LadyGang - Amyra Braha

Episode Date: August 25, 2020

Spiritual Psychologist and Grief Counselor Amyra Braha joins us to talk about one of the most difficult things we all deal with, our grief. Grief is brought on by any number of life events and can feel like an impossible burden, but by talking with counselors, such as our guest, you can learn to develop the tools to help process your hurt and handle your grief.  Thank you to our sponsors! Carefree – For more information or to buy, check it out on Amazon or Walmart.com. Or you may find it at your local grocery store or CVS.  Nom Nom Now – Go to trynom.com/ladygang for 50% off a two week trial. Daily Harvest – Go to dailyharvest.com and use code LAD Y to get $25 off your first box.   Best Fiends – Download Best Fiends for free now on the Apple app store or on Google Play.  OK Cupid – Download the OK Cupid app for free today to meet someone interesting.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, I'm Barbara aka your nursing educator on Instagram. I'm a registered nurse and I create content to help nursing students feel ready to take on anything and everything that comes with the job and trust me it's a lot. Here's one of my favorite and simplest pro tips. Upgrade your scrubs to figs. Figs are designed for us. They are super soft, lightweight, and breathable with four-way stretch to keep up with your every move. Polished professional silhouettes? Check. Functional details and pockets in all the right places, check and check. No matter what your day has in store, Figs has layers to match. Their underscrubs are perfect on their own or as a lightweight base layer to help keep you cool and dry.

And when the temperature drops, their outerwear styles are made for everything from chilly commutes to freezing hospital hallways. If you're in healthcare or love someone who is, check out Figs. Head to wearfigs.com and use code FIGSCA for 15% off your first order. That's wherefigs.com, code FIGSCA. beautiful Naya Rivera, my friend and castmate. So I didn't want you guys to be confused when you heard this as to why that topic did not come up. I hope you enjoy the episode. Sending lots of love. Well, what is this? Welcome to the Lady Gang. That's amazing. Say that again. The Lady Gang. Things are about to change around here. Each week we catch up with Hollywood's hottest

girl posse, Kelty Knight, Becca Tobin, and Jack Vanek. Our guest today has made it her life's purpose to help people through the uncomfortable and inevitable topics most of us avoid, life changes and dying. In fact, she may be one of the few people who actually enjoys talking about them. As an educator, counselor, and consultant in the field of death and dying, she teaches people how to use the grief they experience from any loss, the loss of a loved one, of a beloved pet, a job, even a dream, as an opportunity to open our truest selves and heal on the deepest levels. She combines over 20 years of experience as a hospice and grief counselor with training in the methods of spiritual psychology and the study of various spiritual traditions.

She's been a longtime advocate for the needs of the dying and their families. She was a founding member of our community, House of Hope, California's first social model end-of-life care home established for those who do not have the resources to die at home. Please welcome to the podcast, our friend, Amira Braha. Yay. Welcome. Hello. Thank you. So excited to have you here. And this is a little bit of a different conversation. So after our book came out, we realized that there were certain parts of the

book that our fans were absolutely gravitating towards. And I think all three of us have received messages and emails about being vulnerable and talking about these things. And in our mission to have women feel less alone, we can't just talk about Britney Spears' latest TikTok video. We need to kind of dig into the deep stuff. And so that's what today's episode is for. This is something that happens to so many people, obviously everyone. And I think it's a wonderful conversation.

So we're going to open it up, Becca. Maybe you can explain how you know each other and then we'll let you take it from there. Yes. So in the book, my chapter called Spiritual Therapy, I discuss how I found Amira. For those of you who don't know, she's my personal grief counselor turned just life counselor. And we've worked together for almost six years. And I truly, I can say that my life has changed dramatically since her entering it.

and it was on the heels of a very traumatic loss. And I could cry my eyes out right now, thinking of how grateful I am to you and anybody who does the work that you do in this space. So without further ado, Amira Braha, can we talk a little bit about, you know, my, I think when I opened up about my personal journey in the book, a lot of girls said they resonated a lot with me. so um I was like I was holding on for dear life I was one of the ones you were yes it was like if I and you kept you at do you remember asking me what are you afraid of um I don't remember but I can imagine that I did yes and I said I'm so afraid if I let go right now and I really feel all these feelings that I'm going to end up on a bathroom floor and be toted away into a psych ward.

