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179. Relief and Guilt: Emotions Often not Talked about in Grief with Jana DeCristofaro
114 Plays1 month ago
Jana DeCristofaro, LCSW, is the Community Response Program Coordinator at Dougy Center. Since 2002, Jana has coordinated peer support groups for children, teens, young adults, and adults. She also provides consultation and training for grieving families, students, community members, and professionals locally and nationally. Jana is the host and producer of Grief Out Loud, Dougy Center’s podcast, which features interviews with other professionals in the grief world and those with lived experience of grief. She has also facilitated community responses for schools and community organizations after a death.
Get in touch with Kendra Rinaldi for coaching or to be a guest
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Transcript
Grieving Unlived Futures
00:00:01
Speaker
We grieve for the relationship we never got to have with them. We grieve for the future that will never maybe perhaps be different if that person's life circumstances are able to shift in some way. So I think relief can be threaded through all of that. And then right after relief can also come a lot of guilt and then a lot of confusion and a lot of um mystery for people as to like, I didn't even really get along very well with this person. Why is my grief feeling so intense?
Meet Jana de Cristofaro
00:00:42
Speaker
is about exploring the grief that occurs at different times in our lives in which we have had major changes and
00:00:58
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
00:01:20
Speaker
On today's podcast, I am chatting with fellow podcaster, Jana de Cristofaro. She is a licensed social worker and the community response program coordinator at the Dougie Center in Portland, Oregon.
Journey to the Dougie Center
00:01:35
Speaker
She is also the host and producer of Grief Out Loud, which is the Dougie Center's podcast, which features interviews with other professionals in the grief world.
00:01:44
Speaker
and those who have experienced grief. And she has also facilitated community responses for schools and community organizations after a death. So we have a lot to talk about. We'll see how much we unpack in this conversation. I know we got to talk when I was a guest on your podcast and now you get to be on that side.
00:02:07
Speaker
that It's revenge time. It's revenge. ah Welcome, welcome to the podcast. Oh, thanks, Kendra. Thanks for having me. And I do have to note, you cheated a bit when we did my podcast because you already started asking me questions in that episode. So, I'm already down one. OK, I cheated, I cheated. All right. Well, take us into a little bit of your own journey. Let's start there. How did you end up being a social worker? Like, what was your journey to get to that point?
00:02:41
Speaker
Yeah, i had I'm apologizing to any of your listeners who've heard me tell this story before, because I've told it many times. It was fully accidental that I got where I am today. i When I was a kid, I was like, I don't know what I want to be, like a vet or a Yankees pitcher. I don't know. I didn't have any idea. I was pretty aimless, I would say, through most of high school and into college, although I had this idea, like, oh, I want to work in mental health therapy field somehow. I think I had this idea of, you know, being an individual therapist and sitting in an office that was well decorated. And I don't know, that was just the idea I had. And then when I was in college, I got summer jobs as wait staff, particularly in more
00:03:27
Speaker
touristy locations. And I was like, I don't like people and I definitely don't like caring about their problems because when you're a waitstaff people, you interact with people a lot and they have a lot of problems that you they want you to fix. And I was like, oh my gosh, terrible, I hate this. So off I go do some other things after college. And then I was like, no, okay, I really should like make my way back to this arena and started working with some youth and a mentoring program. And I was like, all right, all right, all right, fine. I'll go to a social work school.
00:03:56
Speaker
So I went to social work school and I was like, okay, I'm still gonna do that individual therapy land. And then I started doing internships. And I was like, again, I really am not great with people. This was a bad idea. I don't know what I'm doing. yeah And I'm terrible with kids and these people want me to tell them how to fix their lives. And my life's a mess. like what This is is a sham. I can't do this. So I graduate and I do research. And I was like, okay, numbers, keyboards, numbers, keyboards. And after a while I was like, oh, I kind of feel like my soul is leaking out of my into the keyboard, and I did go into this to work with people as much as maybe I'm not that great with them. So a friend of mine was like, you know, you should check out this place. I don't know. I think it's called the Dougie Center, the Doughie Center, the Doggie Center. I'm not sure, but there's kids and teddy bears, and they cry. And I was like, great. That sounds perfect for me. So I called them up. When you felt you weren't even good with kids, and then you end up with this.
00:04:52
Speaker
um Well, in my, yeah, anyways, I was just like, that sounds great. So I call them up and they're like, oh, funny enough, we have a volunteer training happening this weekend, two days from now and we had a last minute opening and usually our trainings are booked out a year in advance. Do you want to go? And I was like, ah,
Philosophy of Grief Support
00:05:06
Speaker
okay. Like, I don't know anything about this program. So I show up, I go in the this basement room, there's a lot of people sitting on pillows and the person who was leading the training who ended up being my colleague for many years started out by saying,
00:05:17
Speaker
When people come to Dougie Center, we're here to help them know what they know and find what they need. We're not here to tell them what they need or to tell them what we know. And I let out the biggest exhale because all throughout graduate school, I felt like I was in this position where I had to know what people needed. You know, people are coming to me with their kids are having, you know, major behavioral and emotional challenges or they're struggling with things.
00:05:45
Speaker
i don't know how to tell you how to do anything. I was like, Oh, I can be in a place where I just have to hold some space for people to find themselves and each other together. Perfect. So that was kind of my en entry into Dougie Center. I started as a volunteer and then I got hired on into my position about, yeah, I think it was like a year later. And when the position first came available, I was like, I'm not applying no way. I'm bad with people. Remember, we'll do this on volunteer. But then a friend friend convinced me and I'm very thankful because 22 years later,
00:06:16
Speaker
Here I am, still not sure if I'm any good with people, but I seem to be able to do this job. Okay. So that's how i you I, but you know, that was, that was such a good reflection that you had because it was not that you weren't good with people. You weren't good with trying to solve, let's say their problems. You are good at holding space. And so you're probably so much in your head back in, you know, your early.
00:06:40
Speaker
or part of your career, like, well, they're coming with the problems, and maybe I'm a fixer, and I'm trying to like figure out like the how to fix it, but if I don't know how to fix it, like then what good am I type of thing? right And a lot of us, I think, end up falling into that trap of thinking that when people come to us with whatever it is they're going through, and this is anybody, not even in the space of either as a social worker or in the grief space or whatever,
00:07:06
Speaker
is that we want to solve it. And sometimes all it is is just, we're just a sounding board and just being there. So that shift, I guess, just allowed you to now be able to be doing this for how many years now?
