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18. This Experience Cracked Me Wide Open! - With Amber Onstine
70 Plays5 years ago
Amber shares her very personal and vulnerable journey of grief after the sudden death of her brother to suicide. She shares about the hard times their family has gone through in this journey, but also the tools they've used in their grieving process. There have been many "tender mercies" in their grief, and this experience also cracked her wide open!
Amber Onstine: FB Amber Witt Onstine IG @amberonstine
Music: www.oneplanetmusic.com IG
Production: Carlos Andres Londono
Kendra Rinaldi: www.griefgratitudeandthegrayinbetween.com
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Transcript
The Shadow of Tragic Death
00:00:01
Speaker
I think that was my biggest fear was, is this gonna taint all the good that he did, the good that he is and was? Is it going to now cast this dark shadow over all the incredible things he did in his life? And that is the tragedy of this type of death is that there is this different shadow about it.
Podcast and Host Introduction
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray in Between podcast. This podcast is about exploring the grief that occurs at different times in our lives in which we have had major changes and transitions that literally shake us to the core and make us experience grief.
00:00:53
Speaker
I created this podcast for people to feel a little less hopeless and alone in their own grief process as they hear the stories of others who have had similar journeys. I'm Kendra Rinaldi, your host. Now, let's dive right in to today's episode.
00:01:14
Speaker
Well, hello to everyone listening today. Thank you for joining us this morning, afternoon, evening, whatever time it is you are listening. For us, it happens to be morning. My guest today is actually hiding in her closet.
00:01:33
Speaker
to record because everybody's sleeping in her house because we're in two different time zones here.
Meeting Amber Onstein
00:01:40
Speaker
So my guest today is my friend Amber Onstein and she is a mom of four, an entrepreneur,
00:01:49
Speaker
a wife, a daughter, a sister, and a friend to many. We met briefly through the Health and Wellness Company, we're both partnered with, but we actually met was at a women's event called The Bliss Project, and it was in California, an amazing event. So that's when we actually got to chat and connect, and I'm just so excited to have you on, Amber.
00:02:17
Speaker
Are you there? Yes, thank you so much. So we were just talking before we recorded that you were waiting till the garbage man would go by so that there would be no background sound. You're hiding in the closet so that everybody could still sleep in your home because it's 7.30 right now. Oh, what time in the morning is it for you right now? Yeah, it's 7.30.
00:02:39
Speaker
So we are so we're like sneaking in this podcast here to try to not wake anybody up in the family. So I appreciate you taking that time out of your day and carving it out to come on and be able to share your story. Thank you. I am so excited to be here.
00:02:58
Speaker
I'm so glad you are. I'm so glad you accepted this invitation. And I know that when we met at that BLIS project in California, how many was he? What year was that? 2017? Do you think that sounds about right? Yeah. I think it's three years ago. Three years ago. Okay. So we chatted briefly and we had both had been, had experienced
Bonding Over Shared Grief
00:03:23
Speaker
a death in our family. My mom had passed away just a few months before, and we connected actually a little bit about that while we were sitting there. And so when I was going to record this podcast, I was like, oh, Amber's got to be one of the people I interview.
00:03:40
Speaker
I think we kind of dove in head first. I think we didn't even like, oh wait, what's your name? Hold on. Yes, you're so right. Isn't it so funny? Yeah, you're right. I knew more about that aspect than even knowing the where you lived, how many kids you had. I knew more about that, which is weird, right?
00:03:58
Speaker
It's how sometimes you can get to know somebody so much better by going straight to some of these really hardy, meaty, tough moments in life. And even though you may not know the other little, you know, the fluff, the other stuff that happens in our life. So yeah, I appreciate you. I think you know when you can connect to somebody deeply very quickly.
00:04:22
Speaker
And I think those of us who like to connect at a deeper level, we kind of can spy each other out really quickly. And so then when we- Like a sixth sense, a seventh sense. How many which sense would that be? Seventh? And so then when we do, it often is a really deep dive. And I think because we both had experienced that relatively recently for both of us, it was pretty fresh.
00:04:44
Speaker
And I think it's always a little bit of a breath of fresh air for those of us who do like to express ourselves that you know with some of these things that we go through to have somebody to do that with because these are very tender sensitive topics.
00:05:01
Speaker
Absolutely. And when you talk to somebody that relates to it, even if it's not the same type of loss, there's just a different understanding. There's an empathy that's already there.