And that's the end of Bekatobin. And that is, I hate to tell you this, such a common fear. It's a totally, every single person who's had to, who really has dealt with not just death, that loss and that dark place it takes you to. The reason that most people won't allow themselves to grieve is that fear. Because if I let go, nothing good will come of this. And I will go to the pit, the deepest, darkest pit, and I will never come out. And I guess, because I keep, you know, through the work and through my own experiences, I've heard this, you know, every single time. I don't know if it's helpful to tell people you're not, you know, this is very normal. I think it is helpful. And also to be able to say to them, and you, you will climb out,

you will find a way to climb out. So that's all I have to say about that. And you also told me the only way out is through. The only, God, I'm smart. You're really smart. um yeah the only way out is through and you know i like to think that part of it is also just taking some comfort in knowing that others have have done it have walked through it for me that became um a much less scary experience you know when i've walked through my own what i call the pit of hell you know the dark the dark place yeah when um And I remember being in such a dark place. I had to go to bed. I was in bed for three days. I could not even bear to have light enter into my eyes. And I couldn't speak. And my husband was really worried about me. He'd go off to work and he didn't know what to do.

them I just it was just it was a it was a really dark place um and I remember the the counselor that I was seeing at the time I guess my husband must have called him and said you have to do something because she's not okay and he called and he started to talk to me I remember the phone kept ringing and it wouldn't stop ringing so he must have called again and again right and I finally answered it and I remember it was just like this deep from far away place voice and and he started to talk to me and described almost in detail where I was and I was like what what how do you know that he said because I've been there and that just changed everything yeah well and that's why we want to have these conversations on the lady gang I think that everyone thinks that

their experience is unique. And so a lot of the time when it's a really terrible experience, you think you are alone and that you're the only person that's been through it. And so having a therapist or a counselor or someone to sit there and tell you these are totally normal and also to stop judging the process. That was something that you taught me. You have a lot of guilt when somebody passes away and you're left, like as a survivor. And I came in week after week and I just would confess all of these things to you, like that I was continuing to live my life and I was ready for you to say, how dare you? That's not the way that you're supposed to grieve. And you taught me so beautifully to kind of love myself and accept myself and to look at myself as

the person who had just experienced some great loss and that it was no, there was no place for judgment. Is that a really common theme for people to judge the process? Absolutely. And I would say it's not just around grief and death, but in life, you know, we are constantly judging our thoughts, our actions, everything, the way we live, all of it. And I think that the, I think that's probably one of the most challenging things in our in our lives is to learn how not to judge it you know just to accept and to move into it's a cliche word but it really to me it really is about surrendering and I my belief and the reason that I do work with grief is that it's the one moment in our lives

where we're really stripped bare, have no choice. And it forces us to look at all of this, to look at all the judgments, all of the stuff that's going on inside and surface it in a way that most of us haven't been able to do before that. I think it's really interesting. Can we just add, I think it's so interesting, Becca,

what you just said, because, you know, when we've all had people in our lives that have experienced this great loss. And then you just want to wrap yourself around them and say, everything's going to be okay. And then there's an interesting thing that when they start being okay again, how you could possibly feel guilty. The people around you want you to be okay if that takes two weeks or 20 years. It's such an interesting thing to me that you started to feel guilty when you could wake up in the morning and not be on the bathroom floor. like that to me is so heartbreaking because you've already been through the heartbreak and

then for you to have to be so hard on yourself about like I just think that's it's it's it actually blows my mind like that's so sad to me could I just respond to that um because what's come forward is that the the real work is looking to see what purpose the guilt has for you in your life you know is there some underlying belief that you deserve to feel this way the pain right um is there and again it's it's similar to if i let go then what well if i let go of this pain if i let go of the guilt guilt is pain right it's a form of pain so if i let this go then who will i be what will i be it's really letting go and facing the unknown. I don't know if that makes sense, but go ahead.

