daddy Gang? It is your founding father, Alex Cooper with Call Her Daddy. Megan Devine, welcome to Call Her Daddy. Thank you. Glad to be here. You are a psychotherapist and grief expert. In your book, It's Okay That You're Not Okay, you write, all of us are going to experience deep grief or loss at some point in our lives. Loss is a universal experience. You began your grief advocacy work when you realized the way society and unfortunately many therapists handle grief is flawed. How did you experience this firsthand? Okay, so there's a lot in there.

I want to start just by referencing that part of the book where I say that everybody's going to experience deep grief. And I think something that has become, I don't know, understood in a different way over the last couple of years is that everyday life is full of grief. So when, as you and I are talking about grief, it's not just something that belongs to like an out of order death or something incredibly traumatic, that grief is a big spectrum. And I say that as a lead in to your question, which was, how did I learn that the way that we deal with grief in this culture is so screwed up? Well, I learned that the way we deal with grief is screwed up in this culture after my partner died in a sudden accident. Now, I had been a psychotherapist for a really long time. I dealt with grief. I dealt with trauma. I dealt with the things that bring us into the therapy room, right? And I did a really good job at it. But you know, when Matt died, the things that people said

to me, the well-meaning things that most people said to me, some people were jerks, but we're not going to talk about them. The well-meaning things that people said, whether that was casual acquaintances or close friends or family members or therapists and doctors, everything they said was about getting me out of pain, right? You have to remember the good times, look on the bright side, you're smart and young and beautiful, you'll get married again, don't you worry about it, like as though that was the biggest issue for me to solve in the days after he drowned was like, when will I find someone new? So just like all of the things that we say to somebody when they are in deep pain

are sort of at their root fundamentally unhelpful. And it isn't just grief related to death that we do that sort of fix it, cheer people up thing. It is like everything. It's your average Tuesday, right? And that's why I wanted to sort of situate this beginning part here with I spend so much time talking about grief related to the death of someone dear to you. But the skills that we need to show up for people in that kind of grief are the same kind of skills we need to show up for ourselves every day, show up for the world every day and show up for each other in every kind of difficulty that human life contains. I appreciate you clarifying that because as I was preparing for this, I was just thinking about how people may be listening and feeling like if you haven't experienced firsthand a death, grief looks different, right? Like there can still be someone living in your life, but you're experiencing grief. Maybe you grew up and your mother or your father never wanted to meet you

or and you're knowing you have to basically grieve the loss of a parent or whatever it be. It doesn't always equate to death. But what do you believe is the biggest misunderstanding people have about grief and loss? I think the biggest misunderstanding of grief itself is that it's a finite process and that it only belongs to death, right? You're only kind of allowed to claim that you're grieving if somebody has died. And then we want to know how close was that relationship? How much did that person or that being mean to you so that we can sort of qualify the experience of your grief? And that if you do your quote grief work correctly, it shouldn't bug you. You know, a couple weeks later, six months later, definitely not after

the first year mark, like we have this deeply, deeply ingrained belief that if we do things right, that grief should be over in a very specifically short amount of time. So I think that's the biggest fundamental issue with the way that we understand grief in this culture is that we think it's a one and done sort of deal. And that's just not what grief is. Thank you for clarifying that. Because I do think there's some shame around like, why you haven't done the steps or you have done the steps and you're not over it, like what's wrong with you, which we'll get to. I'm curious to know, like what personally helped you the most when you were in the early

weeks and months of your grieving? Staying away from humans. Staying away from humans helped me the very, very most. I love the honesty. I really do, Megan. Okay. So, I mean, it's accurate, right? Because even people with the best of intentions were going to rub me the wrong way, right? There is nothing anybody could say to me that was going to be helpful. So staying away from environments where I was going to get a lot of judgment or a lot of advice or a

lot of look on the bright side stuff, like that was self-preservation. Very, very specifically choosing to be around people who could be near me without trying to make it better. I was really fortunate that I did have some of those people in my life who could really sort of stand there in that abyss and not try to make it a pretty place for me. So being really intentional about who I spent my time with, that really helped. And focusing on the basics. One of those dear friends in the beginning said your only job right now is to tend to the organism. And by that she meant like, eat, drink water,

move your body in the ways that you can and get as much rest as you can. And that, it seems really almost like too simplistic. But in those early days and weeks of being just completely torn apart, tending the organism was something tangible that I could focus on. drink water, get up and go for a walk, take a nap, right? So staying away from people as much as I could, being really thoughtful, intentional about who I spent time with and tending to my physical body because the physical body needs to be a container for everything that is happening in your life. And while I couldn't solve the fact that my partner was dead and people were saying weird things to me and everything was in such chaos and disarray, what I could do was drink that glass of water in front of me. And that little act was immensely grounding during that time.

