GRIEF AND LIGHT

"Anatomy of Grief" Series | What the heck is grief anyway?!

• Nina Rodriguez • Season 2 • Episode 30

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"Grief is not this OR that; it's this AND that." - Nina Rodriguez

Grief thrusts us into the messy middle, which in time may become the magical middle.

But what the heck is it anyway?! The irony of this universal experience is that it's so unique to each experiencer, the answer of what is it depends on who you ask.

That said, there are some words, descriptions and frameworks that seem to describe aspects of big-picture GRIEF, that when understood, may give us the tools needed to understand and navigate through this nuanced experience.

Grief is love with nowhere to go...
AND unique to each person...
AND nuanced...
AND it lasts forever...
AND dynamic, evolving as we evolve...
AND...

This episode gets a little nerdy, AND it's great for those of us who seek to understand this life experience.

I also check in, providing updates on new and upcoming developments.

Tune in and DM me on Instagram @griefandlight to let me know what you think!
 
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You just lost your loved one. Now what? Welcome to the Grief and Life podcast, where we explore this new reality through grief colored lenses. Openly, authentically. I'm your host, Nina Rodriguez. Let's get started. Hi, friends. Welcome back. This is going to be a chicken episode and part of the Anatomy of Grief series that it started with season two. And if you have been following for some time, if you've been following the episodes on season two, you have noticed that most of them are with guests and they have been wonderful and there's so many more on the way. But the Anatomy of Grief series that I originally planned is a little bit neglected. I'm not going to lie, so just wanted to do sort of a mid season check in here. Life is going to life and things that we plan sometimes don't quite pan out. So in my case, I started season two with the intention of having this very organized and linear progression of teaching. What is the anatomy of grief and how do we move through it? Next thing I know as I'm doing this, I get submission after submission of people very interested in being in the podcast. And as I talked to them, I'm like, Gosh, these stories are fascinating and they can help so many people. And I got so excited, so I decided to pivot. What teacher greater than grief to teach you how to pivot in life, right? So I said, you know why grief is messy. This is so on brand for the topic and it is what it is. So I decided to prioritize a lot of the guests on the podcast that you've been hearing about, especially because a lot of them had a book coming out this spring season in summer. So I wanted to get their information out there and I did that. But I also don't want to leave this whole season without really talking about the anatomy of grief. For any of you who are like me curious and more analytical and wanting to really understand the operating mechanism and what frameworks people are using within the therapeutic field or medical field, or what tools are helpful for people to navigate grief. Then this episode is part of that process, and if you are tuning in here for the first time, then there are two previous ones. First one is what is your grief bias? And then the other one is grief time. Talking about the abstract and nonlinear aspects of grief time. This one is going to be kind of like a grief 1 to 1. What is grief? What are the different types of grief and how do we relate to these in our lived experience? But first, I wanted to check in because I feel like a lot of the new content that has been put out has been more of these interviews with other people. So here I am, just me today and I love, love, love doing these because it feels like I'm talking directly to you. I love doing that. I love connecting directly with people. If you follow me on Instagram at Grief in Light, then you know that I am very quick to respond or as quick as I possibly can be. I love getting to know your stories there. I love finding ways of sharing them. And the podcast is a wonderful platform, but it is very time consuming. Anybody who's created a podcast knows just how time consuming this can be. So what I'm going to do now is find different ways to not only serve this community, but also amplify the stories that are not as time consuming as a podcast episode. So stay tuned for that. I really encourage you to connect with me on Instagram. That's where I'm the most active and subscribe to the newsletter. You could do that in the link in the show notes or by going on Grief Greenlight dot com and then just subscribing there because that is where I'm going to be able to reach you one on one and we can stay connected and move forward from there. You're also going to be the first to find out about all the new developments. I have some ideas that I'm working with some people to build retreats, in-person retreats. I have some wonderful ideas. We're still debating on the location, whether it's Miami, where I'm based, or Tulum, Mexico or the Caribbean or somewhere else altogether. So all of this is in the ideation phase, but I'm speaking it out loud, so we actually get it into the creation and accomplishment phase. So hold me to it. Okay. And also I hold the virtual one on one, the monthly meetups and I hold I'm creating a space for groups, meeting together for an extended period of time, processing grief, moving through this together. So stay tuned for all of that. But. Today. It's about what is grief. So we'll start with that. And this might seem simple, but what I find very ironic and interesting is that when you ask people what is grief, you get different answers. To this day, I don't think there's a solid description for what is grief, because it all depends on who you ask. So with that said, here are some of the ones that I found and I resonate with. I will read them to you and you let me know on Instagram or by emailing me. Which one resonates with you? Or just think about it as you listen to this. The first