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196. Complicated Grief and Trauma with Jeanette Koncikowski
58 Plays1 month ago
Jeanette Koncikowski has dedicated her career to helping survivors of trauma heal and thrive while teaching others how to support them best. With a background in psychology, education, and community development, and working now as a consultant and grief coach, Koncikowski has empowered countless people to tell their stories. She is the founder of Widowed Parent Project, an online resource for widowed parents. She has written and spoken extensively on parenting, complicated grief, family bereavement, and recovery from trauma.
Website: widowedparentproject.com
Instagram: @widowedparentproject
https://store.bookbaby.com/book/shipwrecked2
Show Highlights:
- From Harvard to Home: Jeanette reflects on her journey as a mom, therapist, and Harvard graduate balancing career ambitions and family life.
- A Love and Loss: Her 21-year relationship with her high school sweetheart, Mark, and the mental health struggles they shared.
- The Shipwreck Metaphor: Jeanette describes grief as a shipwreck—navigating drowning emotions, dragging herself and her kids to shore, and rebuilding life from the wreckage.
- Prioritizing Mental Health: The critical decision to focus on counseling for her children and herself early on, and her advocacy for therapy as a universal tool.
- Evolving Grief: How her children’s grief transformed over time, and the role of therapy and support networks in their healing.
- Writing Through Grief: Inspired by her own experiences and the absence of resources for young widowed parents, Jeanette created the Widow Parent Project and wrote Shipwrecked, with a second book, Stronger Than the Storm, on the way.
- Lessons and Legacy: Jeanette’s journey to recognize the value of her story and how it offers hope, guidance, and resilience to others facing profound loss.
Contact Kendra Rinaldi to be a guest on the podcast https://www.griefgratitudeandthegrayinbetween.com/
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Transcript
Seeking Solace in Books
00:00:01
Speaker
The first time I surfaced after his death, I went, I had friends that came and stayed with me. And I thank them to this day. i had three or four of my closest girlfriends stayed for a week with us after he died. And so sometime during that week, I think it was after the funeral, but before the burial, I i finally got out to my, like, I just had to get out of my house.
00:00:23
Speaker
There were so many people, you know, and I just needed, I needed a morning to myself. And I went
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:28
Speaker
to the bookstore. I said, there has to be a book. Hello and welcome Grief, Gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast. here i am right with ah background in child development child trauma i have a trauma counseling certificate i knew things but i didn't feel like i knew enough
00:00:55
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.
Meet Jeanette Konzikowski
00:01:11
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.
00:01:22
Speaker
I'm Kendra Rinaldi, your host. Now, let's dive right into today's episode.
00:01:32
Speaker
Today I'm chatting with Jeanette Konzikowski. She has dedicated her career to helping survivors of trauma heal and thrive while teaching others how to support them best.
00:01:45
Speaker
She has a background in psychology, education, and community development and working now as a consultant and grief coach. She is a mother.
00:01:56
Speaker
she ah was ah She is a widower and we'll be talking about that. I say was, I guess, at the it currently we will find out where your ah where your journey is, but this journey of this conversation will be about widowhood and that journey in your life.
A Love Story and Family Life
00:02:15
Speaker
So welcome, Jeanette.
00:02:17
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me, Kendra. I'm glad you are here. And we, as we were just chatting a little bit beforehand, we'll see where the, where our conversation goes.
00:02:29
Speaker
So right now you are currently living, are you still in the Massachusetts area or do you live? I'm in the New York now. You're in New York. Okay. In New York, yes. In New York. So you are a mom and a therapist and that journey of even get becoming ah therapist, you were married to your high school sweetheart, Mark.
00:02:51
Speaker
And that was kind of what took you on to going to together, right? As a family, you guys went to the Boston area while you were getting... Yeah, for a brief period of time. do you want to Do you want to flaunt where you went to school? I was very...
00:03:08
Speaker
Privileged to get into Harvard for graduate school. So I'm from Buffalo, back in Buffalo, New York now, just outside the city. But ah Mark and I, my first husband, had an opportunity to live in Boston for a few years when I got into grad school at Harvard. And then we stayed in the area for a little bit and then ah came back here before our first daughter was born.
00:03:30
Speaker
Yes. Well, thank you. Now your mama, well, no longer a teenager. Your oldest is no longer a teenager. You already passed one teenage year. You still have one teenager at home and that's a whole other journey in itself. a yeah It's like a half empty nest right now. I've got a ah almost 20 year old. My oldest Grace is going to be 20 in April and my youngest Milo is turning 16 in two weeks. So yeah.
00:03:53
Speaker
They're not that little anymore. when i When I started the book, they were young. Yeah, and that's at the time of the at this ah recording, by the way, because it might not record to it will launch a little further back. So as we're speaking, they're about to be that age.
Facing Grief and Mental Health Struggles
00:04:09
Speaker
Now, Jeanette, tell us about the background. You had experienced grief already in your life when before Mark's passing.
00:04:20
Speaker
but So tell us your journey, your grief journey, when you're ah first in your marriage, you guys got married, Mark had been had some mental ah health at issues all your life.
00:04:35
Speaker
And all their his life, all of his life. So tell us a little bit about that journey. Yeah, so I met Mark when I was 15, my ah first day of sophomore year of high school. En clase de español.
00:04:50
Speaker
En clase de español. in In Spanish class. He was sitting next to me in Spanish class. And um just we were together for 21 years after that. So fell in love with him.
00:05:05
Speaker
um he had, both of us had struggles as teenagers with our mental health. I had pretty severe anxiety. um he had depression. And so, you know, when you meet as teenagers with those kinds of things, right, it's like, oh, my person, my mirror, they see me, they know what this is, what this is like when you're an angsty teen. And so we were, we were pretty inseparable. Um, after,
00:05:30
Speaker
ah you know, we went through some stuff in high school, right after high school, right before the end of high school, his depression got severe enough where he had to be hospitalized.
