'Grief 2 Growth': Brian D. Smith on Signs, Synchronicities, and Making Meaning after Child Loss

In this episode, host Nina Rodriguez engages in a heartfelt conversation with Brian D. Smith, a certified grief educator, life purpose coach, author, speaker, and host of the Grief2Growth Podcast. They explore the profound themes of grief, loss, and the journey towards healing. Brian shares his personal experience of losing his daughter Shayna and how it transformed his understanding of life, death, and the afterlife. The discussion delves into the significance of signs and synchronicities in the grieving process, the concept of lucid dreaming as a means of connecting with loved ones, and the reconciliation of scientific and spiritual perspectives on grief.

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Through their dialogue, they aim to provide comfort and insight to those navigating their own journeys of loss. In this conversation, the speaker explores the profound themes of grief, healing, and the interconnectedness of our journeys through life. They discuss the concept of viewing life as a 'team effort', where experiences and challenges are shared among your spiritual 'team'. Brian shares his GEMS framework, which provides four practical steps for healing. The conversation also touches on the significance of gratitude and the ongoing connection with loved ones who have passed, highlighting that they remain a part of our lives in spirit.

Takeaways:

• Grief is a personal journey that varies for everyone.
• Understanding that loved ones continue to exist can provide comfort.
• Signs and synchronicities can be powerful indicators of connection with our loved ones in Spirit.
• Lucid dreaming can facilitate connection and communication.
• It's important to remain open to different perspectives on grief.
• Grief can lead to personal growth and rediscovery of purpose.
• The mind and consciousness can affect the physical world.
• Reconciliation of science and spirituality is possible.
• Setting specific signs can help in recognizing connections.
• Grief can open us to new realities and understandings.  
• We come into life with a team, not just for ourselves.
• Grief can lead to personal growth and understanding.
• Finding meaning in loss is a personal journey.
• Gratitude can shift our perspective during grief.
• Healing is not about getting over loss, but moving through it.
• The GEMS framework offers practical steps for healing.
• Our loved ones want us to thrive, not remain sad.
• Every experience, even painful ones, can lead to growth.
• We can choose the meaning we assign to our experiences.
• The connection with those we've lost continues in spirit.

Connect with Brian D. Smith:

• @grief2growth
• grief2growth.com
• Book | Grief2Growth: Planted, Not Buried

Connect with Nina Rodriguez:

• @griefandlight
• griefandlight.com

Disclaimer: griefandlight.com/safetyanddisclaimers

Chapters

• 0:00 Preview & Intro song
• 0:54 Introduction, Host's personal note
• 4:13 Shayna's Light
• 6:48 Navigating Grief: Brian D. Smith's Journey
• 10:36 Signs and Synchronicities
• 17:56 After-Life Communication
• 20:51 Lucid Dreaming & the Astral Plane
• 23:33 Reconciling our Beliefs after Loss
• 28:25 'The Team' concept by Frances Key
• 31:32 Planted, Not Buried
• 33:52 Making Meaning After Loss by leaning into curiosity
• 40:02 G.E.M.S. for Healing
• 47:00 Connect with Brian D. Smith
• 49:23 When I miss her most
• 52:20 Shayna's Ripple Effect
• 54:40 If we can do it, so can you
• 56:14 Final Thoughts and Reflections

Transcript

griefandlight (00:00.236)
I felt like her life ended there and every day I was moving one day farther away from that. And I started projecting out like, okay, in five years, am I gonna remember what her voice sounded like in 10 years? And I didn't wanna go on because I felt like I was moving away from her. And I shifted that completely. And now I look at it as like, Ram Dass has a quote, we're all just walking each other home. And it's of my favorite quotes ever. And Shayna was the kind of kid that like we'd be out and Shayna would always

wander off. And I see is like Shana ran ahead. So Shana is home. But every day I'm one day closer to seeing her again. 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. Hello everybody and welcome back to the grief and light podcast.

What if the things in life that causes the greatest pain are challenges designed to help us grow, to ultimately become what we were always meant to be? That is an invitation presented by today's remarkable guest. Brian D. Smith is a certified grief educator, positive intelligence coach and life purpose coach, dedicated to helping people rediscover their true nature and purpose. After the passing of his daughter Shana at the age of 15 in 2015, Brian deepened his study of death and the afterlife

which he had been exploring for nearly two decades. Since Shane is passing, he has made it his mission to support others dealing with loss and to help people rediscover who they are and why they are here. Brian is also the host of the Grief to Growth podcast, author of Grief to Growth, Planted, Not Buried, and now his new book, Gems of Healing. And he actively serves on the board of Helping Parents Heal, which is a nonprofit organization.

dedicated to assisting parents whose children have passed. Through his work, Brian aims to create a world where everyone can find meaning, purpose, and fulfillment even in the face of grief. You are in for a treat today, and I would like to give a very warm welcome to Brian. Brian, it's an honor. Welcome to the Grief and Light podcast. Well, thanks for having me, I'm glad to be here. I am truly honored if you will just indulge me for one minute so I could explain to the audience how meaningful this interview in particular is.

griefandlight (02:24.46)
When my brother Yosef died in 2019 unexpectedly, and as we were searching for answers, we meaning my family and I specifically, my mother and I, I came across Brian's podcast. And Brian was the first voice that became a light for our family in that time, normalizing the language of grief, giving comfort through all the conversations in the podcast with the remarkable guest who brought in topics that were new to us at that time and a little bit strange, but

through, you he's an engineer, you'll get to know his story more in a second, but through his kind of breaking apart of the conversation and the inner workings of these very abstract topics, we were able to gain a different perspective. And really it was a light in the darkness at that time. It was that hand that reaches out to guide us at a very difficult time. So I just want to thank you for your podcast, for your work and for shining.