What advice can you give to someone to properly support a grieving friend or a family member? I love this question because your first question was, what do we fundamentally get wrong about grief? And I think this question is, what do we fundamentally get wrong about grief? And I think this question is, what do we fundamentally get wrong about being a good friend or being a good supporter? The thing we most get wrong about being a good supporter is we think it's our job to make the person feel better. If you're trying to support somebody who's going through a hard time, your job is not to make them feel better, it's to make them feel loved and cared for. You can't make things better for people. What you can do is say, I can't fix this for you. I honestly am not entirely sure what's going to

help, but I'm here and I love you and I'm going to do what I can to stay by your side. So understanding that it's not your job to fix somebody should honestly come as a relief to people because I think, you know, I think we've got these two forces inside of us. One is it's really hard to see people we care about in pain. It's really, really hard. And we want to make it better. So there's that impulse. And we've been taught through media, through movies, through pop psychology, through all of these things that our job is to cheer somebody up. So we've got that on one hand.

And on the other hand, I think on a deeper level, we know that it's not possible. It's not possible to make somebody feel better after their kid died or after they got a life-altering illness or injury. Like, it's not possible to cheer them up. So we've got these kind of warring things inside us and it makes us feel really helpless. And when we feel helpless, we panic. And when we panic, we say things like, everything happens for a reason. No, right? So just no, don't do that, friends. But slowing that impulse down, that impulse to help someone, which is a really beautiful like human instinct, slowing that process down and recognizing that it is not your job to fix them or make them feel better. It is your job in your role as a supporter or a friend

to make them feel supported and loved and held no matter what's going on. So sort of like removing that requirement that you make somebody feel better should make things feel a little easier. Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that because I do have some empathy for people that have been so fortunate not to experience loss or grief in their life yet. And so they really don't know how to and I agree it's almost this like knee-jerk reaction. And I do think it's an underrated bit of advice that I wish we were like almost taught in school because it is so imperative to recognize that you do not need to play a role in this person's healing other than being supportive and usually shutting the fuck up is the best option. I heard you say, you know, everything happens for a reason.

Like, can you give a couple more examples of like what we should not say when we reach out to people who just experienced a lot? How long do we have? There are so many things that you shouldn't say. Now, I don't want people listening to this to panic and be like, oh, there's so many ways to screw this up. I'm just not going to say anything at all. Saying nothing is an option, but it's not a very good option, right?

Saying nothing, not addressing it is a really good way to make the person you care about feel abandoned. So don't say nothing. Any statement that is trying to make them feel happy or better or like none of this is a big deal, any of those statements are not going to be helpful. So some examples are that are everything happens for a reason. Remember the good times. They wouldn't want you to be sad. Never say these things. If the person that you're trying to support has kids or a partner or, you know, a good community, like reminding them of those things is not useful. This happens a lot for people who have had a stillbirth or a miscarriage and they have feelings about it and their friends or other family members are like, well, you have other children, you know, like what, what are you even doing there?

So don't say anything that tries to erase the person's pain or cheers them up now that is going to be hard to do because again we are so trained to cheer people up but just like watch it and know that you are going to say things that are accidentally insensitive that is okay you can always start things by saying like, I have no idea how to do this and I'm going to stick my foot in my mouth, but I am willing to be awkward about this if it means that you feel loved and cared for, right? So don't try to fix things and be okay with being awkward. I love the, it's okay to be awkward because I actually feel like, and I've talked to like a friend of mine who went through a loss and it was like, I actually appreciate the like, just state the obvious. This is really a fucking difficult situation and I'm here for you. And I don't know exactly how you need me

to be here for you. And so I'm going to do my best. But I also like, I know some people are like they're in a better place. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. No. Never. No. Full stop. Is the right approach ever to just not say anything about your friend's loss? Like is that ever something?

Oh, that's a really good question. I think there are times when it would be appropriate if. Let's say that your friend just lost a pregnancy and you're not really sure what to say about it. You can say, I'm not sure what would feel helpful right now. Like, I don't want to not bring it up, but I also don't want to make you talk about it if you don't want to. Do you have a preference as to whether we talk about this? If you can like put consent in all things, right?

