Transcript
Speaker: I think it went from a, how can I go to from getting people to understand that I'm still grieving, I'm still sad. i lost my daughter. Woe is me. It went from that to like, okay, I want to talk about her and I want people to know she existed. So how can I make that happen with making it something beneficial, right? For all parties, beneficial for them to want to talk about her, beneficial for me because i get to bring her into the world still.
Speaker: And so I think that was the difference for me. Welcome to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray in Between podcast. I'm your host, Kendra Rinaldi.
Speaker: This is a space to explore the full spectrum of grief, from the kind that comes with death to the kind that shows up in life's many transitions. Through stories and conversations, we remind each other that we're not alone.
Speaker: Your journey matters, and here we're figuring it out together. Let's dive right in to today's episode.
Speaker: Let's start with a quick disclaimer. This podcast includes personal stories and perspectives on topics like grief, health, and mental wellness. The views expressed by guests are their own and may reflect individual experiences that are not meant as medical advice.
Speaker: As the host, I hold space for diverse voices, but that does not mean I endorse every viewpoint shared. Please listen with care and take what resonates with you.
Speaker: Our guest today is Angela Krupp, a speech pathologist turned grief mentor and writer. Following the devastating loss of her daughter, Aviana, to SIDS, she has transformed her pain into purpose, creating Fly, Avi, Fly.
Speaker: which is a shop that honors Aviana while at the same time funding scholarships for bereaved parents to attend child loss retreats. She is very unique because she integrates neurosciences into her grief mentorship and everything she's learned about speech pathology and just how the brain works into the aspect of grief. And we're really reframing grief. That's what I've noticed from your Yes. an Instagram account. And i love it because it's really what I believe as well, with really even just with the title of my podcast. So welcome, Angela.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for coming to the show. So I like to start getting to know my guests a bit and sharing about your own life. So tell us where do you live right now? And where did you grow up, by the way?
Speaker: I grew up in upstate New York. I no longer live there. It's a little too cold for me. Not that I moved too far. I live in Delaware now. I own a home in Delaware. I had a pretty, in terms of my upbringing and about me, I had a pretty uneventful childhood, I guess I would say. I'm lucky in that regard. I have two brothers. I had parents, they were divorced, so I split my time between my parents' home. But I was an overachiever because I felt like if I was an overachiever that I would somehow bring my parents back together. So from a young age, I have always been go-getter in thinking that
Speaker: If I do good in the world, good things will then happen. And so that has always kind of been my mantra. And even now, I obviously recognize that that wasn't the healthiest psychological stance to have, but I've always been one to just do, do, do. What can I do to help the human race? And so i think that's where that all stemmed from was my childhood.
Speaker: I love that you, reflecting back, that you can see the why of certain behaviors. a lot of times we don't end up realizing things, of course, till much later in our own lives as we're trying to discover like, wait, what what? Things that we don't even realize that stem from our upbringing, yet some of these actually, not all of them are trauma. Some of them are actually good things, right? because That could come like, okay, but I'm going to be doing my best, but now it's not necessarily to try to get my parents together, but just to improve the world, right? As you said.
Speaker: Yeah, I've kind of transferred that stance over to that. And I'm proud of that, but i' I'm also thrilled and and grateful for that. I'm a glass half full kind of girl. And i just feel like you get what you put into the world, right? You get that back. So.
Speaker: You said you had two brothers. Where are you in that order? i am right smack dab in the middle. So when I was the younger sister, i always was, you know, stop bothering your brother. So then when I became the older sister, i thought I could get away with things. And then it was stop picking on your little brother.
Speaker: So i kind of sat in the middle there and I i never really got my way. that Yeah, it's like then you got the chat first you had the the the um of the baby of the house and the only girl. But then you had the middle child syndrome, quote unquote, as they say, who knows, like whenever the birth order ends up applying into our personalities, we we never know like which one if it does work, if it does end up being true or not. I don't know. But OK, so that was your upbringing. And then tell us now, how did you get into speech pathology?
Speaker: Actually, I went to school for education and when I was in my student teaching rotation, I recognized that I had a really good knack for helping people more in an individualized space, more in a one on one. When I was in a group setting, I enjoyed it, but I didn't feel like I gave my best and I didn't feel like I was able to do what I needed to do in that setting. So I decided to speak with my guidance counselor and he kind of said, you know, here are some roles you could still do in the schools. And speech pathology came up. And I had a friend who had a little brother that stuttered. So i was like, oh, this might be an option for me.