Shayna lights so brightly that I feel like I almost know her. I know her energy through everything that you've shared and I know you've helped so many. So thank you for indulging me there. I just wanted to share that. It's a very meaningful conversation for me personally as well. Well, thank you for what you're doing, know, moving it forward. When I, when Shayna passed in 2015, I, that's when I first started listening to podcasts and I found out about,

Sandra Champlain's podcast at the time, Roberta Grimes, and they were that light in the darkness for me. So I'm glad to be able to be that for someone else and it's great to see what you're doing. Thank you so much. you know, in full honesty, is your podcast is part of the reason the grief and light podcast exists, because I felt the importance of these conversations and everybody carries them differently and it was very inspiring. So thank you for that. And on that note, I see Shana's beautiful face in the background there. So

Tell us about Shana's life, who was she and who she continues to be. Yeah. Yeah, I would say who is Shana. When she passed, when she transitioned, when she dropped her body, graduated, all those terms, I don't use the word died because I don't believe anyone dies, but when she passed, it was in June of 2015. She was 15 and a half years old. She was...

griefandlight (04:45.312)
She'd just gotten back from a volleyball tournament. She was a volleyball player. played at national level. She was a basketball player. She had gone to nationals for that. She was going from ninth grade, going into 10th grade. Very active girl, very well liked, great student, all those things. And she passed in her sleep. We, that morning it was a normal morning like any other and

she was supposed to go downstairs and work with my wife. were running our own business out of the home at the time. And, know, my wife kept texting her and Shayna wasn't, you know, getting back to her, but Shayna was kind of how she was anyway. but we did, we discovered she had passed during the night. so she had a heart condition that was diagnosed, but it was minor. it was called wolf Parkinson's or wolf white Parkinson's, which would make your heart speed up. that.

she'd been seeing a cardiologist, they said that was not a problem, that shouldn't have been an issue. So we don't know, we don't really know what physically happened. We just know that she passed in her sleep. Well, I know she continues to exist, but in that human side of us that feels the pain, I'm sorry for the loss, because we ultimately wish they were still here, but here we are and this is why we're doing this exploration on life after loss and life altering change.

And since then, I started listening to your podcast about five years ago. It's almost five years ago. And I remember you doing the fifth year episode, know, anniversary of Shana's passing. And I remember thinking, gosh, I hope I could get to where Brian is someday. That level of, you know, I don't know if peace is the right word, but that level of just deep, profound understanding that it's going to be okay. So how did...

Brian get there in those five years and I can't believe it, but it's been five years since almost. And how has that shifted in the past five years? So how did Brian understanding of grief and loss change in the first five years and then in the next five years since? Well, what I would say is to begin with, I had an advantage over a lot of people because I grew up with a fear of death. And because of that fear of death, I had done a lot of studying about the afterlife.

griefandlight (07:06.144)
So by the time Shayna had passed, I'd probably been studying it for probably around 20 years, pretty seriously, maybe even longer than that. So when I tell people when it comes to grief, there's like two aspects of it. There's we grieve what we perceive that we've lost and that's their physical presence. But we also grieve sometimes what they've lost, right? Their life was cut off. They're no longer able to enjoy things, no longer whatever.

I never really had that with Shayna. I got to bypass that part of the grief, if you will. I always knew that she was, she was okay. But back to my loss, I was like, it didn't, that didn't help at all. I wanted her here. I wanted her here physically. And I didn't want to be here without her. You know, when, when a parent loses a child, you feel like when we have a child, it's your job to take care of them. And

even though I knew she was okay, it's like, she's not here, right? I can't take care of her anymore. So that was a big hurdle that I had to get over. So I do wanna say for people that are looking at me now or looking at you now and saying, look, they're doing great. It's a process we go through and it's really, really rough those first few years, no matter how much you know, no matter what your faith is, it's still a difficult thing.

So for me, to answer your question as to what I did, I threw a series of synchronicities, things just started happening. People would introduce me to themselves and people would introduce me to other people. And I was pretty active on Facebook and someone said, do you know this guy named Mark Ireland? And I, no, I'd never heard of him. So well, he had lost his son. He's written a couple of books. He's part of this organization called Helping Parents Heal. You should reach out to him.

So I reached out to Mark and Mark was very generous with his time. sent me his books. we talked and he was telling me like this, this perspective that helping parents heal has my daughter, Kayla wanted to go on vacation. We were going to go on vacation. We always went to the beach. She said, well, we're not going to go to the beach because that was Shane this thing. So let's go to the opposite. Let's go to the desert. So we decided to go to Phoenix. had never been to Arizona. And as we're making plans to get there, find out that

griefandlight (09:23.79)
Elizabeth Bussan, who's the co-founder of Helping Parents Heal lives in Phoenix or outside of Phoenix. So we met with her and she told us all about Helping Parents Heal and I was like, yeah, I'd like to be a part of this. So that's how I got involved in that journey. So it was, series of synchronicities reaching out to people, people reaching out to me. I was listening to Roberta Grimes' podcast and she mentioned Suzanne Wilson. I ended up getting a reading with Suzanne Wilson, who's one of the best mediums in the world.

And she let me know, she actually reinforced what I already knew, that Shana was still with me. Well, I take that back. I knew that we carried on after our bodies dropped. I didn't know we were still part of this world. I was still part of that mindset, like you die and you go to heaven and then you see your loved ones when they all get there. And what Suzanne and others introduced me to is the fact that our loved ones are still with us, that we can still communicate with them.

the same exact way, it's through signs and synchronicities and dreams and things of that nature. But they're still here and they're still very involved in our lives. So that perspective helped. That perspective helped me a lot. That's wonderful and I love, love, love signs and synchronicities. And again, that's something that you helped us open up to because if this is new to especially a new griever or a first time griever, it's so strange. The whole, everything you're feeling can be so brand new.

