Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Moving Through Loss with Barri Leiner Grant

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

Every one of us has experienced loss at some point, whether it is the loss of a loved one, a relationship you thought would last forever, a pet, or even a job. Loss is inevitable, and with loss comes grief. Grieving is one of the hardest and quite honestly, most misunderstood parts of life. But here’s the thing, when you find the strength to work through the process, a new more powerful version of yourself emerges.  On this episode of The Language of Love, I sat down with Barri Leiner Grant. Barri is the Founder of The Memory Circle, an organization that helps those who have lost a loved one through the power of writing. We discuss the healing power of writing and the role it plays in helping us move to the next phase of life. If you’ve lost someone and find yourself mired in the muck of grief, unsure of how to move forward, pick up a pen and pad and listen as Barri shows us how to write your way through it!  In this episode, we’ll discuss: Grief is not just limited to the loss of a loved one or family member.  Embracing the ways that loss can define and redfine you.  Make time for and be willing to tend to your grief garden. The power of words to help heal us.  Resources and Links Dr. Laura Berman Language of Love Podcast Laura Berman Instagram – Dr Laura Berman Facebook – Dr Laura Berman Youtube.com – Dr Laura Berman  Barri Leiner Grant The Memory Circle - Website The Memory Circle - Instagram The Memory Circle - Facebook About Barri Leiner Grant  Barri Leiner Grant is a certified grief coach (ICF) and founder of The Memory Circle. Born from a desire to make the grief cycle a shared experience, The Memory Circle is a place to gather, remember, and celebrate those we lost and love. As a coach, Barri helps facilitate and explore ways to remember and reflect on loss in both one-on-one sessions and grief support groups. Her passion for helping others share their grief stories became a personal mission when her mother, Ellen Jane died of a brain aneurism in 1993 at just 50 years old. Barri also works with firms of all sizes to develop best practices and policies around bereavement leave and employee grief support. 1. CONNECTING Automatic writing prompt:  Get quiet and ask... What would you have me know?  Allow the words to pass through you to the page.  2. DELIGHTS  Create a journal of delights. Prompted by The Book of Delights by Ross Gay  At the end of the day, write down 10 things that have delighted you.  The Book of Delights, by Ross Gay https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-book-of-delights-essays-ross-gay/12566058?ean=9781616207922 3. Adapted from Julia Cameron’s morning pages.  MOURNING PAGES Three long hand pages upon waking.  The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron  https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-artist-s-way-30th-anniversary-edition-julia-cameron/6665657?ean=9780143129257 4. The Quad Exercise as share by memoirist Dani Shapiro Divide the paper in four with a big plus sign... Upper left quadrant.  Seven things you saw. Upper right quadrant: Seven things you did. Lower left One thing you heard. Lower right And a doodle that represents the day.  Dani Shapiro’s Slow Motion https://bookshop.org/p/books/slow-motion-a-memoir-of-a-life-rescued-by-tragedy-dani-shapiro/9024419?ean=9780061826696 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. And that way, my goal is to awaken your mind, body, and soul. It's time to become fluent in the language of love.

Barry Leiner-Grant is the chief officer of the Memory Circle. So she left a career as a publicity and editorial stylist to become a full-time certified grief coach. and she has married her love and passion and talents from her writing career with all of the work and all the wisdom she's gained from healing through her own grief and as a result has become a guide for so many to tend their grief as she calls it to process loss of all kinds using all sorts of beautiful writing prompts and techniques and tools that we're going to share with you in this episode, including one that I'm going to do starting tomorrow morning,

and I hope you'll join me. So sit back and enjoy this episode of The Language of Love, where we learn to process loss with beautiful writing. Let go of your judgments. Let go of your ego, let go of being graded, let go of worrying if anyone's going to read it and step into the creative process of healing from loss with writing. Barry, thank you so much for joining us. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you because I think it's going to help a lot of people who are struggling with loss. So thank you for joining us. Oh, it's so good to be here with you as always. Yes. And so just so you guys know, Barry, I actually met, we're both from Chicago. We met actually after I moved away from Chicago out here, although we both were in the Oprah world, I guess, right? You longer than I, because you worked behind the scenes. But we were connected. I don't even remember who connected us, but we were connected by some mutual friend.