Like if you can put that power of choice back to the person in pain, I think that that's valid. I don't think that there's ever a time when you just shouldn't mention it. But that's also like you have to sort of assess your relationship level. If you've heard, you know, second or third hand that the barista at your favorite coffee shop just, you know, their dad just died, Should you ignore it or should you bring it up? Well, I mean, you got to think about the relationship and you also got to think about right time and right place. Middle of the morning rush, maybe don't walk up to the barista that you don't actually know personally and say, I hear your dad died. Do you want to talk about it? Like,

maybe not. I completely agree. So I think it depends on the relationship and also right place, right time. I love that advice. And multiple of my friends have shared with me that have gone through loss is again, like, I like how you said, sometimes bringing it up and asking them, obviously not putting too much on them of just like, if you don't want to talk about this, we can go do something else. And, but I also want you to know I'm here if you ever want to talk.

And it's like on your terms, I'm here for you. I love you. Because sometimes I think from my feedback of my friends, they're like, sometimes it gets so fucking exhausting how awkward people get. Like you're now making me work overtime to make you feel less awkward about something that happened to me. Like this isn't about you. Stop being awkward. I know it's a hard thing, but just talk about it or stop being awkward. You know, it gets a little exhausting, I'm sure, to be in a position where you're like, it's okay, Katie. Like, I'm going to be okay, Jesus Christ.

Yeah. I mean, people often find themselves taking care of the other person, right? And that is exhausting. Yeah. In relation to that, should people share their own experiences of loss when attempting to relate to and support a grieving friend? I love this question. The answer is maybe, but probably not. Okay. So here's what happens. So like, you know, you and I run into each other and, um, I ask you how you're doing and you're like, not that great. My dad

died last week. And I'm like, oh wow. My dad died when I was a kid. And then suddenly I'm talking about me. Okay. Don't do that. So the, the term that I use for that is grief hijacking, right? Like we're, we started out talking about you, but now I've moved the conversation over to me. Don't do that. Don't do that. There is a right time and a right place for that kind of interaction. But boy, there are such skills around. Okay, so when would that be appropriate?

Here's when this might be appropriate. If I know that your dad died and I have my own experience with the death of a parent, it's okay for me to say to you, I'm so sorry that happened. Absolutely not about me. I have lived through this. If you ever have questions or you want to check something out with me, I am happy to talk about it. And then go right back to like that, centering that person, right?

It's okay to say it's not the same loss. Everybody's loss is different. I want to let you know that I have gone through the death of a parent. And if you have questions or you need to vent to somebody, I am totally here for that. Yes. So I'm not saying never share your own experience. There is something very, very powerful in connecting with people who live in their own room at the same level of hell as you do.

There is something exceptionally powerful about community with people who understand that territory. But that also has to be by their choice and not, now we're going to talk about me. I agree. I also think keeping in mind when you're on the other end of it and you think that maybe your lived experience could be useful to this person, you are a little bit more removed from it than that person. And so you may be ready to talk about it, but you also have to take into account this person is currently going through it. And maybe this is a conversation for later down the line. And I love how you just said you can offer the quick connection of I'm here, I've been through this and I want you to, you know, grieve on your own time.

But if you ever need someone to talk to, like I'm here, it allows them to make the decision rather than you forcing information on them that's so close to you. And naturally, as human beings, we can't help but lean into our personal experience because that's how we feel about it. That's what we lived. And then sometimes we forget that the other person isn't experiencing it the same way as us. And we try to create a connection when really this person could be feeling more triggered that you're talking about trauma they're currently going through. Yeah. And I think because we don't we don't talk about grief and loss on a regular basis. I feel like everybody's got a backlog of grief. They've got backlogs of stories and memories and experiences that we're all carrying around with us. And I think what happens is when somebody says, you know, hey, my dad died last week, we're like, oh, good, we're talking about grief.

Now I get a chance to talk about mine, too. Like we think we're in this communal experience when that's not, that's not what's happening. And the more we can have normal, normal daily conversations about the difficult emotional territory that comes with being human, I think the less sort of frantic we feel about needing to insert our own personal story into somebody else's narrative. What was a boundary you had to set with someone close to you because something they were doing wasn't respecting your grief? Again, how long do we have? I love a boundary. Boundaries are awesome. I had to do this all over the place, right? Because Matt's death was an accident and he drowned in our home river and he was an amazing, amazing athlete. There's really no reason that

