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12. The World Doesn't Prepare Us For Grief! -With BrynaTalamantez LMFT Associate
82 Plays5 years ago
Bryna Talamantez shares her story of how she joined a grief support group called Journey of Hope when she was 10 years old, after the death of her father. She also shares how other grief experiences in her own life, lead her to become a Licensed Marriage Family Therapist- Associate, and now work with children, teens, adults and families who are grieving.
Get in touch with Bryna https://www.gocuris.com/bryna-talamantez.html
Bryna's Blog: https://thewalkwithgrief.wordpress.com
Grief Resources mentioned in the podcast:
National Alliance of Grieving Children- www.childrengrieve.org
Association for Death Education and Counseling- https://www.adec.org
Actively Moving Forward (AMF)- https://healgrief.org/actively-moving-forward/
The Dougy Center- https://www.dougy.org
Journey of Hope- www.johgriefsupport.org
Worden’s Tasks of Mourning- I’m attaching a what’s your grief blog and a graphic!
https://whatsyourgrief.com/wordens-four-tasks-of-mourning/
Music: www.rinaldisound.net
Editing and Production: Carlos Andres Londono
Get in touch with Kendra www.griefgratitudeandthegrayinbetween.com
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Transcript
The Unpreparedness for Grief
00:00:01
Speaker
One of my soapbox things that I talk about a lot is how much the world doesn't prepare us for grief.
00:00:08
Speaker
It doesn't prepare us to handle it, like doesn't prepare us to see that it happens. And no one tells us what's normal, what's not normal. Thankfully, I mean, one of the things I did learn as a child at Journey of Hope was all of these feelings that like grief isn't just sad. Grief is anger, grief is stress, grief is frustrated, grief is loneliness, all of these things.
00:00:31
Speaker
And so actually all of the learning about grief, for the most part that I learned, was not at school.
Podcast Introduction and Purpose
00:00:42
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray in Between podcast.
00:00:49
Speaker
This podcast is about exploring the grief that occurs at different times in our lives in which we have had major changes and transitions that literally shake us to the core and make us experience grief.
00:01:05
Speaker
I created this podcast for people to feel a little less hopeless and alone in their own grief process as they hear the stories of others who have had similar journeys. I'm Kendra Rinaldi, your host. Now, let's dive right in to today's episode.
Introducing Bryna and Her Nonprofit Involvement
00:01:28
Speaker
Welcome to today's episode. I am so excited to have my friend Bryna today on our episode. Bryna and I met a year ago, actually, and it was in interesting circumstances. I was doing the training to become a facilitator for a nonprofit organization that helps people that are grieving, and Bryna was one of the presenters who shared her story.
00:01:56
Speaker
And we've been collaborating in the last year, serving together in this capacity. And it's been so great to get to know this amazing young woman who I'm so excited for her to now share her journey with all of you. So Brenna, welcome to the show. It's nice to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
00:02:20
Speaker
I'm so excited that you're here. When I saw you share your story at that training for Journey of Hope, which is the organization that we're both a part of, I was just so impressed and your journey just really touched my
00:02:36
Speaker
heart and I knew I had like I made a list when I started this podcast of all the different people I'd be interviewing and your name was on there. So I was so excited you said yes when I reached out for you to share your journey. Absolutely.
00:02:51
Speaker
I'm so happy. All right. So tell us a little bit about what it is you do
Bryna's Role at Journey of Hope
00:02:56
Speaker
right now. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah. So right now, I am the program manager for Journey of Hope, which is a grief support group for kids, teens, and their families after a loved one has died. I actually attended the program as a child
00:03:12
Speaker
And then about six, seven years ago, I came back as a facilitator and had always wanted to give back to this organization. And then in August of 2019, I was given the opportunity to start working for Journey of Hope, which just brought everything full circle. And I think the first night of group that I did in Dallas, which is the group night that I run, was actually probably the same week that I started attending Journey of Hope 19 years before that.
00:03:42
Speaker
So it all just kind of came full circle and I love being with our families and being able to just support them and to be with our amazing facilitators like Kendra. It's one of the things that really fills my bucket in my life. I also- I just got goosebumps. I had to like exactly 19 years and that's part of the journey that we'll be talking about later. But yeah, you're also now, you also, aside from the nonprofit organization that you're a part of, then you're also
00:04:12
Speaker
have a job, a J-O-B, and tell us what it is you do.
Therapeutic Work with Grieving Families
00:04:17
Speaker
Yes, so I am in private practice. I am a licensed marriage and family therapist associate at Curious Functional Health, which is a private practice in North Dallas. And our office really focuses on helping the whole human being. So each of our offices has mental health therapists, chiropractors, and nutritionists. So we really do the whole mind, body, gut health.
00:04:39
Speaker
Specifically in the practice, I work a lot with kids and teens and their families. I do specialize in grief and working with those who have lost loved ones. And not only traditional grief that is a result of a death loss, but also non-traditional grief, such as divorce, any life transitions, a new house, a new move, anything that's new for kids and teens especially. I love being in the playroom.
00:05:08
Speaker
with all of the little kids, they just bring me so much joy and the things that they say are just so profound. And I obviously love my teens and my adults and my families. I love everybody that I work with. I'm so blessed and so fortunate.
00:05:22
Speaker
That is awesome, and thank you for bringing that up, that you help people in other areas of grief, not just the loss of a loved one, because that is huge, and that is something that I do in this podcast too, is shine the light on all these other areas that people grieve through in their life, and it's just life changes, and sometimes it's even
00:05:46
Speaker
happy ones, even I shared that even of myself, even when I became a mom, that was a huge transition in my life and had to kind of balance those emotions out as well. So thank you for the services that you do and for shining a light on that aspect. Now, tell us then a little bit then, going back to then 19 years, well, it's going to be 20 years
Personal Grief Journey: Losing a Father
00:06:14
Speaker
then.