00:07:22
Speaker
I've been in this role for 22 and a half years. since yeah two thousand and two years and And I do have to say like, I think the places where I was working prior to Dougie Center and my internships, the context really did require folks in my role to fix things or to try to prevent bad things from happening. I was working with youth who had been adjudicated for sexually aggressive behaviors. I was working with college students and ah and a medical model of mental health where, you know, the expectation was that we were going to either prevent harm from happening or to correct potential harm in the future. And that felt like
00:08:00
Speaker
I know there's people who are great in those roles, thankful, not me, grief, nothing to fix. I'm just here to hold space and create community. I was like, whew, pressure's off. So yeah. Perfect. So you finally found, yeah, you found like within that space, something that fit your grills. Yeah, that's true. The other things you do have to prevent. Now, once you started then working in that space, you just kind of fell into it really like after you facilitated. What experiences with grief had you personally had at that time and had you or not in your own personal life?
Family History of Grief
00:08:35
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of times people who've had a direct, like maybe immediate family member death, a parent death or sibling death or a partner death are really drawn to doing this work because you learn so much from your own experience. as And you you're a perfect example of that. Like you have your own personal experience and like, I didn't get what I needed and I ah want to be there for other people in this way. And I did not consciously ah you know, come into this grief world with that experience. like Once I was volunteering and working at Dougie Center, there was an opportunity to reflect back on the way that grief had played a role in my growing up and that my dad's dad died when my dad was 14. My dad's mother's dad died when she was seven at the dining room table or Christmas time.
00:09:22
Speaker
fell over and died at the table. um My mom's parents, ah their second child died a couple days after birth. ah My grandmother had an experience. So there were just a lot of stories of grief, particularly around early parent death.
00:09:38
Speaker
in my atmosphere growing up. And so I i felt that connection. And i when I sat with people who were grieving, I was like, oh, that sounds very familiar to me, even though I didn't feel like I had a direct experience. I hadn't had a parent tie. I'm an only child. um Those kinds of things. But the recognizing the ah resonance and the role that grief played in my being parented and raised myself,
00:10:09
Speaker
that right now as you were saying that I'm like taking notes right now with that because you you said something the resonance and role that grief played in your upbringing and that's something that a lot of times we do not even of course think of right like that who are like the effect the ripple effect that it that grief plays in these generations and then how that then affects the rest of the family and generations because of just how a person either has lived grief, navigated grief, suppressed grief, ah you know, all these different
Unexpressed Grief and Family Dynamics
00:10:49
Speaker
things. So can you go further into what that type of grief is even called like called, like if people don't express, you know, express it and how that even shifts maybe a dynamic just from what you've observed? Yeah, I'm sure there's an academic term for it out there. I'm actually not that familiar with what I would, I mean, you could
00:11:08
Speaker
find all kinds of words for it. People use disenfranchised grief or unexpressed grief. I just, I don't, terms don't really mean a lot to me. And like the experience is what's important. And I think what it ended up looking like for me in my personal life,
00:11:21
Speaker
was a deep fear that my dad was going to die when I turned 14 because I'd had it in my head. His dad died when he was 14. I thought my grandmother was 14 when her dad died. Turns out she was seven. I thought my cousin was 14 when his dad died. So I just said there's this family story that dads die young and usually when their kids are 14.
00:11:42
Speaker
So I was pretty terrified my whole 14th year that my dad was going to die. And prior to that, because of my I think my mom's experiences with grief in her family and the ways that was or was not talked about.
00:11:55
Speaker
she carries a lot of fear that people are going to die. And so, you know, it it was a symbiotic relationship of any time my dad was five minutes late coming home from work or didn't call, I felt that terror just kind of come through the family system, that something had happened, he had died. So I just grew up with a ton of anxiety around people dying or bad things happening. And so entertaining that I end up in a job where bad things happen all the time and I hear nothing but stories of people dying. So I guess it was my own exposure.
00:12:25
Speaker
therapy. Unintentional. but i't Now, when you did turn 14, then you turned 15, like at what point did you actually like, oh, wait, I didn't, I didn't end up but but but the family curse, quote unquote, didn't end up happening to me. Do you recall any of that, those type of emotions of relief at any point? um I don't. I mean, it's been a long time now ah because I think that last year you're You just heard 16. I think that continued um tsunami of fear of death and bad things happening, that really never went away. And so that was just one thing, one bad thing that didn't happen. But now we' got I'm on guard for all the next things, bad things that could potentially happen.
00:13:11
Speaker
So let's talk about that talk about the tools that then when you're living with a type of. Year and just in general in in our lives we all hold some kind of years for me was also my parents and i was the oldest of eldest of four and so anytime in my parents would go.
00:13:28
Speaker
out and that if they wouldn't come home at the time that I thought they were going to come, my brain would just start going, and this is my teenage brain, right, going into these whole scenarios that could happen. And then I'm like, how am I going to raise my three other siblings? Like I'm only, you know, like all these things that happen and it's normal.
00:13:47
Speaker
mean developmental type of fears. But as we get older, or sometimes we still hold on to those patterns in which our brain goes. Have you found ways in which either for yourself or for people that you have ah facilitated groups, help them in order to kind of move on with these fears and with these anxieties about grief and about death?
00:14:14
Speaker
ah Kendra, I wish I had a great answer for you. I'm like, what do I do? What's happened? like i happen it Remember, we don't have to have answers. is just like is Was there anything even just for you? like um i mean I think, honestly, getting older has helped um in a way. I'm not sure why. But in my professional world, I do a lot of reading and listening to other people who work in the grief field, especially folks who are actual therapists. Like I'm in LCSW, but I don't do therapy. I run peer grief support groups. So I have to turn to my colleagues like, what are you all doing in the therapy world? And two people have written things that really have helped me. um And because I run a peer grief support group, I can't directly like offer this to people, but I will sometimes pull it out of the conversation of the other people who are in the group. But Megadevine wrote about when that fear comes up, that something else bad is going to happen.