Speaker: And I got into speech pathology. I got into school. I started going through all my graduate courses and I absolutely fell in love with geriatric patients instead, because there is something as you and I talked about before jumping on this call here, There is something so special about being able to help a geriatric patient or an adult who has lost their ability to function in some way, and it has taken away their independence in some regard. And so children, usually a lot of them really need exposure. And maybe some of them come from not the best households where they haven't been exposed to language. And so you'll see a really quick progression a lot of times. And that's rewarding, of course. And I love helping the children, but it's very different when you're helping an adult
Speaker: regain their ability to communicate or their ability to swallow. And so from then on, I was like, this is for me. i love this. i love how the brain works. And because of that, I thrived in that environment. And then I just took it and ran with it.
Speaker: It's so interesting because it's for somebody that's an adult, like you said, the older we are, the more we are used to using our voice and expressing in a certain way. And so it is definitely more frustrating, I would say, because you have more years of doing that than maybe a child that might find other ways of, community you know, their flexibility may be more there than what it is for adults. and Do you notice that?
Speaker: that that's the case, that the children are a little more flexible with certain things than we as an adults? Yeah, I would say, i mean, unless you're talking about, you know, some drastic disability that some child might have that will limit their ability to communicate. Sometimes, like I had said prior, it's lack of exposure or their children are sponges. Right. And so even when I see somebody in an acute care setting, which is where I predominantly work in the hospital setting, if I happen to get an adolescent child, they tend to grasp things much more quickly than that you know older adult population. So yeah. With the narrow neuroplasticity too, would that play a huge part? Because if if in ah in an adult brain, when certain things have already been set, I'm not a scientist, just I just know this in terms of behavior and when I've talked to people just regarding even grief.
Speaker: When we are used to going in that same roller coaster in our brain all the time for so many years and all of a sudden we no longer can do that and kind of have to shift. And I know you apply this into grief, but right now I'm still talking in the aspect of even language because it's still like a behavior that we have.
Speaker: Would be? would it Because a child's brain is still not like, yeah you know what I mean? Like I'm trying to think of like, you're digging a hole, like the hole is already so much deeper in that of an adult brain than that hole of a, right? So that makes a little bit of difference in terms of those neuro pathways, neurological pathways. Yeah. It makes a huge difference because you've, you, like you have mentioned, you've built that neural mapping over several years, right? And so I tend to use this with my patients a lot in speech pathology. Somebody who has a stroke and, you know, ah part of their brain is impacted and now those messages are not getting to where they need to be, right? I often use a traffic jam as an analogy because, right, if you and I both know if we're going to go to the grocery store, the fastest point is from point A to point B. We've done that over and over and over and over again, right? We do that trip every week, maybe twice a week. Well, now you take that route out because there's an accident there.
Speaker: Well, now you have to deviate and find another route, Well, as you were saying, a child, right? They might have only taken that, they wrote their parents a few times. So it's going to easier for them to deviate. It's going to be easier for them to find news ways. It's not as easy for somebody who's been doing the same thing over and over again. it's It's the same reason why, you know, people talk about habits and how you instill new habits. It's repetition. It's putting those reps in.
Speaker: And I wonder if that's then why we say sometimes that children are so resilient and when we say those phrases even just like that, if it even is related to that part too, because it's not as much of a...
Speaker: of part of their habit per se of certain things that when a change happens, they are and they end up adapting quicker than maybe we do as adults. Would you say the resilience plays, that neuroplasticity also plays a part in that resilience? Yeah, I also think there's a mindset piece to it too, right? So a child typically hasn't developed their full thought process or their cognitive function, right? And so as adults, we have, and as adults, we tend to fall into patterns with our mindset.
Speaker: right? Whether that's positive or whether that's negative, it's not always a good thing. If you are surround yourself with somebody who's a negative Nelly, right? They have trained themselves to have those type of thought processes. And so for that adult, it's easier to fall into that where children are a lot more open to exploring new things. They're open to a new mindset. An adult, just like they built those patterns for communication, for swallowing, for driving, They've also built those mindset patterns.
Speaker: And that's where I think you see a huge difference. It makes so much sense. Now take us into your pregnancy experience and motherhood experience, because you've been a mother for 10 and a half years, even though it's been of an angel for the majority of that time.