It makes total sense. And I did learn that through you because the guilt was serving a purpose for me. I was able to sort of beat myself up as opposed to wrap my own arms around myself and sort of fall into a puddle and experience the true sadness. And I found that I had a lot of misdirected, I guess, um, energy during that time, uh, you know, of guilt or judgment or anger. Um, but that also leads me to another question about, um, the misconceptions of, of grief and how I came to you and I was like, well, there's the five steps, right? Like the ones everyone talks about. Your response was? I laughed probably. Yes, you did. Well, yes, certainly we feel those five original things, right? But we've also learned

that it's so much more than that, right? And that it's not linear. You know, so you can feel these things sometimes in conjunction they're not sequential you could feel acceptance and then oh boy then comes in the anger and the bargain like it's just it's a one big mess and a roller coaster and no two people i always say this no two people grieve in the same way even in the same family because no two people live life in the same way and we have this expectation you know that it's a it's a charted course right and and again it comes down to needing and wanting to control our process yeah and the more you try what what happens the universe just keeps picking it up what's the most common i guess feeling that people have that's outside of those main

five kind of stages of grief I think it's it's the the one that's about the future like it's like what's going to happen you know fundamentally it's what's going to happen yeah where where is this going exactly it's the not knowing fear of the unknown and also I think that there's a phase where a lot of people, I'm like six, almost six years into this grieving process. And I could only admit really recently, there's a level of gratitude also for the experience, obviously not for the loss, but for what the loss brought to me as far as growth. And I don't know, I don't know the wording for it, but can you talk a little bit about that? Because there's also the guilt that people, and they think they're going to be judged for saying that they've learned so much

from the loss of someone so important. Yes. And it's something that I will often ask people at the beginning of working with them. And I can't tell you, you know, sometimes it's a good thing that it's not in person because when we're in so much pain, We don't want to hear that there's any possibility that there's a blessing or anything positive that's going to come out of this experience. But as we do the work, and I ask the question again later, almost always the person is able to see that this was a form of a gift. um so again it there and but it's not it and it has nothing really to do with the loss itself or so if the loss is about a death um it's more to do with how what that experience is bringing forward and what we're learning from it

and there's always something to learn from it if we let it if we have the courage and it takes i want to say great courage to to do this work and i think it's also the reason why um people who haven't been able to grieve for a whole bunch of reasons if their losses occurred early in life they've got a life to live they've got jobs to do they've got families to raise and everything kind of gets put off and then it'll take a death or some major loss toward the end of life or at the later stages of life and it's like it's like this you know it all just comes forward all of it and you're not just grieving that one loss you're grieving a lifetime of losses um so that's that experience and they can feel so much more intense and people don't understand why

you know i had a client who came and he said you know i didn't cry this much when my wife died but my dog died and i can't i can't you know get over it and it was just this profound experience you know how is that possible because rationally logically you'd think that would be the loss of the way. But when we started looking to see what else had happened in his life and also what this dog represented, it made a lot of sense. It made a lot of sense. Wow. Also, I had a lot of people ask me what the difference between the spiritual therapy versus regular psychology, sit across the therapists lay on a bed why it's different can you kind of give an answer to that um i can give a stock answer okay you know so there's a there's a there's a i think you know there's a so therapy

in general terms um deals with the mental emotional the physical and it typically you're going in And because there's some, it looks at things from a mental health perspective. So if there's anxiety, depression, PTSD, something like that, or, you know, or more. Grief counseling is specific to the grieving process. and spiritual grief counseling uh looks at those three elements the mental the emotional the physical and adds the spiritual component which is the soul or what we call the soul and what i would call the heart and it really addresses the whole being the whole person and it began when we look at it from that perspective we begin to look at the the awareness

of who we are who we truly are and for a lot of people that's scary because we have an idea of who we think we are in the world right and that's from you know messages from the culture from whatever. But then to kind of really looked and see and understand that that's not really who we are. That's just a definition of what we think we are, but that who we really are is so much more and goes so much deeper. Some exercises that you and I did to help me get out of my own head and sort of drop into that place of finding out who I really am and what I'm really feeling. And, um, I did things like I had to sit in front of a mirror and stare at myself and look into my own eyes. And it was crazy how much like empathy and, and like, um, how much more sensitive you

are to yourself when you look at yourself as if you'd look at another human being and try to connect. You're like, oh, you're in there. And I actually, I care about you and I care about what you're feeling and who you are. And then I had to sit in silence for, you know, one or two minutes at a time, which sounds like no time at all, but it is excruciating when you're running from who you are. That's absolutely, that was absolutely right. Because, and I think that those are some of the practices in, that we learn in, you know, in the study of spiritual psychology, it's really bypassing the brain bypassing the mental because most of us operate from that place right and it gets in the way it gets in the way of the heart and so it's like how can i trick my head to allow