Crisis and Separation
00:05:41
Speaker
And then few months later, his um less than a year later, his, his mother passed away suddenly and our first year in college. um And that obviously took, you know, that grief and his family going through that took a toll on him. And then, um and then at the same time, right around,
00:06:00
Speaker
not too much longer, my mother got diagnosed with, um, aggressive breast cancer. And so as teenagers, even we were dealing with a lot of health issues, crises, heavy things. And so when I got into Harvard for graduate school, you know, it was kind of this opportunity for us to, we saw it as an opportunity to start over.
00:06:20
Speaker
um my mom survived at that point. And, um, didn't want me to not have that opportunity, even though she was going through chemo while I was there. um And so we we picked up our lives in Buffalo and at 22, we moved to Boston and you know we had some we had some good years. um His depression was kind of always this the specter that accompanied us.
00:06:44
Speaker
you know it would it would be there sometimes very aggressively, sometimes more in the background. um And we developed a very codependent relationship on each other, I think, because of not having as much family support as we needed because our families were dealing with all these other things.
00:07:02
Speaker
And... really grew up together. I didn't know how to be an adult without him. And so, you know, we went on, we came back to Buffalo and got married.
00:07:14
Speaker
We had our first daughter in 2005 and went through some infertility struggles and then ah had our second daughter in 2009. And throughout all of that, you know, we maintained our relationship, but it it was a struggle.
00:07:28
Speaker
um He went back to school, he became a chiropractor And um right right around that time, things you know his his depression just wasn't abating. Over the years, we tried therapy, medication, you know yoga, like all the things you could think of to try to get him help. And it never nothing ever stuck. Nothing ever worked.
00:07:51
Speaker
And it was kind of this mystery. and um And it got to a point with him where you know his depression could be very much weaponized against me, where it really became unhealthy um in our relationship. and we got to a point around 2012, was just, you know, the life crises kind of continued. My mother's cancer came back and was metastatic. And so she was terminally ill.
00:08:15
Speaker
um We had lost a baby, our third ah pregnancy, we lost in the second term. And so I had just had a miscarriage. My mother was dying. I was immersed in my own grief and our marriage started to fall apart. And, um,
00:08:31
Speaker
in the middle of that all ah within a year after my mother's death, my best friend died. um And so suddenly of a heart attack at 37. And there just,
00:08:43
Speaker
and so there was just you know, again, crisis after crisis, after crisis, grief after grief, after grief. and for me, it was very much, you know, those three deaths, the the loss of ah of our pregnancy, my mother's death, my best friend.
00:08:59
Speaker
it really made me start questioning like, well, who am I and how much time do I have? And do I want to be this unhappy? Like, love this man. I loved him more than I've ever loved anyone. And we were not in a healthy marriage and, um, and it wasn't healthy for our children to see us the way we were.
00:09:15
Speaker
And so I made a very difficult decision to, to leave, to separate. Um, we were separated for 13 months and he kind of hit rock bottom during that time. He, he needed to hit rock bottom in order to kind of rebuild. And the first six months we were separated were terrible.
00:09:32
Speaker
Um, and then gradually it started to get better. Um, The other thing that happened in the middle of all of this is he got an answer to his depression. He was diagnosed with epilepsy.
00:09:43
Speaker
um So literally the week my my mother died, we got the call from the doctor because he had been having these episodes that we thought were high blood pressure related where he would pass out and he turned out to be dropped seizures.
00:09:57
Speaker
So again, all this is happening at the same time, right? Like all of that grief, the illnesses, um the depression, or marriage problems. And so I stayed for a while because because I felt like, you know, who leaves their partner?
00:10:12
Speaker
When they're newly diagnosed and and then we just couldn't sustain it. So um the separation was good for us, though. i i think both of us felt like it was a much needed break. And ah we had just started working on getting back together, going to counseling, spending time as a family.
00:10:30
Speaker
Um, I had hope he had hoped that our marriage was going to survive this time apart. And then he suddenly died. And so it was just at that cusp of like reuniting that, that everything shifted again in my life.
Writing 'Shipwrecked'
00:10:47
Speaker
Yeah, that is a lot, a lot that you went through in such a short period of time and in a young life. i As I was reading your book, which by the way, I didn't mention that as I was and saying your whole resume, she's an author.
00:11:06
Speaker
Shipwrecked is the name of her book and the the story behind Shipwrecked. Do you want to say why it is you chose that title? Yeah. um So when when he died, that's what it felt like to me. it felt like this life we had planned, right, just got destroyed and he went overboard And I wanted to go overboard too, right? Like when you're in that deep, deep grief, because of course I blame myself. He died alone um in the apartment. I found him.
00:11:36
Speaker
And so the the feeling for me of like, I can't live without this person. I can't, you I'm going to drown. and And so shipwreck really became this metaphor for me throughout my grief of like, this was the experience. It was like, I'm drowning. I've lost you.
00:11:53
Speaker
ah whole life is shattered. How am I supposed to go on? And then having to make a very conscious decision to, um, to get to the surface, right? To find that light, that little bit of hope and get to the surface.
00:12:07
Speaker
And then you look around and you see everything that was in your life is just now floating in the water, right? Like your your whole life you had was destroyed by by the loss. and um And so, you know, and there's nothing to do but get to shore. so it felt like just for, the you know, the next 18 months dragging myself and my kids to shore. And then you get to a place of hope and you think, okay, like I'm going to find,
00:12:30
Speaker
Other people on this island I made it to. And then it turns out to be deserted. and All the people you thought were going to be there for you are not, in fact, there for you in your grief. But you do find others. You you kind of find your tribe. and um And there was a period of rebuilding. And then for me, there was very much, ah and this took years, but there was a decision to go back into the water, to set sail again in my life and to make a decision to move forward without him.