And this was before Sammy died or anything else, but you had been really, and I'm going to have you tell your story in a second, but as a result of losing your mom and going through that grief, that had really opened a door for you to start and really a passion that's been a huge part of your work in the world. So I was wondering if we can just start there with your backstory and how you started to work with moving grief or moving through grief with writing, with community, and some of the other things that we're going to get into. You know, I lost my mother, Ellen, in 1993. And back then, nobody said grief, grieving. You just went back to work and got on with life. I have been writer in some way, shape or form my entire life, whether it's creative writing or being a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, like in some way, shape or form, even in years that I did some publicity, writing was always integral. And it really helped me make sense of the world around

me. And it was a way in which I could express my feelings in a way that felt very natural to me. And I know for some, that's not always the truth. It's a struggle for some. I'm such a words girl, like the world makes sense to me in words. And when I couldn't make any sense of the loss of my mother, I really started writing about it and also did a little bit of writing to her. And because I had no real formal support, it was just my way. I had never read anything that said, oh, go journal.

There's so much now that we have, even though we have more work to do in normalizing and bringing grief into the daily vernacular, I think it just helped me make sense of what was going on inside. And I would notice that if I wrote before bed, I would feel better about going to bed. I was less anxious. I had a better sleep. It was almost like moving what was on the inside to the page was like this physical movement.

that I experienced. Cathartic, but it was never named for me. I didn't know the science. I didn't know any of that. It was just my way. It was just something that I had done and it proved helpful to me. Fast forward many years, I always thought that my mother knew me as a writer and she knew me as a lot of these jobs that she was very proud of. And I thought, oh, if you define yourself in any way by the loss of your mom, she'll be so good and pissed. I really, that was my story. That was definitely the story. And so I knew all these things. I wrote books and I had a byline and I did all these things that I knew she'd be super proud of. And so I sort of stuck in that lane until I realized that I would connect with lots of motherless daughters

in conversation. And in doing so, I just realized that we are so much more alike than we are different, especially in this season of loss, that there would be some daughter that would share something, a motherless daughter, and it would be so comforting to just know that you weren't alone. And I just felt like there had to be a better place for all of that to live. And I did very quiet things on the side because, again, I was so tied into not disappointing my mother and really like, could this loss define me? You know, am I going to let this define me? And I said that to a friend one day and he said, of course it does. But wait, when you say that, do you mean that? Because I just want to understand what you're

saying. Like when you say, could I, when you were asking yourself that question, could I let this loss define me? Were you asking yourself that in the context of if I really want to start focusing my work in the world here built around my mother's loss, am I letting it define me? Because that's what was the way I was interpreting it. A little of both, really. I thought, could I allow for this? It always felt so much less alone when I allowed for those conversations, but they were always done in quiet. They were never part of like the, yeah, the outward business of the day. Right. So what I thought was so interesting was if I could let go of the idea that it might piss my mother off, you know, my dead mother,

if it would upset her and upset her, what was your story about what would upset her that you weren't like making a career about publicity or promoting, you know, the sad girl. Oh, she's the sad girl. She's going to talk about sad things. It's going to be so sad. You know, like I thought she would be so upset if that were my story. It would be, truth is, you know, I know you're into this. I went to see a medium and she said, you must collaborate. She said all these magical things to me. You must collaborate. I reached out. I thought, what does collaboration mean, I reached out to a friend who had a podcast. At the very end of the podcast intake form, it said, is there anything else you want us to promote? And literally out of my fingers came

the words, The Memory Circle. I had never searched it, no SEO, nothing fancy at all. And by the time that podcast interview was in motion, the circle had formally begun. and I dropped the story sort of with the permission of this medium who also said as we were closing out session those exact words don't make it sad yeah that's what I'm thinking like grief is sad I mean loss is sad but teaching and healing and working through grief while they're obviously sad parts to it is not at all sad to me I probably didn't know that then but now I can talk to people about post-traumatic growth, for goodness sake, and making a difference. And, you know, exactly as you've done, we find meaning in all of it. And so I needed the nudge

