The Liz Moody Podcast - What We Get Wrong About Grief: Healing From Loss Of Loved Ones, Pets, Friendship Breakups, & The State of the World

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

Gina Moffa, LCSW, discusses different types of grief, how they physically and emotionally affect us, and exactly what you can do to start healing from them today. Specific tools for navigating different types of losses, like losing loved ones, friendship breakups, the state of the world, and more Whether or not we NEED closure to move on from loss What to do if you live in fear of future loss (even when everything is technically great at the moment!) How to access and process your emotions if you feel numb The profound physical impacts of grief and how to heal your body in addition to your heart and mind How to support people you love while they are managing grief, including the best and worst things to say Why pet loss is especially difficult & exactly how to cope with the loss of a pet And so much more For more from Gina, you can find her on Instagram at @ginamoffalcsw or www.ginamoffa.com. Her book, Moving On Doesn't Mean Letting Go: A Modern Guide to Navigating Loss is available where books are sold. To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order my new book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  This episode is sponsored by: AG1: visit drinkag1.com/lizmoody and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today. ARMRA: go to tryarmra.com/LIZMOODY or enter LIZMOODY to get 15% off your first order. Osea: get 10% off your first order at oseamalibu.com with code LIZMOODY10. Air Doctor: go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code LIZMOODY for up to $300 off air purifiers and a free 3 year warranty on any unit. Previous episodes referred to in this episode: All The Fertility Qs You’re Too Nervous To Ask: Answered Tiny Ways To Infuse Your Life With Joy with Radhi Devlukia-Shetty This Celeb-Beloved Therapy Offers A Radical New Way To Heal With Dr. Richard Schwartz The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Liz Moody podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a bestselling author and long-time journalist. This podcast is all about helping you live your healthiest, happiest life. Whether we're sitting down with a top doctor to have her answer all of the questions that we have been too scared to ask about fertility, learning tiny ways to infuse our lives with joy, or diving into a unique therapy method that offers a radical new way to heal anxiety. And yes, those are all real episodes and they are linked in the show notes if you want. to listen. Today we are talking about grief. Grief is so pervasive, yet we do not create the

space to talk about it, which has a hugely negative impact on our ability to actually heal. Today, we're getting into not just the grief of having a loved one die, although we will definitely cover that, but also the many other types of grief that fill our lives from pet loss to friendships ending to the grief of the state of politics in our country right now. My guest, Gina Mafa, is a trauma-informed grief therapist and mental health educator working with patients dealing with loss and trauma. She's been featured by outlets like NPR, The New York Times, Time Magazine, and USA Today for her expertise in managing grief. And she's the author of the beautiful, beautiful book, Moving On Doesn't Mean Letting Go, a moment.

modern guide to navigating loss. We get into specific tools for navigating different types of losses, whether it's losing loved ones, friendship breakups, the state of the world, or any other type of loss and grief that you can think of. We get into whether or not we need closure to move on from loss. What to do if you live in fear of future loss, even when everything is technically great at the moment, how to access and process your emotions if you feel numb, the profound, the profound physical impacts of grief and how to heal your body in addition to your heart and your mind. The best and the worst ways to support people you love while they are managing grief, including exact scripts for things that are really welcome, really wonderful to say,

and things you should absolutely not never, ever, ever say. Why pet loss is especially difficult in exactly how to cope with the loss of a pet and so much more. A major, major takeaway from the episode is that grief is far too feared and far too stigmatized in society. And the more we discuss it openly, the more we'll be able to process our grief healthfully, the more that we will be able to not have people feel so alone in all of this. So please share this episode and tag us on Instagram, share your thoughts, share it with anybody that you know who this might help. I am at Liz Moody and Gina is at Gina Mafa L-C-S-W. Gina, welcome to the podcast. Hi, thanks for having me. So I love that you open your book by talking about

all of these different types of grief because I think sometimes we can think of loss as just like a loved one dying. But you're like, no, grief is so much more than that. So can you start us off by speaking to that? Yeah, absolutely. Actually, I could thank COVID for at least one thing and it's teaching us that we can grieve so many different things. Just the idea that during the pandemic itself, people lost affection. They lost jobs, livelihood, homes, families. And we've had political divides. So people have lost friendships and family occasions. And I think it just brings to the forefront that we've always been people who have grieved so many different things in our lives, except we've never been able to actually acknowledge it outside of death. And so it felt important to me in my book to say, hey, you probably

picked this book up because you lost someone. But actually, Let's look at all of the things in our lives we probably lost along the way but never acknowledged. I just felt so important that we honor it. Do you think we used to be better at processing grief societally or individually? I don't think we've ever been good at processing grief because I don't believe we've ever been actually given permission to grieve. You know, starting back from Freud, he's like, the point of grief is to get over it and to detach. And, you know, basically we're like, yeah, okay, and we have to bring people with us. So how do we do that at the same time? And I think if we haven't been taught how to grieve because we're now in this hyper-capitalistic world, you know, we just don't have time. They're not going to encourage us to take time to actually sit and honor and tend to our feelings. So I think we've never been good and we're just getting worse at it.

One of many things that Freud got wrong. One of many things. Should we grieve for different things in different ways? Like if we're talking about the loss of a friend, or the political situation in our country is the process of grief the same as if we lose a loved one. It's a little bit different when we lose a loved one because there's really very little we can do. We can't change anything. We're not bringing them back. What we have to do is figure out ways to move forward with them and carry them with us in different ways. But when we lose livelihood, when we lose friendship, when we go through breakups, there are things we can do to reempower ourselves or to,

you know, be reintroduced to other things within our own lives, new hobbies, new talents we didn't actually give the time of day to while we were busy working in finance, things like that. So I think that we have more of a chance of being more empowered when we lose things that are outside of death. It's almost hard to know when you should be doing something and when you should be mourning. The political thing is really interesting. And I'm like, At what point should I be accepting where we are as a country right now? And at what point should I be giving space to mourn where we are as a country right now? I think this is one of those occasions where you're going to do both of them at the same time.

Because I think that where we are as a country, it's so deeply divided and not just the fact that we disagree on the facts, but we don't even agree on what a fact is. And so when we go and circle the drain like that, I think we can feel so much more power. but we can actually just sit and say, wow, was it ever any better? And can we mourn the fact that maybe it wasn't always what we thought it was, too? And maybe it will never be what we hope it to be. And this is where I bring back in power. We can still utilize the power of community and the things that we each bring to the table to at least try to bring some semblance of being able to move on and find peace with each other within communities or find actionable things to do that bring good again.

And the political stuff, the loss of friendships, these types of things, these fall into a category that you call ambiguous loss, correct? Yes. Can you explain ambiguous loss? Sure. Ambiguous loss is really just, you're losing something without a sense of closure. So it can be even people with dementia. Somebody's there, but they're not there. You go through a divorce.

It's an ambiguous loss. This person is still alive living their life, but the relationship is gone. and the routine and the rituals and the hopes. We're spending a lot of time inwardly dreaming and planning and we lose all of that. And so we get to see somebody maybe on social media living their life. Maybe they got married again or have children and it's like, okay, but that loss is so real. And so it's really just without an ending, there's really no closure there. You said in your book that ambiguous loss is the most stressful form of grief, which really surprised me.

Can you explain why? Absolutely. as humans, we crave closure, we crave answers, we crave control, and we crave sense. And with ambiguous loss, we really don't get that all the time. If we're trying to get closure on something that we will never get closure on, it's obviously going to bring up within us, you know, a lot of different responses, stress responses, anxiety, depression, PTSD sometimes. It really depends on the circumstances, but it really is one of the biggest stressors in terms of loss. Do we need closure to move on? Ooh, the $64,000 question. Humans would say yes, but we don't need closure to move on.