00:12:58
Speaker
and and to return to the water's edge. And so that's kind of the metaphor I weave in the book, in part my story, but in part also my research with other widow parents and very practical suggestions for how you cope with such a loss. you know Our story was very unique and we had these other layers in it, right?
00:13:20
Speaker
A lot of widow and widowers I've worked with um over the years, so it's been 10 plus years now, it's been a whole decade without him. um I was 36 when I lost him. I'm 46 now.
00:13:31
Speaker
And it was really this recognition of like, you will have another life. And I would have punched you if you told me that when I was three months into my grief. So it's like, it's so hard to see the trajectory that there is a compass, that there is a place to navigate to when you are in deep grief.
00:13:50
Speaker
And that that grief lasted. And still, I mean, it's not like it's left me. It's just different now. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. And the little nuance about what were you, that the Family Robinson and that you, you said that that was one of the books that Family Robinson. And so that's kind of what you guys were on this island where like the Family Robinson. Yeah.
00:14:16
Speaker
You really have to like, look for, you know, the little bits of resources that yeah you can have to get through this time with your mental health intact. Yeah. It's such a good metaphor of that metaphor for grief because when i have this you know when I interview people, it's really like what tools did you use and what helped you? And this podcast itself is a tool. Now is every single tool that's out there for grieving people the ones that everybody's going to use? no they're there in case that ends up being a fit. Just like if you're on an island, not every single thing is going to be something that you might use. You might use, you might well to use your, make your hut out of, you know, I don't know, palm leaves and somebody else may want to make it out of stone. I'm not sure. Like whatever. Right. So you have to see what works for you in your grief journey. And that's, that's what, what you have. And you're, you're, uh,
00:15:16
Speaker
chapters, you share your story. And then at the end, they're very concise, helpful tools that have helped you. Because I know that we all are seeking for this manual. Like you even said yourself, you're like, you're you're trying to find exactly out there. What was there when you were a widow? Like, what is out there? What can I use? And you're picking books up and nothing really fit what you were going through.
00:15:43
Speaker
And so we write, we write, or we share what, what has worked for us in case that's something that may be helpful for somebody else. So in this process of writing, when did it start? When did you start writing your book? So it's been 10 years of his passing. When did you start writing?
00:16:04
Speaker
About two years after his death. um Originally, i was asked to write um I was asked to write a sermon for my church. So at the time i was a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church here.
00:16:19
Speaker
And ah one of the things that's different about the UU faith is that they have lay ministers and everyday people come up and share their stories. You don't have to be, you know, the priest with the homily. you are You all have lessons to share with each other. And so my church had asked if, um kind of knowing I was going through this journey, if I would be interested in sharing a little bit of the story. And so I wrote a sermon and um that stayed in the book. It's part of the book about my experience. Two weeks after he died, we were we were stuck in a snowstorm um and we were trapped in our house for five days.
00:16:53
Speaker
So was just, you know, my thirties were real rough. It was a real rough time. and And I wrote this sermon about it was during the snowstorm that I made this decision to begin again. And so I had this essay that was my sermon. And it was after I wrote that, you know, it was so helpful for me to like,
00:17:11
Speaker
just get it out. And I'm, I'm a writer by trade. So I was a therapist early in my career, and then I moved into education and I have been writing curriculum for 20 years for different training programs, um, to support caseworkers and social workers and
Sharing Grief Stories
00:17:26
Speaker
psychologists. And, um, so I was a writer, but it was this very technical writing.
00:17:31
Speaker
I didn't do a lot of creative writing. And so getting my story out, being able to share our experiences, um, That was really the first time I started writing our story, but it was even further back than that.
00:17:45
Speaker
The first time I surfaced after his death, I went, I had friends that came and stayed with me and I thank them to this day. i had Three or four of my closest girlfriends stayed for a week with us after he died.
00:17:58
Speaker
And so sometime during that week, I think it was after the funeral, but before the burial, I i finally got out to my, like, I just had to get out of my house. There was so many people, you know, and I just needed, I needed a morning to myself. And I went to the bookstore. I said, there has to be a book that will teach me, like, how do I survive this? How do I help my kids?
00:18:19
Speaker
Here I am, right, with a background in child development, child trauma. I have a trauma counseling certificate. I knew things, but I didn't feel like I knew enough. And I didn't know what this experience would be like. And i didn't even know if I could call myself a widow if we were separated. And so I went to the bookstore looking for a book and I couldn't find this book I wanted, which was a handbook that would tell me, help me, inform me, how do I get through this as a young widowed mother?
00:18:48
Speaker
And so the idea of the book started then. And about two years later, so I wrote the sermon. And then I said to myself, you know, Jeanette, you are a researcher, you are a writer, you have had all of this trauma, you understand trauma from a ah theoretical point of view, maybe maybe you do have something to share with the world. And so um that actually led me to begin wanting to connect with other young widow parents. So the first thing I did is I started a Facebook group called Widow Parent Project, which still exists 10 years later.
00:19:20
Speaker
um And I wanted to connect with other widow parents to hear their stories. And I thought I would write a book that was research-based about, you know, what I learned from other widowed parents. And so I met through the internet, all of these other widow parents, they beautifully shared their stories with me.
00:19:37
Speaker
um That was going to be the original book. I have all their stories. the The first book I wrote that took eight years um was my story, but it was also all their stories. And it was too big. It was like 400 pages.
00:19:49
Speaker
Well, then we we can see shipwreck one, shipwreck two, shipwreck one. Pretty much. it's my When my editor read it, first thing she said is people with grief cannot handle all this content. This is way too much. Like you should have known that. I'm like, yeah, you're right.
00:20:02
Speaker
So I think I actually have two books. So I was not going to publish this as a memoir. I didn't feel like my story was worthy enough of being told or being centered. um I wanted to highlight the other parents' who had shared so much of their stories with me. And when people read it the thing that they kept coming back to was my story and saying, but your story is worthy. And actually, there's a lot of lessons here.