myself to really get to know myself and to start uncovering and so the mirror what we call the mirror gazing most of us look in the mirror every day right and we're looking at the face and the pimples and the whatever and the hair but we're not looking we're not really seeing ourselves and so that teaches us to start to see deeply and then to start transmitting loving thoughts that most of us are really good at doing with others right right I have a question so you obviously did have Becca do these different types of exercises so for any of our girls out there like I think there's two different girls that posted on our Facebook group yesterday about losing someone is there any type of easier exercises that these

girls can kind of incorporate into their everyday life that you think make a big difference that's maybe like a small little thing that they could do you know I'm offering this one because it actually helped me before i even started doing this work and it's it's going to sound crazy but it works and that is to take it really it's about self self soothing right how do we soothe those parts inside that are hurting because when we're grieving we're hurting and so how do i calm myself how do i make myself feel safe and secure and okay and a lot you know it can be whatever that means for you but one of the the loveliest tools that I that I discovered for myself and then went on to find out that this was a thing is coloring and I don't mean um you know those

books but it's like taking taking literally Crayola crayons like a child would good old-fashioned crayola crayons a white sheet of paper no drawing you know just letting yourself go through color and through this expression as as though you know letting that young part of yourself come out and express and you'd be amazed so for me that experience was um i just remember sitting there feeling really calm and it was soothing you know and so those are just small little things that you can do that don't take a lot and i would night after night sit and color because it was all i could do and it helped finding somebody to talk to is obviously going to be really important um just talking about it and i would find the people who are willing to

just listen and not if you can't afford to find a counselor a therapist then um find find a place where you can just let it out um because that's i think that's a big part of this is acknowledging that you're hurting and and and verbalizing yeah all right when we come back we are going to talk about some questions. Hi, I'm Barbara, aka your nursing educator on Instagram. I'm a registered nurse and I create content to help nursing students feel ready to take on anything and everything that comes with the job. And trust me, it's a lot. Here's one of my favorite and simplest pro tips. Upgrade your scrubs to figs. Figs are designed for us. They are super soft, lightweight, and breathable with four-way stretch to keep up with your every move.

polished professional silhouettes check functional details and pockets in all the right places check and check no matter what your day has in store figs has layers to match their under scrubs are perfect on their own or as a lightweight base layer to help keep you cool and dry and when the temperature drops their outerwear styles are made for everything from chilly commutes to freezing hospital hallways if you're in health care or love someone who is check out figs head to wearfigs.com and use code FIGSCA for 15% off your first order. That's wearfigs.com, code FIGSCA. That we kind of sourced some general inquiries for Amira from the Facebook group. You're listening to the Lady Gang.

Okay, we're back. So we had a lot of girls in the Facebook group who heard you were coming as our guests on the podcast. And let me first say that you never realize how many people are grieving, whether it's a person, a job, a pet. Even right now, COVID, we're grieving a life that's kind of never going to be the same again. So first of all, thanks to all the Lady Gang for sharing because that's not easy. And we had a lot of, a lot of really beautiful, but very sad stories. So Amira, do you want to sort of talk about some themes that you? Oh, well, I think one of them was, you know, what, there are a couple of people who asked about like, what's normal, right? And again, I think this is where it's, it'll, it's important to try to find a

professional to speak to because um normal grief is what we call uncomplicated it's just your standard and this is going to sound very flip but it's a standard experience of loss there's been no and there's been no other history or no other family complication or no other issue that the person is holding right it gets complicated if there's been a traumatic loss or um if there's If there's been a string of losses, or if there are other health issues, we just don't know. And again, to say normal, it's like it assumes that there's one way of doing it. And so I have a really, I struggle with that word, normal. The length of time, people seem very concerned with, you know, shouldn't this be over by now?