We do move on nevertheless, right? We do. It's just that there will always be a part of us wondering, yearning, and mourning, but we do. And we are definitely able to move on without closure. What is most helpful in ambiguous loss? What helps people get through that if they can't get that closure. Having a semblance of control somewhere is really helpful. A lot of people try to rewrite the story, sometimes depending on what the loss is. When it comes to caregivers, for example, I think people who have either a family member or a spouse with dementia or late stage Alzheimer's, there's really nothing that they can do. They're losing twice, right? And I think what helps caregivers the most when it comes to being in their life and knowing that they're going to lose twice and having no control and no

sense of closure is the idea that they have to create their own and their own life. And so it may be how do I take care of my body? How do I have a community around me for support? How am I going to actually feel like I have some kind of idea of what's next for me? Because otherwise you really are in a state of always mourning and waiting for the other shoe to drop. And there's never going to be that state where it's actually okay. So they have to create their own sense of control or their own closure? Well, both of them in a sense, even with ambiguous loss, we use the word closure a lot because you don't get it, but you do in a way have your own closure by the actions that you take moving forward. And so it is perhaps a curtain that closes, right, in some ways and somebody's still behind it.

But it is in and of itself the idea that you are creating your own sense of closure and creating control around that would be whatever you decide to put into your life at this point. There's so many tricky elements there, though, because in essence, you're grieving for somebody who is still there. And I would imagine that could bring up a lot of feelings of guilt or, I don't know, just like a complication with that. It is. It is. And it's a lot of rumination, a lot of guilt, and a lot of fear of what it will look like in the end and what life will be like because we all get used to being in our routines. Even as a caregiver who's taking care of somebody that is really not remembering who they are or they're declining, you get used to being in this state.

And now you have to sort of keep getting used to changing states. And so that makes it a lot harder no matter what it is. What do we get used to? I hear from so many listeners who are living in fear of a future loss. Would that be considered ambiguous loss too? where your parents are getting older and you know they're going to pass at some point and you're almost holding yourself at arm's length because you don't want to have this grief in the future. Would that be ambiguous loss? That would be anticipatory loss.

Okay. So that's a type of loss where we know it's going to happen and we're almost pre-greaving. We know it's like on its way that shoe is going to drop. And even actually, to be honest, we can grieve anticipatory grief even if our people aren't sick. We can just have the fear that they're going to die, that we're going to lose them. And that is a real thing people experience. But if you have somebody who's gotten a diagnosis in your family or a friend or someone close to you, and you know that it's going to happen at some point because maybe there's no cure or the treatment stopped working or there's so many different elements to that.

But at that particular time, you are already grieving. That grieving process has started. I'll bring us back to ambiguous loss in a second, but I want to talk about. anticipatory grief. Sure. First, because this is fascinating to me. I feel like this with my husband, when we're really, really good, I'm like, oh my gosh, what if I lost him? It would destroy my entire life. He is not sick. He is not in danger. But I think about this all the time. How do I not do that? I don't know that we can tell you not to do it, right? Because it is so normal to have these fears, especially if you've already experienced something in your life.

And my guess would be that something at some point in your life was a loss and a scary loss or a sudden loss. And that is imprinted in you. And so when you think about your life now and things feeling good, sometimes it will sneak up and you will think things are so good. And what happens if they aren't? What happens if something happened and that shoe dropped again because I know what happened before? or that feeling, I want to avoid that fear and I want to avoid that trauma and that loss and that whole situation that turned my life upside down. That's your body remembering. And so I can't say, yes, in three easy steps, we can take that away from you. But I do think really challenging yourself

to look at fact versus fiction and reminding yourself the things you have control over. You know, we're a society that really needs control. And I think once we feel like we're out of it, we don't know what to do. And there's no soft surrender, right? I can't say, it's okay, Liz. You can surrender to the fact that everything is okay and you can ground yourself in the present. It doesn't really work. So I believe we have to get in our body and we have to maintain a sense of safety in our body and we have to do the work there because that's where that lives. What does that look like? That looks like things like EMDR. You could talk to someone and say, this is the visual that I get. this is the trigger that I have, the visual that reawakens my fear that I may lose my husband,

or I may be in the situation that is devastating and irreversible. And you will play that through with somebody who is trained in EMDR, and they will actually take the sting out of that. So you can think that thought, but it doesn't have the power that it would normally have. Any other techniques for getting into your body to begin to let go of grief? There's so many different things, even yoga for grief, right? grief lives in the body. It is a full body experience. It's something we haven't been taught. I'm a really big proponent of EMDR for grief, somatic experiencing for grief. And Havening, there's so many

different things out there. Havening. Havening is almost like an EMDR. It's bilateral stimulation, but it uses the hands. And there's a lot of different movements that you can do if you want to keep yourself present and avoiding the triggers in a way of actually working with them. It's very new. there's a lot of new treatments out there that are actually body-centered. I think we have to just remember that whether it's trauma, whether it's grief, whether it's really deep anxiety, it's all living in the body. And so everything that you can do, even if it's interactive journaling and you're getting it out, if you're dancing, if you're doing any kind of exercise that feels as if you are actually getting something out of your body, it's important to make sure that your body is moving, but in a thoughtful way.

I recently did an experience where part of working through the trauma was very physical activity. And I had never done anything like that in my life. I've done hundreds of hours of talk therapy and it shocked me the emotions that it brought up and the sense of peace that I felt after punching a boxing bag and screaming viscerally stomping my body and dancing and just doing all these things on a very physical level. Yeah. I have people who come to talk therapy and they just want to talk and I'm thinking, okay, what are we going to do next? And, you know, I'll say, what are you doing for your body? What are we going to actually do to get this out of your body? Because so many people intellectualize their emotions, right? They can talk about them, but they don't feel them. They can tell you everything that they're experiencing, but they're not actually experiencing it. And so for me, that's great, but that's also a coping mechanism then. If you're just coming to talk therapy to tell me how you feel, but not actually experience or express it. That's another coping mechanism. And so we have to really learn that starting with the body is where it's at now. And if we're not doing that, we're not doing the full work. It can be really hard, though, to tap into that. It can be really scary to start to know what you even need to express because we live in a society that really does not

create space for that. So if somebody is listening and maybe they don't have the resources to reach out to somatic therapist. They just want to do something right now that gets them into their body. What's one thing they could do? First, I have to say it's really important to feel safe. And that can be wherever you feel safe. I can't say sit in your house if you don't feel safe in your house. But I would say the first thing to do is to find a place that you physically and emotionally feel safe. And that is going to look different for everybody. Once you can find a sense of safety, it's even just putting your hand on your heart and saying, what do I need? And there's breath work you can do to box breathing you can start there it's as simple as possible because

sometimes even breath will bring up emotion and if it starts to become so awake that you start unraveling emotionally you simply keep your hand on your heart and you just ask yourself what you need and you know just for that moment maybe you need a glass of water maybe you need to call a friend maybe you need to actually put your arms around yourself and hold yourself for a moment which tells your brain that you're okay and you're safe. Open your eyes and make sure that you're back in your room. You can look at things around you just to say, okay, I'm here. There's a microphone in front of me. There's the rug on the floor. I'm here and I'm safe. It sounds so silly, right, to say start with safety, but there's so many of us who are not in touch with our bodies and who

are really terrified of emotions because they're big and they're scary and they can threaten to take us down. But if you don't start with safety, there's really no other place you can go that will feel like it's okay, it will feel like it will take you down. If we're feeling stuck and unable to tap into the emotions that we know we need to release, can you cheat that by like putting on a really sad movie and having yourself cry in that way? Or is that not going to be helpful? I think it's definitely helpful. I remember when my mom was diagnosed with cancer and I was so in the pragmatism of helping care

and try to figure out if it was something we could actually get treatment for. and I was not able to feel my feelings. And I am a therapist who could not feel her feelings. And I remember looking at like this Sally Field movie where she was dying of cancer. And I was like, oh my God, Sally. And I was able to actually access the feelings. And it was really that I was crying for my mother, but I had the ability to place it in the safe place of a movie. But your body doesn't know the difference if you're crying for Sally Field or you're crying for your mother in a way, right? It's a little bit. It's a safe place of a movie. It's a body. It's, you're crying for Sally Field or you're crying for your mother in a way, right? It's. It's a It's going to come out. It's a physical release. So absolutely, if you need a little help to get the tears moving or to get your body sort of releasing a little bit, whatever works is where the wisdom is. I love that.

