The Therapy Edit - THROWBACK One Thing with Stacy Heale on how to talk to children about loss

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

In this THROWBACK episode Anna chats to Stacey Heale about how to talk about and show all the hard emotions, grief included. Stacey's partner Greg died of cancer and she speaks openly about her experiences of death and grief talks and writes openly about the topic and how we can prepare for the emotions that grief will throw at us all at some point.You can follow Stacey on Instagram

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I love bringing bite-sized thoughts and conversations to support your well-being in your busy lives. Behind the scenes, we are working on bringing you a whole new series. But in the meantime, we have delved into the archives and will be sharing some of our most loved nuggets, lightbulb moments and powerful chats. I hope you enjoy them. Hello and welcome to today's guest episode of The Therapy Edit. And today I have with me at Stacey Heel. Stacey is on the gram.

I follow her because I love the way she talks so openly about something that has touched many of our lives, which is grief. We find it hard to navigate. It can scare us when our friends are going through it because we might worry about saying the wrong thing. And she just talks about, she talks so honestly about. about her experience of grief. Her husband, Greg, was diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer back in 2016 when he was only 39 and he died five years later in 2021. So Stacey, welcome.

Thank you so much for joining us. I love how you, as you say, bring honest conversations about grief, loss and how to live well in the rubble of it all. So thanks for joining me. How are you today? Hi, Anna. Thank you so much for having me. I am good. Currently today, I am good. The sun is shining, which makes a big difference to my mood, definitely.

Yeah, and today is, you know, at the moment things are up and down, definitely. But today is a good day, which I will take with both hands. I love that. It's about, you know, sometimes it's a bad moment, sometimes it's a bad day, but you know that that just changes and not to maybe not to overthink it and try and do too much about it. So do you find that you just kind of take it, take those good days, bad days, good moments, bad moments, do you know what? You have to. I think with such a big seismic life event, like your husband dying and having two grieving children as well, as well as grieving yourself. It is, I think the word roller coaster is quite often bandied around for lots of different topics. But it is. It very much is. It very much is. that kind of that high and that low that's that's continuous and I think that I found that on those very very low days or moments when you feel like you're at the top of the roller coaster like literally like about to drop that kind of feeling in the pit of your stomach the only thing to do in those times is is just hold on literally just grit your teeth and hold on and then when you do have those easier moments is just to breathe into them really and

enjoy them because you know I suppose either way the good and the bad days they change so yeah enjoy the good ones while you've got them because they will change and um just hold on hold tight with the bad ones because that will change too yeah and that's a that's such a lesson that's such a lesson for life, isn't it? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it's a hot for life. And there is no one that will not be touched or has not been touched by grief at some point, at some point in our lives. So this is going to resonate. It's going to resonate for everyone. It's, yeah, it's, and it is interesting about grief. And it's only with, you know, I've experienced grief in my life, but nothing as, um, as important as Greg's

death. And it's made me realize that of how, insane is that we don't talk about grief more because if we're lucky, we will live a long and healthy life and if we have loved, we will lose multiple people. So it's not just as much as I would love to feel like this is my one time only. This is my like my big thing. There will be there will be other big briefs. And I think it does us all a really big disservice when we We don't know how to talk about it. We don't know how to deal with it within ourselves. We don't know how to support friends and family who are going through it.

And that creates this void where, like you said in the intro, there's people don't know what to say. So they don't say anything, which causes an even bigger void between people and leaves people feeling really alone and quite ashamed of thinking, I should be I should be okay I should be getting on I can't I can't let people see how I feel about this and that whole shame spy will just kind of goes on and on and on doesn't it it does it does I remember you know as you were talking I was remembering this moment was so my sister many people know my sister had brain tumour and she died when I was 10 and I remember us walking down

the road as a family in our local town and and friends of ours are crossing the road away from us and it you know it's it's the fear isn't it's the fear of saying the wrong thing it's the fear then of then sometimes choosing then to say nothing at all and and it's uncomfortable and it's hard and it's sad and actually we we give ourselves a gift somehow and we allow ourselves to to be with it and look at it and not be terrified of it because it is, it is, it's huge and it can be scary. And that's what you do in your work is basically, yeah, just encourage those conversations and start stripping away some of that,

that shame and fear along with it. Yeah. Yeah, and I hope that it connects with people who have experienced grief, but also that maybe there are some takeaways for people who haven't yet experienced grief because a very harsh reality is that it is coming for you. If you haven't felt it yet, be thankful, but it will be coming. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a harsh reality. And it's one that I think many of us spend a lot of time in our lives trying to not think about and avoid thinking about. And sometimes, you know, even having gone through grief and loss traumatically, as a child. You know, I've, I had a friend who lost a baby and even then I thought, oh my goodness, I don't know what to say. And actually just saying to her, I don't know what say I wish so much that I could say something and it would be the right thing. And I think, you know, it's just coming to

people with your, your desire to get, and saying that. I don't know. I care. And yeah, I absolutely agree. You would think, considering the kind of loss that I've experienced and also making a career out of writing about grief that I would know what to say. But even recently, there's been some diagnosis in my friend group. One of my really good friends is currently going through IVF and I've really had to think about what to say because my, my, my, my, I care so deeply and I'm so aware that I don't want to say the wrong thing. I want to say something uplifting, but sensitive. And I'm like, I've got to get it right.