that it wasn't something that would define me as sad or morbid or, you know, it was anything but. In fact, so many people say, you know what? You're pink grief. You're like, they see hope. They see happiness. They know that on the other side of this and through, we're going to be okay. We're going to be okay. There will be sad days. It might feel like a lot of ebbs and flows and an ocean of grief on some days, but we are going to be okay. And the beauty of what I think I bring to my work is that I bring tools. Let me share my toolkit with you that you have tools at the ready for what I call grief tending, that you can put some time aside every day to spend with your grief. Yeah. I love that idea of grief tending. And so define,

we're going to get to that in a second, but define for us first what the memory circle is. Sure. So the memory circle is a place to sit shoulder to shoulder with others who have experienced grief and loss of every incarnation. And it's physically a circle in the times of gathering. And sometimes we're circles in the squares when we're on Zoom now, which came about in the pandemic. It is one-on-one grief coaching with me. It is being together in group. It is arriving in a writer's circle to process. It is even sitting with me and writing eulogy. So again, to me, it's very natural to find words. And so sometimes that's in discussion and for others that's in writing. So it's ways of processing and using these tools so that we can be

in a grief-tending space. I always say, we need to weed it, we need to water it so that it doesn't grow up around us. And I think that is really how we gain control and power over. And it's remarkable to see people move through the circle, even in the wisdom exchange of meeting others who've experienced loss, especially when we're in groups. Sometimes it's something that someone else says. Yeah, absolutely. That's very resonant for me. And to watch the magic happen by just prompting the right queries and opening people up and making safe space. And I would say that's the feedback I get. There's nowhere to go. Most people say to me, there's nowhere to go. Sometimes it's the therapist's office, but it's rarely like a social occasion. So they say there's nowhere to

go. And I feel safe. I want to be somewhere where I feel safe. And people want to feel safe. And also, you know, and you referred to this earlier, every single one of us where if you're an adult And even if you're not, you're probably grieving something, especially after the past four or five years, you know, you are, you've had losses, you've had breakups, you've had deaths, you've had, and if you live long enough, every single one of us are going to lose people and non-death losses, something we don't even give ourselves permission. Some people write and they say, my DMs are full of people that say, I had a stroke and I grieve the person that I was and the person that I wish I could be, you know, the future that I imagined, divorce, incarceration.

It's endless, but we, we feel like non-death experience is less than in some ways. And we don't feel as if we have permission to grieve. So a lot of circle is also permission granted. Yeah. Well, and it's also that most people just don't know how. And I love this idea of tending your grief like a garden that needs not that you're like letting it take over your life or giving it too much power over you or anything else. It's really just the opposite. It's like you said, so the overgrowth doesn't take you over and also so that you can cultivate some beautiful buds out of there. Because in my experience, grief is a portal. And it's one, by the way, if you aren't the first one to die before you lose anyone else, and I hope you're not, every single person is going to go through that portal. They may or may not accept the invitation, but we are all going to receive the invitation with loss to go or not go through that portal. And on the other side of that portal is healing,

is evolution, is gifts. There's a lot of pain. I'm not saying, you know, it's fun always, but there are so many blessings in it as well. And I think that's really like, that's one of the reasons I was so excited to talk to you because I think so often we see grief and certainly this is when my mother died in 2011. My intention was just like to move through it as quickly and as painlessly as possible so that I could like start functioning again and get back to my life and live. As most of you know, for the past several years, I've been on a pretty intense grief journey and it's been a path of healing. I've shared lots of that healing with you and lots of the healing resources that I found. And I am so thrilled to announce that I

am doing my first ever retreat for grieving mamas. So if you or someone you love is a mama who has lost a child in any way, at any stage, at any age, I would love for you to come join me at 1440 Multiversity in the Redwoods near Santa Cruz, California for four amazing days of beautiful, uplifting community and healing. We've got David Kessler. We've got Paul Selig. We've got Catherine Woodward Thomas. We've got me. We've got body work. We've got organic food, beautiful rooms. Go to 1440.org. Check it out. It's right there on the homepage. I really hope you can join us. We love, you know, a to-do list. Yeah. You can check the boxes and get back to the business I just wanted to be able to like move on with my life and not be in pain. And I did that as quickly as possible. And then, of course, within a year, I had breast cancer. It was a hot mess. And that was a big awakening for me on many levels, but especially about the toll that grief unresolved, unexpressed, unprocessed grief can have on you, whether it causes illness or staying stuck or chronic depression.