And we have the standard one year rule, right, that you hear, like, it's been a year. And my answer to that is, again, there's no one way. And for some people, it takes longer than others, because every circumstance is different. Some people literally can't grieve right away. and so they do everything that they can to just kind of put it aside right and then so that's when you start finding people grieving you know five six ten twenty years out um it it will come out yeah um it's just a question of when and from my perspective the sooner the better because then you get to live your life in freedom right and not carry this thing around with you typically the first year is the people think is the hardest and i would say on the physical level it might seem like the hardest because you're living in anticipation of first of all doing all the stuff that has to be done around a death and then getting through all the milestones right the

birthdays the anniversaries the holidays whatever holidays you celebrated the you know all of those ones that you go into with such with sheer terror how am I going to get through this and then you find that you do and so it's like okay all right you know I'm going to be okay I made it what happens is and I want to say this to people my experience it's the second and third years that are in fact the hardest and the reason for that and it's just it's simple and it makes sense is because we spent the first year in this kind of constricted tight place of holding on right I just need to make it just need to make it and then you think oh all right and you start to let go and it's in the letting go that the other the pain the hurt right the grief starts to surface

and it takes you by surprise because it's like you're you're not you're unaware you're unprepared you haven't been kind of you know holding on so I don't know if that makes sense to people but that's an important piece yeah I think for me I definitely had a harder second and third year because it was like you're sort of just like soldiering on that first year and and like I don't even remember so much of that first year but the second year is like oh shit life went back to normal and I'm still hooked up well and the people around you're saying what you're still yeah you're still in it yeah do you know yeah so you're not even getting their support anymore because they're fed up you're like you had your year it's over it's over move on well and that's

that's great advice for people because some of the girls were writing in because people like their one girl's sister had experienced some some loss and that's actually just good to know for someone who is supporting another person it's that it's not just that first year it's lovely that you're there for the first year but you know and just to know that it goes to a deeper level the experience yeah yeah yeah absolutely actually becca and she probably maybe got this from you but I remember her saying the most poignant thing when my beloved dog hobo died, which I know is not the same on the scale of what you have been through Becca, obviously. And it's still, it's still loss, but I, it was, it was very profound for me. And I remember all these people were

texting me saying, it's going to be okay. You're going to be okay. And that was like, you just don't feel like you're ever going to be okay. Right? Like you're just so sad. And Becca said to me, you know, the thing about loss is that it is always going to hurt. Your heart is going to be broken forever. It just gets less and less debilitating. And that, yes, that's so good. I mean, that brought me so much comfort and I have passed that on to other people in my life that have been experiencing loss and they've been like, wow, that really speaks to me because you're never going to be okay. Like you're always going to be sad. I'm choked up thinking about that day right now, but like, it's, you know, you, you learn to live with that and you can then get out

of bed and you can eat again and you can have a life, but you're never not going to be sad over it. And I think that that's giving yourself permission. Her saying that to me gave me permission to be like, all right, you know, and I can imagine, I just always remember that Becca. And it really, I've passed that on so many times. It was such a beautiful thing to say. thank you i if i i'd like to add to that if i could and yes and it's i would say it's not that you don't ever um get over the hurt it's that you and so i want to separate out the the loss from the hurt because we can definitely get quote unquote over the hurt most of us hold on to the hurt because we think it means that we're going to forget

that we're going to forget your was it a dog the person the person right whatever right it doesn't whatever that was whatever's brought and so that's why we hold on and once we begin to understand that we can heal that in ourselves and hold on to the memory and what gets replaced is beautiful there's just a sweetness and so you're no longer remembering the the loved one from a place of hurt you're remembering them from a place of love right gratitude and so i just want to you know ask you to consider that possibility that we can let go of the pain and not forget yeah that to me is a really important distinction that that's a hard place to get to it it's not easy but it's totally it's totally doable yeah you know and you know and and and here's another

one that I want to make to offer to people and that is that people often feel guilty that they experience joy when they're grieving you know like there's something wrong I had a one client who didn't go home after her husband died she couldn't because she said she it meant having to face first thing there's a photograph of the two of them I guess in the front hallway and it would be the first thing she would see and she just she just said I can't do it and so then she started going home but she you know made sure to keep herself in this you know state of of grief of hurt and um but but when she when she would come to see me or when she she'd come to the grief there was a group that she was a part of she would experience joy and she'd be laughing she felt