is what grief is not. And I love this definition from Meghan Divine from it's okay not to be okay. She is an incredible psychotherapist teacher. I completed her certification recently and it's amazing. I feel so empowered with tools and language to keep navigating grief. I highly encourage anybody to learn about the aspects of grief because it gives you the language to understand what's happening. So anyway, she describes grief as Grief is not a disease or a disorder to be solved, not something to be diagnosed and healed or something that you can recover from. Our ideas around what grief should be are entirely at odds with what grief is. It's important to know what grief is not as it is important to know what it actually is. So it is not a disease, not a disorder, not something that you need to be diagnosed from or healed and nothing that you recover from. Now, what is it? So you've probably heard the quote, Grief is love with nowhere to go. That's a very popular quote about what grief is and resonates with so many people. Grief is love with nowhere to go. And that's so true. If you've lost a loved one, like in my case, I lost my brother and it's like, gosh, what do you do with all this energy you had for this this person, this love that I had for my brother? I have for my brother. And where do I put it? The person is not there. But grief is also nuanced. And I sometimes think about the people who lost somebody that maybe they didn't love. So, for example, a relative who was an abuser and they may or may not feel love for them, they might actually feel pain and resentment towards this person. So in that context, grief is love with nowhere to go may not quite fit. I talk about grief in the it's not this or that, it's this and that, thrusting you into living in the and space. So if you picture event diagram where the middle is the end, we are thrusted into living in the messy middle as grievous. For the most part, grief is love with nowhere to go. That is very true. And also it is true that there are some cases where maybe love doesn't have anything to do with it. Or maybe they did love this person who abused them and they're very conflicted about how they feel about the loss. So when I talk about grief, it's like big picture grief. And this is why it's important to create these pockets of spaces where we acknowledge the nuance that not everybody experiences that the same. Another definition is by the Doug Center in Portland, Oregon. They describe it as a natural, normal, inevitable and universal human experience. Let me say that again. Grief is a loss that is normal, inevitable and universal human experience. And I love that because at the end of the day, if you're on planet Earth as a human being, you will experience loss. And that's just normal, inevitable. And human grief is also impacted by our biases. So how we think about grief and what it is is going to differ based on our beliefs about grief. That was the first episode of Season two that I did What is your grief bias? So I'll link that in the show notes if you want to revisit that one. And it's about asking ourselves, where do our beliefs about grief come from? How were we influenced and how is that influencing our grief experience? So check that episode out for more information. Another definition is grief is timeless, universal and complex. It can take many forms. It may be anticipatory, forbidden or ambiguous. It can be acute or severe, and different forms of grief can overlap like intersecting circles on a Venn diagram. It was actually a quote from Dorothy Hollander's book called The Anatomy of Grief How the Brain, Heart and Body Can Heal After lots of points and nodes, I started The Anatomy of Grief. I thought I was being so clever. I thought I came up with this name all on my own. And so I called the series The Anatomy of Grief and then found out there's a book called The Anatomy of Grief. But keep in mind, my series have nothing to do with the book. It is unrelated. It just happens to be a coincidence. Her book is wonderful. If you have a chance to read it, I'll also link it in the show notes because I'm going to quote her later in this episode. She has a great breakdown of the different types of grief and I think does a great job explaining grief from a very scientific point of view. We're interested in that information. I encourage you to look at her book. So she also says that grief unfolds differently in each person's brain and physical body. Some would argue in the spirit and energetic body as well. Grief, however, universal, is unique to anyone who loses a loved one. Grief is living in the end. That's what I said earlier. Grief thrusts us into living in the end, into the messy middle. So not understanding grief in the beginning, you can approach it with curiosity. I think it's helpful to know some of the frameworks that already exist when approached with curiosity. So everything I'm about to say from this point on is information that I have gathered over the past five years through personal research, through the course that I took with Megan Devine, through information provided by David Kessler, very known in the grief space, through the stories that people have shared and conversations I've had with therapists, psychologists and all the things. But as wonderful as I think this information is, please keep in mind that I am not a licensed medical professional. This is not medical advice. You are responsible for the information that you consume. This is not information for you to diagnose yourself with anything. When I say does this resonate, I'm asking on a personal level, not on a medical level. Okay. So caveat there. Just make sure that you take responsibility for your health. It's very important. If at any point you feel like you need additional help, then please seek it out. Take the information that I'm providing. As somebody who has been in your shoes, who has found frameworks and is sharing them with you. So what is normal in grief? People associate grief with sadness. People associate grief as a sad, heavy emotion that you just have to get rid of so you can get back to