00:06:14
Speaker
this summer of when you became a participant of this nonprofit organization Journey of Home, what was the major change in your life that had occurred? Yeah. My dad died on my fourth day of fourth grade. I was nine years old and he had had three heart attacks and actually been in the hospital for 10 months.
00:06:40
Speaker
He had had his first heart attack the October before he died, his second that December and then the third in August, which was and he died the next day. He had had a very long illness. He had been sick my whole childhood. It was actually more abnormal for my mom and I after he died to not be spending so much time in a hospital. It was just something that was a way of life for me. I went to physical therapy at the hospital with him a couple times a week and I had his
00:07:09
Speaker
physical therapists were my friends from when I was like two on. I went through a lot of surgeries with my dad and my mom and I had a really good routine of we would read books and play one specific game. And so this was just our way of life. I always had a backpack
00:07:27
Speaker
by my door that had a blanket and a pillow and an extra change of clothes and a book or different activity, depending on how old I was. And so if we had to take my dad to the hospital in the middle of the night, my mom would holler in my room and go, Brenda, grab your bag. And I go, okay. And I totaled myself to the back seat and go right back to sleep until we got to the hospital. So that was just a way of life for us. And when he died,
00:07:52
Speaker
My mom, I will always compliment my mom for this, but I am just so fortunate of how much, even as an eight and nine year old, she let me in on what was going on. She always told me age appropriately, okay, this is what's happened. This is what that means.
00:08:10
Speaker
And how do you feel about that? Do you have any questions? So I was always very fortunate for that. And so even after my dad died, her first, probably her first phone call after, you know, the funeral home and all the things that you have to do after someone dies was to Journey of Hope. And we were in groups within two or three weeks after his death.
00:08:36
Speaker
Your mom had already received this contact of this information then about Journey of Hope prior to his passing for you guys to start so early on. So how was that? How did she get that information? What I assume happened is that because the school and my mom kind of had a plan and said, we knew that my dad wasn't going to make it through the school year.
00:08:59
Speaker
He actually wasn't supposed to make it as long as he did. So we kind of knew and she had a plan with our principal, my counselor, and who ended up being my homeroom teacher that I actually got to choose a couple kids to be in my homeroom class.
00:09:14
Speaker
so that I would feel comfortable going back to school whenever that transition happened. And so I'm sure it was my counselor or principal because Journey of Hope was started by a lot of PISD counselors and people who work for Plano ISD. That's where they got that information and how we were able to get that.
Peer Support and Shared Experiences
00:09:34
Speaker
So I assume that that's where she got that contact information from. Okay.
00:09:40
Speaker
Okay. Okay. So sorry. And I interrupted you when you were in the middle of a train of thought. So you said within two, three weeks, then you started going to Journey of Hope. Yes. And I actually was very excited to be with other kids who understood kind of what I was going through. I had wonderful friends and a lot of adults who were looking after me and taking care of my mom and I and making sure that we were okay.
00:10:07
Speaker
But there was just something different about being with a group of kids who had also lost a loved one. And actually at the time that I started Journey of Hope, the kids in the fourth and fifth grade class, we had all lost our dads. And so for a couple months, there were like four of us in that group and all of us had lost our dads. So we were really able to connect with that. And we were really, truly able to empathize with each other of what we were going through.
00:10:36
Speaker
And that was honestly Journey of Hope is where I always felt the safest to be able to talk about whatever I needed to talk about. That is amazing. Now, how many years did you attend Journey of Hope at that time? So you were nine. How many years did you attend as a participant? Yeah, so my mom and I actually went for five years, and we continued to go until the end of eighth grade. Well, really, when ninth grade was starting, because then my schedule just got
00:11:04
Speaker
Even crazier and we just sports and Girl Scouts and okay. I was involved in a lot of activities and It was we felt like we were okay. My grandmother who served as a caregiver for me for my entire childhood She actually died at the end of eighth grade
Coping with Grandmother's Death
00:11:26
Speaker
And so we had continued to go to Journey of Hope through the summer, and once our schedule got crazy, my mom looked at me and she said, do we need to continue to make this a priority? Are you okay? Are we good to stop going because our schedule, we're not sure we can fit one other thing in, so something else would have to go.
00:11:47
Speaker
And I told her I looked, I remember looking at her and saying, you know what? I think that Journey of Hope had given us all it could because we had gone for so long and met so many wonderful people and we had learned the coping skills and the
00:12:03
Speaker
the words to use with each other of how to express how we're feeling. Sometimes those words weren't always positive, but we did try our best to be able to adequately express to each other how we were feeling about just anything, but particularly our grief. Emotions was not something that we were 100% great at, but Journey of Hope definitely gave us more skills to be able to communicate more empathetically.
00:12:33
Speaker
and effectively. With each other. Now, you guys were a team, the two of you, right? You're an only child. So it was the two of you during that time. And so this definitely was this extended family that you were able to kind of have. Aside, of course, you had your immediate family.
00:12:55
Speaker
your grandmother and then you have extended cousins and so forth as well, but at least your immediate family, it was your mom. Now you mentioned of how taking care of your dad had become your normal since you were two years old.
00:13:14
Speaker
So, even not having that part of your routine, even after that, like when you turn nine, not only the fact of your dad having passed, but then that secondary loss as we even talk about in Journey of Hope, sometimes those secondary losses that we have when we go through grief.