Speaker: So if you can share about Aviana and does she go by the full, do you say her full name or do you say? um Yeah, i I say, I say all, I say Aviana, I call her Aves, like A-V-S or I'll call her A-V sometimes, but um yeah. i all tell it Tell us about your journey.
Speaker: Yeah, sure. So Aviana, I had a wonderful, happy, healthy pregnancy. Everything was great. I actually loved being pregnant. Everybody like hated that I loved being pregnant. They were like, we don't want to hear it.
Speaker: So she came two weeks early. And at the time i was a, I was a part-time employee at two different jobs. So I had full-time employment, but I was part-time at both of my jobs. I worked half geriatrics and half pediatrics at the time. And so I wasn't allowed to have a full 12 weeks of maternity leave. I did not know that. And I was only allowed to have six weeks.
Speaker: And so I had to go to bat back to work after six weeks. And i I asked my aunt if she would help me out. I worked mostly two 10 hour days at my one job. And so I would just butt them up against each other and work back to back. And my aunt has six children. So she was like, hey, they range in the ages at the time of like seven and 30.
Speaker: So she was like, yeah, I'll watch her for you. No problem. So to go back to work early, like I said, and I dropped her off for a two day stint. And what happened was I ended up getting bronchitis. So I went to urgent care and I had said to the physician, hey, I have a newborn baby or almost a newborn baby at home. She's two months old. what should I do? My aunt's watching her. And he said, well, I would be on antibiotics for 24 hours before I went and picked her up.
Speaker: And I said, okay. So I called my aunt and i said, hey, would you be willing to keep Aviana overnight? I can't come get her until tomorrow. The physician said I have to be on antibiotics. And my aunt was like, of course. And so I don't know, several hours later, I'd say three hours later, my mother called and I was sitting on the couch and I was relaxing. And of course, you know, I i love my daughter, but I had some downtime because i i didn't have her around. And it was like that new mom, you're tired all the time. and it was like, oh, this is a nice little break. And my mother called me and I'll never forget. She just said, you need to go to the hospital. Avion was on her way to the hospital.
Speaker: And I just sat there and And I just, I didn't know what to say. i i was like, what do you, and then it finally that came out, like, what do you mean she's on the way to the hospital? And I initially thought like, oh, I have older cousins, maybe somebody, she rolled off the couch or maybe they accidentally pulled her arm or, you know, something. I thought it was something simple like that.
Speaker: And my mom said, and I will never forget, my mom said, she's breathing. She's not breathing. And the minute I heard the word, she's not breathing, i just, I knew, like, I just, in my heart as a mom, i just knew. and I just, I just started screaming. Like, I just started wailing. i didn't know how else to respond because I just knew in my heart that she, she wasn't going to make it or she wasn't alive I just knew it wasn't going to be good. Um, and so then on the way to the hospital, I called my dad and I told him and he drove separate.
Speaker: I had had a friend that was staying at my house at the time and they took me. And on the way there, nobody was giving me answers. Nobody was calling me back. Everybody was kind of like ignoring my calls. And I was like, Oh, this can't be good. And then finally my mother answered. And I was like, well, somebody please tell me what is going on. And that's when my mom said, honey, I'm really sorry, but she didn't make it.
Speaker: Um, So then I drove the hospital and I got to hold her for a little bit of time. Not as and not as long as I would like. um Things have changed over the last 10 years and I'm grateful for that. But when my daughter died, i didn't get as much empathy or sympathy from the staff.
Speaker: And so then said goodbye to her and that That was my story. yeah ah my I'm so sorry to hit to hear that whole story. I'm like holding on to every breath that you're saying to. It's like, I can't even imagine getting that call, you know, because ah because in just the circumstances where that you weren't there. Now with, with,
Speaker: SIDS with sudden infant death syndrome, do doctors diagnose that right away in that process? Or do they end up doing a whole other thing of social you know social work and doing all these other steps that also add so much more to your process of grieving?
Speaker: Yeah, they don't right away. They have to go through, like you said, all the steps. like They intubated her when she got there. So like even holding her her intubation tube was still in. So like, they were like, we're really sorry, but we can't remove this because we they need to make sure we did everything correctly. um Oh, that gave me chills. um They, yeah, they, you know, call on the social work. They sent social workers to my aunt's home to make sure that, you know, everything was on the up and up there. They, I i had the autopsy done because I was curious. I wanted to know.