And so the signs and synchronicities may not be evidence and knowing what to look for may not be that evidence. So is this something that you opened up to immediately or naturally and organically or is this something that somebody had to say, no, this is how it works and this is what you look for? So what was that journey? Yeah. It's worlds of signs and synchronicities. That's a great question. I'm an engineer by training. I'm a chemical engineer. I always want to know how things work. And I can tell you 10 years in this journey with Shaina.

are nine and a half years at this point still don't know how things work. And sometimes we have to kind of let go of that. when I first heard about signs, I'm like, okay, well, first of all, things just happen, right? You see a card outside your window. Does it mean that your loved one sent them or that that some people think that is your loved one. So it's hard to, kind of get out of the mindset. Like, okay, everything is signed is nothing assigned. How do you know whether it's a sign? But some of them are just undeniable.

griefandlight (11:49.294)
And one of the advantages of doing the podcast is I've gotten to talk to a lot of people and they've gotten to share their sides of me. And again, they can just be undeniable. synchronicity is something that in and of itself might not be that rare or weird, but it's the timing of it. And I'll give you a real quick example. One morning I was listening to a podcast as I was leaving the house and I go for a walk every morning.

The person on the podcast, the guest said, one of the signs my daughter sends me is I'll be out somewhere and someone will walk up to me and say that they knew my daughter before she passed. And I'm thinking, that's not a sign. That's just someone walking up and saying they know your daughter. That's not a sign at all. And so I go for my walk that morning, same route I walk every day. And as I'm walking past this one house, I notice a woman walking down her driveway approaching me.

And I'm listening to music on my, so I take out my AirPods and I'm just like, yeah. And she goes, hi, my name is Nicole. My daughter was in Girl Scouts with your daughter. And I see you walk every day and I just wanted to introduce myself to you. Wow. And I'm like, okay, wait a minute. I just said that this is not a sign. And I walked the same route every day. And at this point it had probably been seven years. And this is the day she chooses to walk out and introduce herself.

That's what we call a synchronicity, right? That in and of itself wouldn't have been anything, but the fact that I had that thought earlier, I was like, wow, that one blew me away. That is impressive. And it's like you say, it's the timing. It's how, you know, sometimes we ask for it and eventually it shows up very specifically like we asked for and other times it's just this almost like magical feel to it. I say if it makes you pause, count that as valid, right? Like if it makes you just kind of, it takes you back a little bit.

And actually in the topic of signs, remember November, 2020, I was getting my hair done and I leave and it's dark outside here in Florida. live in Miami. I'm driving, I'm pulling out of the garage and I see this car in front of me. It's a black Mercedes with the license plate that says Shayna spelled just like your daughter's name. And I was listening to your podcast and I was like, no, it cannot be right.

griefandlight (14:06.434)
So I take a picture, I send it to my mom and I'm like, should I send this to Brian? He's gonna think I'm weird and crazy and whatever. And I said, you know what, better on the side of whatever, let me just send it. And then you responded, I remember, I think it was either your mother-in-law's birthday that day or it coincided, was late end of November with a special date with the family. And I just thought, gosh, that is so magical how these things work because I just so in tune with the energy. I thought that was beautiful.

It was probably Kayla's birthday, because Kayla's birthday is November 22nd. So yeah, it is. And again, I'm like, I don't know how these things work. I don't know how spirit manipulates it. know Jung was really into synchronicities, and I work with Dr. Gary Schwartz, and he's really into it. We do know that the mind consciousness does affect the physical world. We've actually, we could do that. We've proven that in the lab.

So there's no reason why spirit couldn't manipulate things here. And not only, so just because we don't understand how it works, it doesn't mean it doesn't work. Cause I've seen it happen. Real quick, I'll give you another one. This one just totally blew me away. My daughter loved to play on my phone and she would go in and she like kind of played this little game. I would change my lock screen, you know, a picture of her and her sister. And she would go in and change it to a picture of just her. And so she was always messing with my phone.

So one day I had my podcast, I was looking at my podcast on my phone, one of the podcast apps on it, and all the covers of every episode, it changed to a picture of Shayna. And it was a picture of Shayna when she was like two or three years old and she was playing with these blocks and she's stacking them up. And I thought it was just one of the most amazing pictures I'd seen because she was so young and she had made this huge tower that was above her head. And I thought, how did this happen? And then I panicked, I'm like,

is everybody seeing this, know, all around the world that are listening to my podcast. So went and I looked on my computer and all the covers were right. They hadn't changed at all. And I went back and looked at my phone and they were still all weird. So I took screenshots of it because otherwise I wouldn't believe it would have happened. I still have those screenshots. And then they just went back. They went back to the way they should have been. Now I'm like, I know how iPhones work. I know how photographs work. know.

griefandlight (16:33.454)
How did that happen? I have no idea. And for anybody who knows how the podcast, the backend works, you would have to manually change every single one for them to show up that way. So the fact that it showed up and it wasn't out, it wasn't on the public facing side. It was on your private face. Only on my phone. That's wild. So yes. And she has beautiful energy. I've heard some of the, she meaning your daughter, Shayna, she comes through quite a bit through mediums and conversations that you've had in your podcast with

people who channel the energy of loved ones who have transitioned. And I like that you used the word transition and that was another language that we adopted, another word that we adopted. So I know you've felt her, you feel her. If there's a parent that just lost somebody and they, a question I get is, well, how can I dream with them or how can I get a sign or I never get signs? How can you help them tap into that and maybe open up that door?

Well, first of all, you know, it's really interesting because there's different opinions on stuff. And I try to take these opinions and kind of make them make sense because there'll be, they're sometimes very opposite. So some people will say, if you're in early grief and you're in such deep grief, you can block the signs, which only adds guilt to you, right? Cause now it's like, well, it's my fault. not getting the signs and how am I supposed to get out of this group? So I didn't really like it when I first heard that, but

Spirit is kind of as a lighter energy. And if we are in a lighter vibration, it is easier for them to reach us. And I interviewed someone on my podcast and she gave this great analogy. She's like, imagine like when you're in Spirit, you're up higher, right? And we're down lower, a more dense thing. And if you've ever scuba dived, you realize when you get deeper, you can feel the pressure. So if we're down deep, it doesn't mean that they can't reach us, it just makes it more difficult.