00:13:32
Speaker
of your routine completely changing and you not being able to see all these therapists that your dad was, the physical therapist that your dad would see in and that that was your other home. How was that for you? How was that aspect of, whoa, what? I don't have to have a bag next to my door anymore with all my little stuff. It was really weird.
00:13:54
Speaker
I do specifically remember, as I said, looking at my mom a couple months after he died because we were still at the hospital a lot during those 10 months and those nurses became my friends too and I would trade back rubs for snacks out of the nurses station.
00:14:13
Speaker
I will trade you a back rub for a snack. I'm constantly trying to bribe my kids to give me a back rub. So I'm like, I'll trade you. Yeah. So it was honestly so weird. And my grandmother was there most of that last 10 months that my dad was in the hospital.
00:14:33
Speaker
I mean, this was in 99 into 2000. So she would have to go home. She lived in St. Louis at the time to pay her bills and then she would come back. So even when we got to the point that we didn't need her there all the time, even that was weird was it was just the two of us. And we were used to that for maybe a week or so at a time.
00:14:55
Speaker
But it was and she and I were very, very similar. So sometimes we'd be best friends. You and your grandmother. So my grandmother or your so me and my mom were very similar and we'd either be butting heads or like sharing guacamole on the couch and watching TV together there. So we we found that an interesting thing to have to kind of navigate that it was just the two of us. And we sometimes even felt like the
00:15:25
Speaker
kind of insecurity of not having that man in the house if you're used to it. My dad was six foot five and like
00:15:31
Speaker
a huge dude. And so just his presence, even though he was disabled and he wouldn't be able to physically fight off anybody, just his presence and his voice was enough to, you would feel safe. To scare somebody out. Yeah, you felt safe with him. And so we had a little bit of that transition of just like, man, it's all girls in this house. And not that we, I mean, we are like all girl power, don't get me wrong, but just missing that like six foot five presence in our house. So it was a very interesting transition.
00:16:01
Speaker
And then to have my grandmother coming in sometimes and then she finally moved down here when I was in the seventh grade. And I don't think I ever went back to my own house. So this is my mom's mom.
00:16:14
Speaker
Oh, your mom's mom. So she'd come from St. Louis to help you guys while you were going through everything with your dad's or your mom's mom. And so you were actually then, so when she passed away then when you were in eighth grade, she was here. So she had also then become that very big presence of your life again because she was here. Yeah. And she always had been, and even after the initial we're okay, she would still come for a month or two at a time.
00:16:40
Speaker
and still be here to help us. I mean, we mostly loved that she cooked. My mom had a great many strengths. Cooking was not one of them. And I mean, we ate spaghetti a lot. So we were always grateful for her to be here for that and just to just be a very gracious and graceful presence in our house because she was just so
00:17:04
Speaker
She thought through her words very well and was very graceful. And so she was a nice check-in for my mom and I when we would get worked up and she'd be like, okay, we're going to take a minute. We're going to calm down.
00:17:18
Speaker
We're going to listen to some music and then everything will be okay. So she had continued that. And then I was just so grateful when she finally decided to move down here. And I don't think I ever went back to my own house. I think because she lived, she moved into a house at the other end of our neighborhood and
00:17:37
Speaker
When she moved I kind of looked at my mom was like, okay. Bye. I'm going to Grammy's And then one then she got her cancer diagnosis, so she moved September of my seventh grade year and by August going into eighth grade. She had a pancreatic cancer diagnosis so at that point my mom was the same was even moved in at that point and
Caregiving for Grandmother
00:18:01
Speaker
I
00:18:01
Speaker
we both had the opportunity to help her and be caregivers for her. And as tough as those days were, I wouldn't trade those either.
00:18:11
Speaker
Those were some great days. That was my mom's diagnosis as well, was pancreatic cancer. So I'm very familiar with how many months was from diagnosis to passing. You know what? I say months because it was it years? She made it August to April. We got the stage three, stage four diagnosis in August. And we actually had Christmas the week before Thanksgiving with the entire family because she wasn't supposed to make it to Christmas.
00:18:39
Speaker
And that lady made it till the end of April. And she went far above and beyond. My mom and I had a trip to London planned as a school trip that spring break. And my mom looked to her and was like, you can't die this week.
00:18:55
Speaker
Like you can't. And so, I mean, she actually, I remember her telling my grandmother that as we were leaving, she goes, you can't die this week. And I go, mom, that is like probably the most morbid thing I've ever heard you say, but she would, but she hung on and she, you know what, she died the one weekend in April that we didn't have anything going on.
00:19:15
Speaker
Now, was she at that point when you both traveled, was she in hospice at that moment? She wasn't. Actually, we never got to that point. She was doing okay. One of my mom's really good friends was a nurse, and so when my mom was working, she'd check in on my Grammy, and my Grammys stayed pretty self-sufficient. Up right until the end, we'd have to help her move around a little bit, and she was done cooking, which was very sad, but she would tell us what to do.
00:19:45
Speaker
And so she was still at home and up and about, and she actually, the week before she died, had a stroke. And that's what put her in the hospital. And so it was actually the day that she died was the day that we had decided that, okay, this is kind of it. And we were talking about hospice, and I think she was just kind of like, nah, I'm good.
00:20:08
Speaker
And it was the day her sister, her youngest sister was on the way to visit and to kind of say goodbye. My uncle, my mom's brother had come in the weekend before while my mom and I were Girl Scout camping the weekend before and he stayed with her that weekend so he had his moment
00:20:26
Speaker
And my Grammy died two hours after her sister got there. And she was just kind of like, OK. Oh, like I'm good. Isn't it so beautiful? Yeah. How sometimes they just wait for everything to just kind of be in place and then be able to let go after they've said goodbyes. And I think a lot of times those gifts are really more for us, right? It's like for that so that we have that closure to some extent. So that's so beautiful.