00:20:28
Speaker
um So Shipwrecked, um it's a memoir of widow parenting and life after loss. That's my first book. And now I'm working on The second book, which is Stronger Than the Storm, which is um more of a ah kind of the guidebook or handbook, I want it, right, from other widowed parents' stories.
00:20:46
Speaker
So I have both um not making as much progress on Stronger Than the Storm as I would like because I need to find time to write. And it's really hard with everything else going on to to find that time. So Shipwrecked took me eight years. So I started it two years after he died.
00:21:02
Speaker
I just published it 2024.
00:21:05
Speaker
And it was eight years to to get it from start to finish, but I'm really proud of it. And um I'm so grateful to the, you know, 30 plus parents I interviewed that shared their stories of loss with me and let me kind of hold that and Hopefully will come out someday as the second part of this book series.
00:21:24
Speaker
yeah And what what a way to honor Mark by having it be on his 10th year anniversary then in 2024. Yeah, you know, it worked out that way. I kept, I got to a place around year seven where I was having a hard time finishing the book. And my therapist said to me, maybe you don't want to finish this book because you're not ready to let go of his story.
00:21:46
Speaker
And I really, that that really hit. You know, I was really struggling to finish the book. I had a lot of anxiety about how Mark would be perceived. Like, did I have a right to even share his story? Did I have a right to tell the truth about our marriage and the good, the bad, and the ugly? um There was a lot of good and there was some ugly and there was some bad things, right? And I felt like Who am I to to share this? And then it was Mark, my memories of Mark. Mark was a writer and
00:22:18
Speaker
That was his phrase. He would always say, like Jack Kerouac said, you have to write the good, the bad and the ugly. And once I kind of settled on the fact that I think he would have been actually proud of me for writing this and that his story is just a story now to share and our story is a story to share, right, that I want to help other families. And I think um maybe these are lessons I could have learned earlier in my life that would have spared us some pain. But think I wanted to be able to share what our experiences were. And my children, my beautiful children also, you know, graciously let me include their stories.
00:22:53
Speaker
I said to them at one point, like, I can just leave you out, right? This can be my story. And they were like, but it's our story. And um so both kids let me interview them in the book. And, you know, I think one of the things that makes Shipwrecked unique is that we meet them when they're five and nine.
Unique Grieving Processes
00:23:12
Speaker
And then I interview them when they are 12 and 17 and to see for the children, the progression of their grief and what that's looked like as our lives have changed. Right.
00:23:25
Speaker
I've had a lot of people that read Shipwreck said that that was a really important piece to include because we often don't get to hear children's experience of grief over time. And it's so that is so valuable what you just shared because it is true that a lot of times kids, like the parent themselves is grieving so much that the kids end up getting lost in this mix, like as if their grief is not sometimes...
00:23:52
Speaker
valid in that process as much as the parent you know a lot of times. So, I mean, it happens in and and other type of dynamics too, like siblings when the parent dies. If a sibling dies, then the other siblings are kind of like, ah that's happened.
00:24:08
Speaker
That was my first you know core family experience was my sibling, my sister dying. And that kind of thing of like, wait, but I'm still here too. Or people are like, oh my gosh, your parents, they must feel. And then they're like,
00:24:21
Speaker
Yeah. And like, what about us? You know, like, you know, yeah yeah that's a really, i'm I'm sorry you went through that. It's a very common issue in that family dynamic of sibling loss. um You know, and i think, you know, you'll,
00:24:36
Speaker
People read the book, they'll see it in the story, right? My kids' experience of grief was very different. they And I think that's another major takeaway for me of what I learned, right? Is just because we're the same family, everybody's grief was different. And the way it showed up, um the the things we needed in our grief, the way it still impacts us, everybody had a very unique experience of grief. And the hardest thing for me as a parent was to, especially, you know, being a helping professional, it was like, I just want to fix this.
00:25:04
Speaker
I wanted to make it, quote, right. And there is no fixing grief. And I can't, I can give them skills and tools and resources and the best therapist in town, and they still have to go through their grief is their own unique individual experience. All I can do is bear witness to it and be there for them.
00:25:23
Speaker
And that was really, really hard lesson for me because I wanted to make it better.
00:25:30
Speaker
that That right there, what you said is so important because people are trying to find, i like we find the manual. Okay, this is how we go through it. But then you're like, okay. And then the last step, okay, am I supposed to already be doing be done then with it? Right, right. When you get to, as and you mentioned about the steps, you know, Kugler-Ross's book, as well as then other other ways that worked best for, like that, not that worked best for you, but at least that the idea of what grief looked like,
00:26:00
Speaker
like being, you know, the pebble in a jar. Tom, Tom, my gosh, I just forgot the, the, um, Lois Tompkins. Thank you. Lois Tompkins. Um,
00:26:12
Speaker
that analogy of it, us growing around it. it's our it's ah We grow, the grief is there, but we grow around it and therefore it doesn't end up feeling the same way because we've grown, right? And who we've become.
00:26:27
Speaker
So anyhow, there's just so met so much in the book that... everyone can take something from that. the The part I wanted to share is, can we go a little bit over some of these helpful tips that you shared?
Support Systems for Children
00:26:46
Speaker
So how about we do the ones as we're talking about your your kids. If we talk about the chapter in which at the end you talk about how to support children with grief over time.
00:27:01
Speaker
So you have eight eight things um that you've listed and ah at the end of that particular chapter. Which, how, ah like for example, with yours, let's see, let's start with seeking professional help.
00:27:17
Speaker
How and when did you start seeking professional help for the kids? So I actually, um you know, I guess one of the the blessings, there were blessings, they were hard to find in the beginning, but one of the blessings of our experience was that I was a professional in this area, right? I was working in the field of child welfare at the time of his death. And I knew um from my own school, I knew trauma therapist. And so I actually reached out. um
00:27:49
Speaker
Well, I should say even before that, the the day he died, when we called the school to tell them that the children wouldn't be in that day, bless their heart, the school psychologist, social worker, and principal walked to my house and spent the day with us. So even the day of our loss, we had professionals with us.
