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Feeling Goodbye: Navigating Family Loss with Jill English and Haley Wiggers
123 Plays9 months ago
Saying goodbye to a loved one is holy and hard ground. In this vulnerable and inviting conversation, Haley and Jill talk on the ebb and flow of the goodbyes they have known in their lives and the self discovery they've uncovered through loss. Their courage offers hope to all of us who've faced an untimely loss. So make a cup of tea and grab a blanket for this tender exchange between friends.
For more stories from brave, ordinary women, join us at Red Tent Living.
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Transcript
Introduction to Red Tent Living Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi, I'm Katie Stafford, and this is the Red Tent Living Podcast, where brave women host honest conversations about our beautiful and hard ordinary.
00:00:12
Speaker
This season, we connect on stories of family. We're excited for you to join us. Welcome to our table.
Episode Highlight: Goodbyes with Jill English and Hailey Wiggers
00:00:20
Speaker
We have a really moving episode today that features a conversation between two women I am proud to call my friends. Jill English and Hailey Wiggers bring their courage and vulnerability to bear in this sacred exchange on navigating goodbyes with loved ones. I can't wait for you to hear. Let's jump in.
00:00:42
Speaker
So good to catch up with you again. You too. It was fun to see your name across the screen and just remember the bits and pieces that you have had in my life for some pretty significant decisions I've made, like even your voice. And so to catch up with you in this way, I've been really looking forward to. Me too. Me too. Those are really fun memories for me as well.
00:01:10
Speaker
We may have different ones, but you know, just those points of connection have been really valuable to me too. Yeah. Yeah. So let's jump in. Do you want to go first? Sure. I think I started about four times.
Jill's Vision vs. Reality of Family Holidays
00:01:29
Speaker
This is where we landed. So yeah, here's my story. Feeling goodbye.
00:01:36
Speaker
Years ago, as a young mother dreaming of the rewards of a life well-lived alongside my then husband, I would imagine the holidays of our retirement. I invite you to imagine with me. Two daughters and their families were gathered around the Christmas tree with us. Our parents would be there for a few years enjoying their grandchildren and great grandchildren. My sister's family, nieces, and their families would join us later for dinner at this holiday gathering.
00:02:04
Speaker
After dinner, we would call my brother's family in Florida. Games would be played. Laughter would roll through the large house we lived in, and the satisfaction of a life lived with love would be its foundation.
00:02:17
Speaker
The young woman who dreamed such things couldn't have imagined the changes that were coming.
Navigating Goodbyes and Life Changes
00:02:23
Speaker
Through a series of goodbyes that included the loss of a marriage, deaths of parents, the untimely death of her sister, cancer, disability, and a myriad of other unexpected changes, the young woman's holiday gatherings would come to look very different from her idealistic vision. Since then, I have noticed this about saying goodbye.
00:02:46
Speaker
Whether closing a casket lid over a beloved face or watching a spouse back out of the driveway for the final time. Whether stroking the furry head of a deer pet as they drift off for their final sleep or hugging an adult child before she walks down the concourse to catch her place playing home. Whether walking out from a beloved workplace for the last time or blowing kisses out the car window to a five-year-old. Goodbye is holy and hard ground.
00:03:17
Speaker
and sometimes standing on it aches too much. It's no wonder then that holding the sadness of it all becomes a burden to be tucked away for another day.
Dealing with Grief and Distraction
00:03:29
Speaker
Decades ago, hmm, arriving home after the funeral of a dear friend, I was anxious and my feelings were jumping all over the place. Maybe you can relate to this too.
00:03:41
Speaker
I did something then that I now notice as my pattern for when emotions become itchy and thoughts grow bouncy. I decided to go shopping. It could as easily have been I started a work project or I began to purge my basement or I planned to get away. This decision marked the beginning of my strategy for managing grief in saying goodbye. Distraction. Distraction allowed avoidance of hard questions like,
00:04:12
Speaker
How does the world just go on? What do I do with this big lump in my chest? What happens now? In the moments that follow loss, the earth shifts a little. Some take note and sit with it. I found a way to move past it through distraction. During this last decade, since the biggest of the goodbyes began, I have filled the empty spaces with activity.
00:04:40
Speaker
concluding work of all kinds, vocational work, yard work, home, housework, planning work. I have also distracted myself with new things, most good as new things go, grandchildren, a new vocational direction, and a new couch.
00:04:56
Speaker
I have read books and I've learned about grief and loss. I started a chaplain training program to grow the capacity to walk with others through difficult moments that also involve saying goodbye. I have learned much and thought much about how to go on well, and I have kept myself very busy. All this to postpone the feelings of my grief. What grief I have learned is not that easily put off.