Speaker: I wanted to know like, why, why, why, what happened? You know, all that, what if I had just done this, all the things we go through in our mind. So yeah, they have to go through that entire process and then they return your autopsy results and give you that answer. In my case also, i i don't think they wanted to even late. I think they're trying to get away from labeling um infant death says SIDS anymore. I think they're trying to find reasons why these babies are dying. And even then, like, it was really hard to get them to say that that's what it was. They wanted to say she was hyperthermic. They wanted to say, you know, a couple different things. But in the end, that was that was the diagnosis. So nowadays, you mean that they're shifting that they're trying to say specifically like her heart start stopped beating or this happened, like trying to find the actual answer of why the child died in their sleep, basically?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's no research out now for SIDS. I haven't read the most recent research, right? There was no research out several years back, which opens a whole other can of emotions because in your head, you're like, oh, I'm so glad that they're doing this and that this was found. Then you're like, why couldn't it have been 10 years earlier? You know what I mean? um But I think I've taught, I have a friend who is emergency room doctor and she was telling me how they're trying to, you know, get away from not giving patients patients and parents those answers. They're trying to figure out really like what could potentially going wrong um in in these babies, in their sleep cycles, in their ability to regulate their body temperature, their breathing. So they really want to know. And if they can find anything, um they can give the parents a little bit more closure and information.
Speaker: Yeah, i it's like, like, it's more like answers, right? Sometimes it's because the closure, I mean, it's something there's really because it continues, but at least give some answers that just allow them to grieve in a different way. Because I think when you have so many unanswered questions in your grief, your brain just goes there rather than focusing on the emotions.
Speaker: Absolutely. That's why your brain is meant to do that. It's a safety mechanism essentially, but it really does the exact opposite, right? And so you're right. It gives you less time to actually process your emotions and grieve because you're ruminating all of your thoughts. And so you're right. If we could get some of those answers, we think we'll just be okay. Yeah. It's like an investigator, right? It's like ah it's like it goes straight into trying to solve the problem. And so that's why a lot of times we end up blaming the situations or saying, oh, if I would have not done X, Y, Z, it's kind of like watching a a movie and you end up finding out at the end of the movie who was the who was the one that was the whatever, the...
Speaker: the one that had stolen the something from whatever it is. i just ah what And then you're, oh, I knew it because ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. And you're trying to piece it all, right? And in this type of scenario, it's the same. You're trying to figure out. And when there aren't any pieces to put together, yeah, your brain is just left hanging. So how did you stop the ruminating? At what point in that and shift it your...
Speaker: your ways of integrating what you had learned into your grief? How was that process for you? Yeah, that's a great, that's a great question. And it's, it's a little bit of a, you know, longer explanation in the sense that I, after my daughter died, I went to six mental health professionals and I felt like nobody could meet me where I was at. Right. Um,
Speaker: there's a very clinical side to death and dying. And when it comes to talk therapy, people are given tools and strategies that are kind of cookie cutter or cliche or blanket statements. Right. And so I was recognizing that nobody was meeting where me where I was. They were all asking me to do things that I hadn't even done the prior steps to even get there. Right. And And I feel like now that I work with infant and pregnancy loss parents, like that has not changed. And so what I did is I will never forget. I was walking into Target with my best friend and had blinders on, right? The only thing in the world that mattered was me. I lost my daughter. How dare you not recognize this?
Speaker: And I'm always a really polite person. I hold doors. I see plays. I say, thank you. I was brought up correctly in that sense. um And I let a door slam in someone's face, like not on purpose, of course, but I was not paying attention and the door just shut right in front of them. And my friend had said that was really embarrassing.
Speaker: And it was what I needed. I needed her to call me out and say like, Hey, you are not you. What is going on? And that made me think, wow, I need to do something like this event happened and I need to figure out how I can get my, my crap together and, and, you know, move forward.
Speaker: So I reflected for that night and I thought, man, Angela, You counsel all of these patients who have lost their ability to speak. You've lost their ability to swallow, right? They've lost their ability to process information. Some of them don't know their wives' names, you know, after a motor vehicle accident. You know, some of them have acquired aphasia after a stroke, and now they don't know the color blue. You know, they there are so many deficits in my patients that I see, right? And the one theme that tends to occur no matter what the deficit was, is their loss of independence and their loss of identity and who they were prior. And I recognize that, yes, I had a grief problem, but more importantly, i had an identity problem.