And some people are more experienced or better at diving. might be able to reach us. Others may not be able to. So raising our vibration does make it easier. But then on the other hand, some people will say, well, we do get signed to for super deep grief because they know we need it. So what I would say to people is keep your eyes open. Another thing that's been a strange observation is they don't always come directly to you. Sometimes your neighbor will have a dream or your cousin will have a dream or your grandmother.

griefandlight (18:57.928)
And people will again say, why did they come to them instead of me? Well, again, we have different skills, different ways that we can, some people remember their dreams, some people don't. So be open to however they present the site. The other thing is don't get really fixated on, okay, I want a cardinal. Now I did have a deal with Shayna and after she passed, I said, if I find coins, I want them to be dimes. Because pennies are everywhere, so dimes are gonna be our thing. And so she does.

send me dimes and if I see a dime, you know, it's from her and I found dimes in all kinds of crazy places. So it's okay to set a specific sign and that's a good thing, but also be open to other things. I just gave you a couple of signs that Shayna has given me that were like totally out of the blue. So understand they can come in different ways. So that's what I would say to people and be patient. There's some things you can do. I'm going to talk about my friend, Suzanne Wilson. Again, she wrote a great book called Soul Smart.

where she talks about afterlife communication. She gives some tips about how to get dreams and stuff like that. there are things you can do to make it easier for your loved one. Those are great tips and advice and it really is being open. And I love that you've said that sometimes the signs come through somebody else. So in my case, for example, my mom will ask a question. She won't tell me about it. She'll tell me afterwards when it comes through in a dream through me. We had an agreement that if

any of us ever dream about my brother, then we would tell each other. So when I do, she's like, my gosh, I asked him that yesterday and I didn't even know that she had that conversation to herself probably in her own mind. And so I think that's a beautiful observation and tip because a lot of times it does come through other people. are some people that are more receptive or maybe even just less in their head about it, less skeptical.

And I think that's very powerful. So on the topic of dreams, you've spoken about lucid dreaming. Talk to us a little bit about what that is and how that has helped either in your grief or just maybe even deepen your understanding of life and the afterlife. Well, we're going to get into some kind of esoteric concepts here. So what I've come to understand is that when we sleep, our bodies sleep, but our souls or spirits don't.

griefandlight (21:18.414)
So they travel. And you could have dreams that are just dreams, or you could have dreams where you're actually visiting the astral level, which is kind of, think I see it as a kind of an in-between level between where our loved ones ultimately go and where we are. So it's kind of maybe a meeting point. So when we work on lucid dreaming, it helps us want to remember our dreams. And also we can ask, I visit my loved one on the astral plane? And so,

we can, we can have these, these experiences also lucid dreaming I've found really helps with understanding the, the dreamlike nature of the world that we're in. We, we perceive this world is real and it's solid and everything, but it's really, everything is mental. Everything is unconsciousness. So as we start to really understand the dream world, we understand this world better. And so I've been working on, on lucid dreaming and.

It's really interesting because as I've worked on it, one of the things you do is when you question everything. when you're in, when you know you're awake, you question, I awake or am I asleep? Which seems like a silly thing. But as you put that in your mind, you can do that while you're dreaming. And I've gotten to the point now where a lot of times I'll be having a dream and I'm like, okay, this, this isn't real. This isn't adding up. This, this is a dream. And then you can kind of control that. and that just helps with your, with your mental processes, understanding again,

the nature of reality, that idea of getting outside of our consciousness and understanding that not every dream is just a dream. Sometimes when you're having those dreams, you're actually visiting someone on the astral. I love that. And I've heard in theory that you could work on strengthening that muscle, if you will, to be able to be more present in your lucid dreaming. And that's just a fascinating topic, to be honest. And that's what I loved about.

the way that you introduce the conversations because you have that more science-based background, the way that you ask the questions and that you gather your information, you do your research, and then you translate that to your audience is very powerful because it could be a little daunting and to some people depending on their beliefs, right? It could even be scary to learn some of these things and reconciling our beliefs with the current reality with where we want to take our lives after loss could be

griefandlight (23:42.784)
a challenge in and of itself, that journey. And so what I specifically have in mind is that you come from an engineering background. You were raised, I believe, in a very fundamentalist type of religion, and you've been open to the spiritual side, the esoteric side, and the afterlife. So how have you reconciled those seemingly opposing points of views into the Brian who works in this space now in its fullness? Yeah, it's a real challenge.

and I see fundamentalists on both ends of the spectrum as being the same. It's like they've gone so far around, they've come back to meet together. So you've got the fundamentalist religion, which will tell you that, you know, the stuff we're talking about is evil and scary and stay away from it. and you know, all the things that they say. And then you've got the materialist that will tell you that it's impossible. There's wishful thinking.

and they're just as rigid in their thinking. I've had people that have asked me for evidence when I present them evidence, they say, well, you're talking about mediumships, for example, and I'm like, yes, and they'll say, well, that's impossible. That's not a scientific approach. Scientific approach, you don't say something impossible, you won't understand how it works, but you don't say that it's impossible. So what I try to do is, and I try to encourage people is, open up your mind, don't let either side tell you.

that it's impossible or that it's evil. Open up your mind and see what makes sense to you, what speaks to your heart, what resonates with you. I find that a lot of the things that we learn, pretty much everything we learn about the spiritual, when you hear it, it's more like remembering than learning. It's like, yeah, that makes sense. And you'll hear people eventually start to say, well, yeah, I remember this now, I remember that this is true. So go with what your heart tells you.

what your intuition tells you. And that's one of the things I'm learning is to get so much out of my left brain and getting a little bit more into my right brain to understand that my intuition has been right, that my heart is right. That's the way try to help people understand it. And I also wanna say to people, this is not woo-woo, this is not wishful thinking. read a lot, and I read like Tom Campbell, who's a physicist who does out of body traveling. And I said I worked with Gary Schwartz.

griefandlight (26:07.148)
Penny Satori, there's Julie Bichel. All these people are doctors. These are serious people with PhDs who understand how to test something and it's been tested. Some of these things have been written up in peer-reviewed science journals. It's really a matter of having a holistic worldview. I look at mankind and I think we've been around for who knows how many thousands of years. And for most of that history, we knew that we were spiritual beings. And we believe, we knew, I don't even to say we believed that we knew it.

