Unlonely with Dr. Jody Carrington - If You're Old Enough to Love, You're Old Enough to Grieve
Episode Date: December 21, 2023In this episode Dr. Jody digs into Grief. She explains the difference between grief and mourning and how grief is such an individual experience. EVERYONE grieves at some point in their life in some wa...y, shape, or form and this episode helps give some insight to it all. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Let's start here, where I think the answer begins for everything and everybody, in the place of acknowledgement.
Indigenous peoples in this country have taught me the most
about what acknowledgement truly means.
So everything that I've created for you happened here on Treaty 7 land,
which is now known as the center part of the province of Alberta.
It is home to the Blackfoot Confederacy,
made up of the Siksika, the Kainai, the Pikani,
the Tatina First Nation, the Stony Nakoda First Nation,
and the Métis Nation Region 3.
It is always my honor, my privilege mostly,
to raise my babies on this land where so much sacrifice was made,
and to build a community,
invite a community in, talk about hard things as we together learn and unlearn about the most important things that we were never meant to do any of this alone. welcome back welcome in to the Everyone Comes From Somewhere podcast.
Holy.
Listen, this is a solo episode today.
And I got to tell you, I think I like it.
I really, really, really am enjoying the guest episodes.
I actually thought that my favorite were going to be the solo episodes where I get to just like talk about whatever I want. But I don't know.
I really, there's been so many episodes, so many guests this year. And as we step into 2024,
I thought I would reflect a little bit on so much about what they've taught me.
And that's what I was thinking about, you know, like when we do the solo episode, what can I talk about?
All the things that, you know, we've been speaking to people about this year.
And then the thing that just kept coming back for me, which is probably not how you should end a year. It's grief. And I think that, you know, anytime there's big emotion
in any season or any story or anything, period, the thing we don't like to talk a lot about is
how grief is often interwoven into many things, even the good stuff like the holiday season. And because so no experience happens in a vacuum. No experience is all good. Like from a philosophical perspective, right? There's always a little bit of bad in everything. And there's always a little bit of good in all the bad, you know, I think about listening to the stories
where everyone comes from. And, you know, I think about Tarek's story, if you haven't listened to
his episode, you know, he was a refugee in Lebanon, originally from Syria. And I think about
him stepping into his success that is Peace by Chocolate in this moment. That episode is just so fascinating. And you'll hear in all of his success, the grief of leaving behind a life that he knew that was so great, that he loved so much about. You know, I just taped an episode that you'll hear probably in the new year.
The guy named Lorne Miller and his wife, Lindsay, who cancer is back for the third time.
And this guy, you know, firefighter, rock star, talks about, you know, a beautiful childhood, having two healthy babies, you know, being connected in his marriage, serving his community, all those things.
And the grief of all of the ways that life has turned for him becomes sort of a place of like, can you let it overshadow the world?
And again, you know, like I mean, there's a million stories that I could reflect on. And I,
you know, I hope you listen to some of these episodes because I do my very best to sort of put into context the fact that all of us have beautiful pieces of our story
and that they make us who they are and it helps us define who the world is and how it works.
And, you know, I mean, I think I've said this before when we were talking about therapy,
the therapy episode, which was really like, you know, does it all come back to your childhood?
Yes. And the answer is that doesn't mean that it is
going to direct where you go, but understanding where you came from can become some of the most
significant pieces in understanding how you will handle big emotions. And grief is no exception.
So the definition of grief, you're born with it. If you're old enough to love, you're old enough to grieve. Grief is the human response to loss, you are also born with the capacity to grieve.
The thing we're not born with is the roadmap, the script on what to do with grief.
And many of us call that mourning. And grief in and of itself, the entity in and of itself, is that the emotion is probably, can be the most debilitating, kick you in the vagina, take your breath away, unpredictable motherfucker that you've ever met. Okay? Grief is such a, I can't even think of a word like him,
being meanie. Grief is, I hate it in so many ways. Because I think part of the issue with grief is that it's unpredictable. And just when you think you're fine, it kicks you in the ass.
Just when you believe you've overcome it or, you know, you should be over it.
So many of us understandably want to get through grief.
You just want to be done with it.
Okay.
How long does it take me to grieve?
People ask me this question.
I've had this conversation. How long does it take me to grieve? People ask me this question. We've had
this conversation. How long does it take? What do I need to do to get over it? And I think the answer
is so obvious in so given moment, this is
what blows my mind, in any given moment, in this moment, every single person listening to this This episode around this globe is in a state of grief. We have all lost someone or something. And where it gets a little a war or, you know, whatever that looks like,
a cultural genocide. So it's not as bad. I think that there really is no benefit to comparative
suffering because it is very difficult to tell the story of how anybody makes sense of grief, because context is the prerequisite for empathy.