Speaker: Who am I now? What is going on in my life? What makes me me? I'm no I'm no longer have my daughter. Right. So it's easy to think I'm not a mom, even though I am.
Speaker: you have this identity crisis. And i recognize that that is what I help 90% of my patients with before i even tackle the speech pathology part of my job. And so I'm not a certified mental health professional. I'm not a certified counselor, but I am allowed to counsel individuals as long as it relates to communication and swallowing disorders. And so I started taking all the strategies that I use with them.
Speaker: And when they would have ruminating thoughts, we would talk about guided self-talk, right? OK, I'm going to try that. um You know, when they didn't want to go out in the community because nobody understood them, they have aphasia, they can't get their words out. I would tell them, all right, let's have a mock you know conversation with our child or with our wife. All right.
Speaker: I would tell them, let's not focus on this part of the communication that is giving you a struggle, but let's focus on the things you can do and bring that into then mixed with things you can't do. so All these little strategies that I would teach them when they would get in their own head and they would ruminate on their thought process, I started using. And I was like, I don't have anything else. the Mental health professionals weren't helping me, at least for where I was at. i at least know how to do this.
Speaker: How can I start to change my thought process? I also had a really great basis for neuroplasticity. I know that just as much as we can lose the ability to do something, we can actually also gain the ability to do a lot of things. And I knew that it was about retraining my brain and retraining those pathways to find a different route, to find a different way to do something. And that's what I started doing. And I just would catch myself. I knew enough about the brain to know that my amygdala was hijacking my prefrontal cortex. Like my prefrontal cortex was not engaging. My amygdala was taking over and my fight or flight was kicking in every time. So because I knew that I made a point at the very beginning, the minute I have a ruminating thought, going nip it right there.
Speaker: And how can I shift that perspective? How can I change that? Just identifying the fact that it's happening is something that we don't teach throughout our life, right? We learn science, we learn math, we don't learn grief. And so I was like, I'm gonna start teaching myself this. And that is how I started interrupting those thoughts.
Speaker: I absolutely love that you're sharing this and how you applied what you already knew into your life. And you're right in terms of when you would go to therapists and they may be asking you because this even happens when I'm coaching someone in their grief. If I start saying, okay, start journaling, but the person's never journaled, it doesn't apply to their life. So you always have to start with how you are. what Who are you? What are you?
Speaker: How do you normally process emotions? ah Do you normally go out running? Do you normally Yeah, I don't know. Take a bath. Whatever it is you normally do when you're feeling X, Y and Z in emotions. Let's start applying that in your grief. You know, like that's one of the tools you're going to use. Then as you start using these tools, you already know, just like you did with the neuroplastic.
Speaker: OK, I'm going to use these. Then you can start incorporating others that are new. Right. But to try to teach someone to hop on a horse and start doing hurdles when they've never been on, you know, they've never even ridden a horse with like walking them on a little. yeah with her Right. but its like exactly Yeah. It's insane. So that is amazing. Now, one thing I'm thinking, because ruminating with the part of anxiety and with the part of grief and when there's the attachment of what that means to you, of the,
Speaker: sometimes people start identifying themselves with the grief, right? And so if by chance, okay, I shift these patterns and I do this, how do I do that and release as well the...
Speaker: the the aspect of, I don't i' know, um let me see how I reword this. We get so attached at times with the way that we behave, that is hard to sometimes rewire, even if we know that it's the best for us, because we get even attached to the the emotions, the way people may treat us when we're feeling a certain way, the societal, like, okay, when I am sick, people people bring me flowers, might as well stay sick because people bring me food and flowers. Does it make sense? Like that victimhood component that is sometimes attached to the emotion, how,
Speaker: Do we, or did you realize that you also were letting go of that? I, that was really long. no No, no. You have a really great point because you, you've seen my content. Like I speak to this a lot, right? People get really upset at me when I bring this up, but it's reality is you get attached to that victimhood mentality. You really do. Right. Because you're, I don't think people do it on purpose. And I don't think it's like, Oh, woe is me. Look at me. I want pity. I think it's because like we've referred to before, it becomes their identity, right? It becomes that piece of who they are. And if I am not the woman with a dead daughter, who am I?
Speaker: And they get stuck there. And to be honest with you, how I got out of that, I don't i don't know if that was quite your question in the end. No, no, no, it is. It is. because yeah That's part of it. How I got out of that mindset was...