And we lived our lives that way. Then about 200 years ago, we got so smart, we thought that we thought we knew everything. We said, we don't need that stuff anymore. And that's why we're in the state we're now because we've forgotten who we are. So I see it as more, it's a reclaiming. It's a reclaiming of who we are. And it's a understanding of who we are. And then we don't have to throw out all the Western medicine and the technology. And I love my iPhone. I love being able to talk to you over the internet.

It's given us some great, great tools, but we can have both at the same time. Love, love, love that. And it's so true. I believe that so much of this understanding comes from reconnecting mind, body, spirit. And we live in the context of a society that likes to separate and compartmentalize for the sake of productivity. To keep somebody productive, you can't be just like sitting there trying to meditate all the time or whatever.

But think we should be able to dedicate some time to this exploration in whatever way that feels true and right to you in that moment. And in the context of grief, grief can crack us open to these realities. I now talk about things and believe things that five years ago I didn't even know existed. you know, I think it's powerful and useful to explore and to talk about. at least, like you said, just be open to a holistic worldview. I spent a little three and a half years listening to...

podcasts and stories about near-death experiences. One, because they brought me comfort. I did not care if they were true or not. they just, storytelling-wise, they brought me comfort. And then two, you can't help after hearing, you know, story after story from people all over the world and seeing all the coincidences and they share mostly one nugget of truth. It's like, how could it, how could there not be some truth to this? Right? And I don't have to understand it to,

griefandlight (28:22.506)
allow it to just do the work that it needs to do within myself. So in your podcast, please, if you're listening or watching, I'm going to Brian's Grief to Growth podcast on the show notes. Please do yourself a favor and listen to these episodes. It's one of these where you'll probably binge because they are fascinating. Particularly some of the ones that are my favorite are with Bernardo Kastrop, he's incredible, Francis Key with the team, Susan Giesemann, Natalie Sudman. So all these stories that you've

shared there that opened my eyes to we're not operating in the context of us and us alone. We come with a team, if you could talk a little bit about what that is, what that means, and planted, not buried. What does that mean in the context of our existence? We might get a little abstract here, but that's okay, come along for the ride and- Yeah, absolutely. Where this goes? In terms of the team concept, for example, that-

I've learned so much from Francis or Frankie. And it's a series of books. They were channeled by her mother after her mother passed. Frankie's always been a channel. And it's kind of interesting because I think Frankie was always trying to get her mother to write books or writes verses. So they've actually they've teamed up together now. And her mother now that she's in spirit, she's just channeling these books back through Frankie and their life change. They've totally changed the way I look at everything. The concept is that

You know, again, there's like basically I say three ways to look at our journeys in life. We can look at the solo view that we're here and we're just on our own. And that's the materialistic view. That's the view a lot of us have and the world's about us and about our lives. As we get more spiritual, sometimes we'll think, I have guides, I've got angels, I've got, but they're like all in support roles. And I'm still the star of the show, right? But the team concept is that we don't come in just for ourselves. We come in for a team.

that we come in with over and over again, we switch out roles, we have different responsibilities. And analogy that Frankie uses in the books are, like if someone's going on a business trip to a conference and they're gonna make a presentation, they work with their team before they leave, they have their plan, they go to the conference, they make their presentation, and they come back and they debrief. So that's one of the concepts that I think about. So I think about like myself and Shayna, my daughter Kayla, my wife, it's like,

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We're a team, we're in this together. know, and Shayna has decided that she was going to leave early this time for the benefit of everybody around us. So we all, it's all self-sacrificing and self-serving at the same time. So I'm going to, I'm going to take a shorter life this time, but I'm going to do it so that you guys can grow. And then as you grow, I grow. The other thing is we share these experiences with our team. So when I, when I'm going through something that's really difficult,

It gives me comfort to know I'm actually quote, I'm literally taking one for the team. So me going through this experience that I'm going through now, losing my daughter, maybe another team member doesn't have to go through that exact same thing because they can benefit from what I'm going through. And again, back to planet, not buried as analogy from Jesus talks about, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it produces much fruit.

and you think about a seed, a seed until it falls to the ground, it's not going to grow. And when it falls to the ground, from all outside viewpoint, it looks like it's dead, right? And when we plant a seed, we use the word plant, we don't use the word bury because we bury things we don't expect to come back. So when we go through these tragedies, if we can look at ourselves, and there are a lot of analogies, butterflies is what everybody uses, seeds, whatever.

Because nature also reflects reality. So we can look at nature and we get a lot of truths from that. So when we go through these things, instead of looking at yourself like it's over, it's like what's going to come of this? What am I going to be after I go through this process? And one of the advantages of getting older, as I am, once we have more experience behind us, we can start to see the arc of our life, how it works out. So.

When I got divorced when I was in my early 20s, I thought that was the worst thing possible could happen. But I realized now that made me grow and it taught me lessons and then taught me sometimes it's what not to do. So you learn, don't do that again. But that's, that's a lesson. It's a valuable lesson. being fired from a job when my daughter was nine months old, again, major tragedy, I thought, but it allowed me to take an opportunity or risks that I wouldn't have taken otherwise that panned out for the rest of my career.

griefandlight (33:13.698)
So I realized that that was actually something that was for my benefit. So then we get to the extremes of like losing a person and we say, well, that can never be for my benefit. But why not? If you take the bigger picture, the bigger view of life, that they're still with you, that you're going to see them again, that this is not your only life. This is just one of who knows how many and take that perspective and get curious about what's this going to do for me, to me, people around me.