And is the reason that we need to approach these things on a bodily level is because grief is being experienced on a bodily level and not just an intellectual or emotional level? Yes. Can you speak a little bit to what grief is actually doing in our bodies? Absolutely. First, we have 12 systems in our body. It will come for our nervous system. It is a huge life stressor.

And worse, our brain is, its only job is to keep us alive. So it's always scanning for danger. And when we go through a loss, our body is saying, oh, my God, this is a huge danger. This is a huge stressor. Any kind of thing that creates a sense of stress in our body will affect our immune system. It will affect our cardiovascular system, which is why we have broken heart syndrome. It will affect our gastrointestinal system, which is why we get stomach aches. It'll affect our heads where we get headaches and all of that.

But beyond that, it actually is affecting our brain in that we have to learn new information and we don't like to learn new information under duress. So what happens is we go through a loss and our brain is now trying to learn this new information. You have always been predictable. You've always been here. You are here in time and space and we know exactly where you are. Say, let's use your husband, for example.

Your husband is in a predictable place for the most part. You always know where he is and what he's doing in your brain, right? Your brain knows this. He's here on this planet. And God forbid. But if there's a loss of any kind, our brain is now trying to figure out where he is now. And at the same time, trying to attach to the idea that we can carry him with us, he still exists somewhere in time and space. But he's not where he would be normally.

And so we both have to detach from the predictability that he had being here and also stay connected at the same time. That is a really big stressor. There's a lot of information that our brain, while we're grieving, and especially just after, let's call it fresh grief, right? Just after a loss that the brain is going to say, but wait a minute, they were just here. They were just here, and now they're not here. And now I have to get used to them not being here while also trying to figure out what my new relationship is to them. If that's not a stressor, I don't know what is. Yeah. Wow. And you're trying to figure out your new sense of your own identity without them.

Because I think we create our identities in reaction to, in a relationship with all of the people that we love in our lives. And you're having to say, well, who am I? If not this person's partner, this person's daughter, as part of who I am. Absolutely. And that's a really good example of secondary loss. which we have so many of. Those are the losses that come along with a big loss. It is our identity. It would be the hopes and dreams, the plans. It's all a part of it. And so it's a ripple effect. We don't just lose once. We lose again and again and again in all these different ways, which makes grief so devastating and long-lasting. I very rarely get genuinely excited about skincare, but this is one of the most innovative

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That is birchliving.com slash Liz Moody. And you're going to get 20% off birchliving.com slash Liz Moody. So you said that our brain is trying to make sense of this completely new reality while we are under duress. I always tell people when they're trying to sort out problems and they're feeling really anxious or they're feeling really sad or they're feeling really emotionally overwhelmed to take care of their emotional state and then let their logical brain later sort out the real problems that are remaining. Is that similar with grief? Are you able to tell your brain? we'll work this out later. I'm just going to emotionally process this now, or are you stuck in the state of your brain trying to process things while you're probably in the hardest place to be processing things? Yeah, I would say that it's both door A and B for a lot of people. It really depends on the type of loss, our history with loss and trauma. If we are people who are already really anxious or have high adrenaline in our bodies, it's going to be a little bit harder for us to wrap our brain around.

we're not necessarily going to be able to tend to the emotions right away. So I always say, like, let's choose door number three and just take care of our bodies, right? If we can just make sure that we are getting enough water, which so many of us are not, myself included, we're getting enough nutrition. If we can get some sunshine, fresh air, get some movement, and rest, then we can tend to the emotions. Then we can actually figure out how we're going to wrap our brain around all this information. society is not necessarily setting us up to do that perfectly because, hey, there's not enough bereavement leave for people. We don't have the luxury perhaps of grieving because we have to get back to work. Or maybe we're caretaking.

We've got four children that we have to take care of so we don't have the time. And so that's sort of why I really like to keep it simple and say start with the body. Always start with the body because if you don't understand grief, you will not understand that it takes endurance. And so the emotions will always be there. But will your body be able to actually keep up? Okay. I have so many questions on all of this. I want to bring us back around in a second to the brain and the body and the impacts of grief.

But let's stick with two issues that I see people running into when they're in those initial stages of trying to process and trying to get the water, trying to get the nutrition, take care of themselves. First of all, is there a way that we can ask the people in our lives, our work, our jobs to create the space for us to take care of ourselves? Because many of us, like you said, have real demands of real life things that we can't create the space to give ourselves the care we need. Do you have any advice for overcoming that? It takes a lot of courage to ask for what we need in the midst of grief because so much of the time our needs are going to be shifting. And I think that is what is so disorienting about grief in and of itself, right? Because the minute I ask you to do something, my needs may change. Yet it is also really important to say, okay, so I know that I've got to have a conversation with my boss because going back to work in this particular state isn't going to be good for everyone.

And this is where having grief-informed trauma-informed workplaces is the most important thing, which we're working on in the grief field. We are. But it is not there yet. However, being able to have candid conversations about your own sense of productivity is going to be really important. Now, the flip side is for some people getting that distraction and going back to work is helpful. They welcome that for a moment because perhaps grieving is so much of a burden that they can't do it. It's exhausting to them. So they need to place it aside.

And so it really, again, does depend on the type of personality that you have. But asking for our needs to be met is hard in grief. And a lot of the time, people will say, hey, I'm here for you if you need anything at all. But the truth of the matter is how many times are you really going to say, oh, actually, in fact, thanks for saying that because I could use you to pick up my kids from soccer. If you can make dinner too and maybe clean the bathroom at some point, that would be great while I stay in bed and cry. That would be wonderful, right?

But that's not how it works. Instead, we smile and we say thank you so much. And that's it. and we go off to our own cocoon of feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by our experience. But it is hard. It is really hard for grievers to ask for help. So what can we do to break through that? In order to break through that, we have to break something bigger, which is the stigma of grief.

Because there is so much, there are so many expectations around grief that you have to hurry up and move on. You have to get through it, get back to normal, pull yourself up by your brain, bootstraps, that is our society's motto. And so breaking through that really looks like creating a community and a society where grief is something that we can actually all come together and understand better. We can tend to it better as a community so that people aren't left on their own. And then I think people down the line will be able to say, hey, I actually could use somebody to cook dinner tonight. And people who are in good communities, whether they're religious or otherwise, they do have that. They do have the ability to say, I feel safe enough to ask this of you, will you please do X, Y, Z? But if you don't have community, it is a really, really hard thing to do and not feel isolated.

So maybe a good action step for anybody listening is, one, if you're not in the midst of grief, here's yet another reason outside of the millions of other ones we've already shared on this podcast to begin to cultivate and tend to and nourish your community. And if you're in the middle of grief, don't be afraid to reach out to the community that you have built. Absolutely. It's okay to reach out and ask for help. I think that people struggle because they don't know how to ask for what they need and they don't want to be a burden. But the truth is, is that if anyone asked that of us, we would jump through hoops to help them. Anytime I have had any loved one, friend, family member who's going through anything, I am just desperate to have. help them in any way that I can. And I'm so nervous about doing it wrong. And I'm also trying to be

cognizant of not putting more burden on them by asking them to help me help them. If we could normalize people asking for what they want, it would be so incredible because we all do want to help so, so much. We do. I think the antidote to some of that is teaching us how to be better supporters. I mean, even just saying how do we break through and ask for help is still a burden being put on the griever. And so how do we actually teach people how to support grievers better would be the route I would like to take and do in my book because I do believe that if we can show up better for people while they're in the midst of the darkest, most vulnerable time in their life, that will then teach them that it's okay for them to even have needs. It's okay to be weak. It's okay to

grieve until you are just able to get up again instead of putting a timeline and the pressure on them to say, okay, well, ask for what you need because we don't know. I would say, just as you said before, I'm afraid of doing the wrong thing. Let's actually just teach people how to show up authentically and to be present and to say, hey, I'm going to send food because at the very least, I know you have to eat. And if I know you well, I'm going to just do and I'm not going to ask. And I'm going to be here and I'm going to be present. And if I do those things and I show up in a way that is authentic and consistent and real and caring, that's going to teach you that it's okay to ask me for something that comes up.