he should have drowned and he did, so freak accident. But we lived in a relatively small city and we had our regular coffee shop and a lot of people knew us there. And when I was there, pretty regularly, casual acquaintances would come up to me and press for details. So what happened? Right? And I got really good at just looking them in the eye and saying, those aren't details I discuss publicly. And then holding eye contact for a briefly uncomfortable time. Because again, like it's a normal human impulse to be like, give me all the juicy deets. But you have to understand that that is intrusive and it's none

of your business. And that no matter what the tabloids say, like we don't have a right to somebody else's intimate life or their, or their personal details, right? That, that sort of trauma tourism is not okay. Yeah. I appreciate you sharing like this specificity of how you would set the boundary because again, people going through their own grief, maybe sometimes having that line that you can whip out because I can imagine in these moments, you can get so thrown off and caught off guard. And again, someone's hitting you with your trauma, and you were just trying to go for a coffee and this person is asking you what happened. So that's a great bit of advice of have that one line that maybe you can hold true to so that you don't feel like you're being pushed out of your comfort zone to go somewhere that you didn't want to go that day. I think that's totally respectful and you shouldn't feel shameful or like you're being a bad person. You're being an asshole for not allowing this person to indulge themselves. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, we're mean, we're so trained to be polite and to be nice. And, you know, I like to remind people that just because somebody is, quote unquote,

nice enough to ask doesn't mean you owe them a response, right? And very often it's like, you know, the grocery store is a really hard place for grieving people for lots and lots of reasons. But one of the big ones is it's a public space, right? So if your partner died or your kid died and you're at the grocery store just trying to keep your shit together to get your bananas and there's somebody who walks into the grocery store and they see you, they're like, oh, right. She just had this terrible thing happen to her. Let me go make sure she's okay, right? You're in there, you're just like,

you probably had to psych yourself up for 45 minutes in the parking lot before you went in there and you're trying to keep your emotions in check. And here's this person who walks up to you, pats you on the arm, does that little head tilt that we do and says, how are you really? How's your mom?

Right? Like you don't have to respond to that. You can say, hey, thanks for asking. That's not something I'm interested in discussing right now, but I hope you have a great day. And you can walk away, right? It feels rude, but the intimate personal questioning in the produce section was rude. And it's okay to put that discomfort and that rudeness back on the person who started it. A common question someone might have when they're grieving is, when is the right time to move on? And people are probably curious, when is the right time to take off the wedding ring, to clear out their belongings, to take the pictures down, to date again, whatever the circumstance was. How do you help guide people with these questions? I have a very simple metric and it's called the vomit metric. Here's what it means. So there is no specific time for when you

should do anything. We've got that sort of urban myth that like you're not supposed to make any big decisions within the first year. Like who says, right? Everybody's got an opinion about what you're doing in your grief. We'll use the partner thing for an example here. If you start dating again, you know, you've got people saying, oh my God, it was so soon. Did you not love your partner? Were you getting a divorce? Like what? Like everybody's got an opinion about what too soon is. If you decide not to date or it's none of anybody's business, but nobody knows if you're dating or not dating. If you choose not to date for however long, there's always going to be people who are saying you're perseverating, you need to move on. He would want you to have love again, like all of this stuff. So everybody's going to have an opinion, which means you get to do whatever

feels right for you, because you're not going to please everybody anyway. So one, you get to do whatever feels right to you. Now that makes the question into how do I know when something feels right to me. I think for a lot of people in a lot of different kinds of loss and grief experience, you can't wait for a decision to feel good. I think good is off the table. If you are looking at your wedding ring and you're sort of twiddling it around on your fingers and you're like, I wonder if it's time to take this off

and you immediately feel nauseous, that's your message. It's not time. If you are looking around at your apartment and you're thinking, you know, my kid isn't coming back to this bedroom. What are some ways that I might rethink that space or redesign that space for who I am now? You can't wait for renovation to feel good, but if you're like, it's really sad and it feels like the right move, then that's what you do, right? So as you're sort of reflecting on things and asking yourself, should I do this? Should I do that? If you feel like you're going to vomit, then the answer is I'm not ready at this time. It's a great bit of advice. Thank you for sharing that. You say grief gets different, not better. How has your grief evolved? It's such a good question. And it's great to come after that question of like, how do you know when it's time to move on? Because moving on is not a thing, right?