00:05:24
Speaker
This year, in attempting to walk with others in their grief, I have learned that walking with simply cannot be done, not really anyway, until one has truly felt their own sadness to its core. Boom. That ball in my chest knew what to do. It's bound its way outside, taunted me on the forehead and demanded, feel it, damn it, don't just think about it.
00:05:50
Speaker
Some days I think if I let the tears come, they may never stop. At least not in time for me to get to work or to bed or to be done in time for the myriad of other things I have convinced myself must happen. And yet the ability to be with others in their sadness depends on feeling goodbye well and fully. It is time to say a proper goodbye to the vision of that young woman.
00:06:17
Speaker
It is time for the tears, for the lament, for the honor that her dreams deserve. As part of this process, I have recently begun turning toward her and asking what she thinks of all that has happened. In my imagination, I see her, eyes brimming with tears, and with more than a little disappointment, I imagine this as her response, wow, that's a lot of goodbyes.
00:06:45
Speaker
There has been so much sadness. We have mixed up some savory lemonade, but it tastes different than I thought it might. Then she looks at me as she says, I do look forward to getting to know you all.
Hailey's Reflection on Personal Growth in Her 20s
00:07:01
Speaker
But first, I need to sit for a while with what is missing. Do you mind? I don't want to forget that part. She is so much wiser than I thought.
00:07:15
Speaker
Jill, that was just so tender and raw. And how did it feel for you to write that piece? So writing it was a lot in my head. The first time I read it out loud before getting on this call, feeling it came pretty unexpectedly.
00:07:41
Speaker
toward the end, the first time I read it, I couldn't finish, which made me wonder if it was too raw for this, but here it is and here we are. I think that it's not though. I think what it acknowledges is just however, and when we decide to move through the grief, it's going to feel that way.
00:08:05
Speaker
Grief I think feels saying goodbye and the sadness that comes with it to me feels Like it isn't finished. It's not it's it's just part of who we are and When we remember that it it can still feel sad, you know for lots of reasons and maybe different reasons at different times so feeling the sadness and feeling the loss I liked even from the beginning I
00:08:35
Speaker
just imagining your holidays of retirement, what that would look like. And then as you go into the changes that would be coming in your life, all of the loss and just naming all of the things that have happened as a part of your life. And then you just talked about, I love how you said goodbye is holy and hard ground.
00:09:04
Speaker
And then I loved how you looked upon that.
00:09:09
Speaker
like girl you once were with so much what felt like belovedness, even as you talked about how you filled those empty spaces with shopping or distraction or busyness, because I think it feels like you named something about grief that is really valid. Like we're maybe not always ready
00:09:35
Speaker
to like sit in the feeling. And some of the things we do to distract ourselves or deal with our grief can actually be good for us in that season. And so now you're in a time where you can live there. And, you know, certainly I think about what would it have been like if I really sat with it.
00:10:01
Speaker
And I think I did to the capacity that I could in those moments, but if I really sat with it and allowed myself to go really deep with the sadness or whatever other emotions might've been there. And I wish I would have, but I don't think I could have at that time. And I think that's part of what I'm learning about this whole process is,
00:10:28
Speaker
my tendency toward distraction. I mean, grief isn't the only place that happens. It happens when I'm bored. It happens when I am facing something I don't want to do, all of those things. That's just a key component of what I recognize as part of my personhood that I'm learning to both recognize, notice, sometimes put aside.
00:10:57
Speaker
But just see that it's always there, that tendency to avoid feelings by doing. I just feel like that's owning those parts and realizing they're a part of me, even the ones from long ago, they're still there and being able to recognize where they still fit in my life or aren't needed anymore. So.
00:11:24
Speaker
Yeah. And I loved too, how you said, I think some things that many people don't realize they're thinking, you know, what do I do with this like lump in my chest? I think that's what you said. Like all of these questions that maybe people don't even realize that they're, that they're saying or like that they're processing or wondering.
00:11:49
Speaker
And I loved the line that you said, like, just feel it, damn it. So I'm curious for you, as you even talked about your own work with grief in your pastoral care for people, what has it continually looked like for you to embody your feelings and grief?
00:12:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think in that care, it's really easy for me to access the compassion that I feel alongside somebody who is going through some sort of loss or significant shift in their life and needs to grieve what isn't going to be or happen anymore. The compassion is easy to access.