We're going to dive deep into supporting people when they're going through grief in a little bit. But I want to address problem two with the taking care of your basic needs, taking care of yourself, which is a two-part problem two. One, often when I'm in the middle of grief, I have no idea what I need. I feel like one moment I need to be around people, the next moment I need to be by myself. One moment I'm like, oh, give yourself all the junk food. And then I'm like, this junk food didn't make me feel very good. And I also find myself getting in the way of the stuff that I know would actually make me feel really good.

Like isolating instead of reaching out to people. I'll not answer any text messages, but I'll want people to be text. me, things like this. So how do we actually identify what we need, what we truly need on a deep, deep level, and how do we not get in our own way in terms of getting those things or giving ourselves those things? In order to know what we need, we have to trust ourselves that we're going to check in often. So as somebody who's been in therapy, as somebody who's sort of on top of mental health topics, there's no shame in that. But I think that when you don't know yourself very well, And you're going through grief.

It's an additional burden. And I'm using that word a lot because grief itself is a burden. But what it does is it awakens all these other parts of your life that have been either lacking or asleep. And that can be things like, I don't know how to ask for what my needs are or I don't even know what my needs are. Or how do I go out into the world in this new place that I'm in where I feel like I'm on a different planet and just be normal? That doesn't exist for so many people. Understanding ourselves and getting to know ourselves is an additional task of grieving because you really are in this new place with no map and no structure and all the things that maybe worked for you while you were going through anxiety or depression may not work in this new place. It really is about understanding, number one, what you feel in any given moment because that shifts so much in grief.

And that's okay. Even if you say, right now I'm really angry that they died. Right now I'm really angry that they left me with all of this work. And then that'll shift because that anger will be sadness underneath. And then you can say that, okay, now I'm sad. It can seem so crazy making to say, okay, I'm going through all of these emotions. But that is what it is. And you will cycle through a lot of different emotions all at one time while I'm asking you to take care of your body. And while I'm asking you to ask for help and all of this stuff. it's a lot, but we have to start with understanding who we are and what we need in the moment, and that's it. And is that just sitting there, maybe putting your hands on your heart and asking what do I need in this moment? It's a good start. If you are somebody who can go to support groups or you do have a therapist, that's going to come up a lot more. Because if you're in a support group, people are going to notice you and you're going to be asked how you feel.

So you are going to have to be really present in that moment. And it may mean that you feel numb and you feel nothing, but that's still something. And so it is really simple request, which is get to know yourself in all of the changing moments that grief will bring upon you. And that's a starting point. And what if you're asking yourself, what do I need in this moment? And you're telling yourself, I need a pint of Ben and Jerry's and to watch Real Housewives for 12 hours. And then you do that and you feel worse. I think that nothing is ever going to feel better.

If we can say that time and connection is really the thing that will inevitably need, then we can understand that these are the things that are just band-aids for the moment. If I need to watch Real Housewives for 12 hours and eat Ben and Jerry's knowing that that's just going to be a band-aid and that's going to get me through the next day, I think that that's okay. We put so many rules on ourselves when we're grieving to do it right and there is no right with grief. It's going to be messy and clumsy. We're going to get to a place where we feel like we're doing things that we think will help, but maybe don't, because again, our feelings will change.

But I think that everything is a balance at the end of the day. We don't want you watching Real Housewives for seven days in a row and not talking to anyone and crying through every episode and not eating and not drinking water or getting fresh air or seeing people who love you. That's the other end of the pendulum where I would say, okay, so now the grief is stuck in our bodies. So now we've got to move. We've got to let that energy kind of move through us. What are we going to do? And that's where I would say, you need to talk to someone or get into a support group or let's actually start doing EMDR or some kind of physical type of therapy. Even yoga for grief, this is a really big up and coming thing where we can actually let it move through us. But I'm not going to judge anybody that

wants to get comfort food and find a way towards comfort their own way. Is yoga for grief a specific type of yoga or is it just doing yoga intentionally trying to move through grief? Both. Somebody who's trained in yoga for grief is going to understand what postures and what moves will open the heart. And sometimes the hip openers will be really big emotional releases. So you want to make sure that if you're doing those, you have somebody trained just for the emotion that will come with that. But there is specific trained both intentionally and with the postures. All right. going back to our brains, our bodies, all those physical changes, all those brain changes,

are those permanent? Are we forever altered on a physical level by our experience with grief? Some types of loss will have an irreversible change for you. And those are more traumatic losses that really affect your nervous system. Other types of losses are going to be the type of loss you can grieve through and you can move forward with it will always come up and always be with you. but it won't have an absolutely irreversible effect on your nervous system or your body. So if you're in the really traumatic type of loss category, is your life just going to be a little bit worse forever? I wouldn't say worse, but I would say different. Things are going to feel hard for a long period of time in terms of how you process the world around you and how you feel safe again.

Trying to make sense of something is going to be very hard and it's going to be something that affects, you in terms of high anxiety for a long period of time. Trauma itself is something that doesn't go away and does change us, but it is also something that we can lesson with different types of therapies like I spoke of earlier, EMDR and somatic experiencing. A lot of different therapies will help us figure out ways to lessen the intensity. So when they come up, say anniversaries, birthdays, days of meaning, will always have these moments that come up. I call them grief, quakes, but it can feel like the trauma is happening all over again on that day. And that day will be where your brain remembers, where your body remembers. But that intensity with help, with time and with the

right tools, will be something that you can manage. But you will be different. You will be very different. We can't just forget that something traumatic happened to us. If you fall into that camp, you said that that's having permanent effects on your central nervous system, would one of the past you would want to take be then to calm your central nervous system as much as possible and do modalities that help with that? Absolutely. And sometimes it takes medication as well. I think being in regular therapy or support groups or whatever sort of healing modality works for

you to calm the nervous system, but also to understand your symptoms and how to manage them when they do come up is going to be the path that's going to be the path that's going to be the most helpful, but it is a management. Let's talk about friendship loss. I think it is something that impacts so many of us and people feel so much grief over, but we almost don't allow for that grief on a societal level, which makes it even harder to deal with. So first of all, can you just normalize the grief we experience around friendship loss?

Absolutely. You know, especially female friendships. It is such an intimate relationship that you have. So many of us are closer sometimes with our girlfriends than our part. partner in these different ways. We share things that we would not maybe share with everybody, with even our loved ones. And so imagine that you have this confidant. You have this best friend, this person who knows everything about you, this person you may travel with, have all of your parties with, and then one day it's just gone. And we live in this culture where we don't give

each other a lot of time, patience, opportunity for repair. And the roughly, upshar just remains. And there's a lot of shame in that, especially with women. You know, so many people would think, what happened? What's wrong with you? And we internalize that, like, actually, okay, well, what is wrong with me then if I can't keep this friendship? And it's really happening more and more. I think we don't have enough patience for people. We don't have enough patience for things that are wrong, for any burden in people's lives. And our attention span for being able to listen and be present is much, much different than it used to be. So you think friendship loss is going up because we are having a harder time being good friends to people? I do. That's so interesting. So step one, I guess,

would be let's evaluate the way in which we're showing up for our friends and the ways in which we can encourage our friends to show up for us. Absolutely. We don't realize it, but friendship is a skill. We take for granted that we just have friends in our lives since when we're little kids, but friendship is as much of a skill as it is to be in a relationship. And we need to be as present as possible with people, but also with the understanding of what our needs are. And why are we choosing the friends that we choose? Is it history?