There's no end point to grief because grief is part of love, right? Grief lasts as long as love lasts. There's no moving on from your partner or your sister or your best friend or your kid, right? Grief doesn't end, but it does evolve. It gets different. For me, I mean, at the time of our recording, I'm at like 13 and a half-ish years after Matt's death. I don't find myself falling to the floor, sobbing so hard that I make myself vomit. Like that doesn't happen. That hasn't happened for years. I still have moments though, where I go to text him, right? Or I see his truck, which was a really common truck back then. Like I see his truck go

by and there's some part of me that looks to see if it's him as though some part of me didn't get the memo. Now, those little sort of bleed through moments also don't upset me the way that they used to. Right. I guess my point here is that the edges of this are so much softer than I ever expected they could possibly be. And it is still present. It's always going to be present. I think sometimes there's pressure or expectation to do certain things in memory of a person who passed away. And of course, everyone is different. And if someone doesn't, let's say, go to visit the grave site or doesn't commemorate the anniversary of the death, how should they navigate feelings of guilt or judgment

from others? Yeah. I mean, this whole thing that we've been talking about with this like social shame, social judgment, assessment of the grieving process, like we internalize that too, right? There are things that we should do or that if we don't do, we're somehow failing. And you sort of couple that with our transformation narrative that we love so much, where like if something terrible happens to you, you need to find the gift in it. You need to turn it into a foundation or a movement or write a book or whatever. Like this belief that hard things happen to help us grow into our best life

and who we're meant to be. And that is trash. Hard things happen. And what you do as a result of living these things is completely up to you and there is no there is no requirement that you do a damn thing right other than listen to yourself and care for yourself and you know if you if you decide you're not doing that let me know whatever you do you but even things like um I didn't I don't go visit their gravesite.

Well, okay, you don't have to. Are there ways that you remember your person in different ways that feel good for you, right? Not everybody likes those external touchstones. I remember in the days after Matt died, there was a lot of infighting in his extended family about should he get cremated? Should he get buried? If he gets buried or if he has ashes, whose cemetery should they be in? And who's going to pay for this? And should there be like all of these arguments?

And what's impossible there is everybody has a different need. Some people need the physical location to go and sit somewhere. Other people are like, they're in the ethers now or they're compost now or whatever, right? So finding your own ways to honor your own grief, honor that relationship for yourself, like that is the only requirement is to find out what this is for you. And when you find yourself judging yourself, shaming yourself for not doing something correctly, I think the kindest thing to do is to notice that that's happening. Oh, I'm judging myself for how I live this. What would be a kinder way for me to deal with this

right now? Should we reach out or text family or friends and let them know that we're thinking of them on the anniversary of the death of their loved one? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think one of the things that happens for grieving people is the rest of the world moves on, especially after that first year, right? People are like, hey, you got through the year first. I mean, this is one of the real bummers about our misunderstandings of grief is that we think that by the end of the first year at the latest, everybody should be fine and back to normal. So for your grieving person, like they're still living this, that relationship is still there. And to have their person remembered is really lovely. You're not going to remind them of how sad they are. They're already like, it's already on their mind. You're

not gonna like make things worse. And remember that one of the biggest parts of grief can be this just astounding loneliness and that everybody's forgotten, right? So yes, set yourself a reminder for their birthday, for their death date, for their wedding anniversary, whatever, right? Like set yourself in a reminder in your calendar. There's no reason to make your own like in-house brain remember this stuff. Like

let your external brain library remember it for you. Set a recurring reminder. The other thing that I want to mention about this while we're talking about it is grief doesn't just live on those big dates. So remember your friend this Saturday. Remember your friend when the seasons change, right? Yeah. I have a lot of people close to me that lost specifically parents. And I remember after one of my best friends, one of their parents passed and the first year it was just like, we kind of communicated because we're super close. Like, I don't really want to talk about it. And immediately I was like, got it. Cause I was like, okay, if she's going to talk to someone, I know she wants to come to me, but if she's saying she doesn't want to talk,

we're not going to talk. And then the second year on her mom's birthday, I texted her just to like check in. And all I said was thinking of you today. And now it's been like over 10 plus years. And every single, you know, Mother's Day and her, the birthday, or even on the anniversary of her death, I will text my friend. And a lot of times the comments I get back is just like, thank you so much. You're the only person that texted me today. And so I think what you have to remind yourself is like, you don't need to send a long paragraph.

Some anniversaries of her death, I send a long paragraph of memories that I have of her mom. And then other times it's just thinking of you. But what I did do is check in with her of like, are you okay when I do text you those things? And she let me know it means more than anything because it reminds me that like someone still is thinking of her and not just me. And so I do think there's, again, back to the open communication of like, I think people really appreciate if you're like, I want to make sure that I'm not overstepping because they may say, you know what, on the specifically on that birthday, I hate the text because I don't want to have to feel like I have to respond.