00:05:18
Speaker
because the other person has experienced something similar. Yeah, 100%. So you feel like, yeah, you feel a little bit less guarded to be able to share how you feel or the struggles you've gone through because that other person can empathize with what you're going through. So how about we...
00:05:39
Speaker
dive into that. So what was one of the most recent and more tough grieving experiences that you've gone through the last years? Yeah,
Amber's Story of Loss
00:05:53
Speaker
so you know,
00:05:54
Speaker
When I was thinking about grief in general, I was really thinking that I have an experience to a lot of grief over my lifetime, a lot of loss death type grief over my lifetime. Certainly all of us who are parents and human beings have other types of grief for sure. And I know you covered that on your podcast. But I would say that I really have experienced a lot from a pretty young age when I go back and think. But the more recent was the death of my brother.
00:06:23
Speaker
my brother Chris. So he and I are just right around two years apart, two, two and a half years apart. And so that's been the most recent.
00:06:36
Speaker
And that's the one that yeah, when we met in 2017, that he's who had passed away just recently when we met. And would you say that, so would you like to share with the listeners, was it a sudden death? Was it something that you guys had prepared for? What were the circumstances around his passing?
00:07:03
Speaker
Yeah. So, so my brother took his life and it took me a while to be able to say those words. I'm just going to be honest with you. Uh, that those are the taboo words that in our culture, we really struggle, um, to find meaning around. We struggle to define, we struggle to even know how do we feel about it? Um, yeah. So I'll just give you a little bit of backstory. If I could take you back to that day, because that really helps me to kind of remember some of the things that
00:07:33
Speaker
Um, and, and my brother's passing, um, in this way was not my first experience. I will say that with, um, somebody taking their life. So we had had a family friend when I was a young teen, uh, maybe 11 ish, I want to say, or 12 years old. Um,
00:07:51
Speaker
take their life. And so I had experienced it from the outside, not as a family member, but from a pretty young age. And so and then again, when I was in high school, so it wasn't my first rodeo, but it is never the same as somebody you're deeply connected to, obviously, like in any, any death. So I actually when I found out I was
00:08:14
Speaker
at a fireside chat for the youth in my congregation at church. And I was one of the youth leaders, so I was actually there with two of my teenagers. So I have three teenagers and an almost 12 year old currently.
00:08:29
Speaker
And I was at this fireside chat and it was on a Sunday evening and I just, I had my phone near me, but it wasn't super close, but it was near me enough that my phone just really like, I was being messaged a lot, which doesn't normally happen in my real world on a Sunday night. So I remember being like, weird, why does everybody seem to need to get ahold of me right this minute? And so I had another, a message that had come through from my stepdad
00:08:57
Speaker
who he's just a wonderful soul. And he said, and he's just a tender, I gotta, anyway, he's just a very gentle, tender kind of person. And he said, are you busy? Because he had tried to call me and I thought that was kind of strange. And so then he texted me, which I thought was even more strange. I was like, something's going on.
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah, that's the moment when you're like, yeah, especially if it's not somebody that normally calls you or texts you at certain times. Correct. Yeah, you start already building up that anxiety in you, did you? Well, yeah, because he said, are you busy? And I just said, well, I'm at this fireside chat with the kids and he said, okay, well just call me when you're done. So then I was like, oh, okay, well it's not that urgent. And I was like, okay, well then my sister messaged me.
00:09:44
Speaker
And I don't remember what she said, but it was something like, how are you doing? And I was like, what? Then my dad called, actually I saw, cause at this point I have the phone in my hand and I'm really like curious as to what in the world's going on. And I have a lot that goes on in my family from day to day, my siblings and parents. We've had a lot of big family life things over the years. And so for something to be going on, if you will,
00:10:11
Speaker
wouldn't be unusual. There's a fair amount of addiction. We've had a lot of things that we've coped with in our family. And so yeah, I was like, Okay, what's going on? And then when a phone call started to come through, and it from my own dad, and I was like, Okay, something's going on. I it was like my heart kind of sink. I knew it was big. I just didn't know what it was. And so I just told the kids, Hey, I'm gonna go take this call. I wasn't very far from the door.
00:10:38
Speaker
of where this chapel was, I wasn't very far. And so I walked out. The second I got outside those doors, I answered the phone. And then my dad, you know, I wish I could I maybe there's a reason I don't remember the exact words he used. But he just told me I we were on the phone for maybe, gosh, 20 seconds, at the most.