normal. And gosh, it is so much more than that. There's just one tiny, tiny, tiny aspect of what grief is. The way I picture it is grief is an ocean, and everything that we experience within it is like the boats on the ocean. If you want to be surface level or the animals in the ocean, the marine creatures in the ocean, right? So every single one is different. There's different aspects, there's different purposes. They function differently. So grief is just like the big picture experience that holds a bunch of little experiences that put together are called grief, hope. That makes sense. Megan Divine Calls. Normal grief is so much more than sadness if it's in the body or the mind. Grief affects it. She created lists that cover some of the most common experiences of grief, but it's definitely not comprehensive. It's more as a framework that whatever you're feeling, there's chances that somebody else is experiencing it, too. And that's very important because when we start feeling all these new feelings and grief, it can feel very scary and very overwhelming. At least it did for me. At one point I thought I was having a heart attack and I was not. It's just grief, but it could feel that severe and that physical. And I talk about that in episode 2/1 season. So if you're interested, actually, I think it was episode one or two in Megan, a list of what is normal. I'm going to read a few of them. So trouble sleeping, physical exhaustion, forgetfulness, inability to concentrate, trouble reading, irritation with others, disbelief that it happened. Feeling numb, mood swings, sensory overload, inability to cry, restlessness, dark humor, deep sadness, phantom pains, hypersensitivity, confusion, trouble concentrating nightmares and dreams anxiety, loss of appetite, increased appetite, short temper, frustration hitting the grocery store. Isn't that a big one for so many of us? Headaches, stomach aches, forgetting words, relationships, stress, loneliness, feeling guilty, time loss, intrusive thoughts, wanting to be left alone, meeting people nearby, feeling misunderstood and clumsiness. Again, not a comprehensive list, but look at how many symptoms we can experience during grief. And if you don't know that, that's grief, or it could potentially be grief, wouldn't we be so confused as to thinking something is very wrong with us? Right. But when you frame it in the context of grief, you could see, man, that's actually pretty common. Another aspect of grief is that it is very physical and it affects your neurobiology. For example, this can look like grabbing your phone three years later to call your person, even though you know full well that they're no longer with us in physical form. You know, Andrew humor Huberman from Huberman lab. He had an episode about how grief affects the brain. And Megan Divine also describes it as neural pathways that are frequently traveled are like mud ruts in the snow. Relational habits create well-traveled pathways in the brain. And when your brain reaches for your person or goes to call them three years after they died, that's your mind reaching for something that could still be there. Those sort of cognitive hiccups are normal inside of grief, and they can be very scary for a griever. Some people worry that they're losing their mind. And some people even think that they have early onset of Alzheimer's because they keep forgetting things. Then, almost five years since I've been immersed in the world of grief, I have yet to meet a griever who doesn't pick up their phone to call or text their person many, many years later. I've heard of people who've lost pets who open the door to let their pet back in years afterwards, knowing full well that their pet died. When you're having these moments, it can feel very disorienting and it's very sad and it kind of brings the flood of emotions back. But just understand that this is very common and very normal. Does that mean that because it's normal, it's free for all anything goes? No, because some behaviors can turn harmful. So if somebody is turning to substance use and they're abusing a substance and that can be harmful to their health, or if they're driving very recklessly or doing things that are leading them towards suicidality, that's not to say they're not entitled to feel that way. When you lose your left one, you're not very excited to wake up the next day and face the reality that's different from suicidality. So, again, I'm not a doctor. What I do want to highlight is if at any point you or someone going through grief is moving in this direction, that could be a sign to seek help. I talk about this in a previous episode with Dr. Michael Harris. I'll offer the link or information in the show notes. She gives a framework for how to determine how where is the line in the sand as far as what's normal and when to get help. She did a great job explaining that, and she provides a framework where you can ask therapists if they're grief informed and what kind of help they can provide. So go check that episode out as well. So the timeline of grief, I refer to early grief and later grief. Those are not the official terms. That's just how I personally refer to them in the book Love and Grief by Emily Bingham, whom I recently interviewed. Emily outlines the timeline for grief, which is divided into four parts. First is anticipatory grief. The second is acute grief. Third is early grief, and fourth is mature grief. So anticipatory grief is grief that occurs before the actual death. Acute grief is grief experienced shortly after the death. And the timing of this is very different depending on who you ask. In her book, she quotes 0 to 9 months. Some people would say it's zero is six months. I don't like giving this acute grief a framework because I could say that mine lasted well over a year and it was somewhere between one the first year and the three and a half year mark. Because I look at it as a spectrum where it was extremely sharp and then it started to kind of taper off a little bit. But that lasted well beyond these timeframes. And I still, you know, I'm okay. I started to feel again, the numbness wore