00:20:53
Speaker
Now, let me ask you, so having experienced your dad's death when you were nine and then you were now what, 13, 13,
Emotional Dynamics in Teenage Grief
00:21:01
Speaker
14? Yeah, so it's 14 when my grandma died. 14. So how different, I mean, you had already then developed some tools of how to grief, but of course, as a child, the way we view the death is a little different than as a teenager. So how was it at that point for you then to manage your grief then with the tools that you had, but also still
00:21:22
Speaker
with all these changes. How was it then for you? Yeah, I think that one of the greatest things that I had at that point was that I could A, look at my mom and just say, hey, I just really need a minute to myself.
00:21:35
Speaker
And I need to go upstairs. I, my safe place was upstairs in my room with Avril Lavigne blasting. And, or I also had a drum set in my room. Which song? Which song? All of them. Which song could you, let's see. I'm trying to think. Of course, I still listen to them on Spotify in my car. Oh. But of course, I mean, what? I know, she hasn't come up with anything lately, right? I know. We need some, we need some new jams.
00:22:01
Speaker
I heard Fiona Apple came out with something recently and I'm like, wait, I haven't even heard of Fiona Apple in a long time. Yeah, yeah. So maybe Avril will make her come back. I hope so, man. But I mean, white teenage girl also doesn't have a band in middle school, so I actually had a drum set in my room. And so I would bang the crud out of my drums. Avril would be blasting. My mom didn't care. She's like, girl, you do you.
00:22:26
Speaker
um because she would express in different ways in which the drums was very helpful to drown it out. So yeah we we kind of had established like these are our safe places it's okay for us to take a break from each other and um just to allow ourselves to process and to just kind of look at her and go mom today's a really tough day.
00:22:49
Speaker
And she go, yeah, or if she was really worked up and she picked me up from school and I could tell she was mad or angry, I kind of look at her and be like, what kind of mad or angry are you? Are you mad because you're just mad that we're on our own? And is this your grief talking or is this something else talking? And so we were able to kind of have a better understanding of each other
00:23:13
Speaker
because we did have a very like us against the world attitude. I do remember we were on the way home, we flew up and we buried my grabbie in St. Louis with my granddad. And we get on the flight and we get settled and she kind of looked at me and she goes, just you and me now, kid. And I looked at her, I was like, oh man. I was like, this might hurt a little bit. She goes, yeah, we'll just do our best. So I think the fact that we both allowed each other some grace
00:23:42
Speaker
and we're able to just go, okay, today it is what it is. We're giving up. We're eating ice cream for dinner. Tomorrow will be hopefully a better day. I think that that is so important and I'm sure that that's something that you as a therapist associate that you do and with counseling and stuff and also as a facilitator and journey of hope is the fact of just allowing those emotions to be what they are and not trying to
00:24:10
Speaker
change them either and knowing that everybody has a different way of expressing them and that is I think huge and a lot of times that whole thing of like, let me try to be strong.
Strength and Emotional Relationships in Grief
00:24:24
Speaker
I want to be strong right now.
00:24:26
Speaker
What are your thoughts around that aspect of trying to be strong? I always hear that word when we're going through grief. Either people tell us to be strong or that we put that burden on ourselves that we want to be strong for the rest of us. So what are your thoughts around that word of strong? I felt that a lot more after my Grammy died because I was still fairly young enough when my dad died that there were things
00:24:56
Speaker
I mean, I really, developmentally, the way that I was strong was that I would choose to not get in trouble. And so I really was a big and still am. I'm a huge rule follower and I always stay kind of in the lines because I didn't want to be the one that set mom off.
00:25:14
Speaker
And I didn't want to make her upset and I didn't want her to cry because that made me upset. And so I kind of made it my goal after nine to be like, okay, you can do this. You're in charge of your actions and you have to do that. So I think as a nine year old, that's how I felt to be strong. Uh, when I was 14, I,
00:25:39
Speaker
I knew from then on and I, I parentified myself a lot. And by the time that I went to college, my mom and I were much more of like partners and roommates than we were mother and kid. Part of that is a little bit normal like you as your children developmentally get a little bit older and they need you for
00:25:59
Speaker
the mother. They need you in different ways. You're more of a business manager than you are. Go brush your teeth. Go wash your hair. When was the last time you showered? Things like that. Because as a teenager, well, sometimes you still have to tell them to shower, but you know what I mean. So we had developmentally
00:26:17
Speaker
Got into that point. So I think I just got there a little bit faster I got a job as soon as I could so I could help her pay bills because I knew that money was always tight when you're a single parent and She was doing her best to provide for me the life that she'd always dreamed of her kid having and so I Tried to contribute to that and I never asked for money. I never asked for extra things and so I think my version of be strong was be independent and
00:26:47
Speaker
and don't be the burden. And so obviously sometimes- But it was never about holding your emotions back. It was never about the holding back your emotions or do you think you still kind of tried to hold back? I kind of did. I really, really disliked seeing my mom cry. That was one of the only times that I would ever cry. Not because I wasn't allowed to, just because I think I was just done crying by then. I had done it enough and I was good.
00:27:14
Speaker
And even now that's something I still struggle with, but I think that, um, I, that was one of the reasons why I had the kind of be strong mentality was I didn't like seeing her upset. And so I had no problem getting angry. Anger was a thing that was allowed. We both had it. We expressed it. And then we'd look at each other and be like, great, you ready for some food? Are you ready for Chick-fil-A? And I'd be like, sure, let's go.