00:11:03
Speaker
And I just remember walking to the end of this hallway and there wasn't really anybody out there. There was one person who I knew really well who was out kind of in the vicinity and kind of saw me but probably didn't think much of it until I kind of sank to the floor. Like I can't describe it. I wasn't like laying on the floor. I was in a dress but I kind of like squatted down almost like I
00:11:26
Speaker
Yeah. Like that punch in the stomach kind of thing that just throws you down. There wasn't even, I didn't even, I couldn't even catch my breath. I just remember kind of sinking down. And I was just kind of, I hung up the phone and, you know, anybody who's been through any grief, but really a traumatic grief, a traumatic death, you don't really know. It's kind of like birth. Like you don't know like what's going to come out.
Cultural Views on Suicide
00:11:49
Speaker
And we'll talk about that as we go forward. But that was the first moment where I don't know if I cried right away. I know I let out some kind of a noise. I don't know what enough that this person kind of came over to me. And he wasn't a stranger. It wasn't like a super close. You know what I'm saying? It wasn't like a family member. And he was the first person that I'm going to deliver this news to.
00:12:10
Speaker
Yeah. And bless his heart. I mean, you could tell he was just trying to kind of console me, but like, what do you say, right? So there were some steps outside this door. I was kind of near like a door kind of. And so there were some steps out there and it was dark, right? It was nighttime. And so I was sitting on these steps with this news kind of, he was there for a minute. And then eventually I kind of gave him permission to leave because I knew he didn't really know what to say. And I didn't really want anything said.
00:12:34
Speaker
in that moment. And I was just in this like shock. You're still processing it. Yeah, you're still even just processing what you just heard. Yeah. So I'm sitting here on the steps and just clearly crying, completely shocked, like don't even know what to think. And I feel like up until this point in my life, I've been through a lot. I've seen a lot. I've experienced a lot. And because of the nature of some of the dynamics of my family, this wasn't something I'd never thought about.
00:13:01
Speaker
It wasn't like I'd never thought like somebody in my family could take their life or could die. These are things that I'd actually thought about often enough, but nobody, it's just like birth, right? Nobody is ever prepared for those moments. And so, so I think there was maybe 30 minutes left of this fireside chat and there's like a hundred youth there. It wasn't like, you know, a few of us, there was a lot of people there.
00:13:27
Speaker
Yeah, and then the parents just drop off the kids. It's not like you could just tell them, go to your parents. They get picked up later. Well, yes, but I was there with my own kids. So in my mind, I'm already devising a plan. This is so interesting how as parents, it's kind of like when you have an accident, everything slows down. I felt like everything slowed down and I'm planning. How am I going to get my children home?
00:13:50
Speaker
and not tell them what has just happened. And I kind of, in those 30 minutes, this is a true story, I kind of pulled it together. Am I too older? They weren't older at the time, right? My son who's now 17 was 13 and then my daughter was 14. And so they end, they can't figure, they said, you know, kind of, I'm sure they're asking me like, where did you go?
00:14:16
Speaker
And I don't even remember honestly what I said. I just kind of acted like we were okay. And they got in the car and we went home. I literally got them to bed. My other two were already in bed. My husband was asleep because he wakes up really early in the morning for work. So he had no idea.
00:14:34
Speaker
And I just sat with this burden for a little bit. And, um, my mom had recently moved to my city. That's the first time I lived close to her in like 20 years ish. And we decided to meet up at my mom's house. And so we did. So we go to my mom's when everybody's asleep, everybody's sleeping. You leave, you leave the house to your mom's house. Yeah. And my mom lives a couple of miles from me. So she's very close.
00:15:02
Speaker
And it was like I'd been holding this thing in for the last hour or so. And it was kind of like I couldn't get the kids to bed quick enough because I really needed to go figure out what in the world just happened to my world. And so I got over to my mom's house, which was really hard, right? Because it was the first all of us being together and kind of talking about it.
00:15:25
Speaker
And my sweet mom who has truly endured a lot in her lifetime. I mean, a lot more than any mother really should with her children in her own life. And I remember my mom said, what are we going to tell people? And that really just hung in the air.