00:28:07
Speaker
And I was so grateful for that. They, you know, i want to move to your school system. Where is your, it was great. I mean, they, they didn't have a shock that they just like, we got home that morning a couple hours later and in there's these people waiting in my driveway and they just, you know, surrounded us immediately.
00:28:24
Speaker
So we had that support on the immediate outset. And then, um, you know because the children were with me when I found him, they had an they added trauma component, right? So every child that experiences parental loss, it's traumatic.
00:28:39
Speaker
And then the kids, the way he died and the children being with me, um, uh, he died in, uh, from sudden unexplained death and epilepsy. So the epilepsy actually, contributed to his death.
00:28:51
Speaker
He had had a seizure and just didn't wake up from it. And so, um you know, that was an added trauma component. So I knew as a professional that they might need like psychological first aid. And so I had reached out to, um, someone that had actually trained me when I was a student, uh, because I knew she was in private practice. I knew she was a trauma therapist.
00:29:13
Speaker
I was shocked when like the phone number I had scrawled on a notebook, she picked up and I told her who I was and what we had just gone through. And she agreed to see the kids for an assessment. And, um,
00:29:24
Speaker
And agreed with my initial thinking that, you know, they were going to need some intensive therapy to help them process what had happened. And so ah we were able I was able to, I made a decision, even though money was going to be very tight.
00:29:39
Speaker
even though you know we were faced with all of these financial decisions to make in the immediate aftermath of his death, that I wanted to prioritize our mental health. That was the most important thing for me after a trauma is like everything else has to stop and we have to be okay. We have to get to a place where our mental health is preserved so that this doesn't become maladaptive grief.
00:30:02
Speaker
And so I made the decision to, you know, take what whatever it was going to cost to get these kids help, to eventually get myself some help, although I put them first. um And so we got into trauma counseling pretty quickly. i would say within about two months after he died, they started seeing somebody, each of them.
00:30:23
Speaker
Um, my youngest was actually already in therapy because of the separation and some of the stress that that had caused her. So she continued to work with that child psychologist. Um, and then we have been in and out of therapy ever since, you know, i I've really tried to encourage my kids to see it as a tool that everybody, um, should be able to access. And of course we know therapy is not accessible for many people. There's all kinds of reasons for that, but, um,
00:30:50
Speaker
I made the decision to to get help early for them and to continue to use this resource as we've needed it. And that's looked different over the years, you know, particularly because they've grown um You know, their grief is different at five and nine than it was at 12 and 16 than it is at 16 and 20.
00:31:09
Speaker
So we got help early on. We also um about a year after, not quite a year after he died, we connected to our local bereavement center and we did a support group with other widowed moms and kids. And that was amazing.
00:31:22
Speaker
Helpful in a different way, because it also gave the children access to other kids like them. And I think that's an important part when you have child grief that kids see themselves now as permanently different than every other kid. Right.
00:31:36
Speaker
And so being able to meet other kids that had lost a parent was really helpful for them. Yeah, peer-based support. So those those two could either go hand in hand or at times you might end up doing just one. But the main the main thing is that you if you choose or if you feel that that type of support is needed in in your in your situation, especially when it comes to a traumatic event,
00:32:05
Speaker
in that grief journey, then definitely no that that something. Not everybody needs therapy for for grief and loss. um A lot of kids will do just fine adapting. um On the other side of it, I often will hear from parents in my support group with Widow Parent Project that I still run or that I've coached where they wait too long, right? They wait until the child's behavior um is so out of control with drinking, drug use in the teen years or you know, with anger issues or behavioral issues that now we're at a crisis, right? Something has happened at school. Something has happened in the community.
00:32:40
Speaker
Now we're at a crisis. It's like, let's try to prevent that, right? So when you start to get those like, this doesn't feel really good anymore, or I'm starting to get worried about my kid, intervene then as opposed to waiting for something to explode.
00:32:53
Speaker
um So I always tell parents like, not everybody needs therapy, but everybody does need some level of support. So figure out for you what that support looks like. Maybe it's a group, maybe it's, you know, a six week class on grief. Maybe it's um just having, you know, you have a friend that went through something similar and you're spending more time together.
00:33:15
Speaker
ah We really looked at using all of those resources and tools to to help us at various points in our journey.
Family Rituals and Spiritual Connections
00:33:21
Speaker
and And we're kind of just here talking, we're not I'm not going to go like one, two, three here on these, but the in that process, the part of keeping that communication open with your children throughout, not just the first weeks, not just the first year, just keeping it open years after. Because even as we say, if it just keeps if grief is there, just kind of we start changing things.
00:33:45
Speaker
within that grief than our children are too. So how did that look like when you would keep on, you know, talking to them? You know, this is the thing, right? the We adapted, we coped, and we were still grieving. So, you know, you have all these milestones that come every year, right? the The anniversary of the death, his birthday, Father's Day, holidays.
00:34:08
Speaker
It's always with us. And so it's really important for parents with grieving children to not just think like, okay, we went through that. It's done. We've moved on with our life, right? They're okay.
00:34:21
Speaker
They never bring it up anymore. Well, that doesn't mean you shouldn't bring it up. um I'll have a lot of parents be like, well, they're fine. You know, they, my son's never wanted to talk with me about it again after the first year. But did he really? Or is it just that you weren't open to it? So I really encourage parents to have this be an ongoing conversation. So that to our family looks like, you know, we just had my husband's Mark's birthday was February 9th.
00:34:47
Speaker
We're 10 years out. We had another snowstorm here. We did not get to the cemetery. um We also were traveling back that day from seeing my oldest in college. And it was the first year we didn't do the thing we normally do, which is go out for his favorite food.