00:27:43
Speaker
Um, so that was an emotion we had frustrated, stressed. Those were all things that we like allowed happy. Obviously, I think people always forget happy. Um, but the sadness was the one that I didn't want to allow.
00:28:01
Speaker
Even though it was probably coming out reflected again in anger, the way it was being reflected, the sadness, the way it was showing up was in anger and frustration, but the underlying emotion behind that expression
00:28:18
Speaker
was probably still sadness and missing than usual. Now, you and your mom were this dynamic duo then for many of your years.
College Life and Pursuing Counseling
00:28:28
Speaker
You graduated from high school and then you started college and you decided to go into studying counseling is what your
00:28:38
Speaker
Yeah, so I went into SMU wanting to do something psychology related. At that point, I thought I wanted to do dance therapy. I had grown up from fourth grade on dancing 15, 20, 30 hours a week. It was my full-time job besides school. And it was just something that I wanted to be able to combine my passion of helping others with my passion of dance. Part of that went away when I started having a lot of hip problems because
00:29:08
Speaker
Many of us who dance this long start deteriorating by our early mid-20s. Was it ballet? Yeah, I did a lot of ballet, a lot of lyrical. Jazz, hip hop I wasn't great at. But then I was also on drill team in high school. So that's a lot of kicking. It's a lot of jump splits. So a lot of stuff on my hip joints. So that's what I went into college wanting to do, was to help people be able to express through dance.
00:29:37
Speaker
That was my goal. Or through drumming really loud. Or through drumming really loud. Yeah, I actually took a music therapy class my sophomore year and I loved it because there was a day we were drumming and I was like, I'm banging the quad. This is home. I am good right here. This is home. I know this. Exactly.
00:29:57
Speaker
So then that's how you went in and then how did it develop and how did it change then? And when you decided that it was not going to be then through dance therapy, how did that kind of change? Well, what changed was that my mom died.
00:30:12
Speaker
Sophomore year. This is you. So I was 19. Sophomore year. It was November of sophomore year of college and I had never wanted to go to SMU. SMU was too close when you grow up in Plano and you can get on 75 and be in Dallas in 25 minutes. Way too close.
00:30:32
Speaker
But I was very thankful that that's where I ended up. And there were a lot of twists and turns that got me there. But the fact that I was able to still be physically close to my mom that last, I guess, like 16 months that I was in college was actually one of the biggest blessings I think I had. And she had had a short illness. Her death was very unexpected. And
00:31:00
Speaker
It was that that completely rocked my world and for as solid as I always thought I was of like emotions can't get me that I'm driven. This is what I'm doing.
00:31:10
Speaker
it took a really long time to kind of at least get to the point where I could accept her death because I think it was so unexpected. And the other two, I was ready.
Impact of Mother's Sudden Death
00:31:21
Speaker
Like with my dad, I knew with my grandmother, I knew with my mom, it just was out of left field and she was an older mom. So she was a month shy of being 60 and I was 19. And so, but it had never crossed my mind. She had never acted her age ever.
00:31:35
Speaker
And the thought never crossed my mind that she wouldn't just be this crazy old lady living in my house when I'm 40. That was just how it was supposed to be. So she died the week before Thanksgiving. And after the services, I actually went to Florida with my extended family for two months to just kind of regroup.
00:31:56
Speaker
and see what I was supposed to do next. If I was going to go back to SMU, if I was going to transfer to a school in Orlando, just kind of figuring out what am I going to do. And I did make the decision to come home.
00:32:10
Speaker
And so then I was completely by myself for the most part. Because there's nobody here. Is there anybody here in Texas? I do have some extended. Some of my dad's family lives in the area. And my boyfriend, now husband, was here and his family and all of our friends, because it was just my mom and I had become our family. They were very important to us. I feel like there were probably 15 keys of our house made
00:32:36
Speaker
that people just had. For everybody. I hope they knocked before they showed up. They'd at least call and be like, hey, we're on our way over. Put some pants on till I'm coming over. Seriously. Our house was always an open house. All the parties, end of the year parties were at our house. All the New Year's parties were at our house. I mean, for two people living in this house, it was always full of somebody.
00:33:02
Speaker
Now, how did that change then, too? The fact that then your home was kind of the hub for everybody around, did that change when your mom passed away? Well, because we did have to... I couldn't stay in the house. It was not...
00:33:18
Speaker
we couldn't make that happen. And that was fine because I had a room at SMU for, you know, nine months of the year. So my husband's parents graciously had all of my stuff in their house. I think they still have stuff of mine in their house.
00:33:36
Speaker
that we're still constantly trying to clean out, but we had a lot of help in our community with Girl Scouts through our church of people coming together, helping us get stuff out of the house. I have four storage units at one point because when you're in the depths of all this grief, like how is it? Cause it was my mom's house and my grandmother's house. So all my mom's stuff and my grandmother's stuff. So I was like, how do you go through this in like two weeks?
00:34:02
Speaker
to figure out what you want. So we were very, I was very thankful to have people step up and they're like, well, we'll pay for your storage unit for a year. I'm like, wonderful. Thank you so much. And so it allowed me time.
00:34:14
Speaker
because I had to kind of be on autopilot for a while. I was able to kind of sort of feel while I was in Florida, but my cousins have always been great distractors. That's just what they're really good at. They make me laugh. I love being with them. And we had two babies.