And it becomes very difficult. You know, I talked a little bit today about resilience and how does
one person get more resilient than the other? I truly believe that, you know, in any place that
we've talked about trauma, it's not what happens to you. It's what happens inside of your body as
a result of what happens to you. And so what's really critical for me in this world of grief
is equally, if not more important, understanding the concept of mourning. What you do with grief. And mourning, some would say, is how you heal. And, you know, an emotional illness,
sorry, an emotional injury, not an illness, an emotional injury is the same as a physical injury. The sooner you treat it, the more you expose it,
the more you, you know, attend to it,
the better it has the capacity to heal.
And a physical injury and an emotional injury are exactly the same thing.
Grief is an emotional injury.
The deeper the wound,
the closer it is to the heart,
the more life-threatening it becomes.
Grief operates in the same way.
It'll leave a bigger scar.
It will take longer to heal. The more deeper or explosive,
I don't know, I can't think of the word. The more
closer to the heart it is. And what I love about the concept of grief and mourning more,
you know, is really, it's like a philosophy of life for me. The more you have the capacity to
attend to a wound, the more there is a script for, you know, what do you do when,
if it's a burn or it's a massive laceration or it's a broken bone, right? If I sort of know or
have a plan for what I'm going to do for that, oftentimes there's some comfort and there's some ability to settle and heal and step into that.
Grief is the same way. And when you think about mourning,
mourning, so grief is often such an individual process. This is how I've thought about it over
the years. Grief is such an individual process because how I make sense of the world, how I make sense of
a relationship, even if, you know, my partner and I share a child and we lose that child,
how I have a relationship with that child is completely different than the stories and the
context. You know, it can be completely different than my partner might, right? So it is such an
individual thing and it hits us at so many different levels and times and places in our body and we hold it in very different places in our body.
And it is often done, grieving is often done alone.
We often want to be alone in grief.
We often fear other people having to help us navigate that.
You know, the first time you have to lay eyes on somebody after, you know, a big death or a loss has occurred.
You know, grief is such an individual process.
You know, just for me, for example, you know, or not like the individual will have a different story. You know, we might have had a scene about pierogies
or, you know, the story, the one time that we, you know, hung out together. And so that is our
respective response to grief and versus, you know, you have a completely different experience. And so
grief is so intimate, I think, to the relationship that you've had with the person
or the animal or the, you know, whatever the, where that pain of loss comes from.
Mourning, alternatively, is how you heal.
Mourning is often done in relationship.
Mourning often involves joy.
Mourning, in my opinion, often involves story.
Okay.
And you are not born with the capacity to mourn.
Somebody has to show you.
So if the expectation, and I have to talk about this, you know, in the good old days, whatever those are, you would get a call.
And because you would have very little ability to communicate in any other way, you would have to go face toface to the person who experienced the loss.
Now, if the loss was untimely, tragic, sudden, any of those things,
just like it is today, the desire to connect, to understand,
to get the information, to support, to get all hands on deck
becomes much more quicker, right?
Like there's an urgency to it.
And if it is a predictable death and expected and, you know,
regardless whether it's expected or not, still the last breath still is stabilitating.
But anyway, the urgency is less,
but it still is, you know, like, what is the process? Okay. Now, if I think about the olden
days, the expectation, and I glorify this sometimes, and I really want to be clear that
this is not about glorifying, they had it all right, or it was so much better. The only thing that I think previous
generations had over us was proximity. Now, just because I put two people in the same place doesn't
mean they're going to do anything great with it or they're going to be kind to each other or they're
going to figure out stuff together. What I love about proximity is you then have more of an
opportunity to engage with, navigate, make sense of experiences and emotion. The more
you avoid, the more exit ramps, off ramps, the more you stop looking, for sure, the more you
stop seeing. And so what I love about historically thinking about the ability to lean into the
ability to warn. So like, if you came over, I just remember even,
you know, the death of my grandfather in this lifetime. I remember how I was amazed at how like
my best friend's mom and my best friend, I mean, I was 14 at the time. I remember so clearly that
they came to the house. I remember so clearly that like my mom's heart was just so broken and that I, mine was less broken.
Because as long as my mom and dad were okay, I felt like it was going to be okay.
But I remember, do you remember?
Butter tarts.
Sheila Ritchie, you make the best butter tarts of all time.
And I will forever connect those butter tarts to, see, I often say open-faced egg salad sandwiches are the universal sign of death. Also, for me is a big deal. Despite the fact that my grandfather was old and older,
he wasn't even that old. He was sick. We knew all of those things. I remember thinking,
wow, people are here. They're bringing stuff. They're concerned about my mom.