But then I thought, no, I've just got to be human about it and just say. And do you know what the best thing to say is? Wow, this is fucking hard, isn't it? Yeah. This is hard. I see how hard this is for you and I'm with you. I'm just, you know, whatever is happening, I'm just with you. Yeah, it's that, it's that being a long side.

That's all you need to say. It's that I'm just a lot, yeah, I'm along for this ride on this awful roller coaster with you. Yeah. Yeah. And I think as we, before we click record, we were saying about, you know, how in our culture, there's so much that can be fixed, you know, fix this, upgrade that, replace that. Do it now, do it tomorrow. Get it, you know, next day delivery.

but when it comes to grief, we can't fix it for that person. We can't make it better. We can just be there and not to underestimate the value of just being there alongside them. And also for a more prolonged amount of time, I would say, because I think in that aftermath, I think people really understand, maybe not the intricacies of grief, but that people will be grieving. But I think it's, you know, in those initial months,

I don't know how you felt with your sister, but there's shock. There is so much shock, even if you know it's coming. And we're actually just coming up to nearly a year since Greg died, which is absolutely unfathomable to me because it feels like it was two weeks ago. And so now people might get the impression that we're all okay, that we're fine,

but actually what's happening is that the grief, that the initial shock is starting to wear off and the reality of what's actually happened to us and our family and the implications for the girls, it's really starting to hit home. So I think it is understanding. Like you said, it's not this, oh, get the first year out the way and you'll be fine.

It's that actually that's when it kicks in. That's when you do need to say, oh, do you know what? I was thinking about Greg the other day and I was remembering this story about him and I just wanted to see how do you feel now? How do you feel today? How have things changed for you?

And just realising, yeah, it's not this, there's not this cutoff point. It's really, it's a lifelong, it's a lifelong thing. I will be, you know, I will be sad forever that Greg died. There will never not be a time. Whatever happens in my life,

there will never not be a time when I will not be sad that Greg died and you with your sister that yeah yeah you know whatever happens as you go forward as you know with your family you build your own life that will never not be there and I suppose it's people understanding that it you just build your life around it but it doesn't it doesn't and that's what you say about living living well in the rubble like you will always be in the rubble there will always be the rubble of that grief it's an integration in your life you you build your life upon it and around it and yeah that's really helpful kind of tangible tool for people i'm sure it'll prompt some text messages and some

phone calls actually after listening to this of i hope so i hope so and it really ties in i think you know with your one thing that you're going to bring to us today so stacey what is the one thing that you would love to share with with all moms um My one thing comes from like the essence of loss, I suppose. And the hardest thing for me with grief has been how to parent my children, how to be a mother to grieving children whilst I'm grieving myself. it's an enormous task that I cannot even begin to think that I get right it's as all motherhood is it's trial and error and it's it's trying things that don't

work trying to make house but my one thing is to show all of the difficult emotions within yourself to your children to show them that they are all acceptable and needed and valid so so for me it we you know we I've done lots of research with charities like Winston's Wish who deals with childhood bereavement and they talk about giving children the space to fill all of their feelings but obviously as children they don't have the um they don't have the right knowledge or the right ways of, not right, it's not right, but the ways of expressing how they feel. So they might feel sad, but it comes out as anger or it

comes out as aggression towards others. So my, for example, my youngest daughter, I think regressed probably about three years when Greg died. She became very, very toddler-esque, and would have big blow-ups about things like the color of plates again. I thought we were past that. She's six. But that kind of emerged. And I had to really show, not just say to her, it's okay to feel angry. Because we can say things to our children, but really they need to see it.