00:12:37
Speaker
Moving it into my being, you know, my heart is accessible only to the degree that I'm not trying to protect it from my own sense of loss and grief. And so, yeah, learning to remove
00:12:58
Speaker
that barrier to what I would imagine is probably stronger sense of empathy or a stronger presence of empathy rather than just kindness and compassion has been work and it's been rewarding. And I think those moments where that happens, ministry feels really rewarding and really connecting. So
00:13:28
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's where the work that I've been doing and all of these years and the ways that processing has happened has led to the capacity to do that kind of ministry. And it doesn't always happen, but when it does, it's really special. I think even as somebody who's well like
00:13:52
Speaker
mature and knows and has done a lot of that work to even say it doesn't always happen but when it does it's special I think that's just a real way to say like the way we deal with our grief and our feelings and the way that it comes to the table in our situations and lives is not always like perfectly integrated but
00:14:19
Speaker
the invitation to notice when it does, I think is a gift. Yeah, it feels that way to me. Also inconvenient sometimes, but a gift. That's true. Yeah, that's true. Thank you for sharing. Well, I'm anxious to hear your story and your reflections too. Yeah.
00:14:45
Speaker
This is a piece I wrote last year already, so I just kind of adjusted and changed some things because it felt too much like this is what I feel like I wrote the second time around. And yeah, I feel just curious how it will feel to read. I'm not really sure. Sounds good.
00:15:09
Speaker
I'll dive in. I don't really have a title for this, so say goodbye. I have six months left in my 20s. Some might say I'm just a young spring chicken with barely any life lived under my belt, but we don't wear belts anymore. Thank you, high-waisted jeans. That's not untrue. I'm pretty young in the green scheme of the
00:15:37
Speaker
But as I consider the seasons that have swooped me up like a tornado and dropped me off at the doorstep of change and transformation, I'm well aware of the ways I've had to sort of prune, shed, and say goodbye to the layers, mechanisms, behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs that don't serve me anymore. And the ability to do that, I would say, is a timeless gift. Have you ever had to commit someone to the ground that you loved?
00:16:05
Speaker
I remember the day after the long week we had of unexpected mortician visits and death casseroles and I'm sorry for your lost flower arrangements after my dad's passing that we had to commit him to the ground to bury him.
00:16:21
Speaker
My family and some local relatives all gathered around a freshly dug gravesite. It was one of those days where we had to pull out something nice from our closet, something that screams, I can sort of grieve, but with a little class, but also something that you'd be okay never wearing again, because honestly, who wants to have to remember that this was the gray, almost too busty dress that I buried my deceased father in? I selected something from my older sister's closet,
00:16:50
Speaker
one that I regret because I sort of remember my legs sticking together from the Kansas heat. Bereave strangers got out of their cars and somberly walked over to the great site. My mom, sisters, and I glued ourselves to the first row of chairs under the canopy that blocked the scorching Kansas sun, barely speaking to anyone else.
00:17:13
Speaker
I just wanted this to be over. I remember staring again at my dad's body, laying still in the casket thinking yet again that his embalmed body looked nothing like the man I knew who once held so much life. He was too shiny, too puffy, and his hands looked weird.
Laying Her Father to Rest: Hailey's Farewell
00:17:32
Speaker
I stared at him thinking a host of things, but I remember the moment that I realized pain was inevitable.
00:17:39
Speaker
As we face the prospect of burying my dad six feet underground, I remember, like a pair of pre-baby genes that I have to wiggle myself into only to realize these genes don't serve my body anymore. This belief I seem to hold about a life apart from pain or suffering or struggle was discarded because that wasn't my reality anymore. The belief that I could somehow escape the touch of death or pain in this life no longer served me.
00:18:10
Speaker
however unconscious it was up until that point. My new reality was breaking through. So as I said goodbye to my dad, as if he could actually hear me, I laid an unhelpful belief to rest. Through seasons and years that followed, as if I was hosting an ongoing rummage sale, I continued saying goodbye to the things that no longer served me. As I worked with college students and in the church, I laid down more assumptions and biases I held.
00:18:39
Speaker
I laid down theological certainty and a need to be right. As we moved across the Midwest, welcomed our first child, started new jobs, and lived in a pandemic world no one recognized. I said goodbye to independence, to self-reliance, to a me-centered world where my entitlement was valued above love of my neighbor. As I marched, speaking the name of George Floyd in 2020, I said goodbye to my need to feel comfortable and to be complacent with injustice.
00:19:08
Speaker
As I discovered more deeply the art of shepherding God's people, I laid to rest my need for efficiency, my uncertainty about my giftings, and my belief that I didn't belong in pastoral spaces.