They're concerned about my dad. They're saying things to me like, I'm sorry. Here's what I loved about your Jeej. Here's what I remember.
He had the best laugh. He's so funny, right? Like all these kind of things.
That experience as a child made me look around and go, okay, this is a big deal.
I remember being at the funeral home. I remember it for the first time, like
really being sort of unsure about whether we should be in this place.
And watching my parents navigate that, like, yes, come over. Like you can, this is, he's, you know, you can touch him if you want. You don't have to. You know, this is what has happened. This is what's going on. All those things. My good friend Jeremy Allen and I talk about this all the time.
And, you know, we've done some work together in the past.
He's a funeral director and a rock star, young, amazing soul who has done so much in this place of grief and mourning.
And I just really appreciate his commitment, particularly in his practice, to bringing children into the funeral directing or the funeral process, the wake, the celebration of life, whatever the deal is.
Because here's what we forget so often in this mourning process is that the people closest to the dead guy will lose their ability to navigate their own people through it.
Right.
And so what becomes so critically important in any death
is like, especially if it's untimely,
but even if it is timely, whatever the deal,
whatever that means,
the spouse or the kids or the people the closest to them
will struggle so much to navigate their emotions.
And so a village is so necessary in times of grief
because there is that sense of like, I'll give you a place to land.
Can I get you a snack? Right. The fact that Tannis would have came over at 12 years or 14 years old,
I can't remember how old I was, and just sat with me. I remember like our moms stayed in the kitchen
and cried and did all the things. And, you know, Tannis and I, as I remember it, you know, had a conversation. We went up to my room and put on music and listened. And,
you know, I just remember being so sad and being okay to be sad in that moment and that
she, you know, would be interested in that. And I think giving our
children the opportunity to make sense of death, Because like, we'll never automate death. We're never going to
get out of the death game. We will always be in this place. I say this, I mean, you can't automate
relationship, but you also can't automate birth and death, at least in the foreseeable future.
And so the question is, how do we do our very best to give scripts around that? And so I often make, you know, statements about this, you know, having the conversations,
particularly if there's a death by suicide or, you know, we don't want to talk about
the fact that, you know, this might be imminent or that, you know, daddy's going to die or
whatever that looks like.
I think that in developmentally appropriate ways, making space for those conversations might be the single most important thing you can do.
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You know, people say, well, I don't know what to say.
I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say.
Do you know what the easiest...
I was going to say cop-out, but this isn't actually a cop-out.
The easiest thing that I think happens in this space is you ask questions, right? And instead of trying to tell people, you know, what happened,
you know, how does this make sense to you? You know, when you're 11 and you get the news that,
you know, somebody in your family died by suicide. How does this make sense to you? What does this
mean to you when I tell
you those things? And, you know, this is how, you know, your cousin was struggling or, you know,
this is what happened. What does that mean to you? And do you have any questions about it? And
does anything about this scare you? And I think sometimes we try to put, you know,
we always want to regulate emotion. Okay. So like, you know, he's in no longer in
pain. Everything's okay. Now you're safe. Everything's fine with the best of intentions.
But what we forget is just to hold space for emotion and acknowledge it. And in the space
of grief, my God, because there is probably no more painful emotion on the planet. What we want
to do so much is just jump to the fucking it's okay piece. And that's understandable and you should get
there. My only ask or wonder sometimes is I often think the work happens in those few seconds,
those few moments, those few hours, whereas a human to human, we have the physical capacity
to sit in the mess. So, you know, as I was thinking about this in particular in this holiday season, I think that if this is the first holiday where you're without somebody you loved, if this is the 32nd holiday, a couple of things are true. We encode a lot of memories in times of big emotion, which means that the holidays tend to be more present in the holiday season,
which often makes many people hate the holidays or avoid the holidays
or want to do all those things.
Like I get all of those things how they connect.
My wondering this season,
knowing now that every single one of us is in a state of grief,
some of it more acute than others.
I want you to think about this season, the importance of sinking highest on your heart, your grief heart.
Honoring traditions, saying names, not being scared to do the wrong thing at the wrong time.
And if you do, believe me, you'll have the capacity to get through that.
I think it's a risk that we often should take.
And sometimes, you know, it doesn't pay off the way that we want to.
But I promise you, oftentimes the avoidance is the hardest part.
And I think that one of the most critical places that we need to spend a little bit more time in is the landing of the joy
and the telling of the stories
and the remembering of the things
that bring us back to a sense of peace and joy
and safety in our bodies.
And now people say,
you know, well, that won't bring them back.