I mean, it is not something, and obviously it depends on the loss, but for most of us, it's not something that you can, not that you're going to die if you don't process your grief, but it sure as shit is not going to lead to a comfortable life, much less a happy life if you don't make room for it. And so that, yeah, that's one of the things that I really wanted to process with you, because I know writing is your passion and you use a lot of writing in your work and you talk about the tools. So let's get into some of those. And guys, you know, as you listen to this, you may be listening to this in the car or on a walk, save this and try it. You don't have to do it right now, but try some of the things we're talking about, because

I think whether it's that you're working at using the grief of a breakup or a lost job or a lost opportunity or whatever, or the loss of a person in your life through death, I think you'll find it really, really valuable. And so we're going to try to give you some concrete things to explore. I love that. Some people come to a page that's blank and it's daunting. The last thing that we need when we are trying to process grief and everybody says, you should journal, you should journal and the best of intention shows up with a big fat blank book. It's like just looking at an open road that you have no idea how to drive down. So what I say is also keep beautiful words around you. So keeping books beside you that are poetry books, perhaps a line of poetry will serve

as a jumping off point. So there are beautiful poetry books and I can share resources that we can put in the show notes, the idea also that we can connect cellularly with our person, our body doesn't know whether our person is earthly or otherwise. So a beautiful way to cellularly connect with our loved ones is to write to them. And I also say allowing their voice to come through us in our writing. So one of the prompts that I really love is to get very quiet and get very peaceful in our breath

and our surroundings and ask, what would you have me know? What would you have me know? And be with whatever comes. I call it automatic writing. So this is no sentence structure, no grammar, no spelling. Take the pen or pencil.

No editing. No editing yourself. Right. Let it go. And when you first start doing it, by the way, you're going to be writing gobbledygook. Like it's a, I find, you know, it's not like you say, what would you have me know? And then you're like, well, you need to know. You're like, no, no, it's a practice. It's a practice. This is a practice. Yeah. Even the discomfort sometimes of being with the less than perfect sentence structure of what's coming out of you, I say, allow that to be, which is also very relaxing. You can really reach a state of letting go. So even the process, it's not the end result. This is not your memoir. This is not your story of your loss. No one's going to read it if you don't want to. No one ever has

to read it. Some people have directives about their own journals, like burn the journals. It can, the very act of writing by hand helps you reduce depression, reduce anxiety. As I said, sometimes writing before bed can help you improve sleep. It also helps with memory. And so sometimes we're walking through life post-grief and we have a foggy brain. You'll hear people talk about brain fog. And we are trying so hard to remember our person. So I say the word itself, remember, is like putting ourselves back together.

as you are trying to remember your person right in that kind of a loss when we've lost a person or maybe even a pet we can stir the memory just by writing by hand so this is all coming to the page with a sense of curiosity and if you can't if you can't stir up a prompt as i said sometimes it's asking what would you have me know sometimes it's writing a letter to what ails you whether that's a query to the person, you have like unfinished business. I'm guilty because I really wish the last words that I said to my mom or dad or son were X, Y, Z. Tell them. Write to them. Let them know. And see how that resolve feels in your body. See what it does in the body emotionally. Sometimes people, I say, write a little note at the top of your page. How do I

arrive at the page. Then you do your little exercise. Maybe you set a timer, write yourself a little note about how you leave the page. And what kind of timer should you set? What's a good amount of time for a sort of automatic writing? When I do a prompt-led circle, I say, okay, we're going to write for four minutes. And the best part of giving the prompt is watching all the heads go down. And then the clock goes from four to five because everybody is going, going, going. So I say start at four because it's very doable. You'll be very surprised when the little bell goes off that you have written for four minutes. And it's just such a beautiful practice. The other thing that I really like is there's a beautiful book by Ross Gay. He wrote

a book called The Book of Delights. And I think it's very hard to see outside of ourselves when we're working through hard stuff. So in The Book of Delights, Ross Gay writes an essay a day for 100 Days. And he writes about observing delight outside of him every day. And they're beautiful essays. And I also love having books around that don't feel like such heavy lifting. So maybe you read this essay, it stirs something in you. And then I say, maybe go on a walk and just notice the things that delight you about being on the walk. And at the end of the day, can you make a list of delights, things that have delighted you? And the very word, the entomology is of light, which is so beautiful. Right. And I always say, you know, people say, oh,