00:35:02
Speaker
And, you know, so the conversation was, are we okay with that? Like, can we go later in the week or do we need to do this ritual anymore? Like, let's just check in. How are we all feeling about this? Right.
00:35:13
Speaker
And each kid feels different. My oldest was not a fan of doing these kind of ritualistic things. She's like, I don't, she often wouldn't want to come to the cemetery. I'm not going to force her to do that. So for her, right. It's, she had a harder time processing it.
00:35:27
Speaker
It was like, she doesn't like these very big emotional displays. Okay, but I know she will call me when she needs to talk about her dad. And then for my youngest, she will want to accompany me to the cemetery. She will want to make sure we get Slurpees every year on his birthday and eat five guys burgers and fries, you know, because that was his favorite thing. And so you really just have to have these...
00:35:48
Speaker
um Sometimes it's it's the milestones that can be the opening. Sometimes it can be quieter. you know My youngest came to me a couple of weeks before his birthday and said you know it's almost February.
00:35:59
Speaker
And I knew exactly what she meant. It's almost his birthday. And I feel like it's hitting me hard. And it's 10 years. you know We all really up to the 10th anniversary, it felt some kind of way this year. And um and to the point you made earlier about it you know ah it, it kind of worked out that it was in year 10 that I released the book. It felt like this milestone to me. And I really pushed myself to get the book published. the first I was like, that's it. 10 years is long enough. I gotta, I gotta to get it out this year, you know?
00:36:29
Speaker
So I really think with parents, you just want to leave that door open from, from the day one, you know, um in the book, I write a little bit about, i don't even remember the first conversation I had with the kids about his death.
00:36:40
Speaker
It was so shot. Like I was so traumatized that day. I don't remember it, but I do remember we had multiple conversations you have to keep talking about it, right? it doesn't It doesn't go away and pushing it down and pretending it's over doesn't work either.
00:36:56
Speaker
e And within those conversations, that aspect of the either continuing that bond and the spiritual connection, that's one of the things you talk about too.
00:37:07
Speaker
Can you talk about what that was with you and the and the girls? Like what what did that look like in your life? And what kind of conversations did you have at those ages that they were at that that they felt that they could kind of keep a connection and and based on your own beliefs.
00:37:28
Speaker
In grief theory, we call this continued bonds, right? It's really important for kids to have after the death to have a continued bond with that person. So just because their dad died doesn't mean that Mark has left their memories, their spirits, their lives, their thoughts, and their heart.
00:37:45
Speaker
And so the way that we have kind of kept his spirit alive as our family has transitioned through this loss is really to find meaning in ritual. And so what that has looked like for us over the years has evolved.
00:37:59
Speaker
um In the very beginning, you know, we would do things like- Was it the Sunday fun day? Yeah, Sunday fun days, which was something him and I had started when we were separated to try to maintain being a family. And so They always joked that he was the silly one and I was the serious one. And I felt like, well, now I've got to fill these shoes, right? I've got to i've got to have fun with these kids. That's what they got from him.
00:38:24
Speaker
um like And I'm serious and now I'm grieving, but like, okay, let's go have fun on Sunday. Fine. was like, you know, so in the very beginning, that first year, i made it a point to have Sunday fun days. They continued.
00:38:36
Speaker
even without him. And we ah we wrote a bucket list of all the things that we thought he would want us to do or that we wanted to do in our life to honor him and remember him. um And so we've done a lot of those things.
00:38:48
Speaker
um You know, they were little at the time. And so there was things like, I want to see Broadway and want get my ears pierced because daddy would think that was cool. And, you know, little things that they've done. I see. They're going to play, they're going to play. They were playing the, they were playing it a little bit. My dad would want me to do this mom. Um, you know, and then it was like, dad would like it. I got mine. That was one of my thing for him.
00:39:20
Speaker
And, you know, we did things like on the end. So he died the day before Halloween. And um so like, you know, this weirdness of like planning a funeral right on Halloween. And um we take pumpkins every year with little love letters that we've written in Sharpies on the pumpkins and we leave them at his grave. And on his birthday, we have his favorite meal.
00:39:42
Speaker
And for eight out of the last 10 years, i ran a memorial scholarship fund on his birthday. That was the kid's idea. And so, you know, we have found ways, big ways and little ways. um One of the things we always did with him around Halloween was, you know, they would carve pumpkins and they do that now with their stepfather.
00:40:01
Speaker
um And so there's in in my my second husband is a widower. um We met in a widow support group. And one of his traditions with his late wife was that they always cut down a Christmas tree.
00:40:13
Speaker
So we've maintained that in our blended family. So we find these ways of staying connected to the person we've lost. And, um and that's even included other things like, you know, the children have, when they were little, they had lockets that they wore, I gave them after his memorial service, I gave them lockets with his picture.
00:40:30
Speaker
And when they got old enough to not lose them, I gave them lockets with his ashes in it. And so just these little ways, but that's been really meaningful for them. um When I got remarried, we We included in our service um Mark's picture and Leah's picture and my mother's picture, Brian's wife. um We took pause to thank everyone that supported us in our loss. And we gave everyone a yellow rose at the ceremony and stopped the ceremony to thank those people that had supported us.
00:41:02
Speaker
um And so, you know, for me, it's really been about finding meaning and gratitude. And I think that's something when you're deep in grief, it's hard to imagine having gratitude, right? And now on the other, on this other side of it, where I have this other life, the joy and the gratitude is a huge part of that in finding ways to honor that, right?
00:41:22
Speaker
In doing fun things that Mark loved to do, like ride the mountain coaster. We did that for a long time every year. So it wasn't just the death, but about his life and about our lives and how we're going to live them going forward.
00:41:35
Speaker
Yes, it's it's the a lot of times there's this misconception and hence the name of this podcast, right?
Life After Loss
00:41:41
Speaker
The Grief grief Gratitude and the Gray in Between. But that part that we think that it has to be either or.