It doesn't make it any better. It's still really shitty. And like, 10-4, rubber ducky.
The intention of mourning is not to relieve, not to extinguish the pain.
It is to help in the rewriting or the continuation of the story.
Because when we stay stuck in the pain, what we. He's one of the prodigies of, the woman who created those five stages of grief.
And he himself struggled or experienced significant loss, the death of a child.
And his recent book introduced the sixth stage of grief, which is, he calls meaning.
And the interesting thing is that I think we try to jump too quickly to meaning. What is this for?
What does this mean? I'll be, you know, like, there's a reason for fucking everything. I think
that it takes some time to get to the sixth stage. I think that
many people, full permission to stay in the anger and the resentment and the part where you deny
it all. It doesn't feel like it's real. I think all of those things, we have such a desire to
get to that sort of fixed stage. And so that holding space of it all matters so much, you know, I just asked her about
the intensity and frequency of grief, you know, if I can take you to the first moment that you
understood that your daughter was no longer on this planet to now, what does that grief look like?
And she said, you know, the intensity and the frequency have decreased. And it doesn't mean
I don't, you know, and I think there's always like this sense of like, we have to clarify.
This doesn't mean that we don't honor or love, that there's any less commitment to, but the ability to get to that place where the pain isn't acute to the point that it's so debilitating.
And some of us feel like we deserve to stay in that place, which I think is worthy of an explanation or an exploration all of itself.
Because in this human condition,
you know, we're just walking each other home.
Nobody gets out of here alive.
And no matter how much you stay in hurt and pain
and feel like you pay the price for the loss
or the should have or the could have,
the outcome is you miss everything
that you're intended to see
in the next days, weeks, months, years following the loss of
anybody who you have in your life. And it does not make it any better. It does not bring them back.
And I think her description sort of of that was so interesting to me. You know, the intensity and the frequency
decreases and equally the moments of joy had opportunities to
introduce themselves and be moments that you were more and more inclined to grab
instead of feeling like you were undeserving of them.
So you would let them just fly by.
And I think in this holiday season,
what I'd like you to consider,
no matter what stage of grief you're in
with whoever you have in your life, that the focus is a little bit on
grabbing those moments of joy and stringing them together, not necessarily letting them pass by.
Because I think it is from those depths of despair, of grief, what that emotion,
that human emotion, that universal human emotion is intended to teach.
I think the ability to climb out of it from time to time and then string those moments together,
if you can, is truly where meaning lies. So there you have it. A little deep dive on grief,
mourning. Ellen Wolfelt, you know, really helped me understand that difference between grief and
mourning. And I think, you know, I don't know, man.
I don't know, woman.
I don't know, human, if it's right or wrong.
And again, remember, this is just my opinion.
You and me hanging out, you're doing your run or your walk or having your nog, whatever that is.
I hope you're having a lot of nog.
I'm still on the coffee train today, but I got to tell you, now after I said that, I'm going to have some eggnog tonight. Actually, I don't even think I like eggnog. I'm just going the coffee train today but I gotta tell you now after I said that I'm gonna have some eggnog tonight
actually I don't even think I like eggnog
I'm just gonna get that rum
put a little nutmeg in her
you know make it festive
maybe a cranberry
see just created my own cocktail
right there easy
okay that's all I got for you today. This little deep dive
into grief and mourning, I hope my friends will bring you a little peace in your heart, wherever
that is, with whoever you're hanging on to or connected to this season. Drop your shoulders.
Look at your toes for me. Say a couple of these things in your
head. You are loved by so many. You matter to so many. And I'm just so grateful you're here.
Happy holidays, Merry Christmas, all of those things to you and yours. And I gotta tell you,
we have a season of podcastery coming up in this new year that I cannot wait to sit with you through. I hope
you'll join me. It's now one of my favorite things to do on the planet. So yeah, stay tuned.
Stay connected. And I'll meet you right back here next time.
I'm a registered clinical psychologist here in beautiful Alberta, Canada.
The content created and produced in this show
is not intended as specific therapeutic
advice. The intention of this podcast is to provide information, resources, some education,
and hopefully a little hope.
The Everyone Comes From Somewhere podcast by me, Dr. Jodi Carrington, is produced by Brian Seaver, Taylor McGilvery, and the amazing Jeremy Saunders
at Snack Labs. Our executive producer is the one and only, my Marty Piller. Our marketing
strategist is Caitlin Beneteau. And our PR big shooters are Des Veneau and Barry Cohen.
Our agent, the 007 guy, is Jeff Lowness from the Talent Bureau. And my emotional support
during the taping of these credits was and is and will always be my son, Asher Grant.