Is it proximity? Is it convenience? Do we have anything in common? And I think if we were more mindful about the people that we keep around us, we might also be able to protect ourselves in some way from the inevitable rupture that would come from absolutely having nothing in common with somebody. When you think about strength and resilience, like your ability to feel energized, to recover well, to stay strong as you get older, what do you think that actually comes from? Most people say working out are good nutrition, and yes, of course

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for 15% off the premium starter kit at branchbasics.com. And when they ask you where you heard about us, please make sure to mention the show. That is branchbasics.com and use code Liz Moody. So let's talk about the actual loss moment. There's a few different types of friendship loss that I've heard about from listeners. There's a friend pulling away from them and them feeling blindsided, them feeling like I don't want this person to pull away from me. What should we do in that type of instance? I think it's really hard because you can reach out and say, hey, I would love to talk. It's been some time. Is everything okay? Is there anything that we should talk about? Keeping it to questions leaves it in a place where it's clear that you really don't know what's

happened. But even saying something like, hey, I miss you, it's been a really long time. That could feel really vulnerable for people. But if you feel like you could, it's important to keep that feeling of care if you still have that on your end, present. Because we really don't know what people are doing when they pull away? Are they pulling away because they're going through something and they don't know how to reach out and ask for help? Are they pulling away because they don't value the friendship anymore? Or did you do something that hurt them and they're not able to tell you or talk to you about it? It could be all of these different categories, but you're really left hanging when you have no idea what's happened. To me, that sort of ambiguous loss is one of the most painful because you've

shared so much intimacy and so much hope and so much care and time. And then And to have it not just rupture, but fade away, is a really painful thing. And so I think being able to say, hey, some time has passed. I'd love to talk. I'd love to see what's going on. I'd love to reconnect. It gives the opportunity for somebody to say either, hey, I'm not interested anymore, or I'm so sorry I've been going through a lot of things in my life.

And I've just lost track of people. And if they don't respond, you have right then and there some of your own answers. So simply opening the door for more information can help with the ambiguity of ambiguous loss. It sure can. Another type of friendship loss that I hear about frequently is that I love this person. This person loves me, but we're just in such different places in our lives. We've grown apart. It's not that enjoyable or easy or fun to spend time together.

You still have all this fondness, but the friendship is not working. Do you have any advice for that type of situation? I think it's okay to also honor. the seasons. We try to force things sometimes, and it's okay to actually celebrate that you had this friendship with somebody that had a really good run. We really are always sort of grieving the loss of it. But in this case, it feels to me like, wow, how wonderful that you had this time together and you were able to have this good friendship. And can it be okay for us to say we had a good run and that it's okay if we don't have anything in common or we're really just, we're in very different

places now and we can value the time we used to have together and maybe keep the door open for if those paths cross again. But can we actually just celebrate the fact that we were able to have this time together? So much of grief seems to be about being okay with experiencing the full range of emotions that is being a human being. It is. Which is so hard. It is the hardest. Why do you think people don't want to feel grief? It is the most secretive, rushed emotional experience that we have in our society, and yet it is universal. Everyone will feel it in some capacity in some way. And yet we run away from it. And any chance we get, we run away from grief because it is so in your face. You can't run from it. You really can't. You can't. You can try.

do, but inevitably it shows up at the back door. It shows up in all these different ways. And it asks for you to feel the full spectrum of being human. And it's so hard. Can you make a case as a therapist for experiencing the full range of human emotions? Like, why is this a good thing for us? We have this ability to feel sadness and pain and joy and beauty. And we like to make a thing of it when it doesn't feel so happy and shiny. But that's not real life. More of the time, we don't feel this happy, shiny thing, although we're always aspiring to it.

But I think the beauty comes from the ability to feel the darkness and to feel the sadness and to feel the things that hollow us out sometimes and to know that there's beauty in that too. Because that inevitably means that we were touched by something and that we loved that we were connected deeply to something. And inevitably that means that there was something good that came from that. And it is an incredible gift to be able to not be afraid of the things that we feel because there's simply just the receipt that we have from being human and allowing life to be lived in its fullness.

What is the point otherwise? I want to talk about pet loss for a second. Oh. I think this is one of the most minimized forms. of grief that exists. Yeah. What do you say to people who are coming in and they're feeling so much grief about the loss of a pet, but maybe they're feeling shame or embarrassment that they're feeling that level of

grief? Losing a dog, losing a cat, losing any pet is truly just as significant a loss as losing a parent or losing a loved one. And that needs to be validated. all across society. And I think that if we can do more of that, right, we have things now happening like pet funerals. We have community in our life that will help validate that. We will go through the exact process that we would with any other important person or thing in our life. But it's valid. It matters. And sometimes, actually, to be honest, the clients with whom I'm working are

almost sometimes more devastated for a pet loss than a family member. And they'll be embarrassed about that. But this is a relationship that's unconditional. And you don't get that anywhere else in the human experience. And you have rituals, you have routine, you kept them alive. You are their person. And in so many ways they keep you alive. And so that reciprocity that is really unconditional is something that can't be duplicated in any way. And it is an incredibly huge loss. And it really does need more attention and more time, especially at work. People don't get days off because they've lost a pet. We've all been there where it's like, wait, I'm devastated. I'm devastated. And I don't think I can even concentrate. But there are no

bereavement days for the loss of a pet. And it's wrong. I think sheerly in terms of hours spent, I have spent more relational hours with my cat than any human on this planet, including my husband. My cat has been there when I was agoraphobic. She was the only person who was there in bed next to me for months and months and months and months. She was there when I was graduating from college. She was there when I was getting engaged. Like there's just no person who has been there in that many ways for that much time in my life.

Yeah. And it's irreplaceable. I mean, that relationship, nobody is going to know you like your cat knows you. And this is a good time that the cat doesn't get to speak. speak, right? Because the cat holds all of the secrets. But that cat is your biggest comfort. Yeah. So what do we do when we're experiencing pet loss? What can be helpful in that situation? It's how are we going to honor putting a lot of the power into honoring our pet in any way. So many people say, get another dog. Get another cat. And they don't get it. You have to be ready for

something like that, number one. But also, you can't replace that type of love. And so it is really important that we do whatever we can to honor that pet, and that can be in maybe getting jewelry or, you know, wherever we bury it or having its ashes with us around our necks. It's the little rituals that we create that carry that pet with us. Talking about the pet, I mean, it's really not too dissimilar from losing somebody incredibly important to us and the ways that we would want to honor them and get through that loss and navigate it. But in a way, it feels almost tenfold, because when we walk through the door and they were there to greet us, they're no longer there. And it's really, really hard.

And giving ourselves, I think, permission first and foremost for this is really hard and it should be really hard. I don't need to shame myself for feeling this on the level that I'm feeling it. Absolutely. That's really the key of destigmatizing grief in and of itself. And this actually is disenfranchised grief, pet loss, right? So we're talking about the different types of loss. society should not get to deem which loss is most worthy in our lives. And we have hit that mark so much that we've then said, okay, well, so sorry, but like you've got a day and so sorry about your cat, but it's not that important as if they're there with us.

And it's wrong, and we should never be able to say what's more important and how we carry that forward and what we do with that loss. It is the stigmatization on a very large level that we have to break. Do you have any advice in general for not minimizing our own grief about anything and comparing it to somebody else's grief? Being like, oh, their situation is so much worse, so I don't deserve to feel the way that I'm feeling. I think that when we compare our grief to other people, we're never always seeing the whole story anyway. We're seeing what they show us. Everyone has a different relationship to what in whom they've lost. And so to compare that does a huge injustice to your relationship to what and whom you've lost. If we compare or if we sit and say,