off. I would say the numbness wore off for me around three and a half years. So if I were to follow some of these timelines, you can see how that could be problematic. Or if somebody, you know, looks at this and they say, oh, 0 to 9 months, there's last ten months. Does that make them sick or wrong? No, it doesn't. It's just that person had a different processing time frame. So I used these very, very loosely. Q Grief going back to that, is grief experienced shortly after the death where emotions may be more volatile, overwhelming, or you may feel nothing due to the shock. Then you have early grief. Early grief is experienced again. This is a framework that she uses, but it's different for everybody. So she says it's the first two years since the death. Right. That could be a common framework. But again, that's not necessarily true for everybody. Mine lasted well over that. And I would argue that it's still I'm still in early grief. I know people at the seven, eight, nine year mark where they feel they're still in early grief, then mature grief is grief experience for the rest of our lives. It's the loss in a way lives with us. And although it's not as sharp or we've learned to grow around it, it's still there. I invite you to take this information as a point of reference, because grief is unique to our circumstances and affected by the type of loss our access to resources and support, our beliefs and biases about grief, etc.. This next part is going to be based on the book The Anatomy of Grief How the Brain, Heart and Body Can Heal After Loss by Dorothy Hollinger. She did a great job of listing the different types of grief in what they look like in their most common form and their least common form. And the list is not exhaustive by any means, but it gives you a really good framework to help you identify what you're going through and put words to the experience. I'm actually going to read some parts are verbatim from her book and then some parts are summarized. The first are the most common forms of grief. And we start with ambiguous grief, which follows the news that a loved one is missing or presumed dead. This agonizing situation puts the bereaved into a state of suspension. There's no mortuary and no funeral rites. If there is no deceased without memorial services for the deceased, the bereaved cannot experience the transition between their person's last time in physical form and their transition into a space of memory. Not knowing what happened to their loved one creates an enduring sadness, combined with an occasional agonizing flicker of hope that someday information will surface or the loved one will return. So just think that's a horrible experience. And if you've experienced this, I am so sorry you have so much compassion for you. Ambiguous grief is basically not knowing what happened with the person, you know, a missing person, a prisoner of war, somebody that you'd never found out what happened to them. The mind has a hard time grasping when you actually do know what happened. Imagine not having that that moment to understand the loss in a very visual representation. It could be something that your mind tries to make sense of for the rest of your life, or keeping hope in a way that may prevent somebody from moving forward Another example is when a biological mother gives up her baby for adoption and lives with. The ripple effect of that moment may be wondering where that kid is and how their life turned out, etc., etc. So that's ambiguous grief. Then we have anticipatory grief, which was initially identified as being under the threat of death, as related to the fear of being killed in battle during World War Two as a soldier. And it continues to be used today when a loved one is under the threat of terminal disease or a lingering positive illness such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. This grief is a sort of preparation for the impending separation of death. And for others, the situation can be more complicated where the cognitive and physical capabilities of the loved one diminishing, painful thoughts can emerge for the caregiver, such as When will it be over? So not only is anticipatory grief felt before the death, but thoughts of anger and guilt can also arise. Compassion fatigue, combined with physical exhaustion, may also affect the caregiver. And when repeated resuscitation and life extending procedures delay the inevitable. Dying can turn into a dramatic and prolonged experience for family members, adding to the anguish of anticipatory grief. Anticipatory grief is tough because it's like death by a thousand cuts, and it's very overwhelming. And it has the you're like cry losing your person. And this can be very overwhelming. And for caregivers, I have so much compassion for caregivers because it is a very, very complicated situation. It's exhausting. And a lot of them feel guilty for feeling relieved that the person passed. So if this has been, you would just understand it's very normal to feel this way. And I have so much compassion for you because that is not easy. Disenfranchized grief is grief that is not recognized by those in the grievance world, meaning not recognized by family, friends, culture, religion, society, etc.. Grief can be disenfranchized because the particular type of death. So the person who coined this term initially, his name is Kenneth Doka. He referred to stigmatized losses like suicide and to losses that are not generally acknowledged by society to warrant grieving like a death. But more recently, Disenfranchized had come to refer to the grief of sibling experiences after losing a brother or sister in the case of sibling loss. It is the parents of the child who quote unquote owned the grief. While a sibling's grief can be marginalized or ignored in the rare times when others extend sympathy to the sibling, they often quickly shift to asking about the parents. Sibling grief becomes a satellite sorrow that orbits around the parent's grief. Disenfranchized and marginalized. Siblings can endure this form of grief for years until they're able to acknowledge and experience the loss. So if