Great. Maybe it's a phone call the next day or later in the week. But I think it's like, you can ask someone how they want it to be handled because they probably are going to give you a very straightforward answer because they know what triggers them. Yes. I love that. Excellent work, you, because that is like, that's stellar high level relational communication skills right there. So you did several things. We can break it down really briefly here. One, you set a reminder, right? So that you remember the date. Don't rely on your brain memory. That's not going to work. So outsource, set a reminder in your phone. The message that you send does not

have to be elaborate. I love that you share memories. That's great. You can just say something simple like thinking of you. Sometimes I just send a bunch of hearts on a day because my friend knows that I'm going to text them every year on their dad's death date. So it doesn't have to be a long missive. You can say things. You can say, you know, I'm remembering this time we all went out together as a family. Any of those things. The thing that you describe that you do that is like star extra credit here is I want to check in with you about how these feel, right? Giving your friend, the recipient of these annual supportive texts, the opportunity to say, yes, I love these because you're the only one. Now that's really common.

You're the only one who remembers. So thank you. You also give them an opportunity to say exactly as you said, actually, I would love to not get them because it just makes me feel like I have to reply. So maybe we can do it a different way, right? Like invite, like you're laying the foundation for somebody to give you an honest answer. And that is just, that is so beautiful and so kind and so highly skilled. So thank you for doing that. And thank you for giving everybody an example that they can emulate. Thank you. You're welcome. If someone is grieving the loss of an abusive

parent or, you know, a mentally sick person, someone close to them in their life who was toxic, what might this experience be like? That's such a good question. For some reason, I've been answering the abusive parent question a lot in the last couple of months. And here's the thing. When one person dies, every, let's say it's a family system. So when one person dies in the family, every member of the family lost a different person. One person died, but each person lost someone different because each relationship is different. It's not uncommon in family systems for one person to have an abusive relationship with the person and another person to be like, they were the best

person in the whole world, right? Everybody's got a different facet of that. And what feels so weird, weird understatement of the century, what feels so weird for somebody for whom the relationship was abusive, like to hear all of these people saying great things about this jackass is like it's such cognitive relational dissonance, right? So you feel like you're just getting gaslit and grieving at the same time. So one way to sort of navigate that would be to say, like, let's say you and your brother had very different experiences of your mother. Your mother was abusive to you. Your brother was a golden child. Everything was ducky. And you just cannot listen to your brother gush about how awesome she was. So you can say things like, you and I had very different mothers. And I respect the fact that you had a great relationship with her. Mine was not that. And I need you to respect that for me too, that I can't listen to you go on about how

wonderful she was. Right? So you can say that sort of thing. You can also say things like, you're going to grieve this in your way, and I need you to respect that I'm going to grieve it in mine, right? So there's thing one. Thing two, I think we often think for ourselves, and if we're looking at somebody else, we assume for them that if a, the person who died was abusive, that they should be relieved that they're dead. It's not that simple. All relationships are complex and relationships with abusers are also complex. There's always, I mean, maybe there's somewhere that this isn't accurate, but I think that there's always, I mean, maybe there's somewhere that this isn't accurate, but I think that there's

always some tiny, tiny, tiny little corner in your mind, in your heart, that's like, maybe this abusive person will come around. Maybe they'll apologize. Maybe they'll come back and be the parent that I most needed them to be. Maybe there's a chance. Even if you know that is not going to happen, we still hold out hope, right? And when that person dies, that hope dies too. And that is a loss. And it is valid. Knowing that there is absolutely no chance that you will have the parent you deserved.

That is a very, very deep loss. So grieving the loss of somebody with whom you had a violent or abusive relationship is not, it's not an on-off switch. It's a lot more complex than that. And sort of bringing, bringing yourself some compassion for all of the things that you feel. Yeah. It's really a good thing. I appreciate how you write in your book and you call it like complicated grief and just being, giving yourself some grace to understand that you're going to feel a lot of different emotions.