I'm not doing it right or what is it supposed to look like and put rules and parameters around our grief, we're going to actually find ourselves in a situation where we're not authentically grieving and it will feel like we're stuck in some ways. And so to allow ourselves to feel what we feel as long as we feel it, while also taking care of our bodies while also saying, okay, so and so lost her sister too, but we have different relationships and she's a different person and I'm a different person. These are what my needs are today and they may change. But I have to stay true to this and I have every right to. I know that we can't put rules and parameters and different things are going to work for different people, but we love pragmatic action steps on this podcast. So I would

love if you could share maybe one or two things that you think are really helpful for anybody experiencing grief and maybe one or two things that society tells us to do or we feel like we should do that you are like that tends not to be that helpful that tends to hinder the process of grieving. When it comes to navigating fresh grief really is important to make sure that we start with the body and I will say that every single day even if that means that you take a walk around your block and you get some fresh air. It could be going out in your backyard and putting your hand on a tree and just connecting to something. It can be looking out the window if you can't go outside and face the world and noticing things. Notice a bird flying from tree to tree. Staying present,

but also being in your body is going to be really, really important. Making sure that you are eating the right things that can keep you strong. We all want to go to that ice cream. For my own grief, I was baking cookies all the time. But then I realized that I wasn't getting any nutrition and I was tired all the time. And grief already makes us so tired. So make sure that you're getting some rest. Even if you can't actually sleep,

resting your body is really also very helpful. That can even mean if you need to put a movie on in the background. How will we move something if you're not moving enough? And how will we actually rest if you're moving too much? And it can be very, very small, even to small steps around your house can be helpful. And then on the flip side, is there anything that you feel like you wish people would not do when they're trying to move through grief? I wish people would not listen to others too much. I think that we all really try to be helpful and give our experience. Some people are pushing too much and they're pulling you in a different direction or they're giving you advice that goes against who you are. I would say, listen to yourself, listen to your body. If you're in therapy, listen to the,

advice or the care of your therapist or your support group because they're going to know you best and to make sure that you are never comparing yourself to another person in their grief story because every person, even if it's the same family and the same person you've lost, will have a very different experience. So to honor and respect everything that you're going through as individual and your own needs, but make sure that you're only listening to advice that feels sound and good to you. which will be different for every single person. Which will be different for every single person.

But if it doesn't resonate and it feels like it's just the wrong thing to be doing or it feels as if it's pushing you, then the answer is no. You don't subscribe to the idea of the five stages of grief of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. How come? Well, I do love Elizabeth Kubler-Ross for creating this for people who are terminally ill. But it was not created for grievers. And so what it does fail to do for grievers is actually include the entire spectrum of the grief experience, which is a spectrum. It will sometimes be really bad and really hard and physical. Sometimes we will have days that it feels really good and it will change.

It doesn't include anxiety. It doesn't include so much of the nervous system responses to loss and certainly doesn't include the fact that it is a full body experience that is experienced in our body. so much and so viciously sometimes. I also think it sets us up to fail because we think that there's five stages. We hit the stages and then we're done. And the truth is that we will cycle no matter what the experience is indefinitely. Because like I said earlier, the anniversaries, the days of meaning, the birthdays, the triggers that come up with our senses. We smell their cologne. So many things come up or we see a cat that looks identical to ours. That will bring all of that right back up. and it doesn't get mentioned in the five stages of grief.

And so because we're already a society that feels like we can get grief right or wrong, just subscribing to five stages can really make us feel like we're failing. And something may be wrong with us. And we may have mental illness if we're still grieving a year or two years later. And there's so much more to the human experience than denial and bargaining and acceptance. And so I am so filled with gratitude for the fact that she, She created this jumping off point and brought grief to a conversation. But it is dangerous if we think that that's all that there is.

I think people like it because it's like, oh, if I just get through denial, then I'll get to anger. And if I just get through anger, then I'll get to bargaining. And then I only have two steps left and then I'll feel so good. But I didn't even think about the fact that you would feel like a failure if any of those steps fail to alleviate what you're feeling or you cycle back through one or you feel something from the left field. But the prescriptiveness of it is still really appealing. It is because we want to rush through things anyway as a society. That's what we do. Like, give me five easy steps to do anything and I'm going to take that as opposed to the hard road of humanity, right?

Grief is poetic in this way. It's not easy. It's not prescriptive. Really, it's something that's incredibly unique and unpredictable. And it's hard to say that anybody will even experience the idea of bargaining. Right? I mean, and when do we really get to a place of acceptance? I can move forward without accepting something.

There's so many things that come up in these words where some people may not experience any of them and think that they're not grieving at all. Really categorizing something in this way really sets us up to not know ourselves and not understand ourselves and not accept what it is that we may be feeling that's different and outside of these lanes. So I appreciate her and I very much disagree. Okay, let's get into supporting people when they're grieving. What are some of the worst things that we can say to somebody who's dealing with grief? Platitudes, platitudes, of course, right? So again, we have not been taught how to support grievers. We haven't been taught to grieve.

We know that. The old things that would be said are heaven's got another angel or at least the they're not suffering anymore. They're in a better place. Anything that starts with at least, please don't say it. Nobody needs to have an alternative. And nobody needs to actually have their loss thrown in their face. They may be in a better place. Maybe they aren't suffering. But the better place will always be with us alive and well. And so it's really thoughtless when we say things just because we think we're supposed to or those are the old ways of saying things. In my own loss, I had a really close friend who, you know, this shows how illiterate we are with grief, who after my mother died, wrote on my Facebook comment section that said, heaven got another angle.

And I just kept thinking she couldn't even be bothered to spell check. And so we have to be incredibly authentic. We have to be thoughtful. We have to be ourselves. Imagine a griever has just landed on this new planet and they have no. idea which end is up and where they are. And now their friends are acting strange and they're saying things they wouldn't normally say. It makes us feel so much more alienated and isolated. So be yourself. Show up consistently. And if you don't know what to say, it's okay to say I don't

know what to say. But I am here and I care and I support you and this really sucks and I will be here. Even offer to just sit with someone. Maybe you don't want to talk, but let's just sit here together. Maybe let's take a walk together. We don't even have to talk. And if you want to talk, I'm here. The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easier and the things that you don't want harder. Yet so many of us want to eat healthier, but so few of us actually take the steps to make eating healthier easier. That's where Marley Spoon comes in. What I love about this company and what's different than all of the other companies out there that are doing like stuff in the same arena is that you can customize your choices based on the efforts.

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Head to marlyspoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. That is right, up to 25 free meals with Marley Spoon. That is marly spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody. so remember to get the offer in there. Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. I'm genuinely confused how masterclass gets literally the absolute top people in every single field to teach every single one of their classes. I use it when I want to learn things directly like the cooking class from Thomas Keller

has all of the wisdom that you would normally have to go to culinary school for. But also, I'm being honest, this is like a use case I don't hear a lot of people talking about. I'll just watch it for entertainment when I want to do. something that's far more interesting than scrolling. Christina Aguilera taught me to sing. Shan Boudrum's Art of Mastering Confidence and Sex Appeal class is 10 out of 10. There's menopause classes with leading doctors. There's script writing with Mindy Kaling.

Literally, you name it, they're on masterclass and it is such a good way to get off your phone but have something that's like not quite as long or hard to get into as a TV show or a movie and that it just keeps you entertained and interested. And you are learning. There are over 200 classes from the work. world's best, all for just $10 a month when build annually, and you get unlimited access to every class on the platform so you can learn at your own pace whenever you want on your phone, your computer, or even in audio mode, like a podcast. If you're looking to stop scrolling and

start consuming entertaining content that makes you feel excited and helps you learn, masterclass is it. And the best part, every membership comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can start learning risk-free. Right now, our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. That's 15% off at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. The thing I struggle with is I feel like those types of statements get me through the first time that I'm hanging out with somebody when they're experiencing grief. But as we've talked about, grief is a very long thing. So what I struggle with is the second time, the third time, am I making enough space for them to talk about their grief? Do they want to be

distracted at that point? At what point do I feel like I'm ignoring the situation versus being myself and doing the things that we like to do together, maybe six months down the line? So can you speak to how we can navigate showing up for somebody over the course of time with grief? Absolutely. I think that we forget that there's an entire life still with someone and that it is okay to ask them about the other parts of their life. And so that comes into play a lot. If you're looking to check in on someone, it's okay to say, hey, I'm thinking of you. And also, I know that you had this job interview on Tuesday. How is it feeling? Okay. So that's not diminishing the loss they've experienced? It's not diminishing the loss that they've experienced. What is most important is that you're reaching out.

And if you know the person really well, it's okay to say things like other parts of your life, what's happening with so-and-so? Also, what can I do for Tuesday's dinner? I'd like to drop something off. It's okay for us to talk about other parts of their life because they're already inundated with it. They're thinking about it all the time. They're not forgetting it. The key is showing up and consistently showing up because you're never going to just not talk about it.