It just gives you another way of looking at things that works really, really well for me. Thank you for that. And I'm fully aware that if you're listening and you're in early grief, this might seem just not even accessible. Like the conversation that we're having right now might not even seem like anything that you could reach at this point. But I do want to say, this is something that you come to on your own terms.

your beliefs about the purpose and the meaning behind it all finding meaning like David Kessler says, which I know you you've interviewed him recently and you were certified with him as well. But so in the meaning that you give to your life after a loss is very personal. And at the end of the day, getting to these points where we can say like, this is all happening for a bigger context, for a bigger purpose that I may not understand. And that's OK, is also a beautiful and powerful

and empowering stands to take after loss. And to be honest, it was very helpful for my mother and I because it's not the same as everything happens for a reason. Those platitudes that just make us cringe each and every time is just more like, gosh, well, I'm still here, right? Somebody told me, well, you have to be an active participant in your life. And that might sound a little harsh to somebody grieving, but it rang true to me. And in that active particip...

patient in my own life, said, okay, so what meaning do I give to all of this? And, you know, years later, this is part of my meaning sitting here with you, which is a huge honor and full circle moment. And it's also the work that we do and having these conversations and you being a light for other people, myself included, it's all part of it. And that's not to say our person died so that we could have this conversation.

griefandlight (35:28.878)
It's more just that, there are so many operating mechanisms that we don't know. I heard you say in a different podcast, I'm thinking around like, don't ask why. There's, why is not, there's no point to asking why. Maybe expand on that a little bit actually. Why, a parent who's saying, why me, why my kid, why did this happen? Why is why not the best question to ask? Yeah, well, I do want to echo what you said.

about like, I understand that these concepts we're talking about can be actually offensive to people when you're in early grief, it can actually make you angry. And it does sound like the, know, everything happens for a reason. So just basically suck it up and don't be sad about it. No, we have to go through all the emotions, anger, frustration, fear, guilt, all those things, they're all part of the human experience. So we're not saying that any of those emotions are bad. It's just

Can you get curious about it? That's why instead of starting with death, start with, an exercise I do with people was like draw a timeline of your life and write down all the bad things that happened. Your parents got divorced, you fell and broke your arm, whatever. And can you think of anything good that came out of that? And universally people always say yes, something good came out of that. But we do have these events that when we're too close to them, we can't see that.

because we're still too close to it. Just hold yourself open to the possibility. Just hold yourself open to the possibility that this might. The other thing I wanna say is that when it comes to meaning, nothing in and of itself has meaning. Events just are. Again, people are gonna think that doesn't make sense to me, right? Of course, if I'm in a car accident, that's bad. Winning the lottery is good.

but not necessarily. People that win the lottery a lot of times end up miserable. People that have gotten cancer have said it's the best thing that ever happened to me. People that have had children that are disabled. I interviewed a couple of in the last couple of weeks. So there's children with the best blessing they ever had. So understand that nothing has meaning other than what we give to it. And that meaning that we give to it is a choice. I'll answer your question about the why thing. Humans, we are meaning making machines.

griefandlight (37:51.116)
So we are always gonna ask why. I'm thinking of my daughter, Shayna. She would ask you why and perpetuity, just like always, why daddy, why, why, why? To the point where you just finally say, Shayna, that's just the way it is. That's human, that's fine, it's okay to ask why. But again, when you lose a child, for example, you can drive yourself crazy with the why question. Why did this happen to me? Why not to somebody else?

And I think about a really profound moment in my life. was at the first Helping Parents Heal conference and Suzanne Geisman was there and she's channeling Sinaya. And there were, think, 500 parents at the first one. Imagine 500 people in a room who've lost a child, child has transitioned. And someone asks Sinaya the question, why? Why did this tragedy happen to us? Why, you know, why us? And Sinaya said, from our perspective, it's not a tragedy.

Because from our perspective, when someone transitions out of your world, they just come to our world. They're not lost, they're not losing anything. We are eternal spirits. Whether your life is five minutes or 100 years, from the spirit world perspective, doesn't really make much of a difference. So that why question, I would just say, let's just set it aside for right now. Let's explore what can we do with it. As you said,

You're still here. You have to make meaning out of this. You're going to make meaning out of this. Even if you decide it's meaningless, that's meaning that you're assigning to it. So what if you just explore the idea, and I'll have people hold both ideas in their head, right? If it's meaningless, how does that make you feel? If it's meaningful, how does that make you feel? Which one makes you feel better? And people might say, you're fooling yourself because one is true, but we don't.

We don't know which one is true. We get to make a choice. So that's what I try to present to people. Thank you for that. And it's a powerful frame of mind to adopt. If you're open to it, it really can be life altering in the most meaningful way. speaking of that, you have your GEMS program and the book coming out. I know GEMS is an acronym you help parents heal. How do you define grief?

griefandlight (40:14.168)
How do you define healing? And how does the GEMS framework fit into that? Okay. Grief is a perceived, because everything's about perception, loss. It's when something doesn't go the way that you expected or wanted it to go. And grief can apply to the loss of a person, as we usually talk about, but also the loss of health, loss of a relationship. Grief can apply to a lot of things. There's a lot of

invisible grief as some people are starting to call it now. So we're starting to acknowledge that there's a lot of different forms of grief. When it comes to healing, healing is really interesting word because I saw a meme the other day that was talking about how we can become so obsessed with healing that we don't accept our own imperfections. So healing is something that we're constantly looking for, but when it comes to grief, what it's not, it's not an illness. It's not something to be gotten over.

So healing is a very tricky word when it comes to that because there is that raw pain, I don't want to be here that we do want to move through. But the grief, as David Kessler says, ask him, how long is the grief going to last? David's very blunt with this. He's like, how long is your love on going to be dead? That's how long the grief is going to last. It doesn't mean it's going to stay in the same form. So with

With GEMS, what I try to do is put together four practices that I do that I find help me to move forward. As you said, it's an acronym. Attitude is the first, exercise, meditation or mindfulness, and then self-care or sleep. Actually, I've kind of altered those two, I wanna get all those things in there, but it's a great, I like the acronym, so that's what it is. So gratitude.