00:34:35
Speaker
been in the area at that time. So I just occupied myself with the two month olds that didn't talk. It was great. I spent my days by our pool. And like, and I had been so used to going to Florida for extended like weeks and two weeks at a time, just to so my uncle would instead
00:34:54
Speaker
My uncle would have me come out there to A, give my mom a break. And just because it was fun and I wouldn't have to work, I wouldn't have to worry about anything. It was going to Disney and going to Universal and hanging by the pool and going to the beach and going out on the boat. And so I was able to like, that was your second home. That was your second home. And so to me, that two months there.
00:35:14
Speaker
really didn't have much grief involved other than having to make some really hard choices because to me that was normal for me to be there. I stayed in the same room that I always stayed in. I sat out on the same lanai. I went to the same Disney like it just felt like kind of a vacation so it wasn't until I came home that I started actually feeling but then I had to be on autopilot because I was still making all of these really big decisions as a 19
00:35:40
Speaker
As a 19 year old. Oh my gosh. So it was, I was very grateful for the people that I had surrounding me and everybody was super wonderful. Um, but then that's when I kind of decided to switch. It was actually when I was in Florida, I was visiting my cousin that lived in Savannah.
00:35:59
Speaker
And she kind of looked at me. She goes, you know, why do you think you've been given all this stuff? Like, why do you think you in particular have been given all of this grief? And I said, I don't know, because right now somebody really hates me. And she goes, no, no. Like, think about it. Why do you have all this stuff? She goes, you've always been a very giving person. You've always wanted to give back. How are you supposed to do that?
00:36:28
Speaker
And so it was then that I realized that I wanted to help other people who have lost loved ones.
Career Choice Influenced by Loss
00:36:35
Speaker
And I decided that with my three losses, I could not only provide the empathetic actual experience to clients and to people who I work with, I've been adding in all of the education and all of the background that I now have on all the different theories and all of the data and all of that. So I was able to come back and look at my advisor and go, this is what I want to do. Help me get there.
00:37:02
Speaker
And he would go, OK, this is what we're doing. And my advising appointments were never 15 minutes. They were always at least an hour because they always had something going on. I remember my junior year, first day, second semester, junior year.
00:37:19
Speaker
I had gone back to my husband's parents' house to get the rest of my stuff from winter break. I was driving back to SMU. It was like nine o'clock. I'm on 75 and my car literally stops working. Just stops working at the 635-75 merge. And I go, okay. I throw my hazards. Just like, okay, what do I do now? And so thankfully like an NTTA truck like was coming down the ramp. They saw me. They helped me move my car. The tow truck was conveniently two minutes behind them.
00:37:49
Speaker
And so I called Michael and I go, okay, well, my car just died in the middle of 75. Can you go meet it at the car place? He goes, yeah, where are you going? I was like, I'm going to school. He goes, how are you going to school? I'm like, the NTTA guys are taking me to school.
00:38:02
Speaker
I go, could you please bring me all my stuff? He goes, I guess. So I actually had my advisor. I got there for my 930 class. I got there at 933. And I was running into class with all the stuff I could carry out of my car. And he just kind of looks at me and goes,
00:38:19
Speaker
Do we need to have a conversation after class?" I go, yeah, that'd be great. That'd be awesome. But talk about commitment, girl. First of all, talk about commitment. I'm going to school. Doesn't matter if my car broke down. I'm making it. No, I was getting to that conflict resolution class. It was going to happen, and the NTTA guys took me to school.
00:38:40
Speaker
So I think I was just so thankful and so blessed to have as many people supporting me and rooting me on as I did. And so what better way to be able to honor these three people and to give back to this community than to be doing what I'm doing now. And hopefully more. We're at the beginning of the journey.
00:39:00
Speaker
Oh, no. Yeah. Well, it never really ends, right? Yeah. You're giving back. Yeah. You just have started your career as a... How many years have you been now as a counselor? I've been licensed almost three years, and I've been a part of Journey of Hope as an adult for six or seven. I can never keep track.
00:39:20
Speaker
As a volunteer and then almost one year as an employee now as well. That is amazing. And you know what your cousin said about why? Why you?
00:39:36
Speaker
It's so interesting because a lot of times, like what you said, oh, someone must just hate me, type of thing. A lot of times we think that those things are there as punishment when really they're gifts. As hard as it may seem to think, they may be gifts for our own growth, but a lot of times it's just so that we have something to give back to the rest of the world. You are a perfect example
00:40:03
Speaker
of what it looks like to go through something so hard and then turn it into blessings and be able to give to so many now. So that is amazing. I want to ask you just a couple of questions regarding when you were studying then and learning all this when you were in college.
00:40:26
Speaker
and learning about grief and seeing it as a technical perspective, you know, it's a collage, it's a collage. How was that experience, having that you had already gone through it, and then seeing the psychology behind grief and that process, and were you self-analyzing yourself? How did that go? Oh, of course.
Society's Failure in Grief Preparation
00:40:48
Speaker
I do have to say, one of my
00:40:53
Speaker
soapbox things that I talk about a lot is how much the world doesn't prepare us for grief.
00:41:00
Speaker
It doesn't prepare us to handle it. Life doesn't prepare us to see that it happens. And no one tells us what's normal what's not normal. Thankfully, I mean one of the things I did learn as a child at Journey of Hope is all of these feelings that like grief isn't just sad. Grief is anger grief is stress grief is frustrated grief is loneliness, all of these things.