It's okay to say, you know, hey, I know we're going to be. coming upon three months. This feels crazy that time is just going so fast. Like, how are you feeling today? I think when people say, how are you feeling? It can be overwhelming because you're feeling so many things. But sometimes just how are you feeling right now is helpful because it does sort of close things in to actually, oh, I get to check in with myself right now. How am I doing right now? I don't know. But maybe I'm feeling numb. Maybe I'm actually feeling relief that you reached out to me. I was feeling alone. now I'm not. It's the whole gamut. If you know the person, it's okay to bring in other parts of life

while also acknowledging. Always put the date that is important to them in your calendar so you get a reminder. Sending a card is really helpful because we don't really get cards. Even if you talk to them every day, sending a card is still something wonderful for them to get. But if you're not somebody who's super close to the person who's grieving, it's okay to actually just then say, hey, I'm thinking of you and maybe not ask anything. I just wanted you to know I'm thinking of you. I'd love to see you at some point. We can take a walk. What is next week looking like for you? Do you remember any specific moments from when you were grieving for your mom that stood out as somebody's showing up for you in a really supportive feeling way? Yeah, I have very little memory of the time that my mother died. And

anyone who goes through grief will know that you get brain fog and grief memory and all of that. But I remember people who showed up physically. I had to move really shortly after. And so who showed up to help pack up my apartment, who showed up with food, who like got pizza and Prosecco and just were there. And I don't really remember too much of the outside stuff, but I'll remember the people who consistently checked in. And I don't remember what they said, which is why I say it's not always important what

we say, but it's that we consistently show up. And even just the idea that I remember pulling up to the funeral home and seeing some people who traveled many hours to be there. I mean, I remember crying in the car and it was out of gratitude that people would take the time to show up for me in that way. When you go through loss, it can feel really scary that maybe people won't show up because sometimes they don't. And sometimes the people we think will show up don't show up and they can't. And that was there too, right? So for me, I remember the people who made an effort to show up physically. And the people who backed away because they were uncomfortable with loss are not in my life anymore. Do you watch sex in the city? Yeah. Do you remember when Miranda's mom died and Steve and Aden show up at the funeral in Philadelphia?

And she didn't like tell them to be there and they're just there when she's walking down. Yes. The aisle. That scene always makes me cry. I forgot about that until right now. But yeah, that's really. how it feels. Yeah. Where you don't have to ask and people just show up. I don't think there's anything more beautiful as a grieve or anything more moving and more symbolic of love and connection than simply showing up. You've mentioned food a few times. Do you think if you're looking for a way to support somebody who's dealing with grief in your life, food is like a sure safe bet? Food is a really good safe bet. And is that showing up maybe with like some nourishing food,

sending an Uber Eats gift card, something like that, anything in that space? Absolutely. Yeah, because at the end of the day, like I said, a million times it takes endurance and we forget to eat sometimes. We'll forget to drink water. We won't be nourishing ourselves and we will get sick or we will get exhausted. We will be overwhelmed. We know that they have to eat and whether or not they want to, they can save that for another day, but they will have the food there and that will be a part of the support system. It's really important. What about when the person you're supporting is your partner and they are experiencing grief and you are in it with them day in and day out? Do you have any advice for partners of people who are experiencing deep grief? I do. And that's really also get

your own support because you are going to be going through secondary trauma and loss too if they're going through something really overwhelming. And you being a caretaker. and taking on some of the burden with them is going to make you feel like you're going through it too. And you need a space to sort of not just vent, but to actually process your own feelings, not just about the loss that may or may not seep into your life, but in the change that will come from your partner going through that. And so it's really important that you too get your own support system. And that can just be friends, family. It's just actively seeking out people. Yeah, I think that it really depends on how much of a burden it's starting to feel like for both

people. Healing in any modality or if you have a really good friend support system, being able to talk about it often is going to be important. But if it's something where you really want to get some help navigating the relationship changes, I would definitely seek out therapy with that for somebody who's grief-informed so that you have consistent support for you too and also the ability to sort of learned some tools on how to navigate a partner going through this loss. I've heard from people who are in the tricky situation of they have shown up for their partner as their partner has experienced grief for months and months and months. And there starts to be a sense of how long is this going to last and how long can I continue to show up for them for?

Have you encountered that? Absolutely. The truth of the matter is sometimes it does take hard conversation and sometimes it takes a okay I'm noticing that we're still in the same place and feeling as if maybe you're not able to function or maybe you're not going to work as much or you're not taking pleasure in any of the things you used to and it's starting to worry me and that will be a conversation that would be best had either with the therapist or having practiced it ahead of time let's say your partner is not saying you're putting me on the spot grief lasts for as long as it lasts. That is true, but it can take a toll on a relationship if there's isolation and there's no actual comfort being taken in the relationship itself. And so that's where help comes in.

And that may be that they also need to seek therapy if they are not already in it. How can we get over feeling guilty when we start to step back into our lives and we start to feel joy. That is a really big question because grief initially will always feel like we're in something because we're staying connected to our thing and our person, right? And so the idea that we're going to actually go forward with our lives and invite joy back in or adventure or life feels as if we're disconnecting from our person or our loss in general. And that can bring up so much guilt. The reality is is that they're no longer here in this plane. But we get to decide how much of our lives we get to fill with them and how we do it and how we honor them and how we carry them forward. And I think

the more that we include them in our lives, the less guilt we inevitably feel because we will feel as if they're a part of the joy and a part of the adventure. I can say that my mom is my invisible sidekick and she's helped me write a book and she's been to all these countries that she wanted to visit but didn't get to do before she died. And so I go there for her and I go there with her. And it brings comfort to me. And so everyone can have this individual way of carrying their person forward with them and it will look different for everyone. They may plant a garden or they may cook their favorite foods all the time. That guilt is reduced when we realize that it doesn't have to be one or the other. We don't have to just move forward and leave them behind, that we are always connected with them and

that it's just a perception that we're really just disconnected. I want to ask some listener questions. When people ask what I've been up to, how do I bring up a loved one's death without being weird? Can't we be okay with being weird? Here's what I would say. I've been really processing this loss and I've been in my grief and it's okay to say that. It's okay to be really direct. I think it's important to be direct, actually.

What have I been up to? Well, I lost my mom. And so that's been really heavy on my heart. I've been really contending with grief. But I think if you don't know them that well, it's still okay to be direct and honest and say you've gone through a loss and you've been really processing that and going through that experience. Should we not have any fear of just bringing the vibe down? It's so hard to be a grief therapist in this world where I'm like, it's okay to talk about grief. How are we going to make this something that's not so terrifying if we don't talk about it to.

So in my mind, I would say, yeah, of course we should be honest. How do we sidestep what I've been up to? I've just had a lot on my mind. The more honest that we can be, the better because then we put somebody in the position of having to receive that. How can I support somebody who refuses to seek help on their own? This is where boundaries do come in handy. I do think that we can say, I am here and this is how I can be here for you and the ways in which I can be here for you and you get to know what that is for yourself. But outside of that, I really believe that you could benefit from having some extra support that maybe I can't give. Even not always using the word therapy, but, you know, support is a softer word. It seems like you can use some extra support these days.

Here's the ways I can help you, but there's maybe these other options that could be helpful too. and also asking a question, hey, do you have anybody else supporting you during this time? Helps to take the burden off of you. But make sure that you're also taking care of yourself. Is it bad to tell somebody who's grieving the negative ways in which their grief is impacting you? Or is that honest and helpful in some way? Well, give me an example. So this situation of how to support somebody who won't seek help on their own, would it ever be helpful to say, I'm feeling really burnt out by being your sole source of support. I'm feeling like I'm

getting depressed from being here for you for weeks, months, years, whatever it is. Or is that always working against what we're trying to get to? I wouldn't use that language. I know it's true, and I would use that language with somebody else in your life. But I think when it comes to communicating with somebody who's going through something, it's pretty obvious to, them too that they're stuck in it and they can't feel better and perhaps they're stewing in it. Maybe they have had ambiguous loss or maybe they just can't shake a breakup, whatever it may be. But I think our language is really important and we always want to at least be encouraging because we don't know how close somebody is to the edge.