And again, I remember when I first heard about this gratitude thing, it actually made me angry. It's like, what do mean? It can be triggering first, then people. What do you mean be grateful for, you know, because my loved one died and everything is bad? Well, the thing is, again, part of being human is we focus on what's bad. It's evolutionary, it's fine, it's who we are. So we have to really work on focusing on what's good. So in early grief, tell people, it could just be somatic things, things with your body. Okay, are you warm?

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because it's cold outside, are you cool? Do you have air conditioning? Are you fed? Just things like that. And it's a practice that really trains our mind to focus on what's good, not only on what's bad. And it actually becomes, it's really wild. After a while, you just shift and you just start doing it without even realizing it. So first I tell people, just real simple, when you wake up in the morning, before you get out of bed, think of three things you're grateful for. Again, might be my bed's warm.

If you're in the shower, it's like, I love, I like hot showers. might be I'm having dinner with friends and they whatever it doesn't have to be, you know, something big. It's just, it's, training those neural pathways. Exercise, whatever works for you. I mentioned earlier, I walk every morning. that's what, that's what works for me. It's good for me physically and it's really great for my mental health. So I'll listen to podcasts, listen to music, meditate, whatever. that's, that's my exercise. If it's going to the gym.

If it's working in the yard, know, whatever it is for you. mindfulness. People don't like a lot of people don't like the word meditation is I can't meditate. There's lots, there's so many different ways to do mindfulness. Now find something that works for you. and that's again, that's training your mind. I, I, I say I teach mental fitness. That's a big part of this thing is like, you've really got to train your mind because your mind will just run off and do it every once unless you get control of it.

And then I really encourage people, and this is something that I've learned in chain of plans, self-care is so important. And so many people in our society have been taught it's all about work, it's about effort, it's about the grind, and they don't take care of themselves. And even some religions, including mine when I was growing up, teach to put everybody else before yourself. That's never good advice.

You want to put yourself first because if you don't, you're not going have anything to give to other people. So I'm always work with my clients. They're usually really high achieving people. That's why they come to me. And it's funny because they're like, well, what should I do? And I'm like, okay, for you, you need to slow down. Don't do another program. Don't go to another retreat, you know, take some time in the afternoon and goof off, you know, watch a movie. those things are important. I was talking with a client just, just a couple.

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yesterday, the day before, and they're like, I need to rest more. But they get up in the morning, they do this, they do this, they do this. And I said, what is rest to you? Like watching old TV shows. I'm like, well, do that. And don't look at that as like wasting time. That's actually you're being productive because you're recharging your battery. So those are the four things I really try to work with people on. They're literally things you should do every day.

Just like you brush your teeth every day. You know, these are things for your mental and your emotional and your spiritual fitness that you should do every day. That's a great framework. Super easy to remember and very helpful in many different contexts. I love the gratitude part because like you say, it's not this toxic positivity thing good all the time. It's not that it's just that gratitude opens the, it's like cracking the door open to let a little bit of light in. And the one tool that I have is I have this little whiteboard.

and it says grateful for and then I have literally one, two, three. So every morning it's in my room. So every morning I see it and it's blank. I don't put the three things. It's just every morning, just think of something that you are grateful for. And like you said, it could be the simplest thing, a warm shower, coffee in the morning, my puppy, those kinds of things. And the joy comes from oftentimes the mundane. There's so much joy in the mundane and the everyday life that we...

take for granted, quite frankly. tuning back into that is very powerful. also know somebody who puts an alarm on her phone at nine o'clock every day, three things I'm grateful for, let's go, right? And she'll text it to her husband or her friend or whatever, but it's a practice. And so when her parents passed or, you know, they suffered some other misfortunes, seemingly they kept that practice and it was very helpful. And these anchors are more important than we realize in moving through difficult times when everything feels like the

Earth is shifting underneath us. Thank you for that framework. Where can people find more information about it? Where can they work with you if they wanted to? I know you have many offerings on your website that are wonderfully well put together, thought out, and helpful to a lot of people. So maybe tell people how they could find you and work with you. Sure. You could find me at grief2growth.com. It says grief, the numeral two, growth.com. And I do have the GEMS guide. There's a free version of it.

griefandlight (47:23.566)
PDF you can download, just go to careerforgrowth.com slash gems, G E S. there's also the version that the more full version that's for sale on Amazon. and that's the one that, that you mentioned. I do work with people one-on-one. I have a community, it's, on a platform called circle. So it's kind of like Facebook, but it's a lot more shut down and no ads and all that kind of stuff. so it's free to join. So it's careerforgrowth.com slash community. You apply to join.

I just want to make sure that people that join are serious. you can go there and apply to join than that. I am launching online groups. So we're recording this in late October. This should be available in the next couple of weeks. People said they want to work with groups. think groups are really great. So that'll be coming out really soon. And you'll find that on my website as well.

You know, there's the podcast, of course, and the YouTube channel. So I try to make myself available to people in as many ways as possible. And when you go into the community, you'll see I also have a few online courses and stuff like that as well. Well, you are a wealth of information. If you're listening and watching, the more you look into Brian's work, the more you'll realize how helpful it is in different contexts for different people. You really, in the years that you've studied this,

20 years now, and also the podcast and through everybody you've interviewed, we gain insights that we normally wouldn't if we were in a more linear track in life, if you will. And through knowing other people's experiences and being in it ourselves and learning from other people, we can offer that wisdom through the programs. What you're doing is incredible. And I'm thankful that you've answered the call to help people this way. So I will certainly link all that information in the show notes. Again, it's grief, number two, growth.

grieftogrowth.com and that's also the name of the podcast. So if you're looking on YouTube and on the other podcasting platforms, you can find it under that name as well. And I would be amiss. I have a special request for a question. I told my mom I'm interviewing Brian tomorrow. Do you have any questions for him? And so she said, yes, actually. So I'm going to read it verbatim. She says, please ask him. In those moments when he missed her most, what was most helpful? What did he do in those moments when he missed her most?

griefandlight (49:43.426)
What was most helpful? What did he do? Okay. Well, this is really interesting because I don't remember which meeting friend of mine said this, but I found it to be deeply profound. She said those times we're missing them the most. We feel like we just can't stand them not being here. Think of it this way. That's probably the time they've drawn closest to you. And what it is is you're feeling their spiritual presence, but you're missing their physical presence.