I keep a gratitude journal. It is so hard in, especially in fresh grief to there. I think you and I can speak to where you are after you work through the grief. I mean, mine isn't 30 years in my rear view mirror. I would never have said, oh, I'm so grateful for some of the gifts that have come my way. And people will ask you to write this gratitude journal. I think that's such heavy lifting. Yeah. Especially soon after loss. That's really, it's very heavy lifting. Doing anything after serious loss is next to impossible. So I think it's like bite size. And I think I have 20 books on grief that people gave me after Sammy died. I haven't, I mean, sorry, but I haven't opened one of them. I don't ever, people ask me all the time for book

recommendations. And I say, you know, what would be really beautiful? Like drop off this skinny a little tome of poems and it's such a gift or have something by your bed. That's like a little card of the day of inspiration or a Mark Nepo book that has like a little thing to read each day. Just like I said, beautiful words around you. What I love about writing down a few things that delighted you is you remember you are part of the world. Your senses are open. And so you remember to look. You remember, you know, in this walk, my feet are on the ground. You're grounded in all of the senses, but you're also part of a world. We can feel very disconnected when we are grieving. So I love that. I feel like if joy and gratitude had a baby, it would be delight.

And so I love this. I love writing my little list of delights. Another favorite that I was introduced to by Danny Shapiro, memoirist that I adore. Memoir is also a great place to be if you want to read a book. I feel like it makes you feel like a sense of accomplishment if you finish the book, but it's not prescriptive like a grief book can be where you feel like you're doing it right or you're doing it wrong. A memoir is just a beautiful chapter in someone else's life where you may see some connection in your experience. So in this writing workshop, she tells you to divide your page. She calls it the quad exercise. Divide your page in four and write down seven things you saw, seven things you did, one thing you heard, and a doodle. And again,

opens the senses. If you do this for a week, the first day you might write, I saw a bird, I heard some bird sounds, you know, you're not very open to the world outside. When you start doing the exercise, you realize that you're tapping into all the senses. Yeah. You also said, why seven things you heard, seven things you did, and one thing you heard, because you should be discerning with what you let in. What words are you allowing in? Ah, interesting. What are you listening to? Who are you listening to? The doodle reminds us to be

playful. And the list of the seven things you did really helps you notice a sense of accomplishment in a day where you really feel like you haven't done anything, done anything. You get to the end of the day and you can often feel like that, but when you write it down and you clean something and you brought something to the, you picked up something at the store and you cut an apple and you made a beautiful dessert for yourself or a dinner, you start to just write down and you're like, oh, look at that, a sense of accomplishment. Beautiful. And so I love also the two, I love all of this, but the two prompts. So I want to talk a little bit more specifically about sort of, especially those earlier stages of grief where it feels, or for people who are just, maybe it isn't

the earliest stages, but you've been feeling really stuck there because so often grief becomes very complicated and protracted when we aren't processing it and dealing with it. So there's thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people I talk to whose losses were years ago, but it feels like yesterday because they haven't really had an opportunity yet to start processing. And one of the things that I love about the work that you do is that it gives, there's so many ways to process grief, obviously, but you really give these prompts and resources for processing grief and loss with words. I think it also taps the subconscious.

I think sometimes we can't find words. Yeah. And so I think sometimes you'll surprise yourself. What you see comes on the page will often surprise you. You have the opportunity to sit down next to yourself. It's almost like you're the narrator of your grief. And then when it's on the page, I feel as if you're sitting down next to it,

but you can separate it from yourself, which I think is also something you can look at physically and feel like it's not a part of you. I've adapted The Artist's Way. Julia Cameron wrote The Artist's Way 40 years ago as a means of unfurling your creativity. I think her idea of writing three longhand pages upon waking. She calls them morning pages, M-O-R-N-I-N-G. I call them morning pages, M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G. I like the idea upon waking, writing these because Cameron says our ego wakes after we do. That little edge of dreamy state when we wake, if we just go straight to our notebook and just write three longhand pages of the day. The first page and a half always sound like whining, complaining, muddy muck. And then all of a sudden I feel as if it