00:15:11
Speaker
She says, I go back to the fact that I don't know what's going to happen and I don't know how it's going to go, but I've already gone through something really terrible and I figured it out and I will figure out whatever best thing happens next. And so that's one anchor point for me. It's like, I don't know what it's going to be like, but I will figure it out. And then um Claire Bidwell Smith writes about living with her own anxiety. Both of her parents died when she was a young adult of cancer and how easy it is to go to that place of the worst case scenario. And she intentionally and sometimes, well, at least for me, I have to kind of like strong arm myself into this, like pause. And rather than just imagine the 8,000 bad things that could happen, stop and intentionally imagine the best thing that could happen.
00:15:55
Speaker
So, I do that. Those two things have been my anchor points. And in my groups, like I said, because I'm not giving direct, you know, intent, feedback in that way, I will often ask, like, how are other people dealing with this? And eventually somebody's like, well, I read Claire Bidwell Smith's Anxiety, The Missing Stage of Grief, or I read Meghan Devine's It's Okay That You're Not Okay book, and they will kind of bring that into the the conversation, thankfully. So yeah, those are my two to the present day things that I do when that fear comes up.
00:16:26
Speaker
Isn't that interesting aspect of having to kind of hold back in your own expression and its is really just allow the the individuals there to express their their thoughts and their experiences with grief and not interject our own experiences. And that happens so often in even just when we're talking with another person who's experienced grief that we sometimes go into this well you know comparison grief.
00:16:56
Speaker
ah Can you talk about that aspect of comparison, grief and and grief, and especially like in groups in which maybe they're not, like in in in certain areas, the grief ah the grief groups are divided based on the type of loss somebody's had. But sometimes the way that that loss could have occurred could also affect
Stigma and Grief
00:17:15
Speaker
how someone may see their grief as different or the relationship they had to the person. Can you talk a little bit about that?
00:17:24
Speaker
Yeah, so from the perspective of what I've seen in groups, you know, I work with kids, I work with teenagers, I work with young adults, and I have over the years worked with adults as well. And I see that comparison, dismissing of my own grief, or that I find it happening more with older people, like young adults and adults. The kids don't seem to do that as much. And even if they are doing it, they're not expressing it in the way that maybe adults and young adults are. So kids, I think, as I watch them in their group, they're really trying to make sense of it. Oh, your dad. So wait, what's up?
00:18:05
Speaker
aneurysm? Okay, so your dad had some in his brain. Okay, and your dad, your had dad has someone that's heart and your mom, you know, they're just trying to make sense of like, well, how do people actually die? Like, what happens to the body? And there's not as much of like, well, I only knew my dad for six years, and you knew to your dad for nine years. So yours is harder, mine's easier, whatever, like all this stuff that happens. And I feel like in Let me get into a little bit in the teen group, but more into that young adult and that adult group. There's so much socialization about like what counts as valid in terms of the amount of grief.
00:18:39
Speaker
And it's less about, ah maybe people just aren't verbalizing this, but there's not so much of like, well, my grief's so much worse than yours. It's people saying, I feel like my grief's not worthy enough. That's what I hear most of all. And I think there might be a skewed sample of those, the people who find their way to my group too, because they're they're in a sense maybe not getting the feedback or compassion or care from their community that would say your grief is valid. So they come to our community and they're like, everybody's grief is valid here.
00:19:06
Speaker
And we start from like, we're all in this room because someone in our life has died. But that may very well be where the similarities end because who died, when, how, what our relationship was like when they died, what our relationship was like with them growing up, what our relationship with them is like now, all the things that go into our unique unique identity constellation that play a role in what access we have to resources and support or don't have access to resources and support, all those things come together and create such a unique experience. So let's just come at it from the perspective of my grief is mine and your grief is yours, and that's where we're working with.
00:19:41
Speaker
That's what we try to do. We start to try to set that stage. And yet people say, well, I just, you know, my dad and I didn't get along. We hadn't been speaking for five years and then your mom was your best friend and, you know, just all this back and forth, back and forth. And so I feel for people like, gosh, if we could strip away all of that additional consternation around whether or not our relationship or our grief is valid and just actually let ourselves experience the grief.
00:20:07
Speaker
and just seems like a lot less work, but it just seems like human nature right to try to put ourselves in different places. um and so that say We do have some groups that are specific to how a person died. and that From my perspective, that's less about like, ooh, you have more grief than these people. It's more specifically for people who've had someone die from a death that is often stigmatized by our society.
00:20:30
Speaker
will find themselves in a little bit more um less guarded place, perhaps, if everyone else in the room that they're talking to has had someone die of substance use or suicide or homicide, because they're not bracing for the gasp. They're not bracing for of the maybe kind of invasive questions. They're not bracing for a sensation that feels like judgment, whether or not there's actually judgment there. So I do think there's some some benefit to having people come together in a way that they're not having to navigate what they perceive to be someone else's opinion or judgment about their experience. yeah because I went off track. I'm not sure I answered your question. No, you did. You did. That way you can really just be raw and real about it. You you mentioned something in the movie we that ah that you were a part of. You were one of the guests and it was ah meet me where I am documentary.
00:21:19
Speaker
And you mentioned something there that I would love for you to further explore here. And it had to do, you you talked right now about even just the dynamics of sometimes even just the relationship with the person or the how someone is dying. you you will You shared your own experience of your grandmother's passing and we can go into that. And it's that aspect of relief in grief. Let's talk about that relief within your grief journey.
Complex Emotions in Grief
00:21:48
Speaker
Yeah, well, I mean, it feels like it's number one thing no one's going to admit in a public forum. So let me just a admit it right here in this public forum. But I do think that, you know, it's kind of the classic stereotype that when someone dies, the pedestal comes out and the compliments come out and the showering of the grace of how amazing this person was. And those things can be very true. And then the reality is humans are complex and we have complex relationships with them.
00:22:12
Speaker
And there are people in our lives who die that after their death, sometimes our lives are easier. Sometimes our lives are more peaceful. Sometimes our lives have more possibility and liberation in them without that person here in their physical form.