And I found that has been really, really helpful for me. Another thing that I realized, because when Shayna passed, again, it was 2015, I felt like her life ended there. And every day I was moving one day farther away from that. And I started projecting out, like, okay, in five years, am I gonna remember what her voice sounded like? In 10 years. And I didn't wanna go on because I felt like I was moving away from her. And I shifted that completely.

And now I look at it as like, okay, Ram Dass has a quote, we're all just walking each other home. And it's one of my favorite quotes ever. And Shayna was the kind of kid that like we'd be out and Shayna would always wander off. And I see is like Shayna ran ahead. So Shayna is home, but every day I'm one day closer to seeing her again. It's not that morbid, like I wanna die right now kind of thing. There was that for a while to be frank, but now it's like, can wait.

But every day I'm one day closer to seeing her. I don't know when that day is gonna be, but every day is one day closer. So when I'm missing her, I try to remember her presence. You know, it's funny, I was talking somebody the day about pictures. Shayna's picture, I don't if you can see the digital frame behind me, but that does nothing but rotate pictures of Shayna. She's on my watch. I talk to her every day. So I don't miss her the way that I used to.

because I feel like she's still with me. Sometimes, yeah, sometimes I do miss her physical presence and we're together with family. I'm like, you what would Shayna be like if she was here? I'm not going to say that don't have those days or those days even, their hours or their moments. But yeah, all this stuff that I'm talking about, that's why I do it. It's constant, it's work, as I said, gems every day. Thank you so much for that. I'm sure she'll appreciate it and I appreciate it as well.

griefandlight (52:06.862)
And it's a daily thing. definitely do a beautiful job of honoring Shayna. like I said, I almost feel like I knew, I don't obviously didn't know her, but I knew her energy or know her energy, right? Because she's so, she shines so brightly and you've shared so many beautiful things about her. And actually I'm curious. I know that her friends, I believe it was on her birthday or her anniversary, they would come to your house and spend some time with you and your wife and her sister. Is that still something that happens? I know it's been a while, but

you know, maybe that's something that's still ongoing. How do they keep her memory alive? Yeah, it's cool. They call themselves the Shayna Six after she passed. So there were seven of them. It's so cool because it's a little like, really multicultural little group. They don't come anymore because they're like in their 20s now. So some of them are, I think they're married and they've moved away. But when they were here, they would come every anniversary and every birthday. And they still reach out. They still reach out every anniversary and every birthday.

And it's really cool to see her impact on them. When they got to college, they wrote their college essays about Shayna and this is, you know, three, four years after she had passed. So yeah, it's, her, her ripples still go out and you talked about feeling your energy. When I'm working with clients, a lot of times they'll say, can, I can feel her looking at me through, through that picture. And people do find your energy to be very comforting. Definitely. She's a beautiful, beautiful person and soul.

And as I want to give a special mention to her sister, as a bereaved sibling myself, it could be a very lonely journey of life without her sibling. Does she have this connection with Shayna as well? Kayla, right? Yeah, Kayla. Yeah. Kayla. Yeah. Frankly, Kayla, she values her privacy. But she's three years old and she was 18 when Shayna passed. They were more like twins.

was weird, they were like twins, but Kayla also acted like her mother. So was a weird combination, but they were so, so, close. Kayla is very intuitive. So Kayla's the one that has the dreams with Shayna. And so it's kind of funny, because when she comes home, her mother will say, if you had any more dreams about Shayna, you know, it's she's always pushing her for that. So they still have that very close connection.

griefandlight (54:27.694)
Well, shout out to Kayla. And that's interesting, because I'm the one that has the dreams about my brother the most, and I share it with my family. So that's an interesting connection there. Yeah. And there's so many more things. I wish I could continue this conversation for much longer. But I want to thank you for your time. Is there something I didn't ask or anything that's on your mind that you would like to share with our audience to feel like the conversation is complete for today? Only this. When you're, again,

It's kind of like back to that planet not buried thing and I and I know in early grief this might be Way more than you can you can handle and it's fine look at people like Nina look at people like myself that are further out and trust if we can do it then you can too and understand that When Shayna passed I did not want to be here. I did not want to be on the planet and I remember hearing a woman

say that on a podcast. It was on Sandra Champlain's podcast. I remember I was in the car. I remember that moment when she said after her daughter passed, she wanted to step in front of a bus. And I appreciated her honesty because that's how I felt. So you can get through that moment. It's just a matter getting through it and your loved one, my daughter, I want her to be proud of me. I know that I'm going to see her again one day. I know she's going to hold me to account. So

Know that your loved one wants you to be happy. They want you to thrive. It's not an honor to them to stay sad for the rest of your life. Feel your sadness, be patient with yourself, but move forward. Thank you for that. And as a final question, what would Brian today say to Brian in 2015 after Shayna is passing? wow.

Nine years, 10 years is not as long as you think it is. Life speeds up as you get older. You'll see her again soon. Beautifully stated. Thank you so much, Brian. It has been an absolute honor for the conversation, for you to be here for this full circle moment on a personal basis. And I'm sure our listeners and our audience will get so much out of this conversation. This is just the tip of the iceberg. So if you received what was said today, I invite you to check out again his podcast, his web page.

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grieftogrowth.com. And with that, we will leave you. Thank you so much, Brian. It has been wonderful. And thank you for your generosity of time. Thanks for having me. 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 via my Instagram page at griefandlight. Or you can also visit griefandlight.com for more information and updates.

Thank you so much for being here, for being you, and always remember, you are not alone.