00:15:49
Speaker
for about three milliseconds. And then I, everybody just kind of was sitting there and it was a couple of my sisters, my mom and my stepdad and me. And, cause I have five siblings, but not everybody was there, but there was, most of us were there. And I, I said, we're going to tell people the truth. We're going to tell people the truth. And you know, when I think back, like as a mother and knowing what my own mother has been through,
00:16:19
Speaker
I just think in that moment, it was like another way to protect her child. She and my brother were very close. They spoke on the phone. I mean, there was a period of time when they probably talked on the phone more than once a day. And she said to me, I think I must have asked her like, well, of course we're going to tell people the truth. And she said,
00:16:46
Speaker
This is when she really kind of started to cry. And she said, I don't want people talking about my son. And I think in that moment, you know, I'm a mother, but I'm also experiencing this as a sister and as a daughter, like watching it kind of in third person. And I could kind of feel
00:17:16
Speaker
feel her like she had watched him go through so much in his life and she was so close to him and there wasn't very much in his life he didn't share with her even all the all the hard parts she knew we all knew we were very close in that way and so we really did know this wasn't a huge surprise if you will um in that way but it's always of course a surprise but still a surprise yeah of course of course but i just remember my sweet mother just sitting there and just
00:17:43
Speaker
even in his death, she was so worried about what people would say, what they would think, how they would react, what kind of things people would talk about. And so there was just such a tender moment that really was such a human moment that anybody could relate to if they had been in that situation. What you said, like it just struck me in that moment too, because it's like protecting his dignity and his honor, you know,
00:18:10
Speaker
after, like what her words were that, like, I don't want anybody talking about my son. And I wonder if that's the reason that it's so taboo to talk about suicide because of the fact that then people are trying to protect because of the fact that there's a taboo, then there's like, oh, are they going to then say that there's something wrong or that we didn't do something or that this, you know, there's just so many.
00:18:37
Speaker
factors around it that that I wonder if that is why it's yeah like I don't know it's just it's what it is you're right it's one of those things we don't talk I mean I think I told you my my uncle
00:18:53
Speaker
Took his life as well, but so but I don't remember too many of the details I know my mom just told us but I don't know in terms of family and in the city that they lived in like if people shared I don't know the details because I wasn't there I was in another country, but
00:19:08
Speaker
Well, the truth is, that's part of the humanity of life is that you don't really have control over that. We like to think we have control over all those things, but we really don't have control over how people are going to react, what they're going to say, even in your own family, right? This isn't just quote unquote, those people out there. This is even in your own family, right? Because everybody has
00:19:29
Speaker
You know so well grieved so differently and that was very true also in my family But in that moment, it was just a very human moment And when I look back on it with some perspective as I've processed this over the last four years, you know, I just I think about There's a lot of decisions that we make in life that don't end our life that are really bad decisions that are hard decisions decisions that if we could take back we would and
00:19:57
Speaker
The difference between those types of decisions and a decision that you could make that could end your life is that you're kind of immortalized in that way.
Legacy vs. Tragic End
00:20:05
Speaker
And I think that's the biggest fear. At least let me speak just for myself. I think that was my biggest fear.
00:20:12
Speaker
was, is this going to taint all the good that he did, the good that he is and was? Is it going to now cast this dark shadow over all the incredible things he did in his life? And that is the tragedy of this type of death is that there is this different shadow about it.
00:20:35
Speaker
I always know if somebody has lost somebody to suicide. I shouldn't say always, but I would say my accuracy is about 99%. I'm usually pretty spot on. I can spot it a mile away, especially if people are posting on social media. This just happened to me about three or four days ago. Somebody that I knew posted about losing somebody.
00:21:00
Speaker
And because of what she did say and because of what she didn't say, I knew sometimes as of what you don't, it's so clear sometimes. Yeah. It's what is not said that sometimes ends up picking up too. Right. And I knew it right away. Yeah.
00:21:17
Speaker
I just know it's both. It's typically the what you don't say. It's typically that all of the things are left out. There wasn't a long battle with cancer. There wasn't a car accident because even other tragic deaths we talk about on some level. We don't want to talk about this. It is so bitterly painful.
00:21:37
Speaker
And there's so much judgment. There's so much shame in our culture around it that we don't want to talk about it. And so I think it's interesting. I've done a lot of work on myself over the last, you know, however many 45 years.