Speaker: It wasn't even grief work, I want to say. Of course, that was sprinkled in because I was doing that, you know, in conjunction with. But it was mindset.
Speaker: It was a lot of mindset work for me. Right. And so I had to be honest with myself. I had to be honest with the people who were my support system. I had to take a look at those around me and think, who is egging on, for lack of better terms, my victim mentality, right? I'm a firm believer that in your grief journey, you need a bunch of different chess pieces because you're going to have that friend that consistently validates you all the time. You can't have just that validation. You need somebody who also is shifting your perspective, right? You need a friend or family member who's really good at playing devil's advocate too. And that's okay. You need all of these characters in your journey because if not, you are going to stay stuck. So I started evaluating my current relationships. I started thinking who's in my corner
Speaker: Who's not in my corner? What kind of person do I need to help me maintain, you know, this new tool that I found or this new strategy that I found? Or if I got really honest with myself and I was like, oh, I noticed that these times of my life when things get crazy and you mentioned anxiety, when things are, you know, more anxiety prone, identified and said, like, what do I feel in my body when that starts to happen? Like, I can tell you right now, if I'm getting mad at my partner right now,
Speaker: And he really ticks me off. Like I can already tell you what I'm physically going to start to feel because I actually did the work to recognize that. And then Who do I know that's really good at curbing those emotions for me, right? And they'll be my person in my corner for that and when I need to go there. So I guess my biggest answer to you is I got really clear on who I was, why I did what I did, and I recognized that this is a process. I think in a society full of instant gratification, And the fact that the grief culture and our bosses and our jobs just immediately think that we're supposed to be back to work and things are supposed to be a hunky dory and normal and, you know, two weeks, six months, 12 months. i accepted the fact that this was a process. And when I did that, it made a hell of a lot of difference.
Speaker: Makes absolute sense. Thank you. Yeah. With that process, I love what you said about the different chess pieces, like just having the different people that you know to call. Same within within grief too, you know who are the people that you're going to reach that's going to bring their food, like that are going to be the ones that are go to be there for food or who is going to be the one that's going to help you go run errands. The same thing here. if you have already an understanding of what your friend group and your or family is, what each of their strengths are, and use that in your own you know for your own grief journey to be able to kind of ah mold it and know, okay, today I do need someone that's just gonna, like really, this is so like random. But one time I called my mom
Speaker: complaining this is going to be like totally I might even just cut this off because it seems like I just went into this other thing but I i i have hyperhydrosis in my hands and well in other parts of my body but I can even show you right here my i was tea my my daughter was like five and I put my hands over her hands as she was playing the piano and she like took them off and like wiped them off like ooh I was like What?
Speaker: I'm like, even my own kid. I've had people wipe their hands off, but even my own kid is not wiping their hands off. So I call my mom. thinking, oh my gosh, my mom's going validate these emotions of what I'm feeling. And I call her and I'm like, my mom has passed since, but I call her, I'm like, mommy. And I'm like, mommy, na, na, na, na. And I'm like, didn' and and I'm like, literally like a little girl telling her, you know, and my mom was like, Kendra, until you start feeling comfortable with your own sweat, people around you are going to react that way. And it was like,
Speaker: That's not what I wanted to hear.
Speaker: So I know that this is not related with needing to grieve. it's a good analogy. Yeah, but I was actually grieving. It was just not grieving a death. It was grieving the fact of how my child was reacting to my to something that I couldn't control, right, which was the sweat. So in the same way, sometimes when we call someone,
Speaker: And we're thinking they are going to be there for me and they're going to totally be supportive and you know, that yeah, come and come and cry with me. And that's not how they react.
Speaker: Then it catches us off guard. Right. So yeah knowing that, knowing really who you're calling and what you might be expecting to get back from them is important because it might not be right. The the right response for you at that moment in your grief.
Speaker: Yeah. And in grief, you might have to come to terms with the fact that there are people in your life that you might need to limit your contact with, right? Like maybe they are fueling that victimhood mentality for you. And so it is okay to pull away from those people. It is okay to distance yourself from those people.
Speaker: And I don't think we talk about that enough either. So yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. No, thank you for for sharing. Now let's talk about the part of identity because I do... talk a lot about grief in identity.