00:22:28
Speaker
And we also grieve for that person. We grieve for the relationship we never got to have with them. We grieve for the future that will never maybe perhaps be different if that person's life circumstances are able to shift in some way. So I think relief can be threaded through all of that. And then right after relief can also come a lot of guilt and then a lot of confusion and a lot of um mystery for people is to like, I didn't even really get along very well with this person. Why is my grief feeling so intense? I think that can be a very um unsettling place for people to step into. They may have had, it well, when this person dies,
00:23:08
Speaker
I'm probably not going to grieve that bad. And then they that person dies and the grief is overwhelming. Or then someone had a really clear, clean relationship with someone and they're like, when they die, I'm going to be absolutely devastated. And then that person dies and the relationship feels accessible in a way that continues to feel clean and clear. And so there's grief over the person being gone, but there's not all this other complicated mess that can come when the relationship is more complicated. So I think there's a lot of ways that relief can be a part of it. Even when you think about folks who maybe have been a caregiver for many years with someone who has a long-term illness, whether it's a physical illness or a cognitive illness or some sort of degenerative condition, there's a lot that goes into caregiving and there can be that like,
00:23:53
Speaker
that my life is going to be different. And then also there can be, well, what do I do now with all this energy and attention I was putting into this caregiving and so much guilt about that one time at 2am when you thought, Oh my gosh, I just want this to be over. And then that person dies and you're like, I did it. It was definitely that thought at two in the morning of all these other things that were contributing to this person's condition. That one thought at 2am is definitely what killed them. And then a lot of guilt that can come with that. So I don't know, I,
00:24:20
Speaker
I appreciate when people are willing to come forward and talk about those elements of relief and recognize it's not binary. There's not, oh, I'm only relieved or, oh, I'm only grieving. It's like yes to all those things. Yeah, you said the and that it's not one one or the other.
00:24:35
Speaker
So then with your grandmother, share about that experience and for you. So what what was what was your grandmother sick of and what was her old journey that then that emotion, because I can relate to that aspect of when they're suffering of the, okay, they're no longer suffering, like also that empathy for the individual and their own suffering in that journey. Can you talk about your own experience with that?
00:24:59
Speaker
I can. I mean, it's hard. I will just caveat it with that the experience I had, I was 14 or 15 when it happened. So my initial reaction response was from a very 14, 15 year old perspective. And now I'm looking back at that as a 50 year old. um And so the the circumstance leading up to my grandmother's death, my grandfather and my grandmother had been together for like a gazillion years. I think if you were to look at their relationship from a ah present day 2024 psychological lens, you would say, whoa, that's really codependent in the fact that they had been together forever. My grandfather was an immigrant from Italy. My grandmother was raised um by immigrants from Italy. So they were in of kind of like a smaller community that way.
00:25:43
Speaker
And there was a lot of other things involved in that, but they were just together, together, together, together, together and my grandmother had some pre existing mental health.
00:25:54
Speaker
struggles. So I mentioned that her second child had died. And I believe after that, she had quite a period of I don't even know what it was, depression, anxiety, a fun mix of the two. um But she had experienced electroconvulsive therapy, ECT therapy um a few times in her life. So she had dealt with some mental health challenges. And for a while when my mom was heading into college, my grandfather was in the hospital for a year and a half, like almost died in the hospital a year and a half. So just like a lot around that, just a lot of stuff, medical stuff for her. um So fast forward to my grandfather, I think it's 80, my grandmother is 78. My grandfather dies pretty suddenly of what I thought was lymphoma, but I'm not sure if that's actually what it was, some sort of really quick illness.
00:26:45
Speaker
he dies. My grandmother is like bereft, devastated, and has a resurgence of some pretty significant mental health stuff. So that was going on for about six, eight months. And it was a lot of phone calls back and forth between my family in Brooklyn, where she was living with my aunt and her wife. There's just a lot of drama, family drama. And then my grandmother, as far as I knew,
00:27:10
Speaker
had attempted to take her own life by taking pills. This is the story I think I knew when I was a teenager. And so she went probably to the hospital, got maybe put on medication, sounded like she was doing better. And then she was coming home from bingo, I think, with her friends and was missing for a bit. And then the call came through and I heard my mother scream.
00:27:36
Speaker
And the story was she was hit and killed by a subway train. And we never found out really if it was suicide or an accident or someone pushed her. My 15-year-old brain was like, well, obviously, it's suicide. She just tried to take her own life last week. What's wrong with these people? I don't understand why the adults were a little not on board with that story. But you know I was pretty shielded from a lot of things.
00:27:56
Speaker
But the initial response I had when I found heard my mother scream, and knew my I was like, oh, she must have died. And I felt that relief because there had been so much tension for her, from the family system, just all of that. She'd just been really struggling and it was just so much drama.
00:28:12
Speaker
And so as a 15 year old, I was like, whew. But then, I mean, that quickly, of course, got eclipsed by watching the adults of my life go through what they were going through. But that also wasn't really clear to me. Like, I don't remember anyone really talking to me about their feelings. I just remember seeing some feelings. But I don't remember anyone directly saying, I feel this way or that way.
00:28:31
Speaker
And there was a lot of other drama about trying to get the ah death certificate changed because it was ruled a suicide by the medical examiner. And my aunt really wanted that change to accidental death because they were fearful that my grandmother wouldn't be able to get a funeral in the Catholic church buried next to my grandma. Like all this stuff that is a teenager. like again yeah I was like, what is this ridiculousness? Why are all these adults being ridiculous? Why is the church being ridiculous? Why is my family? I was just like, what is wrong with people?
00:28:59
Speaker
But that was my 15 year old just like, when she took her own life and like, let the lady get buried next to her husband. What's the problem here? Like, I just didn't understand all of this, the context and the history around the stigma around that.
00:29:13
Speaker
But even to even the way that you felt in that relief, that your emotion that then it was clouded by what you were seeing the adults live around. I recall my when i my brother was a first-personer and I interviewed on my podcast and he shared that when our sister died, he was seven.
00:29:31
Speaker
And he did not feel that particular sadness that that it was. It was not it was actually like a calmness, like he didn't feel like crying. But then he saw our other sister who was four years older than he was crying on the couch and then seeing like my parents and he's like, oh, I guess this is what I'm supposed to feel.
00:29:53
Speaker
And it shifted because he really in his, in his heart, like that sadness was not the first emotion that he felt, even though it was really close to my sister. So, so much of what we feel is of course brought into us because of society and the people around. And so to be very.