00:21:55
Speaker
But I think that there was a lot of truth that was pouring out of me that night when my mom said, What are we going to tell people? And when I said the truth, I knew intuitively that it would be so painful, but that it would be freeing if we could just write out the gate, just talk about it. So that was that night, you know, and then
00:22:17
Speaker
fast forward, I don't know really what you want to talk about as far as like the whole process of the film, all that or not. Well, whatever you want to talk about, but in terms of like, so that was, I watch every little bit of story you say, I create this movie in my head. So I'm like, I saw you leave the home, the kids were sleeping, husband was sleeping.
00:22:41
Speaker
imagining even just that two-mile drive from your house to your mom's house all on your own with this truth. It just sinks in with me because it could feel like eternal. So then you're there. Then you get back up. At what point then do you tell your husband,
00:23:05
Speaker
When you get back home, like how did that pan out when you got back home, your husband, your kids? Yeah. So the kids were asleep. And so I wasn't like going to wake them up, right? There was something in my mom. Yeah. When they came back. There was something that's so interesting. I want to go back for two seconds because there was something in my mom brain. It's so funny how we want to protect our children.
00:23:26
Speaker
I've been through a lot, I've seen a lot, and my kids have because of that. So we spent a year foster parenting two of my nephews when my kids were younger, a little bit younger, and they were their ages. And so they've seen like, we've had a really stable, happy home, honestly, I've been married for over 20 years to still my best friend, we were best friends before we ever dated, and we still are. We have a really great relationship. He is my person. He is my
00:23:52
Speaker
I don't have a female friend closer to me than he is to me, which is maybe a little unusual. I don't know if it is or isn't, but we just are really, really close. And so, but going back to the kids and I'll get back to him and my husband in just a second.
00:24:08
Speaker
I just remember thinking, I don't want them to go to bed thinking about this. It's so funny the way we make up little reasons and stories that are mine for how we do. But it's again, the protected. But it's not used to hear you were protecting just like your mom was protecting your brother when she also said, I don't want people. It's like that. 100%. Yeah. And so I just kind of, so that was my reasoning anyway.
00:24:34
Speaker
I eventually at some point I want to say it was in the middle of the night I finally did climb into bed because I was sitting there's a little bit of a gap and I don't know where I was I could have been downstairs just processing praying I don't really remember to be honest with you that part I do remember at some point climbing into bed
00:24:51
Speaker
and uncontrollably, just I could not. Like, my intention was to wait till he woke up to tell him I didn't want to disturb his sleep. I know that sounds so crazy. Because he was going to work the next day. I mean, he wakes up so early in the morning that I just thought, I can bear this burden for a few more hours so he can sleep. I know. But, right, this is the... I know, but I'm here. Like, I'm like, I just want to reach over and to the amber. And like, literally, I'm like,
00:25:20
Speaker
if I'm like want to go back in time and like reach over and hug that amber that was like trying to hold it all together you know oh there's been lots of therapy since so we could go back to that in the last four years there's been lots of inner inner inner child and inner older adult work even but anyway but I at some point because he's always been my safe place I crawl into bed and I can't
00:25:46
Speaker
I don't like wake him up, but he wakes up from my like uncontrollable just sobbing. And so then I tell him which of course he is just he loves my brother. We were actually neighbors with my brother for a number of years.
00:26:02
Speaker
when our kids were a little bit younger, we lived in the same cul-de-sac and our front doors literally faced each other. We were that close on the block. Yeah. My brother was insistent that we would be neighbors during that time. Yeah. And so he was really close enough to my brother. He really, I mean, it was like a brother to him. Also, it wasn't just, you know, a looser relationship. And so, you know, we both just laid there and wept and, and, and what all, all of the things, right? All of the things. And so,
00:26:29
Speaker
It was really, it was hard. I mean, it was really hard, but I still hadn't told the kids. The next day, we talked to the kids, and this is so interesting. There's so many weird things that kind of came out when I was thinking about this. Somebody knew, so my bishop, but kind of you could say the pastor or the
00:26:52
Speaker
whatever of my congregation, he did know he was in the building that night. And he knew and that was a real tender mercy. I call it for me, one of God's just total blessings, which anybody who's been through anything hard in their life, if they're aware will realize there's so many
00:27:10
Speaker
blessings that flow and little tender mercies, just these tender experiences. Tender mercies. I'm writing it down right now. Yes, that wasn't my phraseology, but it was something I adopted and just those tender mercies.
00:27:30
Speaker
there was lots and lots of those. And I was lucky and really grateful that I had done so much work on my own self over the years that I was really aware of those as they were happening often. And so that very first one was a friend of mine who I hadn't told that had found out probably because Manda's stuff spread so quickly, especially in the age of social media. And so she had at some time during the day, I don't even remember if I was home that following day had brought over a plate of cookies.