00:41:24
Speaker
And so actually, all of the learning about grief, for the most part, that I learned was not at school. I'm a part of a couple different organizations. One of them is Association for Death Educators and Counselors, which sounds really morbid, but they're a great group of humans. I was a part of a group called Actively Moving Forward, AMF, which was a college grief support group. And they allowed me the opportunity to not only
00:41:54
Speaker
go to the AMF conferences and learn more and meet people there. But they also helped me get to the ADEC conferences so that I could learn more because they knew what I wanted to do. And then I've learned a lot from different organizations. The National Alliance of Grieving Children has a lot of different education. The Dougie Center has a lot of education. So a lot of what I've learned about grief came outside of the classroom. But I do have just, and so learning it, looking at these different grief models,
00:42:23
Speaker
Hey, there are no stages of grief. That's not a thing. Hallelujah. Thank you. Thank you for saying it. It took me a very long time to find a way of talking about grief that actually made sense to me because even, when was this? So I guess even like six or seven years ago, the five stages were still something that people talked about often.
00:42:49
Speaker
And so what I discovered was I really fitted with Warden's four tasks of mourning. There are four tasks. You can do them over and over again and you will do them over and over again. You don't have to do them in any specific order.
00:43:05
Speaker
And I always talk about this and then I always forget at least one of them. So I'm going to pull up. The first one is to accept the reality of the loss and that that person is gone. That is something I think that we all do every day.
00:43:27
Speaker
Even 2015 and 10 years later, there's probably few mornings that something doesn't happen in which I could call one of these people. And so I'm constantly reminded of the reality that these people are not here. I always say that the first time you accept that is the hardest and it takes a while.
00:43:50
Speaker
And for me with my mom, it took me coming home because when I was in Florida, everything was a party. And yeah, we were talking about tough stuff, but we were talking about it on the boardwalk of Disney. Like, how could that be bad?
00:44:03
Speaker
Um, so coming to an empty house, then have to clean out and realize that make decisions. Yeah. Yeah. That's yeah. That was task two is to work through the pain of the grief. Also something that never goes away. You will always be working through the pain of the grief.
00:44:21
Speaker
It just, for me, doesn't come up as often as anymore. Next week, with Mother's Day capping off the end of next week, I will be a complete basket case. And just because I think our bodies kind of know these important days a little bit more than we do.
00:44:36
Speaker
sometimes. And I was kind of having a weird week this week. And I remember that actually on Wednesday was the 15 years since my Grammy had been gone. It took me till the end of the day to realize like, why do I just feel weird today? Like, what's off? Because it's April, right? Because it's April, you're right. So that's something that you are always working through. And that's not something that ever really goes away.
Adapting to Life Without Loved Ones
00:44:59
Speaker
Task three is to adjust to an environment in which the deceased is missing. So with my dad, it was putting away the hospital backpack.
00:45:08
Speaker
It was, we had a couple handy, like disabled things in our house that just helped him a little bit more. Those were all gone. When my Grammy, when she died, we had a wheelchair and a walker at the house and then those were gone. And so just even those small adjustments of just realizing that person isn't here. So adjusting to the physical environment as well as the social and emotional environment in which
00:45:36
Speaker
Like my Grammy was my person for a very long time and that's the person that was really constant and I'd look at her and be like, today sucks. She goes, great, what kind of ice cream would you like? And so then it took my mom a while to catch on to like, that was supposed to be the response.
00:45:51
Speaker
Yeah, talk about food being comfort, being taught as comfort in your family. We can have that conversation at another time. Food, totally everything. This week, having a rough week, did I have a lot of chocolate? Yes, I did. But it's okay. Task four is to find an enduring connection with the deceased while embarking on a new life. And so that's where
00:46:19
Speaker
I think you kind of, that's your like sunshine and your sunrise after the big storm. And you've been through these months, could be years of just trying to work through this pain and sitting in the pain and just having it consume you so much. And then to finally look at your life and go, how can I embark on a new life while having an enduring connection with my loved ones?
00:46:46
Speaker
And that's the task when I finally read these, that I was like, that, that's what I'm doing. I said, that's what makes this different because this grief doesn't go away. I mean, I have a picture, I'm looking, I'm at my desk right now and I have a picture that I drew for our Journey of Hope Facebook Live a couple of weeks ago of like my mom. And I could have, I've thrown away all the other projects we've done for Facebook Live, but this picture that I drew that's like, it looks like a six year old drew it.
00:47:13
Speaker
But it's sitting here on my desk. But it was you now. So this is not one that you drew when you were nine. No, this was literally a month ago. This is one now. It was a month ago for one of the Facebook live. That's me. Stick figures. Yeah. And so it's just sitting here on my desk and I have different pictures throughout my house. I'm very thankful that there is a picture of me and my husband with my mom and that sits on our bookshelves. And each one of them has a shelf. I have a dad shelf. I have a mom shelf. I have a couple of mom's shelves because she has a lot of stuff.
00:47:43
Speaker
And then I have a grandmother self. And so just finding that enduring connection, I have a lot of pictures. I'm very grateful for that. The amount of money my parents spent on duplicates and triplicates of these pictures when I was growing up, sometimes they get very frustrated. Now you see the value. And sometimes I'm like, okay, okay, just get rid of the duplicates. No one needs them. But there are moments that I'm just like, I just need to take a minute and just
00:48:10
Speaker
Just look at those and remember some of those things. So that's why That's where we live. I love those. Mm-hmm. I love those, you know, I had never heard of all those of that particular way of of morning and those make so much sense those make so much sense because it there isn't really any order and and I say this all the time, it's not like just
00:48:34
Speaker
accept, and that whole thing of the why, the questioning, the bargaining.
Non-linear Nature of Grief
00:48:41
Speaker
Even if they happen, they don't happen in any order. There's not really steps, right? Because if they don't happen in order, they're not really steps.
00:48:51
Speaker
But and these right here, these are also just kind of are just a process too. They're not necessarily even in an order either, but it to some or do you feel like these particular four do come in a process. I think that like I think acceptance and that connection kind of is like closure. Yes, like that. I feel like that has to happen first.