you listen to my podcast and know my story, I lost my only sibling, my brother and I can attest to the fact that I can count on one hand in five years how many people have asked me how I am doing? They do not ask me how I'm doing. They ask, How are your parents? Oh my goodness, how are your parents? And I'm grateful for that because I'm thankful they ask about my parents. It's jarring to feel how ignored and how the underlying assumption when they ask is that your grief doesn't matter. My grief as a sibling doesn't matter. And this hurts every single time I've gone a little bit more used to it by now I'm not as shocked, but it still boggles my mind. So if you're a sibling ICU, I have so much compassion for you. If you know a sibling who lost a sibling, a surviving sibling, please ask them how they're doing. Our grief is valid. I think we could all agree that in some ways the loss of a child as a parent is probably the most up there in terms of pain. And my goodness, like nobody would wish that upon anybody and nobody should wish any kind of pain on anybody. A parent losing a child is just really up there with the unimaginable and a sibling losing their person who's a witness to their life, the one they grew up with, the one that they know, the one that they in theory would have lived the rest of their life with, parallel to them losing that. Especially if you were close like and my brother and I were very, very close. It's extremely painful. And not even being acknowledged for that loss adds another layer of pain. So that's a that was a personal note because I can relate to that one. So the last normal type of grief is called normal, resilient grief. And this is generally uncomplicated, although still painful. Gradually the bereaved comes to accept the loss and adjust to life without their person. So those were the how many five most common forms of grief. That's ambiguous, anticipatory disenfranchized and normal resilient grief. Now we're moving on to the less common forms of grief. And in knowing them, you can help identify somebody within your circle who may be experiencing this and help give them a framework and words to identify their pain Or if it's you, then this may help you understand your pain. So less common forms of grief. Again, this is from the book The Anatomy of Grief by Dorothy Hollinger. Delayed, postponed or suppressed grief, which is sorrow that is not allowed its full expression. It's as though a deep emotional response to the loss doesn't happen and the grief is not processed fully. I had an episode with Judy Lipson, who started grieving 30 years after the loss of both of her sisters. I would say that this is sort of in line with the delayed postpone and suppress grief, because back then she didn't have the space to grieve. She was only able to do that later in life with postponed or delayed grief. The bereaved show some grief, but what is often expressed does not seem to be enough, given the significance of the loss. There are a number of circumstances where the brief can't allow their grief to be fully felt. For example, how the death happened or the survivor's own experience of the death event may be so intensely disturbing that it overrides the full expression of grief. Litigation related to death can often postpone grief as the focus shifts from sorrow to legal matters. Or perhaps there's not enough social or familial support for a full expression of grief. You're so focused on the legal aspect of it and on getting justice that sometimes the grief is put to the side so you can get through this process. So acknowledging that dynamic is very important. Delayed grief is another one and can erupt as a full expression of grief months or years later. A seemingly random event may cause what seems to be an overly intense reaction, such as a movie showing a child saying goodbye to a father, for example, might cause profuse crying in distress and someone whose father died years ago but wasn't able to grieve fully at the time. And as I read these, there's more. But as I read these, just ask yourself, can it can you see yourself in me? Do you know somebody who's been through something like this and just understand that these experiences are grief? Because sometimes we don't even know that experience is grief. So in other cases of delayed grief, the very temperament of the bereaved may be the cause. The bereaved may be accustomed to pulling a curtain down on emotion, to intellectualizing feelings by thinking things through, afraid of being overwhelmed by the death of a loved one. The survivor may not allow enough psychological space for the full experience of grief in the time following the loss. This is huge. So many people are afraid to grieve fully because one not many understand what that means. And then to a lot of people think, well, if I even go there, I'm not going to be able to stop. And that is a very common fear and a very common reason why people avoid grieving altogether. I see you. I hear you. If that's you. I see you. I hear you. It is. Not easy. And that is why I completely believe that we don't have to walk this path alone. It's better if we do this together with other people. And when you speak out, help either with a therapist or a mentor or coach. Ask them to help you build containers around your grief. That does not mean that you contain your grief. Because grief is messy. It's like water or lava. It's it's going to get on everything. At some point, even a little bit. It's just more gaining tools to contain it as much as possible within a certain framework, especially if you have to be dividing your attention between kids and work and all these other things. So building a sense of safety around the emotions so you can feel them fully. There's forbidden grief is another one and it's similar to Disenfranchized grief, but it is more powerful. Typically the loss is owned and acknowledged by the primary. Graeber But usually only during the funeral services. So when the memorial services are over and the estate issues have been settled, the primary bereaved may disown the death and insist that the other family members never