Like I know people close to me shared with me like, I feel so fucked up, but there's a part of me that's like relieved they died. And I can only imagine the feelings that brings on of like, oh my God, am I a bad person that I'm, I feel like a weight lifted off of me that this person died. Like what's wrong with me? Like, what do you say to people that are experiencing this type of complicated grief and what advice do you have? Yeah. I try not to use the word complicated because there's a, like the medical pathology model of quote unquote complicated grief is a whole thing in and of itself. But like one of, one of my favorite colleagues says humans are

complicated, right? Like all relationships are complicated. So all grief is complicated grief. We are such complex people. And we have such misinformation about what normal grief is, like the range of what is part of normal, healthy, uncomfortable human grief. It's just like there's a lot in there in the normal range. And feelings of relief are very, very, very common, especially if your person had been sick for a long time, right? If you've been taking care of somebody, if you've been watching them suffer, there is

relief that they are no longer suffering. That doesn't mean that you love them any less. It doesn't mean that you're glad they're dead. It means that there is a weight that you have been carrying that you no longer have to carry. Of course, there's relief in that. There are some people whose person died, let's say before the pandemic, right? Like they had an illness and they died before the pandemic really hit a couple of years ago. And they were thankful that their person was already dead so that they wouldn't have to go through not being able to be with their person in the hospital because of the restrictions in place at that time. Do you know what I mean? Like we can be thankful that certain suffering has been reduced or lessened or ended. And it doesn't mean that

you're glad the person is dead. Yeah. Are there signs that we can look out for to know if someone needs professional help in managing their grief? Yeah, I love this one because one of the first things we often say to somebody when we learn they're grieving or when, you know, when they're trying to tell us how they're feeling, they're like, you should probably talk to somebody. It's like, dude, I'm talking to somebody right now. Right? Like, there's this like, why don't you go talk to somebody is a really good way of shutting down a conversation. It's not the helpful statement that you think it is.

So, warning signs. When I say that as messy as it is, human grief is not an emergency. It's normal. It's expected. It doesn't mean that it doesn't deserve support and care and attention. It doesn't mean it doesn't hurt an excruciatingly large amount, right? So I'm not saying everything is like sunshine and puppy dogs and rainbows, but we don't have to panic the way that we do at most expressions of grief. That doesn't mean that there is nothing that is a little bit of an emergency or something that does need extra care and attention. But this goes back to tending the organism, right? If somebody is actively feeling suicidal or they're engaging in self-harm, right?

Grief or no grief, those are things that need immediate attention because we need the person to stay safe and we need them to feel supported. If your person, the person you care about is engaging in inherently risky behaviors, I'm not talking about emotions that make you feel uncomfortable. I'm talking about things like shared IV drug use or a lot of unprotected sex or drinking and driving or driving under the influence. These are all things that need attention. And the way that you approach them can make the difference between whether your friend feels like they can talk to you or not talk to you. Let me give you an example. If let's say that I have a friend whose sister died and the way that they're dealing with it is by getting blackout drunk every night and hooking up with somebody at a bar and bringing them back home to their house and then kicking them out in the morning. Okay. If you say like, you can't do that. You can't keep hooking up with people. You can't keep drinking, like all this stuff.

Like one, we're accidentally shaming somebody's sexual expression and we never want to do that. Like you want to have consensual sexual activity with somebody as part of your grief process. Yay. So we don't want to be up a situation where your friend's no longer talking to you about the things they're going through because dangerous behaviors in isolation get more dangerous, right? So what the heck do you do in this situation? You can say things like, I'm really hesitant to bring this up because I want you to be able to talk to me. I'm concerned about your safety when you're going out and doing these things. Can we talk about some safer ways for you to get your physical and sexual needs met in ways that

aren't quite so dangerous? Would you be willing to talk about that with me? Right? We just did so many beautiful things in that one little statement, right? Like, acknowledge that this makes perfect sense to me, and I'm worried about you. And can we talk about some ways that we could make this safer so that you can continue to express yourself the way that you need to, but not put yourself at serious risk? Yeah. I love that example just because again, like when someone's going through this, they're going through so many different emotions and you don't want them to shut down and ice you out because a lot of times someone just needs to be seen and held in a safe place and just be like, oh, I'm not judging you. I actually love you so much and I care about you.

Just checking in and not being confrontational about it. Are there specific therapists who specialize in grief? Like what should someone look for if they think they do need professional help with their grief? Yeah. I'm pro-therapy. I think that everybody deserves their own therapist just in normal everyday life because everybody deserves somebody in their corner. Everybody deserves somebody who is not personally affected by the things you say, right? Like, if I'm going to go into my therapist, and I'm going to unload the things that are on my mind, like there's no interpersonal repercussion when I go home, right? Like, so everybody deserves a therapist. Now, that said, finding skilled,

grief, literate therapists and providers is not easy. We've got a grief illiterate culture. We think that grief should be one set of emotions and one set of emotions only, that it should be over and done within six weeks or six months. It's hard to find somebody who actually understands that grief is a natural, healthy process that involves a whole lot of things. So how do you find a good grief therapist? I think the first thing you can do is go look at their website. And if their website has a lot of like pop psychology, transformational memes speak things like whatever's happened, we can find a way to rise above like just believe in yourself and any obstacle can be overcome. Like, don't even bother with this stuff.