Speaker: I experienced it actually when I became a mom. That's when I first kind of really observed my grief and identity of the not knowing even who I was now in this new role. So you had just gotten into this for the last 11 months. As you're pregnant, you have Aviana. You've just now kind of settled into this role of motherhood, and then it's ripped from under you.
Speaker: How did you shift that then identity? And what other things about yourself that you start bringing forward in into your life to tie into the aspect of identity to kind of give a little bit of of ease to the grief of identity?
Speaker: Because you're still a mom. You're still a mom. But I mean, still like, yeah, yeah. I'll be honest. At first, I had no idea. i was like, I don't know what I'm doing. i don't know where this is going. I, you know, for a good couple months, at least probably, I did that whole victim thing that we spoke about, right? I tried to, I think this is going to sound terrible, probably, but I think I tried to use my daughter's death as my sole identity. And then i would get really, really upset when people wouldn't recognize that. Right.
Speaker: And so i sat with it. I sat with everything and I decided that knowing me as a person, that the only thing that was going to be beneficial for me was to rebuild, but to rebuild with purpose and rebuild to honor my daughter. For me personally, that is what was going to work. And I knew that.
Speaker: I knew that because the one thing that held me together when everything else crumbled was From like day number, i don't know, six or seven, I decided that I was going write to my daughter every single day. I'm a writer. I'm in my undergrad is English and communications. And then I have a master's in speech pathology. And so I wrote to her every single day. But I didn't write to her like, you know, where somebody says, just pick up a journal and start writing. Right. I wrote with purpose. I actually wrote to her and explain the world around me.
Speaker: And so I was like, oh, today I went here, here and here. Like I took a trip to D.C. and I told her all about like the monuments that I visited. And it was almost like I was teaching her, even though she wasn't here. Right. And so.
Speaker: I started by doing that. And then because I felt like she had become my best friend through my writing, that's when I was like, I need to rebuild in her honor.
Speaker: And so how I did that was exactly what i did. I created my small little shop in her honor. All of every single penny that I get from that goes to funding infant and pregnancy loss retreats. And now I get to talk about her all day, every day. And it just honored her, but it also built my resilience.
Speaker: And it also gave me a completely different life, right? Like eventually, as I keep growing my little shop, as I keep growing my retreats, like I'm, that's going to be my life. And I just did a complete 180 and decided I was going to go in a completely different trajectory and just use her as the fuel for that.
Speaker: Yeah, you're honoring her life, still having her with you along in this journey, just different, not in the woe is me, but in the wow, this is us. You know, it's like, no, woe is me, but wow, this is us. Together, you're building this because she is part of that fuel for you to build what you're doing and being able to give back to others.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it went from a, how can I go to from getting people to understand that I'm still grieving, I'm still sad, i lost my daughter, woe is me. It went from that to like, okay, I want to talk about her and I want people to know she existed. So how can I make that happen with making it something beneficial, right? For all parties, beneficial for them to want to talk about her, beneficial for me because I get to bring her into the world still. And so I think that was the difference for me.
Speaker: How do you still honor when the woe is me creeps in and when the grief creeps? shift because again, regardless of all the mindset work we do, there's still going to be moments in which a giant wave that it does not matter how prepared you are comes out of nowhere.
Speaker: So how do you still honor those emotions when they show up? Best answer I can give you, hands down, community. And it's exactly why I do what I do. So there are times where you're right. You can use all the mindset work you want You can have all the tools and strategies. You can know your best tools and strategies for you personally. And there are going be times where you just get walloped, right? It's just going to knock you on your butt. And that's when I go to somebody else.
Speaker: in the infant loss space that I've had intricate communication with. We'd have conversations. I can think of somebody right off the top of my head now, right? And when she's having a really griefy day, she sends me a message and she's like, Hey, can you just hear me out? I'm having a really griefy day. And she does the same for me. There's a couple people I can think of, but you know, once you're in this space and you start building those connections, sometimes it does take other people. And that's okay. That's part of the learning process. And I tell my aphasia patients and my you know swallow patients the same thing. Like sometimes it's gonna be so unbearable that you need to reach out to somebody else because that's just where you are. That doesn't mean that all the tools and strategies you've had and that you utilize aren't working. it just means that time in space, you need somebody else at that point. So when I get that way, I just reach out to somebody in the community who knows exactly where I am who sees me, hears me, and just witnesses me.