ask again or speak of the death or the deceased. This can happen in situations where the death is unexpected or not socially sanctioned, like suicide. When permission to express grief is forbidden and family members, especially children, may experience shame at speaking of the lost loved one. And with time that shame and avoidance can become internalized and cause its own psychological distress. Gosh, this is a big one because there is so much shame around certain types of losses like overdose and addiction and suicide and murder, etc., etc. It's so important to share our stories. The more that this is openly talked about, the more it's an invitation for people to share the stories that they've been keeping secret and help them process the grief. It does no good to anybody to keep all of this pain internalized. It will come out one way or another, and grief can also be a very physical experience. All the trauma surrounding it can be if there was trauma, very physical experience, and it manifests physically. There are some who argue that it manifests in autoimmune disease or cancers or some other disease later down the line. It's always good to bring awareness and create bases for people to release and talk and process openly. This is why we have these conversations. There is no shame in talking about any of this, and the more we have open conversations about these realities, the better it's going to be all around. That was forbidden grief. Then we have forgotten grief, which occurs when the death event is not acknowledged by others as significance, or when the bereaved experience of grief is not valued The experience of a stillborn birth is an example of an underappreciated loss that is often forgotten by other people. The heartbreak of a stillborn baby doesn't elicit the kind of attention or understanding from others that accompanies the death of a baby who was born and then later dies is stillborn. Loss and the death of a newborn or older baby are both devastating. But the words of condolence and the form of grief are different. And the grief from the loss of a stillborn, given the lack of social acknowledgment, may get pushed into, forgotten and less than conscious realm where the grief lingers. Gosh, this one's so true. You hear so many mothers who have lost babies either to miscarriage or stillbirth. And their biggest pain point and actually I'm painting this with too broad of a brush stroke. This is just from what I've heard from conversations about this type of loss, is that there are losses unacknowledged. And a lot of people look at them like, well, you still have other kids. Like, why aren't you focusing on that? Or just have another baby like you can make another one like you grow bananas on a tree or something. And what they seem to forget is that each baby was a dream. Each baby was a connection. Each baby is a representation of what could have been at every stage in their life. So where the rest of the world might see a family, let's say it's a traditional family in the sense of mother, father, children, the mother and the father see mother, father, children. And the one that's missing because it's invisible, because other people don't see it unless they tell you it's extra painful. So when a parent speaks up about their child in heaven or, you know, a lot of I've heard it say, like heaven side, an earth side, I'm a parent to children have inside and earth side. Please acknowledge that and please have compassion for them because they are living something that we don't understand. My general rule for grief is that if I don't get it, but the other person feels it as a pain and a very strong reality of them, then let's honor that. Just because I don't understand it personally or I haven't been through it personally, it doesn't mean it's not extremely relevant. Or maybe. The most important thing to somebody else. So a little bit of compassion goes a very long way for all of these. Among those who may experience forgotten grief are grandparents after the death of a grandchild. Grandparents have been called the forgotten mourners as well, similar to siblings in this situation because they are not the primary drivers. Grandparents can experience the sorrow in a very powerful and overlapping way. They grieve the loss of the grandchild, the potential of the life that was lost. And they grieve the loss of their adult child, the parents, as well as often for both parents who have lost their child. I have all four of my grandparents alive as we speak. I have seen their grief and they are such pillars to our family that sometimes we forget that they need support as well. And they're grieving, too. And I remember the first time I saw both of my grandparents cry. It was for different reasons. On my dad's side. I remember he cried. His son passed away this a long time ago. But I was so surprised because I was like, Gosh, this pillar is not supposed to have feelings. This pillar has been so strong. Like it feels weak right now. That's what I thought at the time. I know better now. I was a child back then, but it was very shocking to me. And then I remember when my grandfather on my mother's side cried after my brother died and as I was an adult and only four and a half years ago, and I just was so shocked, it was that feeling again of, oh, my goodness, this pillar, he is in so much pain right now. And the fact that it was shocking is shocking in and of itself. Knowing what I know now about grief, then again, so much grace to all of us. Do you have a grandparent in your life who suffered a loss? Please acknowledge their loss as well in their grief as well. We're almost done, you guys. So then we have abbreviated grief, which is expressed by the brief, but the recovery happens within a short amount of time. It may be because of a new relationship, like marriage happens soon after the loss or family and community is financial, social or religious may offer strong support that help the bereaved. Abbreviated grief is different from normal, resilient grief because of its abruptness. So you just grieve for a short time. That's completely possible, too. There's