unfurls what I call the Windex of the day. There's like a clearing and a cleaning and everything that was inside is now suddenly on the outside. And it is such a beautiful way of clearing. And also we don't go straight to our phone. We begin in quiet and all of those are so soothing. Yeah. And so good for you. I mean, I'm going to do that actually, because I been waking up and I think this happens for a lot of us for a lot of reasons, but especially with grief, I have been waking up with uncharacteristic anxiety, you know, and this happens a lot in grief. It's interesting that it's happening for, I think there are lots of reasons it's happening for me now, but it certainly happens for me and has happened for me after in those months, especially immediately following a huge

loss where you wake up and there's that sucker punch to your stomach where you're like, holy shit, this really happened. Holy shit, that person's gone or holy shit, this relationship is over. Like it's, you wake up to the reality when you open your eyes. It's like Groundhog Day. You're like, and again, and again. Yeah. And in the beginning that's happening every hour. It's happening all the time. Right. But then eventually you'll, when you, it happens for a while, I find when you wake up and now that I'm not getting the sucker, I'm not, you know, that doesn't happen, but I wake up lately with a knot in my stomach and this feeling of like anxiety, like something bad is happening or going to happen or whatever. And I don't know if it's what I'm dreaming or

it could be a million things, but I love this idea that you're describing because I can totally see that. Like if I were just to grab my journal and just be like, holy shit, I feel like crap. I'm scared to death and just like barf it out. Eventually that shifts. and it is so subtle and so magical. And I say to people, just be curious, just be curious, come to the page with no expectation and try it for a week. That's all I ask. Try it for a week.

We're going to see three pages of morning stream of consciousness, handwritten right upon waking, whatever wants to come through. Let's do it. Let's do a challenge. Seven days all together. All right. We're doing this, guys. I'm doing it. You can do it with me. It's a good one. And just as you were saying the sentences that you were just saying aloud, those are the ones that, can you imagine if you didn't put them on the page that you would be carrying them with you all day long? I lie there in bed. I start trying to transmute it. I start grounding. I open my heart. I call God in. I'm like, okay, I don't know what

this is about, but like, I'm just going to put this in the violet flame. I'm going to open my heart. I'm going to call in optimism. I'll like do this whole routine with myself, which does work, but I like this idea. I'm excited to try it. I'm glad. I'm glad. And it's a beautiful practice. And it also is nice to have this portal. Yeah. It's a beautiful place to just be able to put it down. And I think when you start to see the effects, I always say it's hard not to keep doing it. It's hard. It's really hard not to. Because it's so helpful and it makes you feel so much better. And I will say this because these guys know that I go to the woo-woo land real quick. And I welcome the woo-woo and I love the woo-woo. But when you were talking about

automatic writing and what would you have me know, those of us who want to connect with the other side or get wisdom, even if you haven't lost someone who's no longer here, but maybe you want to connect with your higher self or your angels or your guides or whoever, automatic writing is a beautiful way to do that. And I have found that Sammy, when I take the time, and like I said, for the first page or two, it's gobbledygook. Like I'm just sort of writing. The silt, I say. It's like the silt that's inside. I don't know if that's gobbledygook. Gobbledygook. It's like you take a snow globe, right? And that's how you feel in the morning. You're like a shook snow globe and all that silt is whining.

And so all that goes to the page and when that clears and settles and you have that all out, it's like, what reveals itself? And by the way, guys, that is what anyone, and you probably heard my conversations with some of my friends who are channels. If you ask any psychic medium or channel, like how does one learn to channel? they will tell you automatic writing because what starts to come through when I do this especially when I ask Sammy or my mom or someone else what would you know a question like what would you have me know or what is it that you want to tell me or I will write some silt for a while and then