00:19:21
Speaker
as I had these holy, surprising encounters with amazing women who exude the presence of the Lord. I was challenged to say goodbye to asking permission to live my calm. I was challenged to soften my perspective towards folks whose actions really angered me.
00:19:40
Speaker
I was invited to say goodbye to the narrative that people were rooting for me to fail. The list could go on, just like we stretch and wiggle and adjust the clothes that no longer fit or serve the bodies we inhabit. We sometimes need to adjust and stretch and wiggle or even purge the beliefs, attitudes, narratives that no longer serve us and lead us towards greater consolation. We need to take on the mentality of Marie Kondo and simply thank those things and say goodbye to them.
00:20:11
Speaker
As I enter the last six months of my 20s, I'm deeply honored and grateful to have, well, gotten to be me. Sometimes our physical losses and goodbyes invite an interior redecorating of sorts, as Kate Bowler often reminds me. Of course, as we say goodbye to layers or beliefs or attitudes, we also pull up a seat for new ones at the table of our lives. I'm setting out a seat for long long
00:20:40
Speaker
To be a dear companion, I navigate loss and desire. Not because I'm lacking anything, but because I simply want to befriend it and tend to it. I'm setting out a chair for silence and solitude as much as possible, because amidst the noise and cold heart of my life, I need to meet God in the quiet.
00:21:00
Speaker
There is a bench at the table that holds a place for vulnerability, dependency, and detachment, because for me, they've had to work together. I've had to lean into vulnerability as I share my sufferings in the safe embrace of others, dependent on their help and nurturing care, and detachment from my ego and pride that lie to me saying, my limits are a liability. Laying my dad to rest for me
00:21:27
Speaker
over time set a tragic and impossible trajectory of goodbyes. And yet some small part of me came alive that day. Of course, I am learning the ongoing work we are invited into is exactly the ebb and flow of goodbyes and hellos as each season cease fit. Being continually molded and remolded by the spirit into new creations.
Welcoming New Narratives
00:21:53
Speaker
The old has gone is going and the new has come.
00:22:01
Speaker
Wow, those thousand words or less encompass a whole lot for you. And I'm just sort of holding this space, absorbing that. There were a lot of really beautiful phrases and
00:22:18
Speaker
analogies and metaphors, particularly love those genes, you know, releasing those things and just thinking about the significance of that moving over the last 10 years from, you know, early twenties to almost 30 and all that has happened.
00:22:47
Speaker
the ebb and flow of goodbyes and hellos and what that looks like. As you were reading, what parts really kind of poked at what was a lie for you in this moment today?
00:23:04
Speaker
I think what surprised me was it wasn't necessarily the sharing about the loss of my dad and the memories of like laying him to rest that felt particularly alive. Like that felt more like a story I was sharing because the detail a little bit more comical to me and like, and so I think what I've really been wrestling with that I added
00:23:31
Speaker
into the piece rather than what I had posted last year was the piece about what are all the things that I'm now inviting to make up space. And that I think is what I am learning and growing in. And that's something I feel like over the last probably four years or so that I've had to learn the most
00:23:59
Speaker
are not just the things in me that need to be like purged, but the ways in which I am being formed, I think, and the ways I'm becoming. There's a tug, I think, in my spirit when I think of like, I already, I like want to be there. I want to be 10 years from now what I will be now, but to trust
00:24:26
Speaker
the slow work of becoming and seeing that unraveling the life. Yeah. I hear that impatience. It's hard to wait for the day that you wake up and recognize, oh, I'm doing that now. And I didn't think about it as an intentional thing. And as I think about this, I think you identified them as seats at the table that you were making space for. Is that right?
00:24:57
Speaker
Um, so many of them are hard to do in the stage of life that you're at the, the silence, um, the solitude, even the vulnerability, because you're so busy caring for others and tending to their, you know, vulnerabilities. I wonder how in this season of life, you're finding space to pull out those chairs, to let, let those things take a seat.
00:25:28
Speaker
Hmm. Sometimes it's not.
00:25:32
Speaker
until I'm forced to, that I'm like, oh, hello, you're here. Sometimes vulnerability and dependency and detachment choose me before I actually have the capacity to choose them. And I'm maybe more surprised that they show up a little bit, if that makes sense at all.
00:26:00
Speaker
And it doesn't, I think the solitude and silence, those things feel hard to come by, but I crave them. They feel like, for me, a consistent discipline that I have to work at a little bit more to know the quiet is where I will meet God.