00:30:16
Speaker
aware of which emotions are borrowed, kind of, too. if it's It's hard to know, really, like which ones we borrow and which ones are our own. so But thank you for sharing that very candid, own personal story with that.
00:30:31
Speaker
Now, how did you then now end up happening to then create the
The Birth of 'Grief Out Loud' Podcast
00:30:37
Speaker
podcast? How did you transition into that and let's go into that world? So you would work you were working in the Daggy Center since 2002. At what point did the podcast idea come about?
00:30:50
Speaker
Yeah. So 2015 is when the podcast started. So I imagine we started talking about it in late 2014, because January 2015 is Grief Out Loud's birthday. And it started because that was around when I think I first started listening to podcasts. And back in 2014, you know, I think it was This American Life and Radiolab and a few other really, the Moth, some really well-known podcasts. it was a very different landscape than it is now where there's a gazillion podcasts to choose from. And I was talking with, ah at the time at Dougie Center, ah the person who was in the role of our chief operating officer was kind of like a techy guy and knew a lot of stuff and was into podcasts too. And we just started talking and we thought, you know,
00:31:34
Speaker
There's places like the Dougie Center all around the world, but there's lots of places around the world where there's no place like Dougie Center for kids and teens and families to come to when someone in their life has died. What about those folks? like What can we do to reach out to them in some way?
00:31:52
Speaker
And so originally we were like, well, podcasts are free and mostly accessible. If you have access to technology, not everyone does, but they're free at least. I guess we got to pay for your device. Anyways, sometimes you go to the library, you can do it for free and.
00:32:07
Speaker
I was like, well, you know, it could reach us across the airwaves that could go around the world. That's kind of cool. I was like, we can't do a group on a podcast. That's not going to work. But maybe we could take questions from people and share some thoughts and reflections and answers that will help other parents and caregivers know how to support their kids and teens. That was kind of the original idea. So the first couple episodes, that's what we did was like, take some questions. I think we did one on like,
00:32:33
Speaker
What's the timeline of grief and what are some different things you can do with a person's ashes or cremains? And then we click over like, well, I think it's going to be helpful to just have conversations about grief and not necessarily try to answer questions. So we did that. It was mostly Dougie Center staff. And then we started branching out and doing interviews with um folks with just sharing their lived experience, not from a professional perspective.
00:32:56
Speaker
And then eventually people started reaching out to me to want to be on the show to talk about their book or whatever they were doing. So that's the theber origin story was like, there are people who don't have access to services like the Dougie Center and whether or not they're kids and teens now or whether or not they're 70 now, but they were a child or a teen when their parent or sibling died and there was no Dougie Center for them then.
00:33:17
Speaker
that was kind of the idea. And I think we sort of grown into like, what can it be, which is it can be a place to feel less alone in your grief, because you hear the story from someone else. And so if you come to a group, you've got maybe like 10 or 12 other stories. But if you come to a podcast, it's a group of two, it's your story and the story of the person you're listening to, of course, it's a one way relationship. But I do think there's a lot of benefit and just being able to like, Oh,
00:33:40
Speaker
while that story is so similar to mine, or while that story is so different than mine, now I've learned something about myself by hearing about somebody who had a different experience. So I think that was the kind of the overall origin of what would be the purpose of the podcast. And for me personally, we'll go back to that original story of like, I don't always do great with people, but I do great with keyboards. I was like, podcast is a way to have an in-depth conversation with someone and then spend endless hours just nerding out about editing. And it was a nice break for me from that direct service too. So it's kind of ah ah the best of both worlds for me and my job. Well, I love that you love the editing part of the podcast, because that is my least favorite. I should just send it over to you. Well, I will say love, hate. I love figuring out how to do the editing. The actual editing is, so as we've talked about, monotonous and tedious for sure.
00:34:31
Speaker
Yes, I was like, it's the first time I'm actually like using the footnotes section here on my on this thing here. I'm like, oh, I don't have to like write it and then try to figure out what my words are. I'm going to write them here on the computer itself instead of because then I'm like editing and I'm like, what did I write? Which part is it that I have to edit? I don't understand my own writing.
00:34:55
Speaker
And then yeah when you don't edit like right away, too, then you then forget certain things and Anyway, but it is so good. So you were able to find the best of of of both worlds here and be able to provide this service. Now it's reached quite a bit. It's been around then 10 years already. What have been some of the, and it it's hard I don't know, like if you were to ask me this, I would not know what to answer, but maybe you can answer it.
00:35:23
Speaker
What are some of these like stories or guests that you've had that have either like impacted you a lot or shifted the way that you thought about grief? If you can recall any specific ones.
00:35:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I've had other people ask me like, well, what's your favorite episode? And I'm always like, the conversation I just had, every time I have a new interview, I'm like, oh, that's my new favorite. And just because there's such an experience to go, I always feel like I enter a space with guests, like we're going to go to this place together and I don't know what it's going to look like or what's going to be there. And then whatever's going to happen is going to need to happen.
00:36:01
Speaker
And it feels like a transporting experience to be with somebody in that kind of conversation. So they're all my favorite, all 299 of them. You were 299, so you were the most recent one.
00:36:14
Speaker
um I mean, when I look back over the years, there have been some times when folks who had been participants in our program want to come on the show and share their story. And there's something really powerful and magical about that because there are oftentimes people who have been in group with me and they're at a place where they want to come tell their story. It's not me hassling them that they want to come tell their story because they feel like they've moved into a place on their grief where they have something to offer.
00:36:42
Speaker
And I am so grateful I have this platform to help them have a place to do that, to make that offering. um So particularly folks who were teens in my group and have decided to come on the show, that has been really meaningful to me because I think, oh my gosh, no way as a 15 year old would I have gone on a show and told my story. I don't always like doing it as a 50 year old. So the fact that they trust themselves,
00:37:08
Speaker
in their grief, the fact that they trust me to hold their story and honor their story, that they trust Dougie Center, all of that just is really, really meaningful. um And then second, not second to that, but in addition to that, the podcast is a way for me to connect with folks who are doing work similar to mine or are impacted by work that I do all around the world. And that has been really powerful to me. Because I mean, I'm in Portland, Oregon. There's a ton of people come to Dougie Center. I have a network and a community there. But to be able to branch out in this way and not have to go to a conference to do it, like just to connect over the podcast. And now I have this whole network of people I can reach out to and say,
00:37:47
Speaker
What are you all working on? Or I've got an idea about an episode I want to do. Do you have anyone that you could recommend? That feels really meaningful to me that the the network is bigger than just my immediate experience.