00:27:59
Speaker
And it's so interesting how we get these little inspirations to do things for people and we don't realize sometimes how monumental they can be. And in that moment, those cookies kind of saved me. It sounds so interesting, but the kids got home from school and this plate of cookies was there.
00:28:17
Speaker
And so we kind of sat the kids down to tell them, but I was not ready to tell them all the details. I wasn't ready to tell them exactly how we died. I didn't know how to articulate it to my children. I was still very much in protective mode. They weren't older, older. My oldest was only 14. And so I just, I didn't, there's not a manual for this.
00:28:37
Speaker
There is no manual for surviving. There's not a manual for death period and then there's all the other, and then of course, how do you say it? How do you tell your kids that their own whole took his life? There's no manual. And remember, we were neighbors with him and they were very close with him and my one son
00:28:57
Speaker
is very, very, very close to my brother looks just like my brother. They have very similar mannerisms. They were always very close. My brother didn't have a child until a little bit later after me. And so he was kind of a cool single uncle. You know, everybody loved him. He loved the kids. And so they were very connected to him. And I was so concerned about
00:29:21
Speaker
all of it. I don't even just all of it. And so and I just I wasn't even sure what I was doing and how I was making sense of all of it. And so it was like,
00:29:33
Speaker
I don't know how to help them also make sense out of this, right? And we had lost, I had lost one of my dear friends just two months almost to the day prior to losing my brother. And so they had already seen me go through grieving with a dear friend who died of cancer.
00:29:52
Speaker
And I spent a lot of time with her. And they so they already had some really hard notions around this type of grief in a family, because they saw, you know, their children now living without a mother. And so they we had already had some hard conversations around that. So I do feel like intuitively, I was extra protective, baby.
00:30:11
Speaker
And so, yeah, so we sat the kids down and we kind of talked to them a little bit and gave them very few details if you want to know the truth about how he died, which worked for a little while. Right. And then I had this plate of cookies. And so when they were still young enough, a couple of them were, you know, really young children, four and five, four and six. And so.
00:30:32
Speaker
then I could just say, oh great, and I remember my young son saying, can I just, like right after I kind of delivered the news, he broke this really hard, painful silence with, can I have a cookie? And I know that sounds so crazy, but in the moment, it's like all these little things, right? And so we were able to kind of break that tension a little bit because I had this beautiful plate of cookies that this sweet soul had dropped off. Yeah, kind of in that moment.
00:30:59
Speaker
So, unfortunately, though, that secret that I had was very short-lived. My son, who was very connected, I'll just say spiritually connected, they always had this interesting bond. My son, my oldest son and my brother, so much so that when my son was born,
00:31:23
Speaker
my brother would come over often and want to hold him. And at that time, my husband was working in like a swing shift. So he wasn't home until like 11 o'clock at night. And so my brother would come over and he'd sit and just hold him. And anyway, they just had a very tight bond. Always, they always did.
00:31:42
Speaker
And so my, without going into all the details, my son had grown curious as to what actually happened. So remember he's 13 at the time and he wanted to know like what actually happened because he knew
00:31:57
Speaker
that I hadn't told him everything, that I had probably left some things out at his age. And this was within like 48 hours. And he needed that information for his own processing and grief probably to like he kind of, even though the younger ones probably didn't for himself, he needed that.
00:32:15
Speaker
100% and I can absolutely say, and I was not that person for him to get it from in that moment. In his eyes, he's watching me now grieve the sibling who has been at the time, for years, had been the closest sibling to me emotionally, if you want to call it that. My brother and I had a deep spiritual connection.
00:32:37
Speaker
And so we're all pretty close in age, but he and I just, we shared a spiritual journey that I didn't share the same journey with my other siblings. And so we had connected at a deep level anyhow from probably our twenties on.
00:32:52
Speaker
and I was not in the dark at all about some of his challenges and struggles you know he was really open with those things and so it was just a different place to be and so I wasn't at a place to even I was really grappling with this loss was so monumental for me it still is that I I couldn't even
00:33:12
Speaker
get my head around it. And as anybody who's been through a death knows, then you kind of really quickly have to make a lot of decisions. And we did and plan a funeral and do all these things. So it's really easy to be very busy doing those things and, and whatever. And so I just remember,
00:33:31
Speaker
probably not being as available. And here's my sweet, amazing, gentle, tender son, not wanting in any way to add on any more grief to me. So he's certainly not going to pry. He's not going to dig because he's watching this unfold before his eyes with his own mother. And so he took it upon himself and I was putting him to bed. It was the, probably the second or third night after my brother had passed and I was in his room and I knew he was having a hard time.