00:26:27
Speaker
regardless if I feel it or not. And so just pockets of my day, even turning the sound off in the car as much as I can with a top layer in the backseat, but not feeling like I have to talk at him all morning or play loud music or just closing my door for a minute at work.
00:26:50
Speaker
And then I think I have tried to find a balance of, yeah, vulnerability and what does that look like? I feel like sometimes I tend to overshare and I'm like, oh my, you just got, you just got that. But finding safe people and shared as far as a gift and something that I know that I need.
00:27:14
Speaker
Well, what, as we just wrap up our time, what are you from our conversation, from maybe both of our pieces or just the conversation in general, what are you taking with you into the week?
00:27:30
Speaker
I think one of the things that, well, one of the images that is staying with me is the, just the metaphor for wrecking, you know, the, the metaphor of clothing that no longer fits, but it also kind of stands alongside this table image that you provided at the end of your piece where allowing seats for the things that need to be there and recognizing them. Um,
00:27:58
Speaker
as I kind of move into my week and think about, you know, what are some of the things that I'm learning in this work that I'm doing and what I'm, what I'm called to rethink and re-envision and re-imagine about how I hold things in the world, right? And things like grief and things like other forms of pain or whatever, what, what seats kind of need to be pushed under the table and what ones need to be pulled back.
00:28:26
Speaker
to allow space for some of these things that you name, vulnerability and even dependence, thinking about those things this week, I think. Yeah, how about you? I just really loved, I feel like even as we're in different seasons of our life,
00:28:53
Speaker
Like sometimes I'm recalling your story and feeling like part of the person maybe you would be talking and looking back to could still be me. And I feel so much compassion as you're looking back on yourself a decade or so ago. Like even me giving myself permission to receive myself the way that you did in your own story.
00:29:21
Speaker
And encouragement, I think, as you are someone who is older than me and have lived more life than me, compassion and encouragement to say, like, it doesn't have to look perfect. It doesn't have to be tied with a bow. I could receive and learn things in 20 years differently than I am now, and that's okay.
00:29:49
Speaker
Yeah. It's a work in progress. I love this sort of intergenerational conversation and the perspective that it provides. I'm always inspired by women who have been able to live through a different thing in a different way and the really amazing and wise things that come out of that. This has been really fun. And I think just the capacity we have to learn from one another, no matter
00:30:19
Speaker
where we are in life, right? And remembering stages and looking forward to stages and the things that we wish we knew or didn't, you know, I don't know. Now I'm rambling, but that's sort of the space that I feel like I'm sitting in as well is just the beauty of time and the beauty of the way that God allows us to
00:30:45
Speaker
learn about ourselves and about God and the grace that's there and how we get to extend that to ourselves and to one another. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's so good. I don't know if I could say it any better or would add anything to that. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Jill. This has been so much fun.
00:31:12
Speaker
Have you ever had to commit someone you love to the ground? Oh my goodness. That sentence from Haley was so gripping.
Katie's Learnings on Grief and Distraction
00:31:23
Speaker
Both she and Jill have navigated some of the deepest and most painful forms of goodbye. I felt so honored to listen to what they have learned along the way. There's a lot I still need to learn about grief.
00:31:39
Speaker
Like Jill, I know what it is to only be able to feel death in small doses and to crave some form of distraction to serve as a balm for the loss. And I know what it is to have that loss catch up with me and demand to be felt. I'm grateful for Jill's courage in marking her own path towards being with herself.
00:32:03
Speaker
And I love the way that Hailey marked how grieving her dad and saying goodbye to him forever shifted her world, sending her on a new journey of many goodbyes, but also some hellos, like hello to her sense of calling, hello to longing and silence and solitude, hello to a spacious place to meet God. Sometimes vulnerability chooses me before I can choose it, Hailey said.
00:32:33
Speaker
I think we've all likely experienced that moment. The next time vulnerability presents herself to me, I hope I can welcome her the way Jill and Hailey are learning to, with permission and acceptance for what I feel, and surrender to what God seeks to show me.
00:32:53
Speaker
What about you? What is your relationship with grief, silence, and vulnerability like? And what might be possible if you listened to that brave voice inside of you, inviting you to feel, damn it, something to think about? Until next week.
00:33:13
Speaker
The Red Tent Living podcast is produced by myself, Katie Stafford, and edited by Aaron Stafford.
Podcast Credits and Review Invitation
00:33:20
Speaker
Our cover art is designed by Libby Johnson, and all our guests are part of the Red Tent Living community. You can find us all at redtentliving.com, as well as on Facebook and Instagram. If you love the stories shared here, we would be thrilled if you left us a review. Until next week, love to you, dear ones.