00:38:00
Speaker
um yeah i don't Yeah, I could keep talking and talking, but perfect those are the things that stand out today. i love So in these when you connect them with people that are doing the type of work you do in other countries, have you noticed any similarities or major differences in how societies in their culture address grief in other places?
Cultural Perspectives on Grief
00:38:25
Speaker
Like when you've talked to them about how it is for them? Well, it's a great question, Kendra, because as I'm thinking through the folks I've spoken to in different countries,
00:38:35
Speaker
have all been people who have reached out to me with their lived experience of grief. I actually don't have a lot of podcast connections with professionals in different countries. Our previous executive director, who's now our senior director of advocacy and education, is part of the international work group.
00:38:57
Speaker
Oh my gosh, I should know the name, but it's the International Work Group on like death and dying. And so she's connected with people all around the world. um So she might be someone you should have on the podcast and ask her that question, but I will say in my experience of talking to people who have shared their lived experience from living in different places, there's so many similarities, so many themes, feeling alone in my grief, feeling confused, sometimes feeling supported or unsupported by my family and my community.
00:39:22
Speaker
having my peers not really know how to be there for me, like all those things feel really, really similar, even though a lot of the culturals and ah cultural traditions and routines and rituals might on the face look really different. There are still some of that, some universals in those themes coming through. Yes. But yeah, you're you're right in terms of the cultural ways in which it can might be ah expressed might be a little different. That's something that I've observed in certain people that I've interviewed as well, just because of their own lived experiences that may be there grief was not acknowledged or even allowed to be expressed in the country that they were originally from. And it was not until they came into the States and then there were adults adults themselves. And then they're like, wait a minute, I was never allowed to express my grief as a teenager when my sister died. Like I didn't, you know, they they erased everything that
00:40:15
Speaker
reminded my parents, my parents erased everything that reminded them of her, you know, in their life. So there are different ways culturally, but yeah, but the themes, like you said, are all universal because we are, we are really all connected and all our emotions and we're all just one, one big complex being each individually, but it's it's so good to feel connected with others, with these emotions as well.
00:40:44
Speaker
I'm really not glad you just brought that up, Kendra, because now I want to ask you a question since you have talked to quite a few people who have had experience of maybe being in a different culture or community or or country when their person died and then coming to the States and being like, oh, I can talk about it or express it or I didn't get a chance to. I'm curious how you respond because I have my own reaction to this. When people always say,
00:41:08
Speaker
The United States or America is a death denying society, a death denying culture, as though other places are somehow ah way more open and expressive about their grief. and I have such a reaction to that. So I'm curious what your reaction is. i have i've always think I've always thought that in general there is a taboo, but I don't think of it as just the US in general, of what I've just lived. Taboo around things that make us uncomfortable. So death being something that in a lot of societies or cultures of beliefs,
00:41:45
Speaker
We feel uncomfortable around it because it's something we don't know and that shifts so many aspects of our life. I think that we don't necessarily talk enough about death itself, that therefore when we're experiencing grief that has to do with the death of someone, we also tend to then not talk about it either, because it makes us uncomfortable. So in this country, because there is such a wide variety, I believe, of cultures but within this country, i i I think that it is not like what you're just saying. that it's this it you You can't stereotype the whole US. There is just a huge amount of cultures here, probably way more
00:42:33
Speaker
then other could I can say that even from my own country in Colombia. like Yes, there are some you know immigrants, you know of course, in Colombia, and there's influence of that, but not as vast, I believe, as the cultural impact that there is in the US.
00:42:50
Speaker
that that um That wouldn't, I think, apply in the US. I think it's just in general in society that we may have more taboos around that in certain, yeah. I don't know if it, does that make sense? what it way Why is it that it bothers you when you hear that?
00:43:10
Speaker
Well, I'm relieved to be like now a party of two. It's like, I don't know if that's actually true. It's just been something that I think it's said. Things get said. And then because they get said over and over and over again, people are like, oh, that must be true. And I've always been like, I don't know if that's true, that this idea that like it's unique to the United States. So we're a death to death denying society. What I what my theory around it. This is not rooted in anything academic or research based, just my own wonderings. But I think because we are such a diverse country of different cultures and customs and because we are a country where there are um
00:43:48
Speaker
Many people who maybe aren't raised with or don't have access to really consistent or structured rituals and routines about what we do when someone dies. I think there is a longing for that and then a looking to other cultures, maybe cultures that are more homogenous and have a maybe more um
00:44:09
Speaker
unity around maybe religion or spirituality or whatever that might be that there's these things that we know that we do. We have this ceremony or we do this and we hear rituals and routines. And I think there's a longing for that because people feel so lost when someone dies. And they're like, and now I got to make all this up of how to do it. Even though there's a piece that I talk with people who if they are raised in a culture or community where there's these really um, embedded routines and rituals. Sometimes those feel really comforting and sometimes they feel restricting. And so there's this like freedom and being able to choose and also this like overwhelm and needing to choose how we're going to do things. So that's what I sometimes think about, but I don't, yeah, I'm not sure if other places are more willing to just sit down and talk openly about grief and death. That's not been my experience in talking with people. So.
00:44:54
Speaker
No, it isn't. I mean, being that I am from Colombia, I can tell you that it it is not common to just sit down and talk about death in Colombia at all. At least in the areas or the you know places that I lived, I would not be able to say that in maybe some of the indigenous components within our culture. you know And that's the thing. Maybe going back to maybe seeing if any of the indigenous areas within each of our country's cultures, if they are if they themselves have these taboos or not. And I honestly don't think that they do. I think that it is more part of their
00:45:38
Speaker
like, you know, life, like, because, uh, yeah, i I'm like trying to think of even just a native Americans or any of the other native cultures of each country. I think that they wouldn't be as, as afraid as we, I have no idea that this is like just me just throwing it, but I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I have no facts. We'd have to ask an anthropologist or something to find out what the,
00:46:09
Speaker
what the real what the reality is ah around that. Now, we've talked about the Dougie Center. We've talked about your podcast. We've talked about your own life and your journey. Is there something I have not asked you that you want to share with the listeners?