great right and then she'd go home and she'd crash and so we started working with that because she had this notion that she wasn't supposed to feel good right and that her husband would would be mad and so when I asked her about it you know do you really think that he doesn't want you to be happy and she said no I think he would want me to be happy and so what would happen if you showed him and she just so there so we developed an exercise where she would you know go in and and smile at this picture and let the joy come through and it just transformed her right doesn't mean that she wasn't hurting it doesn't mean that she was going to forget him but she was allowing him in her way right to see her heart to see her happiness and to share in it it was beautiful amazing wow

um so and i i had another question um okay so there's a lot of girls that get very um judgmental about uh grieving miscarriages like judgmental of other women and of themselves because you know it's like first of all women we love to judge one another That is like our, we're really great at it because probably cause we hate ourselves so much. That's a whole other podcast of digging Becca. That's a whole nother podcast. Um, but there were a lot of girls in the Facebook group talking a lot about, um, the loss of someone you or something or an idea of something. And then one girl said it really well. And she said, it's not that I'm sad that I am grieving this baby. I'm grieving the idea of what life was

going to be like with this baby. And I think that rang very true to me because I have been someone who's been like, is that really something we're sad about? Is that something warranted? But then when she said that, I said, oh my God, I've been there a million times. It's grieving the idea of something that you were anticipating or kind of fantasizing about so that's I would say that that's exactly right and and and oftentimes we're grieving the relationship not the person we're grieving who we got to be yeah or who we were hoping to be in the case of a miscarriage right we're grieving the idea or the idea of hope yeah and so then it feels like well what's the point right so it's it's really i think in working and with those situations it's really

understanding everything that we put into it like you know that we we we it's kind of like we put out onto these situations or onto the idea the very things we should be putting into ourselves right it's like we're waiting we're we're hoping that this this pregnancy and this child is going to make me i don't know becca you tell me what's what would that you know for me it would be a make me a better mother right you know um give me a purpose give me a purpose right and and when that's taken away from us, well, then again, it's the, who am I? Well then, so what am I supposed to do now? Right. I had a bit of a different experience. So last spring I had a miscarriage, but I wasn't trying to get pregnant and I wasn't fantasizing about my life with a

child or what that would be. But it was a very strange thing because it was super early. And there's obviously any woman that's gone through that. There's like the trauma of these like you know, the trauma of the actual like blood and stuff that's kind of intense, obviously. But for me, you know, the grief I was feeling and the sadness that I was feeling about it, it actually really rocked me, even though I wasn't dreaming about my life of being a mom, it was the like sort of end of that dream. Like I wasn't trying to be a mother, but it was like, oh okay my body doesn't work the way that i it's supposed to because i'm you know 38 years old and if i was gonna do this i would have to do it now and since i'm not doing it um my parents won't

ever be grandparents i won't ever be a mom i'm not going to have ever experienced my life with a baby bump i'm not going to see chris as a father like all those things so for me that was the grief I was feeling. I was never like, oh no, the baby. I mean, of course it was sad, but my grief was like the life that I'm saying no to in a way. And then also I feel like with you, Kelty, it was probably like, you are so, um, you want to be in control of so many different things. And it's always been your decision to like not have it. But then life is kind of coming at you being like, well, no, it's actually outside of what you want to do. So it's probably that situation too. Yeah, it was, it was kind of crazy. So I do have like a soft spot for people that don't know

really how to deal with that. And I think there's like two ways. I think people hurt and then they reach out. They're like a Kelty where they're like, everyone, I need attention because I want to take my mind off this. And there's a Becca who is like, I don't want anyone to know that I'm ever hurting. You know, there's like two spectrums there. So it's really grieves the same way nobody does nobody lives the same way nobody grieves the same way and nobody dies the same way oh bro did you like that that's good it's actually you know because we see because we do i mean and so i i realize i'm taking myself into another tangent but um it is about a lot of this is about control and about perceived notions of how we should be and who we should be and what

we should be right we're assuming that every woman is supposed to be a mother and every woman is supposed to carry and get pregnant and bring to term how do we know that these are just ideas that have been put on us right and so it's a lot of it is just again building ourselves up and trusting ourselves enough to know what's right for us um the um the idea of people no two people dying in the same way i think is a really important one also um because again there's an expectation especially if um there's a family involved and i used to see this a lot people don't understand why there's so much tension and so many issues that are coming to come forward you know when there's a when there's a death when the person

is dying typically a parent for example right and what i say to people is if there are any issues in this family that have been hidden or untalked about they will come they will surface they will come out and in the same way that there are no two families that are alike you know it's it's So we have this assumption that, oh, the person's dying, everything's supposed to be now beautiful, right? Like we're going to have this beautiful end of life death. Well, if it wasn't beautiful before, it's not going to be beautiful now. Wow.