Like, stalk people's Instagram. Look at the kind of stuff that they're putting out there. Because, look, there is a time and a place for positive thinking. It is not applicable in grief. Remember, we're not looking to cheer somebody up or to solve their pain for them. That person is going to stay dead no matter how many times you think positive about it.

So look at somebody's website, look at somebody's social media, look at the way they greet the world. Are they really invested in happiness is the same as health and only happiness is the same as health? So like full stop on those folks. The other thing you can do once they've kind of passed that test is if they've got like a free 15 minute consult or something, you can talk with them and say, so tell me how you approach

working with grief, right? Before you tell them your story, before you get into it, ask them how they work with grief or how they understand grief and their role as a therapist. They are going to tell you some really important information. They might come out with, well, you know, if you do grief correctly, like it won't get complicated and you don't need to worry about it, but you do need to stay on top of it so that it doesn't become a problem. Like, no, stop. Right? So, I mean, I can't tell you exactly what you need to hear. Your body will tell you if this is a good match or not, right? Like kind of checking

in with that vomit metric here too. Like if you feel squicked out by the way they talk about grief, then don't bother making an appointment to go in and see them. One thing that I love about this particular topic is so often, very soon after a death or a loss or a injury, you've got your supporters saying, what can I do to help? How can I help you? What can I do? What can I do? You can deputize a good friend or an ally or something to do that initial sorting for you. Like go find me five local therapists who are taking new patients, who take my insurance and look at their websites and see if it's worth me even making a 15 minute session with them. Right? It's a great bit of advice. Yeah. You can let people be helpful because they really want to be helpful and you can have them do that initial sorting for you. One last thing that I want to say about this is that grieving people often find themselves educating their providers, teaching their therapists that grief is not pathology,

teaching their primary care physicians that, no, I'm not depressed. My son died. There's a difference. If you find yourself having to educate the person you're going to see for help over and over again, maybe invest some energy and some time in finding somebody who doesn't need you to teach them. I really appreciate you walking us through that because I think a lot of times with podcasts or books or whatever, like there's, there can be helpful, but then people are like, we know like actually how do I, like where, where do I, like, where, where do I start? And so I really love you walking us through what to look for. Last question. If someone

tuned into this episode because they are in the depths of darkness and grief, and they're really in it right now, what would you like to say to them this really is as bad as you think I mean that's the opening line of it's okay that you're not okay this really is as bad as you think I think just hearing that whatever you're experiencing is makes perfect, like that it is as bad as you think. We've got so much coming at us, trying to tell us it's not this bad. It is this bad. It is exactly as impossible as you feel like it is. There is something so powerful and so medicinal in being seen in the truth of that and being

allowed to tell the truth of what this is like for you right now. Megan, I can't thank you enough for coming on. I just feel like there's so many people out there, like you said, that are pushing a narrative of get over it. Life goes on. You're going to be okay. And sometimes it's really refreshing to have someone validate what you're currently going through. And I feel like so many

people are going to feel seen from this episode. And also in a weird way, being more realistic gives you hope of like, oh, this is awful. This is painful. This sucks. I do feel sad and I do feel like it's hard to get out of bed every morning. That's okay. And I do feel sad and I do feel like it's hard to get out of bed at bed every morning that's okay and and I do really encourage everyone to go read your book it's okay that you're not okay because I feel like you know you do have such a great obviously grasp on it it's so obviously I'm so sorry and it's so unfortunate what happened to your life but it is really nice to have someone that actually has gone through something to be speaking on it rather than someone that is, yeah, pathologizing it. And it's just like, this is what we should be doing because studies say this.

I can't thank you enough for sharing with us today and giving us kind of a guide of how to approach the feelings and to sit with them and not to feel distressed that wherever we are in our process, it's okay, you're fine, and you should feel okay with however you're feeling and don't feel shamed for that. Yeah, I love that you said, you know, when we tell the truth about how hard things are, that's actually where hope lives, right? Pretending that you don't feel how you feel, pretending that you're not in the pain that you are, or having to defend your right to be in pain takes up so much energy that the hope that you need or the energy that you need to get through the next five minutes is not quite as available as it could be. So yeah. Thank you so much for coming on Call Her Daddy. You are welcome.