00:46:33
Speaker
That is not a question to ask a 50-year-old menopausal braining woman. Oh, my gosh. I'm about to be 49 this year, so you you and I are in that. Oh, actually, we could talk about that. Let's talk about grief and that.
Grief Beyond Death
00:46:51
Speaker
Let's talk about the grief in our life in our life when grief is not just about death. When grief comes into the heart of where we are in our stage in our life and just the aspect like you said like on my brain like okay like where is my brain now and I the longing of even the sharpness of our brain of what it used to be what have you have you noticed any grief come up of this particular stage than in your life
00:47:22
Speaker
Yes, that's a full answer. Yes, very much. Very good. One thing I'm appreciating in the world of grief right now is the way the conversation is broadening out. I mean, at Dougie Center, we are focused on kids and teens and young adults and their family members when someone in their life has died or when someone has an advanced serious illness. So we are focused on the grief of death and dying.
00:47:49
Speaker
And I think for a long time, that was the only scenario that grief was associated with. Like you only use the word grief when someone is dying or someone has died. And and not just like, and at only a human. Now there's a little bit more around like pet death and other beings in our and our world, the earth, things like that. And I'm appreciating that the conversation is broadening out around grief to include things like the end of a friendship, the end of a relationship,
00:48:18
Speaker
um you know, all of those different aspects. I'm really grateful for that because I do think there's a way in which we're all expanding our grief awareness and understanding and education by being able to feel like, oh, I but get to be a part of this conversation too. Maybe I'm not someone who's had a parent or a partner or a spouse or a child die.
00:48:36
Speaker
but I can understand and relate to this idea of grief because of all these losses that we experience. And I do think aging and midlife is one of those. um So i'm thank you to everyone who set the stage for me to be able to sit here with some sort of integrity and say, yes, this feels like grief, even though it is not the grief of someone who has died, which in my role, in my work, I can be real hesitant and tentative around that because I never want to dismiss or somehow diminish the grief of having had someone die to then use that word to also encompass the experience of a change in cognition, physicality, ah social location, all the things that come with with midlife right now for me. um So. No, I agree. You know, that part, as you're saying this, of minimizing then somebody, we're back again to that aspect of just this one word grief because we've associated for so many years to just the aspect of the death of someone.
00:49:32
Speaker
you know or or something, that then now when we switch it to then mean, which has always really been about just the end or any change in transitions period, because it's such a wide range of of reasons that we can experience grief, just like there's a wide range of reasons that we can be sad, a wide range of reasons that we can be happy, a wide range, all these other emotions that have this really wide range of reasons that we can do. like We never be like and like, I'm so happy I get to have my cup of coffee. And then be like, well, why are you happy about that? like You should be happy that you're going to go like on a trip. like You don't compare people.
00:50:15
Speaker
in their experiences of like a happiness of something so minutas, like, oh my gosh, I can't wait to lay my but and my head on my pillow tonight. I am so happy I get to sleep early. No, but yet when we're saying something that has to do with grief,
00:50:32
Speaker
or sadness. Well, why are you sad about that? What do you why are you sad about your, you know, like, don't cry over like what is it spilled milk? Well, or whatever. Well, maybe I do because maybe that was the last cup of milk that I had in my head. Maybe I do want to cry over spilled milk today. Or, you know, and the same then with grief. ah Why not?
00:50:55
Speaker
be embracing of the complex emotions and the the whole rainbow of spectrum of reasons we can feel them. Oh, Katja, thank you. i No one's ever put it in quite those words before and I've literally never thought about it from the perspective of we don't qualify or have judgments about how much happiness people are expressing unless we feel like it's not enough. What if someone's to come to us and say like, oh my god, I have the best latte this morning. It totally made my whole day. No one's like, ugh, well, it's nothing compared to having your birthday celebrated. or anything like that. And i I love that. And I was like like, why is that as you were talking? I was thinking, why is that? And I thought, oh, because if I come to someone and i express something I'm happy about, nothing is required of them. They feel no pressure to be there for me in a way that if I'm sharing something that might be sad or hard or troubling me in some way instantly as the person listening, you feel like, oh, now I got to perform. I got to do something.
00:51:57
Speaker
And that's why I think we have this instinctual way to be like, oh, it's not that bad, because like, I'm busy, man, I got time to help you with what your problems today. I don't know how to help you with your problems. And now I feel like I need to do something or perform for you. And if someone says like, I had the best hike, I'm like, great.
00:52:12
Speaker
That's the end of the conversation, or I might ask a question about it, but I don't have to feel like I have to do anything. um So thanks. I had just learned something brand new today that I hadn't thought about before. and We're like a society of fixers of, you know, and that like what you just said, yeah, like if you come with me saying something that again, it's going to make me uncomfortable, we don't want to be uncomfortable. And so the moment someone's sadness makes us uncomfortable,
00:52:37
Speaker
And there may be times in which someone's joy makes someone uncomfortable. Maybe there are other people that would want to fix that and make their day not be that great by telling them, why are you so happy with that cup of coffee? of yeah I've yet to encounter that. But um but yeah, so yeah not diminishing that these transitions, including this change of life that we're experiencing in our age, is so valid because there has been an end to something, an idea of who we were as well and that the way in which we used to but feel or energy or you or our mental capacity of you know and other different things that come with this aspect of aging. I felt that when I became a mom myself, of grieving the person I was even prior to becoming a mother,
00:53:32
Speaker
And it did not take away from the fact that I was joyful of having these two beings. Again, that word and that you said earlier also applies to these type of changes in our life. It doesn't take away that we're also happy that we're getting to experience this, even if we're missing out on certain things that we were with like, oh, you did not die at the year you went over the 14. No, never mind. Nobody died at 14 when you were thinking about it. That aspect that okay, we are having the ah opportunity of aging and and this is just one of those things but no and and we can still feel Grief over the things that we don't have now
00:54:18
Speaker
It's one of the things we talk to our volunteers at Dougie Center about quite a bit is when we in volunteer training, we do an activity around a life roadmap, and they're invited to mark any major transition in their life, whether it's a transition that is, you know, socially sanctioned is positive, negative, neutral, is mark those transitions and then go back and think about like,
00:54:36
Speaker
you know what what did those transitions bring up for you emotionally, mentally, things like that? And to hope in the hopes that this like trained group of volunteers will go out into the world and when they run into a friend who's about to have a baby or is graduating from a program, that they might be the one person in that other person's life that says,
00:54:56
Speaker
What are you worried about with graduating? What feels hard about graduating? What are you scared about graduating? What are you scared about becoming a parent? What are you worried about? Because everyone else says, oh my gosh, congratulations. And that's the end of the conversation. Like we said, right it's a positive thing. Oh, phew, I'm off the hook. I don't have to do anything else. I just say yay. And we move forward with that.