And so we want to make sure that if we are fed up, so to speak, that maybe we can utilize another person in our lives to vent that to. but I think it's important to also have boundaries so we don't get to the point where we want to tell them off, which is where you can say, hey, I'm available next Tuesday. And that's it, right? And so you're not necessarily giving more. I think that we often can feel really resentful when we give too much or we offer ourselves indefinitely and then we feel taken advantage of or we feel like it's never ending. And it's us too, right? Like, okay, I've given you everything. Like let's go now. feel better, but grief doesn't work like that and everyone is different, but I do think that for

people who are circling the drain, as I call it, where there's no movement whatsoever in the despair and there's no actual movement that they're taking to feel better, it can be really hard to support them. So if I'm talking as somebody who is a supporter, I need to have boundaries and take care of myself too. And the language I would use would be simply the things I can do and not the things I can't. It's such good advice to take care of yourself so you're not getting to that place in the first place. That's such good advice. Yeah. Next listener question, I can't stop grieving my miscarriages. How do I grieve for a child that I'll never know? This is another huge, huge loss that people don't understand because they just assume at least you can try again. And that happens all the time.

I'm really big on honoring every single child whether or not you've given birth to them. But a lot of my clients really love the idea of planting gardens that grow perennials and things that come up and naming that garden after a child that you may have had if it came along to the point where you had a name picked out. But I think even still, having a way to honor every single life that was going to be is really important. Your body doesn't forget. Your heart doesn't forget. And I think it's just important that whether or not. society or your friends and family honor, it's important that you do. And what's the goal with grief? Where are we trying to get and what is possible for us when we're in

grief? Where are we trying to get is a really interesting question because we're most of the time thinking that there's a finish line. And really there isn't. So the answer to where are we trying to get with grief is to not necessarily feel like every loss is going to take us down, that the news itself is a shock and that our whole world is going to collapse again upon hearing this thought, right? If you think about a fresh grief, when you wake up, sometimes people are like, oh my God, I had forgotten while I was sleeping that. My mom died. And now I woke up and the reality is here all over again. And the hope with grief is that we can integrate that. information into who we are now. So now I know my mom died every time I wake up and it doesn't hit me

out of left field. It hurts and some days it hurts worse than others. Some holidays are really hard, right? But that I can figure out what to do with them and how I can honor her or how I can honor the memory of my loved one and carry that with me forward in a way that doesn't take me totally out for good. And so really what grief is is this yearning to be back to what we were that we can't. And it's that yearning to have that connection again to what and whom we've loved that we won't have, but we have to then figure out a way where I get to say we get to actually redefine who they become to us. And that can shift over time too and how we want to honor them and their life and their legacy because there's that whole idea that people don't die as long

as we remember them. And that's really, I think, the goal is how do we remember them as we move forward. What's one homework assignment that you would give to somebody who is experiencing grief, something that as soon as they turn off this podcast, they could go and concretely do to begin to move through it? One of the things I really love, and this could be pretty much at any stage of loss, but is letter writing. And I would love it if you could write a letter to your loved one that you've lost just about where you are today, just about missing them, just about how feel and how you've been really navigating life without them. And just to have an understanding of where you are in this process, I think writing letters

is so important because it's good for us to figure out where we are and how we feel. But it also over time helps us to see where we are going with our grief and how our relationship to the grief changes. So I'm really big on writing letters just in the moment. And then could you speak to somebody out there who's experiencing grief? I would love for you to just share a message that you think they need to hear right now. Yeah, I'm not sure what it is that you may be grieving, but it's important and that it's valid. I think so many people try to rush through the process, and I would say, please take your time.

Please feel whatever you need to feel. Please take care of your body. please be really tender and gentle with the moments that it feels like it's too much. If there's help out there, receive it. It's really hard to receive help sometimes. And it's important that we do, especially if it's authentic. And as hard as it feels to be around people, don't isolate too much. Solitude is good.

Self-reflection is good. Writing letters and being with our feelings. But too much of that can be really dangerous. So I just want you to be tender, be gentle. take it one day at a time, one hour at a time even, because it will always change, but just know that that's okay. That's okay. And we'll get through it together. Just don't do it alone.

Love it. Can you tell us a little bit in your own words about your beautiful book and anything else that you want to spotlight? Oh, thank you so much. So my book is called Moving On Doesn't mean letting go for a reason. And we're talking about it so much today, right? How do we get through something so we can move on? And the language and grief is so important because we never. will move on. But I wrote the book during COVID because there was so much happening and my practice

is so filled with people that had different types of losses but didn't understand them. And I really believe that if we have knowledge and we understand what we're experiencing, it gives us a sense of agency on how to move forward, even if it's not five easy steps. But if I know what it is I'm experiencing, I'm going to say, oh, okay, that's what's happening. Oh, I just lost someone and I can't function and I forgot my name and my phone number. Oh, okay, it's grief brain. I get it. I understand that. Oh, I'm supposed to be feeling this sick right now. Okay, that's normal. Okay. There's so much panic, right, when we don't know what we're experiencing. But additionally, there were people calling me from all over the country that just didn't know what to do with their grief. They either didn't have

access to it because they didn't have a grief-informed therapist in their town or they didn't have the money for grief therapy. It's one of these things where it was like, there's only two hands that I have, what can I do with them? And a book is not a savior, but it to me was a way that I could try to give access to people who didn't know what grief therapy or grief-informed care looked like a chance. I really understanding what their experience was. And so it means a lot to me. It's my work every day for 20 years. And it's my own experience of loss. I didn't get to really process my own loss of losing my mother for so long because I was busy working and I was a grief therapist who got grief wrong sometimes, you know, I didn't realize until my own really significant

loss how deeply embedded it was in the body because we weren't taught that. We're all sort of clumsily understanding and learning more about grief. It's a humbling experience. And so this book for me felt like I just wanted to be not just somebody who does this work every day, but somebody who gets it, who's felt it, and also who cares very much. I just wanted to be like a friend sitting down saying, hey, I think I can help with this. It's very meaningful to me that we have this conversation. So thank you for having this with me because grief is such a scary thing for so many people and so isolating. And this is the time. We're all experiencing it. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your book and your work and sitting down here today.

I really appreciate everything you've shared. Thank you so much. Thank you for all of this. This episode was so enlightening for me. It made me realize how much. grief I've been coping with that I haven't even been willing to recognize as grief because we don't allow for it on a societal level because we're not allowed to talk about these things and particularly grief outside of the traditional type of grief like losing a loved one. Any other type of grief is just completely not allowed for and that type of grief is barely allowed for at all. Also, Gina gave me the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest sliver of hope that maybe, maybe I would be able to cope if I lost Bella. So I'm very appreciative for that.

If you have any friends who are working through grief after loss and you think this episode could help them in any way, or if you know anybody who is supporting someone through a loss, please send them a link to the episode. I really want to open up this conversation and help as many people as possible, and I really appreciate your help in doing so. If someone shared a link to this episode with you and you're new to the podcast, welcome. I'm so glad that you're here. If you are not following the podcast, all you have to do is go to the main podcast page on whatever

platform you like to listen on. That's going to be the one that lists all of the Liz Moody podcast episodes and you'll see the word follow under the logo on Spotify. And then there's a little follow with a plus sign button on the top right of that same page on Apple Podcasts. There was a recent Apple update too that changed things up a little bit. So even if you've been following the podcast forever, like since the healthier together days, you might have been unsubscribed.

It might not be showing up in your feed anymore, which is so annoying. So please go to that little button in the top right of the page that lists all of the Liz Moody podcast episodes and click turn on automatic downloads. So the pod keep showing up in your feed. This way you will not miss out on any new episodes. They'll appear right in your feed every single Wednesday. and every other Monday, and you definitely do not want to miss out. We've got some really, really good ones coming up,

including an episode about the very real and researched neuroscience behind creating the life of your dreams. It is so cool. And another with an incredible friendship coach, solving all of your trickiest friendship struggles. Okay, I love you, and I will see you next Wednesday for the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast.