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Irad Eichler: Sharing Grief in the Time of COVID
21 Plays4 years ago
Welcome to another episode of The Glam Reaper. This time, Jennifer Muldowney is joined by Irad Eichler, founder of "Circles", an online platform that creates Circles of support for people experiencing life crises. Their main topic? Grief.
As we are all aware, thanks to the last 2 years with COVID, some of us experienced grief from a loss of a loved one due to COVID-19 and some were separated for a very long time because of lockdowns and travel bans. The Circles platform was established to help people who are facing grief with a loss of a loved one cope with loneliness. But it goes beyond that. They also work with people suffering with anxiety, depression, dealing with chronic diseases, and so forth. This is done through connecting people with the same life issues on their platform in sessions that are led by professional facilitators. Clients who sign up can then start to build meaningful connections and establish relationships with kindred spirits.
Stream this episode to learn more about how Circles works and to hear a beautiful story of how the platform brought a group together in real life. Stay tuned and get connected!
*This episode was recorded at Christmas 2020, so apologies for the time difference.
LITTLE NUGGETS OF GOLD:
- An Introduction to Circles
- What is the aim of Circles?
- How to find Circles and start connecting with people
- People who can join Circles
- The importance of the right technology in connecting people
- How to cope with loneliness
Connect with Irad Eichler:
Circles
Website - https://circlesup.com/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CirclesSupport
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/circles_support/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/circles-support/
Email: hello@circlesup.com
Personal Links
LinkedIn - https://il.linkedin.com/in/iradeichler
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/irad.eichler/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/eichlerirad?lang=en
Connect with Jennifer/The Glam Reaper:
Facebook Page - Muldowney Memorials: https://www.facebook.com/MuldowneyMemorials/
Facebook Page - Rainbow Bridge Memorials: https://www.facebook.com/rainbowbridgememorialsdotcom
Instagram - @muldowneymemorials & @jennifermuldowney
Twitter - @TheGlamReaper
Email us here: glamreaperpodcast@gmail.com
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Transcript
Introduction to The Glam Reaper Podcast
00:00:04
Speaker
Hi, my name is Jennifer Muldenny, aka The Glam Reaper, and this is The Glam Reaper Podcast.
00:00:10
Speaker
This show focuses on stories about love, life and loss, but also with a massive input from the funeral world, since that is the world that I live and breathe in.
Grief and COVID-19: A Holiday Reflection
00:00:19
Speaker
This week's episode focuses on grief.
00:00:23
Speaker
COVID was a really tough year last year, and we're all in mourning.
00:00:28
Speaker
How can we mourn together when we have to stay so far apart?
00:00:32
Speaker
Please bear in mind that this episode was recorded at Christmas of 2020.
00:00:38
Speaker
Yes, it's taken a long time to get it on air, but we are a baby podcast and we're only getting started.
00:00:44
Speaker
So please bear with us.
00:00:46
Speaker
The information is still as timely as ever.
00:00:49
Speaker
Let's take it away.
Seven Chairs Charity: Combating Loneliness
00:00:53
Speaker
So, Erad is a gentleman who connected with me on LinkedIn and very fascinating, has a charity called Seven Chairs, which I want to know where the history of that name came from.
00:01:06
Speaker
But you focus very much on grief and grief support.
00:01:11
Speaker
Am I right?
00:01:13
Speaker
Exactly.
00:01:13
Speaker
Okay.
00:01:13
Speaker
So, Erad, you take it away.
00:01:15
Speaker
Tell me what it is that you do.
00:01:17
Speaker
Great.
00:01:17
Speaker
So first, thanks so much for having me.
00:01:19
Speaker
I'm excited to be here.
Technology and Human Connection
00:01:21
Speaker
Yeah, as you mentioned, we are a startup, actually, that's aiming to end the loneliness in the world.
00:01:27
Speaker
The thing is that when people are facing grief, for example, they're not just facing the grief and the loss of the loved one, they're also facing the loneliness that comes with it, the feeling that nobody really understands what they're going through.
00:01:42
Speaker
And even their family, friends sometimes don't really get what they're going through because they had a special relationship with the person that they lost, with their loved ones.
00:01:51
Speaker
And that's where we come in.
00:01:53
Speaker
We connect people that are dealing with the same life issue, the same life challenge as the others.
00:01:59
Speaker
For example, grief over child.
00:02:01
Speaker
And we connect parents to a group, small groups of anywhere between six to eight people that are meeting on our platform weekly.
00:02:09
Speaker
And the groups are led by professional facilitators.
00:02:13
Speaker
If you kind of look at the way we live now, most of the kind of our social connections are based on social networks.
00:02:21
Speaker
which I think are anti-social networks because they are taking our relationship and kind of, it's a redundance of the relationship.
00:02:28
Speaker
You could have kind of read, you know, I spoke a thousand times about what we're doing and you could have read it through the website
00:02:35
Speaker
But still the two of us chose to be on the same place, on the same time.
00:02:40
Speaker
Talk to each other, have a relationship and have a meaningful connection as opposed to just communication, you know, just sending email or posting on Facebook.
00:02:49
Speaker
And that's what we are fixing because we know that loneliness comes from lack of human connection.
00:02:55
Speaker
So we work on building a human connection.
00:02:58
Speaker
So, yeah, we started with grief.
00:03:00
Speaker
focusing on grief.
00:03:01
Speaker
We gave support to thousands of people, connected thousands of people, mostly, as you can tell by my accent, in Israel or in the States.
00:03:09
Speaker
We leveraged technology to find the right group for the right people.
00:03:12
Speaker
And we leveraged technology to help the group facilitators to be the best group facilitators that they can in various ways.
00:03:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's a very interesting topic.
00:03:22
Speaker
And you made a lot of points there that I think are just scratching the surface because
00:03:27
Speaker
They do say that as we grow more connected as a world, we grow more disconnected.
00:03:33
Speaker
And I think, you know, the tragedy of COVID-19 and the pandemic that's ripping through the world at the moment has proven that and shown us
00:03:42
Speaker
that while technology can be a support system it absolutely resolutely does not take away the fact of physical connection with people and even as you said us talking today which you know i work in the funeral community and a lot of people when they meet me i've been on the radio i've been on tv and things like that and honestly i'm actually quite a shy person and this podcast has been a brainchild for the last two years
00:04:07
Speaker
but I just don't like the camera being on me or I don't, you know, I like to talk to people.
00:04:13
Speaker
I'm much more of a converser.
00:04:15
Speaker
And I realized that in what I do, exactly to your point, there's so many, it leaves so many people bereft and lonely and wanting more of a connection.
00:04:26
Speaker
And I even find myself, I mean, I would nearly say as a memorial planner, I become people's best friend for the intimate time I work with them.
00:04:34
Speaker
I hold their hand, I've hugged, I've held people as they've broken down.
00:04:38
Speaker
It's a very humbling and incredibly rewarding career for me anyway.
00:04:43
Speaker
One of the things that I wanted when I did this podcast was a it had to be a podcast as opposed to just a blog which I had been doing for years but with a blog you just feel like you're talking to people.
00:04:55
Speaker
It's like Dear Diary or whatever, you know?
00:04:57
Speaker
And even with the podcast, I mean, if it was just me in a room on my own, it could be just me talking to myself, which isn't unusual.
00:05:04
Speaker
But I wanted this to be both audio and visual because I want people to get a sense of it's two people talking
Personal Experiences of Loneliness during COVID
00:05:11
Speaker
to each other as opposed to
00:05:13
Speaker
just two people giving their opinions into your ears and you know some people are audio some people like to see things whatever it's interesting actually that you're as an Irish person I'm living in New York and I'm stuck in New York effectively because I can't go home to my family and we have a new niece that just came into the world last week and honestly
00:05:30
Speaker
I'm a mess.
00:05:31
Speaker
I'm an absolute, I don't mind saying it to the world.
00:05:33
Speaker
I'm an absolute mess.
00:05:35
Speaker
I hear any Christmas song on the radio.
00:05:37
Speaker
I see any reminder of back home in Dublin and it's Christmas and I burst into tears.
00:05:42
Speaker
I got a package in the post last night from my little nephew.
00:05:46
Speaker
He's two and a half and it's his, he's like Van Gogh or Da Vinci.
00:05:50
Speaker
I don't know.
00:05:50
Speaker
I glance at his paintings anyway.
00:05:53
Speaker
and I broke down crying and I feel like I'm just crying constantly right now and it's probably living alone in New York City one of the busiest cities in the world and yet here I am absolutely feeling completely isolated and it is I have a massive network of friends and colleagues and lots of people I can turn to but sometimes you do feel like I can't
00:06:15
Speaker
Is it appropriate for me to say this to people?
00:06:19
Speaker
I'll even decline loads of invitations just because I might not feel it's appropriate in the time or I don't want to bring everybody else's buzz down and stuff.
00:06:26
Speaker
So I think what you're doing is incredible and it's such a good resource for people.
00:06:31
Speaker
Tell me how do people utilize your web?
00:06:36
Speaker
It's a website, not an app, right?
00:06:37
Speaker
App and a website.
00:06:39
Speaker
Okay, so tell me, say for example, if I have a family this weekend that I'm working with that maybe have lost a spouse, how can I facilitate them in sending them to Seven Shares?
00:06:51
Speaker
Totally connects to our vision.
00:06:54
Speaker
At the end of the day,
00:06:55
Speaker
You're living in New York, you grew up in Dublin, you probably went anywhere you're living.
00:07:00
Speaker
You can research the web, you search Google, right?
00:07:03
Speaker
You use Google.
00:07:03
Speaker
When you called a cab, you probably use Uber or any other tech.
00:07:09
Speaker
But when someone is in life crisis, there is nowhere to go.
00:07:13
Speaker
There isn't a place on the web that you can go to and have a meaningful connection.
00:07:19
Speaker
And that's what we are building.
00:07:20
Speaker
answering your question.
00:07:21
Speaker
It's just, you know, they just need to log in into circles.
00:07:26
Speaker
It circles app.com and then we can leave all the links down below.
00:07:34
Speaker
Right.
00:07:34
Speaker
So just need to click and we help them find the group.
00:07:37
Speaker
And that's where technology comes in place because we can use technology to find the right people for you based on age, based on the situation that you're dealing with.
00:07:47
Speaker
And for example,
00:07:48
Speaker
A mother wants to be assigned to the same group as a daughter.
00:07:52
Speaker
They
Group Therapy Dynamics and Benefits
00:07:53
Speaker
will have different groups because they are dealing with different situations and their peers are others.
00:07:58
Speaker
They have different kind of peers group.
00:08:00
Speaker
That's where technology comes in place.
00:08:03
Speaker
I can tell you a story of one of our colleagues.
00:08:05
Speaker
He had cancer and he was living in L.A.
00:08:08
Speaker
and he was around 40.
00:08:10
Speaker
He's a wealthy man.
00:08:11
Speaker
He can afford whatever mental health service he wants.
00:08:14
Speaker
And he was looking online for support.
00:08:16
Speaker
The only thing that he found was online group support.
00:08:19
Speaker
It was a pre-COVID story.
00:08:23
Speaker
So he drove an hour, went into a room, and he found himself with 70-year-old ladies sitting in the same room with him.
00:08:31
Speaker
And it was like three of them.
00:08:33
Speaker
And he was like, it's so broken.
00:08:35
Speaker
It's unbelievable that I'm 40, and I can't find people
00:08:38
Speaker
that are dealing with cancer, that's where we kick in.
00:08:40
Speaker
Come to the website or the app and search specifically for what they're looking for.
00:08:45
Speaker
Is it like just drop down menus?
00:08:47
Speaker
It's a questionnaire.
00:08:49
Speaker
They actually fill a questionnaire and we help them navigate through the questionnaire.
00:08:53
Speaker
We ask them questions and by learning about them,
00:08:56
Speaker
we kind of find the right group for them with the right set of people for them.
00:09:00
Speaker
So at the end, so it's like a questionnaire, almost like similar to when you apply for online coaching or therapy and you fill out this questionnaire and you get matched with a group though, not a person.
00:09:13
Speaker
Exactly.
00:09:14
Speaker
And the thing is that it's hours away from signing up.
00:09:16
Speaker
So we always have an opening for new people in any kind of segment within maximum a day.
00:09:23
Speaker
They will always find people to speak with and to meet with.
00:09:26
Speaker
And on top of that, we have a daily meeting for open to everyone, 7 p.m.
00:09:32
Speaker
EST.
00:09:33
Speaker
And it's a free meeting, free sessions around grief, facilitated by a mental health professional.
00:09:38
Speaker
People can just log in whenever they want, every weekday.
00:09:41
Speaker
And it's a free service to give them a sense of that they are not alone in the world and there are a lot of people.
00:09:47
Speaker
And I can tell you, it's
00:09:49
Speaker
I was part of one meeting and it was so moving because it started with four ladies joining the meeting and each one of them experienced different loss.
00:09:57
Speaker
But within 10 minutes, the four of them were crying.
00:10:01
Speaker
Crying from both pain, but relief as well.
00:10:04
Speaker
All of them started with their cameras off, so nobody could see each other.
00:10:08
Speaker
But at the end of the meeting, like 10 minutes before the meeting's ending, all of them turned their cameras on.
00:10:15
Speaker
And it was kind of like a,
00:10:17
Speaker
The excitement in the room was amazing and all of them changed phone numbers and emails and they're connected with each other and they're still connected.
00:10:26
Speaker
How do you facilitate these group meetings?
00:10:29
Speaker
Is it through Zoom?
00:10:30
Speaker
Is it through your own platform?
00:10:32
Speaker
How does that work?
00:10:33
Speaker
It's through our own platform.
00:10:34
Speaker
We do use the capacities of Zoom through our own platform.
00:10:38
Speaker
I'll give you an example.
00:10:39
Speaker
Why do we insist on doing it our way?
00:10:42
Speaker
Because for example, when you sit in a room, now we're talking, I can look at you, but I can also look at myself, which is pretty strange.
00:10:49
Speaker
Usually when you meet people, you don't have the image of yourself on top of the person that you speak with.
00:10:55
Speaker
Absolutely, yeah.
00:10:56
Speaker
It's a small feature, but yet,
00:10:58
Speaker
gives a different experience.
00:10:59
Speaker
And that's what we're aiming to build the ultimate experience of a group online and to really, really, really facilitate relationship between people that can really support each other and building the group together.
00:11:10
Speaker
So that's the reason why we are using it.
00:11:13
Speaker
How do you prevent, obviously with COVID, we've all seen the dangers of these Zoom meetings and people crashing them.
00:11:20
Speaker
Now, a grief support group is obviously a very tender and emotional moment in time for those people.
00:11:27
Speaker
So how can you prevent somebody from crashing that?
00:11:31
Speaker
And there are unfortunately sick people out in the world, so people want to do bad things to already hurting people.
00:11:38
Speaker
So how can you prevent that?
00:11:39
Speaker
How do Seven Shares prevent that from happening?
00:11:42
Speaker
For us, it's the most important thing.
00:11:44
Speaker
At the end of the day, what we are doing is we're building safe places for people.
00:11:47
Speaker
And if they want to be safe,
00:11:49
Speaker
It's counterproductive because, as you said, people are hurting.
00:11:52
Speaker
So first of all, all of our system is protected and people can't join a meeting because it's not an open room that people can join, except from the everyday meeting that I mentioned.
00:12:04
Speaker
But we have a gatekeeper.
00:12:06
Speaker
The gatekeeper is the group facilitator.
00:12:07
Speaker
So nobody can get in unless the group facilitator allows them in.
00:12:12
Speaker
In any time, the group facilitator can just throw people out and stop their participation.
00:12:16
Speaker
There aren't any unsupervised
00:12:19
Speaker
meetings, all our meetings are supervised, the group facilitators know each other, it's small groups, it's intimate group, it's anywhere between six to eight people, so they know each other, kind of like think of a room and everybody knows each other, then even if someone that you don't know gets in, like everybody knows this team and they're like... Of course, yeah, a person who just arrived in the back.
00:12:39
Speaker
Is there a fee for this?
00:12:41
Speaker
Yes, so I would say part of our mission to give the BACS mental health services
00:12:47
Speaker
as accessible as possible.
00:12:48
Speaker
So accessible could be, you know, using the internet and then even someone from rural Texas can join a meeting on one hand and also pricing wise.
00:12:57
Speaker
So the cost is $15 per week, $60 per month, which is 10% of any other mental health service you can consume out there.
00:13:07
Speaker
And that's the reason we can do it is because we're using groups.
00:13:11
Speaker
So the cost splits between all the members
00:13:13
Speaker
And that's what makes it accessible for the people.
00:13:17
Speaker
Actually, when we designed the way we want to provide services to people and kind of like fight loneliness, we knew that first of all, we want to be a startup because when you're a startup,
00:13:27
Speaker
You can provide, you can grow fast and you're not dependent as opposed to foundation or being dependent on donations.
00:13:35
Speaker
So once we will have a solid business model, which is accessible to the people on one hand, but still viable and scalable, then we can grow fast.
00:13:44
Speaker
And at the end of the day, we are imagining, you know, the mother of a child in Australia and father in Belgium and grandmother in Virginia.
00:13:53
Speaker
We want to reach each one of them as fast as we can.
00:13:57
Speaker
There's a real sense of urgency for us.
00:13:59
Speaker
Every morning that we wake up, we understand that there's another morning that we didn't provide services to people that are still suffering in the world.
00:14:07
Speaker
That's what keeps us moving.
00:14:09
Speaker
Sounds fantastic.
00:14:11
Speaker
And it definitely sounds like something I know a lot of the families I work with absolutely need.
00:14:16
Speaker
And even if it's for $60 a month, well, that's what the price of it's not even, is it even 10 coffees these days?
00:14:24
Speaker
The price just keeps going up every time I go to Starbucks for the price of 10 coffees to have that.
00:14:31
Speaker
group now do you have a certain for example i know people that may get busy they may just want this as a backup they may want to be a member of the group to dip in once a month they may not want to kind of go every week do you have a criteria or anything at the moment it's kind of a personalized program and they build it with the group facilitator so it's kind of setting expectation but the thing about the group and that's what why we encourage members to come every week
00:15:00
Speaker
is because it's not just for you.
00:15:02
Speaker
You're coming for yourself to get support, but you need to remember that every time that you show up for a group, you actually provide support to the other members that came.
00:15:11
Speaker
So that's something that the codependence here works both ways.
00:15:15
Speaker
So we do accept people not coming every week, and we know there's a lot of things that are going on, but we do expect, first of all, people to let the group know about it and also to kind of let the other members know.
00:15:28
Speaker
People are depending on you in that way and you can really help people.
00:15:32
Speaker
That's the charm in the group.
00:15:34
Speaker
Yeah, and that's, I mean, in many ways, it's a beautiful sentiment because I know a lot of grieving families that I've worked with where they might not show up for themselves, but they'd show up for somebody else.
00:15:48
Speaker
And I think that's a lot of people these days is that I'll do for somebody else that I won't necessarily do for myself, you know?
00:15:56
Speaker
and that's actually a very important part of it and the fact that it is a group therapy and how many members are active at the moment or do you have that information or yeah we do have the information and we provide service to hundreds of people every week and accumulated we serve over 5 000 people during the few months that we've been around and i can tell you that the demand
00:16:21
Speaker
It's unbelievable, like in terms of the things that people are facing and we're getting requests for group, not just for grief.
00:16:28
Speaker
We're getting for depression, anxiety, loneliness, people that are dealing with any kind of chronic disease, cancer and so on and so forth.
Exploring Loss and Open Conversations on Grief
00:16:39
Speaker
That's interesting that you say that because like when I decided to do this podcast, while I might work in the funeral community, I didn't want it to be a podcast about death.
00:16:50
Speaker
So that's why it's very much about love, life and loss, because all three of those work in tangent.
00:16:56
Speaker
And it's it can be the loss of a spouse.
00:16:58
Speaker
And that can be due to divorce, due to death, due to separation, illness.
00:17:03
Speaker
There's so much loss of a job.
00:17:05
Speaker
We deal with so many losses through life, not just life itself.
00:17:10
Speaker
But I think it's so important for us to talk about it and also not judge each other.
00:17:13
Speaker
I mean, I did a whole TED talk about exactly that topic about the loss of my dog.
00:17:18
Speaker
If anybody hasn't seen it, they should watch it.
00:17:20
Speaker
It's only five minutes.
00:17:21
Speaker
Yeah, I did.
00:17:22
Speaker
It was amazing.
00:17:24
Speaker
Thank you.
00:17:25
Speaker
The amount of people who've reached out to me and say, oh, my God, that totally resonated with me.
00:17:29
Speaker
And I did not think you were going the direction you were going.
00:17:33
Speaker
Because it is.
00:17:35
Speaker
It's such a, I don't want to say frowned upon, because it's not frowned upon by the pet community.
00:17:40
Speaker
But outside of that,
00:17:42
Speaker
Comparing the loss of a dog to the loss of any human life is just sacrilegious in so many circles.
00:17:48
Speaker
And so I do think it's important for people to get the support they need in whatever circles they need it from.
00:17:54
Speaker
So I absolutely think what you're doing is incredible.
00:17:58
Speaker
And I can only believe that it's going to go from strength to strength because unfortunately, and especially this year, we are...
00:18:06
Speaker
highlighting even more the losses that we're all suffering.
00:18:11
Speaker
I mean, there's job loss, financial loss, illnesses, death, it's loss of friendships.
00:18:18
Speaker
I, for example, even in living in New York, I don't know how many of my friends have moved back home to Ireland permanently.
00:18:24
Speaker
So my entire social circle has changed, you know, as well as my job, as well as my financial situation, as well as the lack of
00:18:33
Speaker
going home to for a hulk from my dad or whatever it might be you know can i ask especially considering the start and we will come back to i want you to tell me about what's happening at christmas which i don't think this will be aired in time but i think it's we should record it anyway and so um
00:18:49
Speaker
whether we use it or not, or somehow we can at least talk about it.
00:18:54
Speaker
But before we get into that, considering at the start where we were talking about how technology is both bringing us together and separating us, disconnecting us because we have, I check in on Facebook and okay, I've told a hundred people that I'm alive and good.
The Future of Community Support
00:19:10
Speaker
Will you, do you foresee, ERAD, any future where you'll have this as physical communities worldwide?
00:19:19
Speaker
So definitely, I think at the end of the day, we need to leverage technology, kind of ignite human connection and connect people.
00:19:27
Speaker
But I see it as a ladder.
00:19:28
Speaker
You climb the ladder, but at the end of the day, if you want to reach the top, the top is human connections face to face.
00:19:34
Speaker
Having said that, I think as a startup, as a company, as a movement, what we want to really do is kind of
00:19:42
Speaker
help people connect.
00:19:43
Speaker
Actually, we saw it in so many groups.
00:19:45
Speaker
I can tell you about one group here in Israel.
00:19:48
Speaker
Israel is not that big.
00:19:50
Speaker
It's kind of like smaller than the state of New York, but we had a group of people, the caregivers for cancer patients.
00:19:57
Speaker
After the sixth meeting, one of the members, her spouse died.
00:20:01
Speaker
All the group on the seventh meeting drove two hours to meet her.
00:20:06
Speaker
They came all together to her house with the group facilitators.
00:20:10
Speaker
and the meeting was in her home.
00:20:12
Speaker
So that's one example.
00:20:13
Speaker
Another example is... That's so powerful.
00:20:16
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:20:17
Speaker
Women with breast cancer, that's kind of one of them went through an operation and she was in a meeting while lying... The operation was in the morning, in the afternoon she was lying in the hospital participating in a group meeting dedicated just to her after the operation.
00:20:34
Speaker
So technology, again, it's kind of a... It's a ladder.
00:20:37
Speaker
We climbed the ladder,
00:20:39
Speaker
We are like, everybody's down there.
00:20:41
Speaker
We need to get everybody on the ladder, connect again and get up there and be together.
00:20:47
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:20:49
Speaker
With meaningful connections, spending real time like we do right now in conversation, in interaction, as opposed to texting and so on.
00:20:59
Speaker
And it is, it's so easy to fire off a text to 20 people saying the same thing or sending an email, group email to everybody, but
00:21:08
Speaker
While there's definitely a place for all the WhatsApp groups and the Facebooks and the LinkedIn and even TikTok and all of those, they shouldn't replace
00:21:20
Speaker
physical connection and emotional connection they should just supplement it really and it's something I try and use social media for if I'm going on a trip for example well I know from staying in touch with all of these people through the social media that oh I can reach out to x y and z and hopefully meet them whereas without social media I wouldn't have had that
00:21:40
Speaker
You know, those are the type of conversations I have with my parents when they wonder what's the point of having 850 friends on Facebook.
00:21:46
Speaker
There's a certain amount, you know, you have to keep private.
00:21:50
Speaker
Some people do.
00:21:51
Speaker
as we say back home in Ireland, air their dirty laundry all over social media, which, I mean, I guess that's their therapy.
00:21:57
Speaker
But yeah, it's definitely, as long as it's used in the appropriate way.
00:22:04
Speaker
And I mean, those two stories are just, they'd send shivers up my spine.
00:22:07
Speaker
Like, that's a really powerful thing.
00:22:09
Speaker
Seven strangers traveling over two hours for somebody that they were estranged from, that they didn't know.
00:22:17
Speaker
On top of that, it was a chat group.
00:22:19
Speaker
It even wasn't a video group.
00:22:20
Speaker
That means that they just texted each other for an hour every week for six weeks.
00:22:25
Speaker
And then the relationship was so intimate that they felt compassion and they felt that they need to go and be with her.
00:22:34
Speaker
So it was literally the first time that they met.
00:22:37
Speaker
And I'd say the bond is still massive there.
00:22:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of like that one.
00:22:42
Speaker
Do they take the group off your app and off the website and sort of do their own thing?
00:22:47
Speaker
And is that something you encourage or do you encourage people to sort of maintain, obviously with the facilitator and stuff?
00:22:56
Speaker
We do encourage people to connect.
00:22:58
Speaker
If you want people to connect, you can't control the connection.
00:23:01
Speaker
So we definitely allow people to connect and take off the connection of the platform.
00:23:06
Speaker
The platform is not a communication.
00:23:09
Speaker
platform.
00:23:10
Speaker
What we offer is a facilitated process.
00:23:12
Speaker
You actually pay not for the technology, you pay for the matching services and you mostly pay for the group for the facilitation.
00:23:20
Speaker
And in our vision, platform will be open to groups that are not facilitated and they won't be charged.
00:23:27
Speaker
It's kind of the way we see
00:23:28
Speaker
Our platform evolved, but it always will be around human connection and we definitely encourage people to build relationships, to meet, to talk.
00:23:37
Speaker
We want to be there for them, but once they are not lonely anymore,
00:23:41
Speaker
they can kind of continue with their life.
00:23:43
Speaker
I can imagine you might even evolve into becoming a dating website.
00:23:47
Speaker
I can imagine, you know, there's people, there's been movies written about it where people meet in various different meetings where they're going through similar things in life and develop a connection that can turn into a romantic and loving connection, especially when both have lost spouses, maybe, or children.
00:24:06
Speaker
And as we know, the loss of a child is incredibly important
00:24:10
Speaker
painful and hard on any marriage.
00:24:13
Speaker
So yeah, I can imagine there could be a few seven chair weddings in the next decade or so.
00:24:19
Speaker
You never know.
00:24:20
Speaker
Where did the name come from?
00:24:22
Speaker
First of all, we launched our new brand and now we're no longer Seven Chairs, we're now Circles.
00:24:28
Speaker
Yeah, it happened just now.
00:24:30
Speaker
And so it's kind of like breaking news.
00:24:34
Speaker
Seven Chairs is now Circles, not Seven Circles.
00:24:38
Speaker
And the reason we call it Seven Chairs is because we realized that kind of the magic number of group is seven
Rebranding to Circles: A New Philosophy
00:24:45
Speaker
people.
00:24:45
Speaker
So that's kind of why we call it Seven Chairs.
00:24:47
Speaker
But we realized that in order to change the world and to be big, we want to talk about circles as opposed to chairs.
00:24:55
Speaker
Because circles kind of give you a sense of equality.
00:24:59
Speaker
Everybody is equal to each other.
00:25:01
Speaker
Everybody is sitting in a kind of a round circle.
00:25:03
Speaker
Having said that, our logo is not round.
00:25:06
Speaker
It's kind of a
00:25:07
Speaker
twisted round circle because we know that all of us are different as well and all circles are different so and that's the magic like you go into a room with six people and there's a certain dynamic and then if you go to another room with different six people then there's a different dynamic that's the magic basically amazing okay and you guys tell me about the christmas initiative that i'm jumping on board with and that you're helping me
00:25:36
Speaker
helping will will help to promote so tell us about that
00:25:39
Speaker
So, yeah, first of all, thank you for that.
00:25:41
Speaker
And I think I didn't tell you a little bit about my background, but I founded an organization about supporting people with a mental health issue here in Israel.
Holiday Grief Support Initiative
00:25:51
Speaker
And we realized that during the holidays, we saw that there is a huge collapse in the situation.
00:25:56
Speaker
People, they made progress within two years and then comes the holidays.
00:26:00
Speaker
They feel so alone.
00:26:01
Speaker
And then a walk of two years just disappear and they stop talking and they kind of like they hospitalized themselves and so on and so forth.
00:26:09
Speaker
When you look at holidays for people that lost their loved ones, and talking from my own experience, I lost my mother.
00:26:16
Speaker
You know, the first holiday, the second holiday, there's this empty chair that nobody sits in it.
00:26:23
Speaker
And there's the family's there, but then the absence is more clear than, you know, in your daily routine.
00:26:31
Speaker
And that's where people really feel alone.
00:26:34
Speaker
And we realized that the holidays are coming.
00:26:38
Speaker
And there's a huge opportunity for us to make
Impact of Grief on Control and Sanity
00:26:40
Speaker
the difference.
00:26:40
Speaker
So we decided as a company to open our services and have three days just before Christmas, Monday to Wednesday.
00:26:47
Speaker
We're going to have three sessions, online sessions.
00:26:50
Speaker
People can connect from anywhere.
00:26:52
Speaker
All of them will be facilitated and people that will join in will get tools to deal with the loneliness, deal with absence of their loved ones.
00:27:01
Speaker
And they will also meet people that lost the love.
00:27:04
Speaker
And they feel they can feel together.
00:27:07
Speaker
They can feel part of something.
00:27:09
Speaker
I want to kind of build up the things that you said before.
00:27:13
Speaker
When you lose someone, there's like two things that really happens to you.
00:27:17
Speaker
First of all, you feel that you lost control of your life.
00:27:20
Speaker
There's a certain control of life.
00:27:21
Speaker
And we know that everybody's here.
00:27:23
Speaker
Everybody is alive.
00:27:24
Speaker
And then when somebody dies, you feel that you lost control of your life.
00:27:28
Speaker
Something that was certain became uncertain.
00:27:30
Speaker
Kind of like,
00:27:31
Speaker
so that's one thing and the second thing is that you have all these kind of thoughts what will happen to me what will happen with my children should i will i die soon and then you feel a little bit crazy and losing control of your life and feeling a little bit crazy can really easily be normalized if you meet people that are feeling experiencing the same experience and that's the essence of what we're doing we're kind of connecting people that are dealing with the same things and normalizing their experience and making
00:27:59
Speaker
bring a little bit relief into their pain and that's what we are going to do in the holidays.
00:28:05
Speaker
This is going to be three days?
00:28:08
Speaker
Exactly.
00:28:09
Speaker
21st, 22nd, 23rd.
00:28:11
Speaker
Yes.
00:28:13
Speaker
21st, 23rd of December and there will be three sessions each day open to the public.
00:28:22
Speaker
You don't need the questionnaire to get in or it's
00:28:25
Speaker
No, you just need to log in and that's it.
00:28:28
Speaker
You don't have to... And it will be facilitated by a grief counsellor report?
00:28:37
Speaker
Social workers, grief support, but all of them are mental health professionals that are trained by us.
00:28:43
Speaker
I'll just say again the dates so we won't get them wrong.
00:28:47
Speaker
So 21st, 22nd, 23rd of December.
00:28:50
Speaker
Yeah?
00:28:51
Speaker
Okay, yeah.
00:28:53
Speaker
and free sessions each day and you can get that information on your website which is circlesapp.com circlesapp.com okay exactly okay great so we might not more than likely I won't have that this out but what I might do is if I have the editing done in time I might edit that little bit out to to share on social media or whatever and that'll help tease for this episode anyway so double double on me
00:29:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's it, I think.
00:29:25
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:29:26
Speaker
It was such a pleasure.
00:29:28
Speaker
No problem.
00:29:28
Speaker
Thank you for having me.
00:29:30
Speaker
No problem at all.
00:29:35
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening to the Glam Reaper podcast.
00:29:39
Speaker
It has been something I've been working on and muddling with for over two years now.
00:29:42
Speaker
So I appreciate your time to listen in.
00:29:45
Speaker
Every episode will have a new guest we hope you will find interesting as they tell their own story.
00:29:50
Speaker
So stay tuned for the next episode or have a look through the Glam Reaper episode collection.
00:29:56
Speaker
Find your nugget of gold as we talk all things life, love and loss with a dash from the funeral world.
00:30:04
Speaker
Until next time.