And it takes doing the work, right, to help a person have a beautiful death, a peaceful death. And that's a great segue into one of the books that I want to talk about. Yes, please. We were going to ask for some books. One of my favorites is by Dr. Ira Byock, B-Y-O-C-K. He was a hospice doctor, physician. He's written quite a bit. But the most important piece that he wrote was a book called The Four Things That matter most a book about living and it comes out of the work that he did with his patients and their families right and in it he talks about completing relationships and you know what i

want to add to this is i i firmly believe that we should be doing this in life not just waiting for death you know an imminent death to happen um and he talks about how to complete gives you the steps for how to complete a relationship so that there's nothing left unsaid right you want to be able to live your life with no regrets and ideally to die with no regrets or you are ideally not to lose someone with regret and having a regret that you didn't say or do what needed to be said or done and so he talks about um you know doing forgiveness work forgiving one another right and then expressing gratitude and expressing love right and then releasing them if there's a death

and those are those are in fact the most powerful things that i can say to anybody when you're dealing with well with loss too because you can do this for yourself right you can do it after the fact but if you've got somebody in your life who is who is dying that you can do this with them and it's a way of just releasing and letting go of all of that stuff that's getting in the way yeah and i i i've done this work with so many people and seen families shift from i mean i one example i have is of being called to a family where there was a police involvement because there were restraining orders where the wife wouldn't let the the patient's sister come in and i mean it was just it was wild and this poor man was in active

death and he said to me i i want to be able to say goodbye to my sister and my father and the wife is not going to let them in the house and it was you know it was just it was and when we got clear. And each person got to come in and talk to him and do this work. He actually died in the span of a few hours with his wife on one side on the bed and his sister on the other and the rest of the family surrounding him. And the wife and the sister from that day on would meet weekly and we're in each other's lives i'm not making this up i mean it's powerful the work that we can do so this man was you know went from being so he couldn't die because he wanted to say goodbye to his father and his sister right and the minute that he he was allowed he was

given this gift he could let go and so he died in peace wow well that's also something i feel like in the years that we've worked together you've had so many stories like that where i mean you've you have experienced many people die because you were a chaplain in a hospice and the stories are really beautiful and I think that people are so afraid they're so afraid of what that looks like but then they experience it I have a friend who watched her brother you know they he he was had I think I believe an aneurysm and the family decided that he wasn't going to make it so they had to make that decision to quote pull the plug and she said her ideas and the anticipation of what that was going to do was so much worse than the actual event itself

yeah and again it's the it's the fear of the unknown yeah and and what we place on it right yeah you know and i think also you know what are what are your ideas about death you know i think that's also again it's a very individual thing and that will that will temper you know how this goes yeah now back to the lady gang well we are so grateful that you came on to talk with us um i don't want it to end i know neither do i so so wonderful were there any other themes that you picked up on on the facebook questions that you want to cover you know some of the, um, the posts were just heartbreaking. Um, and I just, you know, obviously the need is so great. Um, and I, I can't, I don't, you know, I'm, I can't address the specific because they're

just, they're just so big and, and I would encourage people to seek support. It's, it's important um yeah i mean there you know there's uh oh i don't i i really i'm i'm hesitant to kind of pinpoint anyone you know there's one who talks about the fear of getting so losing a parent and then the fear that you're going to lose others right oh yeah right and i think that that's um that's fair that's a pretty common one that this is you know i'm going to this is going to happen again and I don't know if I can handle it and again it comes down to that question of you know what what's going to happen to me and so my encouragement with people is to really work on that self-soothing piece the part of you that is so afraid and really trying to understand what that

is well I was just gonna say like Becca I I mean I know you're such a courageous woman but it's like I have thought many times, like, how do you even allow yourself to fall in love with someone, get married, like love someone after you've lost someone that you loved? Like that to me seems absolutely impossible. Um, well, I will say that I probably wouldn't have, if I hadn't had help to get through it. Um, but you know, there were times, there were definitely times throughout dating Zach that I was afraid that he would also suddenly pass away and that I would never survive it. But I actually found that the majority of the time I did have to have those conversations with myself to say, you've been able to handle this before and you can handle