absent grief when early attachment has been so fragile that the child wasn't able to develop tolerance for separation. Perhaps the mother or primary caregiver wasn't there enough for the child to trust that she would return? Or even if the mother was there physically with the child, for example, she wasn't there emotionally because of her own grief, depression, or other difficulty. There is also empathic grief. And with this one, I think of somebody else losing their loved one or something else happened. Like the one that comes to mind is when Matthew Perry passed away recently. If you don't know him, he's the beloved actors of friends. And when he passed away, a lot of people were like, Oh, my gosh, now what? Did we know him personally? No. But now you have that empathic grief for that type of loss. Mass grief is an unusual form of grief that is somatic involving the body of the bereaved in some way. The bereaved does not experience the loss emotionally. Rather, the grief is displaced as the physical symptoms. Usually the bereaved are unaware that their somatic symptoms are connected with the death of a loved one and that these symptoms are concealing their grief. This one is huge. You guys mask grief and this one is very is probably more common than not. I don't know the statistics surrounding it, but I do know people who have said I went to get out of the car and my legs weren't responding and they thought they were paralyzed. Or in my case, I thought I was having a heart attack because at the time I was trying to be strong for my parents and I wanted to make sure that I was as calm, cool, calm and collected within my grief so that nobody else suffered around me. And in doing that, I felt physical symptoms. And I've heard stories like this from different people. So grief is very, very physical. And I talk about this in previous episodes where the most surprising thing to me about grief was how physical it was. Shadow grief doesn't fully surface. This is another one. It often happens after an early miscarriage when a woman is faced with the loss of her embryo. This is a term used in the book, not mine. The loss of such a small, fragile embryo may seem less like a death than a beginning that doesn't materialize. It's a life unrealized, a woman's grief, and sometimes her husband's space shadowed because this loss remains private and unrecognized by others. Also, traumatic grief is a multilayered and linked to the details of the death, which can I tend intensify the grief experience. The example we used in the book is Jacqueline Kennedy's horrific experience sitting next to her husband, President John F Kennedy, when he was shot. This is an example of direct traumatic grief because she was right there experiencing the paralyzing shock and towering distress of her husband's murder. Trauma can also be imagined, for example, when in the case of suicide, a homicide or an accidental death, the loved ones learn details of what happened. The intensity of the grief experienced in such cases can be affected by how much detail is shared. All parents would, of course, be devastated to learn that their teenage son had been killed in an auto accident. But to hear and trigger warning this description is a bit graphic. But. But to hear that a tractor trailer truck was a mouthful, let's say here that a tractor trailer truck crossed a double yellow line and smashed head on into their son's small car. Would probably make it harder to cope with the loss because the parents could picture the scene and imagine the pain and distress of their loved one before the death. The severity of a real or imagined trauma in survivors can be accompanied by post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD responses and grief have been referred to as traumatic grief. So PTSD think traumatic grief. It's important, then, for the very survivors who may be experiencing trauma to realize that these conditions may coexist. So when traumatic loss occurs in the course of military service, for example, more layers are added to the experience of traumatic grief. And for some, especially those, an act of war zones serving in the military involves being confronted with imminent death. And when a fellow service member dies in combat, grief can weigh even more heavily given the extreme stresses of combat, as well as survivor's guilt. Military grief is the grief in and of its own because it can be catastrophic and accompanied by PTSD and veterans of wars and their families experience grief in a particular and unique way to the members of the military and their families. And then the last one she lists is ceremonial grief, which is marked by large memorial gatherings that can happen after the death of a national person or a national catastrophe, assassination, death, etc., I think 911 here. So it's like a collective ceremonial grief. That was the end. Thank you for hanging with me there. This list is not exhaustive and there are other forms of grief. As you listened, were you able to identify as somebody maybe in your life or even yourself within these descriptions of grief? Another aspect I want to add to this is a lot of people who go through, quote unquote, normal grief as described in the first five categories, expect people who have these added layers of trauma to grieve as they did. So people will call themselves resilient, and that's great. And because grief is about living in the end and there are people who have to deal with layers of grief that are way harder to unpack and that linger way longer than other types of losses. So, for example, the mother who feels like she needs to justify saying her baby's name, who was stillborn or if somebody was murdered and they have to deal with the litigation of that and everything else that came afterwards and how the person died. Those are layers upon layers upon layers. That's why we say each grief is unique. Each loss is unique. How somebody processes the loss is unique. And that's why having grace for ourselves and each other is so, so key. So, so key. Now I intentionally left out prolonged grief disorder or complicated grief because I