00:41:48
Speaker
It's like you can't have joy and be grieving. No, yes, you can. you be can be You can have joyful. And you mentioned that, finding these moments of joy, finding these moments of of gratitude finding, they can both coexist.
00:42:03
Speaker
Just like you can ah for you and Brian love each other, yet you also still love Leah and Mark and you're still grieving them. it's Those things can coexist. And this idea that that we have in life that is like, oh my gosh, if I'm happy, then that means I'm not grieving. And then all these guilt things that sometimes...
00:42:26
Speaker
It's like, it's just yeah it we why don't we him Yeah. You know, like everything else, it's black and white. It's a binary. No, it's not. No, it's not. Like I fell in love with someone in deep grief.
00:42:37
Speaker
We were both in deep grief and we still fell in love with each other. And, um you know, I had a lot of guilt for falling in love with another man as I was grieving Mark. And, and,
00:42:48
Speaker
and I don't know if it would have been anyone else but Brian, because he understood what I was going through and I understood what he was going through. And so, you know, this was these were the opportunities that came that if you open yourself up.
00:43:03
Speaker
You can find joy even while you are grieving. And I think that was a huge takeaway for us and something I didn't understand really about my life before. It's one of the really big ways that grief transformed me.
00:43:15
Speaker
I used to feel so unhappy in my life and I didn't make enough time for myself and I didn't make enough time to take care of me. You know, it's part of what contributed to the issues in my first marriage. I i really didn't create space for myself to have joy.
00:43:30
Speaker
And so that became part of my mission afterwards was like, I get to be happy. i don't want to die unhappy. I've lost so many people I love and they've had regret in their life about the things they didn't do. I don't i don't want that to be me.
00:43:45
Speaker
And so one of the gifts I've gotten out of this was permission for myself to really live more fully and more courageously and do things I didn't think I could do.
00:43:56
Speaker
um or would never have allowed myself or dared to do because i know how short life is now. And I know that any minute you can lose it. And and so why not live big and why not live joyfully?
00:44:10
Speaker
We should almost, almost let end it there, but I still have more. That was so perfect. Thanks. That is, yes, you, you can do, you can do both. You can have a fulfilling life amidst your grief. You can, yeah, you can feel joy amidst your grief as well. and But I think if I could add one last thing on that, you have to grieve though, right? Yes. didn't just decide to be happy all these things at the same time.
00:44:35
Speaker
Um, there's a children's book, um, Going on a bear hunt, right? Oh, yeah. Talk about the love. You have to go. Yep. i would don You can't go around it. You can't go over it. You can't go under it. You have to go through through it.
00:44:48
Speaker
yeah And so the deeper you allow yourself to grieve, the more you let the feelings happen and you don't numb them, you don't run from them, you don't hide from them. But the deeper you let yourself go into grief, that to me has equated to the deeper propensity I have for joy yeah after the grief.
00:45:06
Speaker
So i don't want to give the idea. It's just like, oh, I just, you know, it's over. i'm not grieving anymore. You have to go through deep grief. my first... years, three, four years after he died, i was in deep, deep despair.
Healing Through Writing
00:45:21
Speaker
um And i was falling in love and I was rebuilding my life, but I let myself grieve him and all the other losses. I really got to a place where I had to grieve everything that had that had changed my life.
00:45:33
Speaker
It was such a short period because your mom died 2012. Right. And then, and then Tony, my friend Tony died and then Mark died. and you know My marriage had ended in the middle of that. and not Yeah. And then you had had a miscarriage. Yeah. Right. So a lot in a very short period of time.
00:45:51
Speaker
And you didn't mention, wasn't it Sophia? so Sophia, wasn't that also when Sophia died, that, that all of a sudden it's ah like that, that death opened up. This was your friend's yeah right wife, right? Yes.
00:46:05
Speaker
that And then that ended up opening up the floodgates, as you say, for this other grief. And so knowing that it may not, even if you're grieving right now, you may...
00:46:18
Speaker
think that the grief is completely on the surface, it may not fully be, you know, floodgates. Right. And that was, you know, I got to the place where I had focused so much on the kids and I had, you know, I was in year seven. We had just gotten, I just gotten remarried. We were in the pandemic and,
00:46:39
Speaker
I decided to go back to therapy because I thought I just needed to work on like being a better wife this time around. You know, this was like my grief about the marriage, the first marriage. And, and I went in, I met the trauma and I said, I need someone with a trauma background because I have all this trauma, but like, I've, I've dealt with all that. And she listened to my story and she was like, Oh no, I actually think you need to process all of this because even though you maybe tackled your mom's death and you know, this little bit on the miscarriage. And then you went to therapy after Mark died, like the whole of it.
00:47:14
Speaker
I hadn't dealt with and the way it had really changed who I was and was impacting the core beliefs I had going into my second marriage, the way I felt, you know, i hadn't really dealt with it. I had kind of did the thing professionals do, which is like, let me take care of everybody else.
00:47:31
Speaker
I'm just going to tamp this down. And like, I'm okay. You know, i've I've dealt with the surface stress, the daily stress, I hadn't really dealt with my own grief. and And I think that's also where I got stuck with writing the book. The book was a release for me in being able to tell the story and in grieving. And I had to go away to write a lot of it. I did these little mini retreats for a couple of days at a time because I had grieve.
00:47:54
Speaker
And I wouldn't let myself do it fully with the kids. I would grieve to an extent. They would see my mourning. They would see the tears. But I needed to like go out to the woods and cry, you know. And so in writing the book, I went out to the woods and I cried alone. And I had very deep grief seven, years after his death that needed to come out.