00:55:16
Speaker
and to recognize that any transition can come with that mix of excitement, joy, and also fear and hesitation and trepidation. And like what a gift to give to someone to be like, what are you worried about, about this being maybe you're going to be responsible for for the rest of its life? like I don't know. I would be terrified. It seems like it would be amazing if someone could ask those questions. So all that to say, I will go back one moment to your question about grieving menopause midlife.
00:55:44
Speaker
The image I've been sitting with is that up until this point in my life, there has been unspecified striving, which is, I don't even know striving for what? Just the striving to do more, be better, get better, improve, right? And it's a part of the culture, I think, that I'm raised in of, like, there's constant improvement, self-improvement, self-awareness.
00:56:03
Speaker
Striving, striving, striving in this uphill way. And then somehow it just tipped and now it's downhill. And I'm like, all this striving feels like flailing. So that's what I'm grappling with. Before I was getting purchase and traction as I was going up the mountain with my striving. And now I'm just like falling down the scree slope and I'm still striving, but now I'm just tumbling. So I'm like, hmm, I got to think about that. So that's what I have for you today.
00:56:30
Speaker
Well, then think of the journey since you described it as climbing. Now, I mean, I'm going to go on that ride with you is that when you do go hiking and you have amazing hikes, you're important. I can't talk about hiking in Texas, where I'm at in Texas right now, but you have lots of great mountains to hike. And I've been to some in the Washington state, like Rainier and things like that.
00:56:55
Speaker
in your climbing and there's a sense of accomplishment when you get to the top, there but there's also a sense of accomplishment when you've reached the bottom of that ah hill. You know, it's like when you come back down. So seeing right now as if like, wow, you know, it's like there's still like this trekking and there's other things that we're going to discover on our way down this hill that we've trekked up and and come back down and feel, I guess that that when we arrive would be maybe just when we already die.
00:57:28
Speaker
There's still going to be a sense of accomplishment ah of the things we experienced on the way down the hill as well. i Yeah, I hope so. I mean, I do like co hiking downhill. I will say though, there's something that I think we understand. There's like a social contract around when you hike up the hill.
00:57:47
Speaker
you hike up the hill. And then when you hike down the hill, there's some element of it that's easier. It's hard in some ways, especially if you've got knee issues, heart hurts. But the the cardiovascular stuff, all that, like that gets easier. And that's the expectation that's going to get easier. But I don't think I was raised or understood anything about like how to shift gears at this time in life. Because I'm still expected. you know I'm still working. I'm still and you know i'm engaged in things.
00:58:14
Speaker
And I've always just had this drive to you know be like, what are your goals? I'm like, do more. That's always my goal. Do more. Hike up the hill more. And I don't think I have the framework or the operating system that knows how to downshift and go down the hill.
00:58:31
Speaker
I'm going cruise control for a bit. Yeah. And that's why it feels like stumbling flailing at this point, because I'm still striving upward, but there's no more ground under my feet. So that's what I got. Yeah. no i No, I love that analogy and like the feeling. So thank you for sharing that so transparently.
00:58:47
Speaker
And thank you for going on this ride of this conversation too. Without any roadmap, we just went, we just went and we just uncovered what came from our conversation and and seeing what maybe others out there may be also thinking about themselves and and their own grief.
00:59:06
Speaker
Hopefully, and I know, not hopefully, I know someone listening to this will relate to several aspects of the stories you shared in your own experiences, just like I know that many of the stories that you've had on your podcast can relate to other people. Now, your story will be that for someone else here as well. So thank you so much again for for sharing that.
00:59:28
Speaker
And if we can end with how people can get in touch with you or listen to your podcast, any of the ways of connecting with you, please. Yeah, absolutely. And before I share all that logistical stuff, I just want to say offer for some gratitude to you, Kendra, for being such a skilled guide and facilitator for these conversations. it's It feels really nice to kind of break out of just the like, here's what I do, and here's how we do it. And they like I do a lot of these interviews, and it feel they sometimes can feel no fault to anybody else. Just like, I feel like, oh, I got to stay more.
01:00:01
Speaker
in my professional role. So thanks for inviting some of the personal in with that too. um So back to the professional ways to get in touch. um So Dougie Center has been around for over 40 years. 40 years, not four, that sounded like four. And we have local programming in the Portland metro area, but we also provide training and support and resources for people all around the world. So the best way to connect with us is to go to our website, which is dougy.org.
01:00:27
Speaker
and You can find other programs similar to ours. We have a lot of free downloadable tip sheets, activity sheets, and each and every episode of Grief Out Loud. But you can find Grief Out Loud on Spotify, Apple Podcast, you know all the places where you find ah things to listen to.
01:00:45
Speaker
Perfect. Thank you so much again. This is Gianna De Cristo Faro, and I look forward to getting a lot of feedback, I'm sure, from this podcast as well from this conversation. So thank you again, my friend. Thanks, Gensha.
01:01:06
Speaker
Thank you again so much for choosing to listen today. I hope that you can take away a few nuggets from today's episode that can bring you comfort in your times of grief. If so, it would mean so much to me if you would rate and comment on this episode. And if you feel inspired in some way to share it with someone who may need to hear this, please do so.
01:01:34
Speaker
Also, if you or someone you know has a story of grief and gratitude that should be shared so that others can be inspired as well, please reach out to me. And thanks once again for tuning into Grief Gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.