whatever else is coming next. It's going to suck so bad, but it is how I feel about the next loss because it's inevitable. I do feel like I have the tools, but I know that it's going to be painful. But you know what's weird, Amira, is that this week, a guy that we've all been watching his story, Nick Cordero, who is a Broadway actor, and I worked with him for a brief moment in time years ago. And, um, I had so much come up over the last 90 plus days that he was fighting for his life in the hospital. And I actually had to stop watching sometimes because it does bring up a lot. It brings up a lot of stuff and it brings up a lot of, um, so many things. And, And, and I just last night, uh, he passed away two days ago today.

Um, just last night I was putting the sheets on the bed with Zach and I just felt that feeling of like, I know, I feel like I know what she's going through right now. And I feel like I know what she's feeling. And that like almost took me to my knees. Like that is like, you do not want to ever feel that again. And you don't ever want anybody that you care about to feel that way. but then it was only a moment. And then I just thought, but here I am, you know, like life goes on and I'm putting the sheets on my bed with another man that I love so much. And it's like,

it was this really crazy moment, but, um, I mean, life goes on and like, that's how I did it. I just, you get up every day and you do the work and you don't avoid yourself. Even though there were days that I definitely did avoid myself because I just couldn't deal. And I made stupid decisions and I did things that I judged myself so harshly for, but I think because I had someone to talk to every week that said, it's okay. And like, you should do all the things that you feel you need to do right now. And you shouldn't judge yourself and you shouldn't, you know, it was just so freeing to have that ability. So I just beg anybody out there who is struggling to go easy on yourself and find somebody who can be compassionate with you yes yes yes yes I don't have to say anything

you're saying it all it's fabulous I think it's allowing ourselves to be in the dirt in the muck and to also you know I want to say that if you could if you're capable of experiencing deep hurt despair pain to be brought down to your knees there's a opposite equivalent or whatever you know there's you you can then experience those incredible highs right and so that's life and so i think it's also just putting it into a context and understanding that um all of this especially death is a part of life that's a really important concept to get you know like the concept we hate the concept that's like it's and there's a reason they call

it a transition in some traditions right it's a transition to the whatever's next and then maybe that there's nothing next but it's still a transition in the same way that we're bringing you know i used to think of myself as a midwife yeah because you know there are midwives who bring who welcome and assist a woman to bring a being into this earth right well the same at the other end. Yeah. One more thing. We often will think that we don't, how can we possibly, when we've experienced the loss of a loved one, a partner, how can we possibly go on to love again or love somebody else? Right? It's like, how can I do that? We have enough love in our hearts and it just keeps growing and growing and growing it's like a parent saying i've already got one

child that i love so much how can i possibly love another if you ask those people who have you know more than one child right they don't not love the second and third right maybe my parents definitely well no i'm pretty sure no i'm sure mine didn't right and i was and i was the first so there okay we're like we'll save it but you see do you understand what i'm saying yes yeah it's like we again we think that love is finite you know and it's it's like in a little box and it's not it just keeps growing and expanding it's like a muscle so um are you taking new clients yes i am thank you how do people find you they can go on to my website which is my name

amirabraha.com can you spell it for people like me who can't spell it's a m y r a b r a h a dot com perfect and you'll be able to find me and we'll post that in our facebook group and our thank you letter as well so everyone who it might be walking or driving or whatever right now. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you, Becca Tobin for being so vulnerable. You too. Really special. And thanks to all the Lady Gang members for supporting each other in the Facebook group, sharing this episode with people you think might need it. And that's it. Thank you so much for being a part of the show. I want to thank you guys for doing the work that you're doing because it's important thank you i love you i love you

bye-bye next tuesday thank you thank you very much thank you thanks for listening and make sure to rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcast we have new episodes of lady gang every tuesday and thursday follow us on social media at the lady gang uh follow us personally at Kelty, most importantly, at Becca, and at Jack Bannick. The Lady Gang Network is produced by Will Sterling, Steve Delamater, Kirsten Woodward, and Elizabeth Begwet. Thanks for rating and reviewing wherever you get your podcasts and tune in for new episodes every single week.

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