personally do not subscribe to this way of viewing grief. There is a divide in how some people view grief and will put it this way. Group A believes that grief is a natural, normal and human response to loss, and Group B believes grief can become pathological after a predetermined amount of time, such as six months if it is not clear already. I belong to Group A I personally believe and I speak about this in my in my grief bias episode, that grief is a natural and normal response to us. Therefore, I do not believe in complicated grief or prolonged grief because I do not see grief as a problem to be solved. There's a quote by Dr. Tazewell Boarder from the University of Missouri. She says, I think what we have here is not a prolonged grief disorder, but a prolonged lack of grief education. And I have to say that I agree with the statement, because grief is complicated. Humans are complicated. Grief is complicated and it is nuanced. So that said, grief is nuanced. If at any point you feel that you need additional support on your journey, please, please, please do not hesitate to ask for help. And to get that help just because I don't agree with this does not mean that if you feel like you need help, you shouldn't seek it out. With all of that being said, we are our best sources of information. We know ourselves, and if we tune in, we check in, we know when we should seek out help. And I highly encourage you to do that when you seek out help. It's a good idea to seek out a grief informed therapist's coach or mentor. And what that means and how you seek those out is something I discussed in that episode with Dr. Michael Harris. I will link her episode in the show notes. She provides a framework and some set of questions that are five questions that you can ask a professional to see if they provide grief informed support. I think this is very, very important because you may or may not know this, but grief training about grief, not a big part of the curriculum in therapy and in the medical fields. So somebody who has taken the extra time to learn about this is different than somebody who went through the just the traditional curriculum. It's my understanding that there are some people trying to change this, so I don't know who's teaching it and who's not. But one way to find out is by asking the right questions. Help can be in the form of therapy with a grief informed therapist. Or it could be joining support groups. It could be working with a grief informed mentor or coach, or creating a space around your grief so you can keep taking the next steps forward. People need spaces to process, integrate and just be. I personally believe grief is an invitation to slow down. Sometimes the invitation is brutal and sometimes the invitation is gentle. But there is so much power in the sacred pause. And I invite you to embrace the sacred pause whenever you can. Sometimes the pause is very brief. Sometimes it is little breaths we catch throughout our day, and sometimes it is dedicated time and space for yourself. I highly encourage you to get it however you can and build it as time goes by. However you can achieve this, give yourself permission to grieve, to be with your feelings, to move them through your body, your physical organism. To allow yourself to feel the range from the unpleasant to the pleasant, like joy, and allow yourself to create a new foundation of safety and agency from which you can be the witness to this powerful life experience. That is grief. If you need help along the way, feel free to reach out to me via Instagram. Those of you who message me know that I am quick to respond and quick to connect. This is truly hard centered work for me and I appreciate the opportunity to serve. I am working on adding more ways to connect and serve you and this community. I believe we do not have to walk this path alone. For those of you who don't know, I host a monthly meet up and you can sign up via my website. People who have attended have been from all walks of life, from all different types of losses, and everybody leaves feeling so much lighter than they came in and feeling like they can get through their next day and week. I also offer one on one mentorship where I hold sacred space for grievous to unfold and process and find ways to move forward. It's creating a secret container where rivers can just be some people like the group setting and some people don't. They prefer a more private setting. So I offer both. Now I am building a container so that we can have a consistent group of people who meet over time and grieve together to help each other move forward. I am also working on in-person retreats in addition to the podcast episode, so I'm doing all the things I'm trying to help and serve in every way possible. The in-person retreat is something that's very near and dear to my heart. I am so excited about this. It is key, whenever possible, to dedicate time and space and dedicate yourself fully to these spaces. So that goes the same for Grievous. I would say that's especially true for groupers. So I am building this. It's still very much in the ideation phase, but I encourage you to sign up for my newsletter so you can be notified. Yeah, it's a plate full of love. Graeber's deserve a space to grieve and breathe and be. I invite you to stay up to date on these things again by subscribing to my newsletter. You can find it at Griffin Lite dot com. I will link it in the show notes. That was a lot of information. I know. Thank you. If you got to the end. Thank you for being here. And thank you for taking the time to check in with yourself. That's it for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe to the Grief and Light podcast. I'd also love to connect with you and hear your thoughts and your stories. Feel free to share them with me at my Instagram page at Grief and Light. Or you can also visit Greenlight dot com for more information and updates. Thank you so much for being here, for being you. And always remember you are not alone.

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Nina Rodriguez

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