Speaker: that Talk about then your retreats and how you've created this community and now supporting other people that have been through what you have. Yeah, I love that. um I think that stemmed, i went to my first retreat and I thought, wow, this is really neat, right? It's different being online or being in a Facebook forum or just you know typing a text message to somebody When you actually come face to face with people who have experienced the same thing that you have, there's this bond that it you really can't explain it. It just happens. And so being in the same room with people
Speaker: who see you and hear you, you don't even have to say anything and they just get it is a different level. It's just a different level of, you know, therapeutic intervention in a way. And so after that first retreat, I was like, this is, I just knew, i knew immediately, like, yes, I love my shop. Yes, I love speech pathology, but I knew immediately I need to start bringing lost parents together because I saw the relationships that formed. I saw the aha moments. I saw people go from, you know, feeling like no one in the world understood them to speaking about their child tenfold by the end of the retreat and like had all these ideas of what they were going to do when they left.
Speaker: And, it It was just a moment for me that I was like, all right, I'm doing this. And so that's what I did. i i had the idea for a while and I worked a nine to five job. So I kept kind of putting it on the back burner and I was like, oh, my little store will just fund this. My little store will just fund this. And finally, last year, I was like, all right, you got rip the bandaid off. Like you've been wanting to do this forever. And so I did. i a hosted retreat and everything that I thought was, you know, confirmed after that. I'm still, I created a small little message feed with the girls. They message each other. They send each other Christmas cards. They send their baby birthday cards. And it's just become, now I'm just adding more and more people to it when we have retreats. And it's just lovely. i
Speaker: I wouldn't have it done in other way. I'm just really thrilled. It's Great. I love that because, yeah, you created the community that you also needed and more of these chess pieces even for yourself. And you're giving that to others. You're giving them that community as well by creating these retreats. it's It's connecting people. It's just so important. I love that they send each other.
Speaker: i love it. They give messages to when is Aviana's birthday? Her birthday is August August 18th. a eighteenth And her angel wings are when are her when Sir Angel?
Speaker: October 20th of the same year. Yeah. She was two months and two days old. Two days. Okay. So I want to talk about how people can contact you if you want to share more about that. And then I have another question as we close off. How do people get a hold of you? How do people... get into a shop. I know as we're speaking right now one of your websites is still in in the midst of construction by the time maybe we release the episode, it's already out. So share about Yeah, it's almost ready to be um public. just It was getting a revamp. But yeah, best way to get me. So I do have my little shop in her honor and that flyavfly.com. But the best way to get a hold of me is I'm on there much more frequently than other channels or social media is Instagram. And my hashtag is Angela dash AV dash rebuilds or underscore. So yeah, that's the easiest way. And then I'll have, I have a little link in my bio there and people who want information on the retreats, they can sign up there. i also have, like I said, that scholarship. So every single retreat, somebody gets to attend the retreat completely free of charge. It's all paid for by my store. And I love bringing that to people too, because there are so many people that reach out to me that are like, I can't, I can't afford to do this. And I was like here's a scholarship application. There you go. Like fill it out. So you get to bring that to other people. So that's great too. But those are the two ways right now. Flyavfly.com, which there's an email link to that. You can email me there or Angela AV Rebuilds on Instagram.
Speaker: Thank you so much, Angela. Angela, I like to end by asking you, is there something I have not asked you that you want to make sure you share with the listeners? Oh, I love that. I think that the biggest thing that I just want to share, and it's not even that you haven't asked, It's my go-to because I feel like it can help so many people, whether it's the death of a child, whether it's the death of our mother, our brother, whether it's the the loss of a job, right? Whatever you are grieving.
Speaker: The line time heals all wounds drives me absolutely insane, right? And it drives me insane because it's not just another cliche line. It does such a disservice because what happens is people think that they can be a passive person in their healing journey. And 90% of people who come to me are like, well, people told me this is going to get better. People told me time will heal this, right?
Speaker: And I'm like, no, it's not time that heals the wounds. It's what you choose to do in that time period.
Speaker: Right. And so i just want whoever's listening to know that whatever you are going through, it's all about what you choose to do with the time that you are given. and that is what makes all the difference.
Speaker: Couldn't have said it better. Exactly. Thank you so much again, Angela. Again, this was Angela. Thank you, Aviana as well, for being here in spirit, at least in my perspective. She's always here. Thank you so much. Yes, she's always.
Speaker: Thank you. Thank you.
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.
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.
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.
Speaker: And thanks once again for tuning in to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray In Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.