00:48:16
Speaker
i I love that you're saying that you really needed to grieve and like that allowing that because a lot of times people are very fearful of opening up that emotion because they don't know how they're going to put it back in. It's like, wait, it's like one of those jack-in-the-boxes that just like,
00:48:33
Speaker
pops out and then you're like, wait, how do I stuff it back in there? Right. So how, when you would have these, you know, weekend retreats to write and to grieve, what would be your process of like, was there even a process? I don't even think it's like, we don't even logically think it. Yeah, there's really not, you know, I would start writing, would have, try to recreate, you know, what had happened. And then sometimes I just had to sit, like you see it on the page you're like, damn, that was, that was a lot, you know?
00:49:03
Speaker
And then I would go take a walk and I would just let whatever feeling, thought, emotion, sensation came, come. And often that meant I was on my knees crying in some woods in a beautiful retreat center somewhere.
00:49:17
Speaker
Right. And i would let myself do it until I was exhausted, till it was out. And then I would pick myself back up and I would go in and I would put on a pot of soup or open up a bottle of wine and i would watch something on HBO for an hour and then I would come back to the book.
00:49:32
Speaker
And I would, this is the process I had in writing that the writing was grieving. The writing was a release. um And I think when I got to the end, it was like, I have pushed this out of my body. Now I have let it go into the universe, um which doesn't mean I don't still grieve him. Right. But this, this weight I was carrying of our story got out of me. And that was really important part of my healing.
00:49:56
Speaker
Since you said a pot of soup, one of the analogies that for me always works and that I, when I talk to my clients, it's like a pressure cooker. You got to let the steam out.
00:50:08
Speaker
You have to, if not, it's just gonna burst. And I was very much like a little, let a little bit out, let a little bit out, let a little bit out, but I'm fine. Worry about everybody else.
00:50:19
Speaker
And I had to get to a place. I ended up doing, um, Two years of intensive trauma therapy before I was really in a place where I felt like I have healed through all of the loss I've had.
00:50:32
Speaker
And healing, that that word is something that sometimes when I hear, oh, healing, it's not like that it's over. It's just that you have found a way of living with it in a way that is manageable and doesn't disrupt your life.
00:50:49
Speaker
Right. Is that what you see? that Yeah, very much that idea um in the book with some of the grief theory I've shared, right, with Lois Tompkins, like you grow around your grief.
Legacy and Community
00:50:57
Speaker
And in And the healing for me was getting to a place where it's always there. It's always going to be a part of who I am. Right.
00:51:03
Speaker
um To one of the things you said early on in the interview, I'm always Mark's widow. I will all like that. Well, I will always have that experience of being widowed, even though I'm remarried now. It doesn't cancel it out. It's not like, oh, now you're you know, they put the boxes. Are you widowed? Are you married? Are you all Oh, check, check, check.
00:51:22
Speaker
Like, right. It's, it's that binary. Everybody wants to like, I've had people say to me, well, you're remarried. Your second husband doesn't want you talking about your first husband. I'm like, well, he actually does. He encourages it in a fact, um, cause we're healthy people. So, right. Like this, you, you have to let the grief out. You have to,
00:51:41
Speaker
um Move through it. And the healing for me being healed, it's not an end state. It is a process. It's something I'm still losing them. yeah but ah still really working on. And i i don't, I think as long as I'm alive, Mark will live within me.
00:52:00
Speaker
Mark's story, who Mark was, will live in my children. And so, you know, it's not, it's not like I'm over it. It's always with us. He's always with us. And um his legacy continues.
00:52:13
Speaker
Yeah. His legacy really does continue. and And, his legacy was not his death. His legacy was not his depression. um all the best parts of him are in our, in our girls. And so I get to see them grow every day and I'm grateful for that.
00:52:29
Speaker
but Thank you, Jeanette. Before we wrap up, is there anything that I have not asked you that you want to make sure that you share with the audience? Yeah, the last thing I would say is so one of the things i did when the book was released is I finally got Widow Parent Project up on the web. So I have a lot of resources for widow parents.
00:52:51
Speaker
um You can find us online at widowedparentproject.com. Please feel free to go to that site, share those resources with young widow people in your life. You know, i it was so hard to find people that were young widows. We, we joined a widow support group and everyone was 60 and 70 years old.
00:53:09
Speaker
That's how I met Brian. Cause we were the only two in our thirties. Um, You know, and and there were other women in their 40s and 50s, but it was ah there wasn't enough support for young widowed parents. And so I've wanted to write the book and I wanted to create this website to give people places to go find that information. I so desperately need it 10 years ago. And now we have so much more.
00:53:31
Speaker
you know I've been really pleased that in the last 10 years, there's podcasts, there's books, there's um you know all kinds of other resources now that didn't exist when I was widowed. And so I'm really grateful for people like you that do this work, that share these stories, just to know you're not alone in it and you you could find community. And finding community is another really great resource to help.
00:53:54
Speaker
I would not be able to tell my story I um my widowed friends had not reached for me in my grief and said, we've got you, come along.
00:54:04
Speaker
And what I'm trying to do now is to pay that for and say, we've got you, come along. You can do this. You can do this. That's perfect. Thank you, Jeanette. Jeanette Kazowski. Did I say it? Kazakowski. Kazakowski.
00:54:17
Speaker
Oh, now I got it. I mixed it with mark is with that nott with Mike, with the Monsters, Inc. last name again, like we mentioned in the beginning. Yeah. Thank you so much. And again, her book, Shipwrecked, you can find it.
00:54:31
Speaker
anywhere. that right? Anywhere, uh, anywhere online. So you can get it, ah through book, baby. can also get it on Amazon and Burns and Noble and, um, ask for it at your local library and they'll have to get it too. So um yeah. And then bre dear widow parenting and you mentioned then your web website as well.
00:54:52
Speaker
And so many other ways as well that I'll link in the show notes. Thank you so much, Jeanette, for sharing your story, Mark's story and the legacy lives on. Thank Thank you.
00:55:08
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.
00:55:21
Speaker
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.
00:55:37
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.
00:55:49
Speaker
And thanks once again for tuning in to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray In Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.