00:34:03
Speaker
And I was talking with him and he started to ask me very pointed questions. And they were questions that led me to know somehow in my inner knowing that he knew more than I thought he knew. He definitely knew more than what I had said. And I couldn't figure out where he learned it from because I will be honest with you that during the first few days, I was very careful about, because there was obviously lots of phone discussion with family and talking, you know, as we're planning things, et cetera.
00:34:32
Speaker
Um, I was very careful as to where I was having those conversations. And so I was pretty sure he hadn't actually heard me talking about it. So I just wasn't sure where he got his information. And so I finally said, okay, I know you know something.
00:34:48
Speaker
And I just need to know how much you know and where you found it out just so I can know I want I'm willing to fill in all the gaps that you need. I just need to know what you already know. And you know he's so was so sweet he was really tearful and did not want to tell me he was so afraid to probably to hurt me I'm sure.
00:35:06
Speaker
And so then he said, well, I knew, like he lied to me at first, right? Cause that's what we all do. Right. So first he lied to me, like, I don't know. I don't know. And then finally I said, okay, I know, you know things and it's okay to, you know them. I just need to know what information, what gaps do you need me to fill in for you? And so he said, I knew that you didn't tell me everything and I needed to know. And so I went on the internet and I went searching.
00:35:35
Speaker
And because of the nature of my brother's suicide, and he didn't even live in California at the time, but because of the nature of it and where it had occurred, it was newsworthy and it was searchable, which it never even occurred to me to look it up or search about it.
00:35:54
Speaker
maybe because I didn't grow up with the internet era, right? So it wasn't like, yeah, like my first thing wasn't, let me go Google this. Like I didn't want to Google it. I knew the details. I didn't need to go look it up. Even deeper, right? It didn't even occur to me that it would be there. It just never occurred to me that it would have been something that would have been on the news or in the news or where he lived it was.
00:36:15
Speaker
And that was another tender mercy that I didn't live there. I was so grateful. I didn't have to see that played out at all ever in that way. And so, yeah, that was so interesting to me. And so he looked it up. Well, then, of course, I had to know what he saw so I could know. And that was really hard. That was a hard
00:36:33
Speaker
thing to do was to actually give myself permission to search it so I could see what he saw. Because you're reading somebody else's story about what happened to somebody that you are close to, and it's like a third perspective, point of view perspective, writing of what happened, something that's so close to you.
00:36:55
Speaker
Yes, because you're seeing, and I'm sure this is true for all news when people have anything tragic happen, where you're seeing it from a very clinical, like here's just what happened. And I'm feeling it from every fiber of my being, every emotion, every heartache, every, every, every good thing, like it's all of it. It was all of the things and, and trying to make sense out of it. Because, you know, in our culture, we're like, well, suicide is for those people, those people that do that thing, as opposed to like,
00:37:25
Speaker
No, this is like my amazing brother who wanted so desperately for us to be neighbors that he helped us with our down payment on a home we were really not ready for at the time. We told him when he talked about these new homes being built. This was obviously years and years ago now, but we said we're not quite ready. Like we're paying off some student loans and we were doing some things. And he said to me, how much money would you need to be able to get into this house?
00:37:55
Speaker
And anyway, so I mean, so this is what they're, this is the person they're talking about, right? And so anyway, so going back to my son, so now I have to deal with what is the, what are the facts? So now he's my one of four children who actually knows the facts and the details that even those minor details that I may not have shared at that time with any of my children at the time that they may just may not have been ready for, at least I thought that as a mother, you know, in full protective mode, it's like,
00:38:24
Speaker
How can I somehow help my children know what's going on and experience grief without it being full throttle? That was probably some of my intuitive, I don't know, under all the crazy thoughts. This is my calm, right? Going, how can I plan this out so that I'm going to do the least amount of damage to these amazing kids with this uncle that they just adore, right?