messages will start coming through and information will start coming through and words will start coming through that really don't feel like they are coming from me. Yeah, they're coming through me. And a lot of people will say like entire books come through them entire songs come through them. And I I'm with you. I believe that to be the truth. I also like the idea of writing to your problem. Yeah, you know, you wake and let's say you're griefy about something. I say you write to the problem or you write to little Laura, lowercase Laura needs some mothering today. What would you write to her to soothe her? So it's using it as a tool in so many ways. And I love the idea. We all know how to write a letter. We all know the format of a letter. So

to the loved one, to a friend you're having beef with that you feel really, they might be alive, but you're very griefy over the loss of the friendship, write the letter. If you have something that feels like there is no resolve, but you need to move it through you, I say after the piece of writing is done, burn it, put it in water, rip it up in a million pieces. You can also get rid of it and physically see that you have released it from your life and let it go. Put down what you need to say, and then you've released it. Maybe it's a letter you'll never send, but you've moved it through you. Yeah, I think that's beautiful. And it's important for you guys to know that you do not have to be a writer. You do not have to know

grammar or spelling or be eloquent or be a decent writer. It doesn't freaking matter. It's just the act of doing it. So I love this. I love this whole conversation. Where can people learn more? We're going to put everything in the show notes, but if people want to learn more about your offerings and what you do, where can they go? I'm at thememorycircle.com and I'm on Instagram at The Memory Circle. I will often pop up like a little IG live and invite us all to write together. A lot of free opportunities to write with me. I love to share these prompts. I love when you share your writing back to me. Sometimes something will reveal itself and somebody will send me like one juicy line that came through and it makes me so very happy. And again, for many of us,

because we don't deem ourselves a writer, we feel that this is counterintuitive. And exactly as you said, please give yourself permission to just be with the writing. If you're writing, you are a writer. That's what I say to people in circles. So we just start with three handwritten pages a day in the morning when you first wake up ideally before you get to bed, make your coffee, turn on your phone. Quiet and be with quiet. We don't look at our phone. I say permission to pad in and get like a warm cup of something and sit down with your notebook and maybe even light a candle and just be with the quiet. Sometimes I pad outside and just get my feet on the ground in the grass and I bring my journal. I'll start procrastinating and looking at my phone. So I'm not even going to

get out of bed. Yeah. Put on my glasses and pull out my journal and go. And get curious also about what Julia Cameron says about the ego, because I love the idea when I write and I don't know the science where, you know, I can't find any juicy science to back what she's saying, but I believe. And it is really interesting what comes when you are judgment free. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. There's freedom there. Right. And so we all have these judgers, whether it's our own judgment, which is always just internalized judgment from a million different people that teachers, parents, whatever, friends, whoever, people who rejected us or made us feel small or made us feel stupid or whatever that thing is, right? Like all of those are irrelevant.

Nobody is grading this. Nobody is reading this. You don't even have to read it back, although you may want to. I'd say a shorthand that's kind of nice if you really don't want to be with the words again, because sometimes it can be painful to reread something. Make a little asterisk as you're cruising by. If something feels like, oh, you know, if you get one of those moments where you're kind of like inspired, whether it's an asterisk or a circle or whatever, but keep going. But I love just taking note of those. And so then if you want to revisit, you're not running through pages and pages of... You just look at the parts you've marked. Yeah. I do that when I'm doing therapy, when I'm making notes, when I'm with my clients

and I'm like, oh, that's an important thing or that, you know, I'll make a little asterisk because then the next time I quickly look through my asterisk is, I don't know what the plural is of asterisks, but it's the same thing. I like that. Yeah. It's a good hand for you to just recall what came up. And I think that, I don't know, I just love it. I always feel like it's the voice of the narrator without the inner critic shouting over your shoulder, but you are the narrator of these and it's very empowering. And like I said, sometimes it's nice also to date the page so that if you ever do want to go back, you just sort of know where you were in time and feel really good. Yeah, I always date. I like the dates. That helps. Beautiful. This is such good

advice. Great tools. I would love for you guys to try all of these tools with me and let us know how it goes. And check out TheMemoryCircle.com and Barry's work and keep us posted because Lord knows we're all in this together and we need all the tools and techniques that we can to stay tapped in and tuned in and and gardening and tending our no weeds needed here beautiful thank you barry thank you I went to the doctor Said I'm crazy for your love Wrote me a prescription

But there's no cure for a cry