They need to see that in me. So I have made sure that I've said to them if I'm feeling just absolutely. angry and frustrated, I will show that to them and offer a space to them to say, what do you feel angry about? How does that show up for you? And because traditionally, anger is not a very tolerated emotion in girls and women. And I want to show them that actually anger is a transient emotion, but it is valid. We have routines now. where if we're feeling angry, we've got special toys and pillows that we will just go and beat. We've got sticks that we will beat them with. And I've even said to them at night,

because nighttime seems to be when all there, all the emotion comes out in children, isn't it? And when we're going to bed, I'll say to them, right, if you're feeling upset or stressed, in this room, we're allowed to swear. Only for tonight, we can say whatever we want, which they think is like, it's like the biggest treat on a firm. But it's this, it's about saying, I'm feeling this and I need you to see that I'm feeling this. And it's okay that you feel that as well. And another one is, a part of that is crying as well. I felt very, very nervous, I would say, to start with of crying in front of the girls.

It was always something that, you know, I went to the bar. to do. I would do in the shower. I'd do in the car of, I don't want them to see I'm upset because it might, it might shake them. They don't want to see me upset. I've got to be strong for them. But actually, what that did was, was show them that if they cried, that was possibly a problem. And I think people are very keen. I have noticed this, that people are very quick to try to stop children crying. Even in grief, their dad has died. let them cry because it's really, really sad and they need to get that out. The last thing I need my children to do is hold that stuff inside and watch how that comes out probably when they're a teenager and that will explode out of them. So I realized that really I needed to sit down and cry with them or if I was crying about something particularly that happened they would say oh mom are you okay and i'd be like oh do you know what i'm just missing dad i was just thinking about dad and i miss him so much and um yeah just that to be the norm that i will

tell them how i'm feeling and and and also offer some kind of um resolution to it to say like you can cry you can feel sad you can feel angry and then it goes they can see that entire cycle of emotion in me. They can see that it's okay to do that. And then it ends. It's not something that's so overwhelming that they will be consumed by it. I don't know if this is going to work out because I'm literally hot-footing it. I'm literally learning on the job.

But yeah. And I think that's probably important, not just in grief, but in all parents. parenting. Yeah. Yeah, that's my one thing. And you've got a project in the background going on, haven't you, of a book? And it's not got a title yet, and it's not kind of fully formed yet, but I'm going to be looking out for that. And I just know that it is going to be such a powerful and valued resource for people. I hope so. I will send you a copy when it's done. So thank you so much. And to finish off, I ask some quickfire questions. Okay, are you ready?

What is a motherhood high for you? Hi. Oh my, do you know what? Currently, it would be my children eating anything that I make them for dinner without argument. Just it's endless and it is daily. I would feel that I had won the game of life. Dancing around the kitchen. And what is a motherhood low for you?

Oh, God. there's a lot um i would say uh suffering probably when i had my second daughter bay i suffered from postnatal depression that i just tried to power through i thought that i could just get through it and i had a moment where i had to take she wouldn't stop crying and i took her out for a walk in the push chair in the rain and it was so terrible that i sat on the pavement and cried and some children who were just kicking out of school, I heard them walk past and say to each other, do you think she's having a nervous breakdown? I was thinking, yes. Yes, I am. Yes, I am. Yes, this is what it looks like. Yeah. With a screaming child here. This is, this, this is what that looks

like. Relatable. Relatable. So, Stacey, what's one thing that makes you feel good? Oh, um, well, you just mentioned. it dancing in the kitchen that's um that's one of my absolute favorite go-toes one of the things they did this morning when we were just um gearing up to leave the house on the school run tensions were high it was all about a lip gloss that they were fighting over who's was who's and i deflated the entire situation with a dance off i love it i love it how diffusing how grounding well i think it was more just me. Well, it was basically me busting out some really quite aggressive moves and

them just knocked out of their anger by just the horror of what, like the embarrassment of like, what is mum doing? But it worked. It's living a best life. Exactly. That's what she's doing in the kitchen to the music. That's brilliant. It's a tactic I'm going to employ. And finally, how would you describe motherhood in three words? Pick your battles Oh I like that sentence and true

Brilliant Well thank you for joining me Thank you so much the wisdom And also some really amazing tips there I think for people to To hold on to and to utilise I loved Yeah I loved I loved everything that you said

And I think you're right We all need it or we're going to need it And that's just it's a fact You know it might feel like a scary fact but it is a fact of being a human. So thank you for all you do to help people realize that they're not alone in that. So thank you, Stacey. And I look forward to your book.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Grab a copy of my new book, The Uncomfortable Truth. Change your life by taming 10 of your mind's greatest fears, where we tackle some of life's uncomfortable truths that rob us of energy, joy and headspace, such as some people don't like me, I'm going to fail.

Bad things will happen. And as we move into a place of radical acceptance of these truths, you will find yourself living more freely and intentionally with more presence and confidence than ever before. You can find it at your usual bookseller. But in the meantime, just feel free to hit subscribe. And if you enjoyed this episode, please do share it so that we can get more ears benefiting from the words that we share.

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