00:49:14
Speaker
because you can't truly believe and feel those things until you have accepted. So really, I do think that has to come first, but I do also think that we can feel pain without labeling it as grief yet. And so I do think that acceptance does have to come first, but I also love that even though the fourth task seems all inclusive and kind of the final step,
00:49:40
Speaker
It doesn't disclude the fact that we're always still working through the pain of our grief. And so I think that that's why I think these are so nice. And yes, they're in a great order. The way he ordered them was a great order. But there's an emphasis on this doesn't happen always in order. And there's nothing that says you can't go back.
00:50:00
Speaker
and revisit these things over and over and over again. Yeah, because sometimes also there's triggers. There's things that end up coming up in our grief that are different, like a different aspect of the grief ends up coming up, which I'm assuming even when you got married, even though you had been with your boyfriend, even like
00:50:18
Speaker
getting married was right there, a huge happy moment that brought up also some aspects of grief because you didn't have your mom, your dad, or your grandmother by your side on this special day. Right. So you're kind of having to reevaluate. Yeah, and graduation was tough too. I'm going to make sure to take all these websites. Oh, graduation. And graduations because what's funny is my husband was at my high school graduation.
00:50:44
Speaker
and my undergrad graduation. You guys have been together forever. And my grad school graduation. Yeah, we've, yeah. And so at high school, he was just like, okay, I'm your, I'm your buddies. Like we're friends. I'm just here to celebrate you. No big deal. He told me that after, and this was after actually my grad school graduation, he told me this, he looked at me at my undergrad graduation. I actually couldn't look at him while I was like, while all graduation stuff was going on, because I was like, if I look at you,
00:51:11
Speaker
I'm going to lose it. And so I just like stayed straight ahead and was like, all right, don't just focus. Um, so he said he felt more like a parent at that graduation because he was the one that was like, Brenda, do your homework. Like you have to take this test. You have to study. Um, because I was a so distracted and B I still had, I was still working 30 hours a week all through college.
00:51:34
Speaker
Um, just so I could like, you know, pay some bills, like I had a phone bill still and some things, but he said that my grad school graduation, it was two months, three months before we got married. He was like, I got to feel like a partner there. I was so excited. Um, so in, and so in those moments too, and I, I mean, I've lost it at all three of my graduations and at my high school graduation, I knew my dad wasn't going to be there. And I was going to, he called SMU SMU.
00:52:04
Speaker
And I was going there and I knew just how excited he would be, but these things will come up. And I think with like with my wedding, like I think dress shopping, that was the big, that was the hardest day of. I was like, we are getting married and we are going to the beach. My mother-in-law went, so I didn't want a whole lot of people because I knew I would be really overwhelmed. So my mother-in-law went and my maid of honor came with me. And then we had two appointments scheduled. And after the first one, I was so overwhelmed that my
00:52:34
Speaker
made of otter called her mom and was like I need you to get here because her mom you know is a nice surrogate mom for me and she was just like no we're not doing that we're not picking this dress we're picking something else um so I did have some good support with that um but by the wedding I was like we are getting married I was also really sick so I was just like please someone get me out of this dress I would like to go home I hadn't packed us for our honeymoon yet so I was like let's get married
00:53:00
Speaker
Let's have a party and let's go to the beach. And you were sick? You were sick on your honeymoon? Because I had worked so much leading up to that. We decided to move on Wednesday. We got married Saturday. I woke up Wednesday with a sore throat. Saturday morning of our wedding. The stress. Yeah. And was still working and all of those things. I'm trying to finish my hours for grad school.
00:53:21
Speaker
And Saturday morning I'd spent the night with my maid of honor and I texted her at 6 a.m. I go, I'm up. I need everything in the cold and flu aisle. Like, let's go. She goes, yep, me too. Here we go. So both of us had a lot of medicine in our system just trying to make it through the day that day. But it was still, it was still a really great day. But I knew just at the end of it, I was just so excited to be who I was going to be with at the end of the day. So that was all that mattered at that point. So it was a lot of the planning and leading up to it that I think was the worst.
00:53:53
Speaker
that brought up some of those feelings. Now I'm going to have to get all these different websites from you to be able to put in the show notes because all these links to all these resources that you mentioned because it's like a whole bunch of nuggets here of tools that other people can use and it's been so amazing even just to learn
00:54:15
Speaker
through you about all these different aspects. And I'm sure the listeners were like, wait, wait, let me rewind that. So don't worry. We'll put in the show notes and the bottom, all the links. So I'll make sure to get those from you. And Brenna, this has been amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for sharing all this journey and again, showing how you can take
00:54:38
Speaker
Lemons and make lemonade. Absolutely. Like you did. Absolutely. And make the best out of what you got and your situation and make sure that you're giving back to all these other now kids and teens with your empathy as well as with your knowledge, helping them navigate through their grief. And I think that's a beautiful, beautiful gift that you're giving. Yes, I love it. Thank you so much, dear. I'm so excited that you're on. Thank you for having me. This has been great.
00:55:07
Speaker
Thank you love. Okay. Thank you. Thanks again. Bye
00:55:17
Speaker
Thank you again so much for choosing to listen today. I hope that you can take away a few nuggets from today's episode that can bring you comfort in your times of grief. If so, it would mean so much to me if you would rate and comment on this episode. And if you feel inspired in some way to share it with someone who may need to hear this, please do so.
00:55:45
Speaker
Also, if you or someone you know has a story of grief and gratitude that should be shared so that others can be inspired as well, please reach out to me. And thanks once again for tuning into Grief Gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.