00:38:49
Speaker
You know what, sorry to take this second from you because this kind of scenario of what you're saying happens to us in all moments of life and parenting. Like not just when we're delivering these kind of news, we literally are all winging it because again, there's no manual for parenting either. So every little single thing we do is like that. Like, okay, what should I do this? And then afterwards we may say, yeah, maybe that was not the right way approach, but at that moment,
00:39:18
Speaker
At that moment, that was. 100%. And you know, that is part of, that is part of all trauma, whether it's grief, whether it's, you know, some other type of trauma, is going back, and I believe, and forgiving yourself for your humanity. Going back and really forgiving yourself for all the things you wish you had done, things you wish you had said, ways you wish you had done it, that you just in that moment,
00:39:48
Speaker
couldn't see, understand, you know, get to whatever. And so that was a part of my healing for sure was being able to go back to that mom of me and say, man, you did the very best you knew how to do in that situation. And to forgive myself and
00:40:05
Speaker
And obviously we've done lots of work since then. And give yourself grace. Again, the grace component. Oh. Yeah, giving yourself grace. Oh. Yeah. It's like, I think it's we forget that. We give grace to others and we forget. And again, like just using that phrase again that you even said, having tender mercies, even with ourselves, you know, that tender mercies just sounds kind of like those little, yeah, those little blessings or little things that come. But again, just being tender and having grace with ourselves.
00:40:32
Speaker
with our past decisions and with even just our present. Yeah. Wow. So then how did you then express it and how to the younger, because your youngest was then, oh my gosh, like eight then, right?
00:40:51
Speaker
Did you share differently with each one based on their age? Did you say everything the same way? I will tell you no, I didn't. In the beginning, my oldest son was the only one who really knew the details. My daughter knew a fair amount because one of the other challenges to my own grieving process in the early days, the first few months,
00:41:15
Speaker
was that I was also homeschooling my daughter. So my oldest was, wanted to be homeschooled from middle school on. And it was a, anyway, so because I'm an entrepreneur and have been able to work from home all these years, I was able to do that, which was amazing. But there was a massive
00:41:34
Speaker
caveat about having her there while I was grieving because there is this part of you that doesn't want to show all of the parts. You don't want to scare your children. It was rough and having her there. So she experienced a lot because I was there with her during the day. So it wasn't like, okay, the kids are off to school and now I can just be and I can just let this all out.
00:41:54
Speaker
I always had. Let me just dig in my cave. Yeah. Let me go in my, yeah. And I did a fair amount of that, but there was some guardedness that had to be there for rightfully so. So there was a lot that she knew, but didn't really want to process at the time, which was understandable. All four of my kids handled it. They just, they were so different. Their relationship with my brother was different. They were a different age. Their feelings around it were very different.
00:42:18
Speaker
And that's the challenge of grieving at all is that everybody grieves, as you know, so differently. Even members of the same family experiencing the same grief or the same trauma. In my opinion, it has a lot to do with kind of the work we've already done. In some ways, so somebody who's maybe done a lot of work might handle it differently than somebody who hasn't done as much work with themselves, right?
00:42:44
Speaker
in terms of maybe handling past traumas or past issues, have they resolved those? Were they able to have some healing around those? And I feel like just like anything else, the more unhealed parts we bring to anything, whether that's a relationship, whether that's a grieving, whether that's whatever, then there's a lot to sort out, right? And so
00:43:08
Speaker
Um, I'd always been on a self-development path. Honestly, I was this weird, nerdy teenager person that loved self-development. From that time I was really young. I'm not even joking. It's like so weird. When I think about my own children, if they were like me, I would think that was probably a little interesting. You were listening to cassette tapes. You don't even know. Oh my gosh. I had the tapes. I had the books. I just loved this idea.
00:43:33
Speaker
We I came out of a lot of turmoil right as a child and a teenager and then into my young adulthood with my Family and so I just always loved this idea that I could do it differently. I love this idea that I could become better I love this idea that I could help other people do that also that we weren't stagnant in our Growth we could completely evolve and so I just have always been enamored with that notion of being able to evolve and so
00:44:03
Speaker
Anyway, the reason I bring that up is because then I now I'm dealing with a child and going, they're all at different places. There are different developments. What, what, how do you meet the need of what they need? What's enough? What's not, you know, what's not enough?
00:44:16
Speaker
And so that was really challenging, I will say, to grapple with. And so they all got little bits and pieces. Truly, my daughter just expressed it. Didn't really want to know a lot. She knew too much for herself. And I really respected that. And my youngest son was pretty young, honestly. And he was born right after we had moved. And my brother had also moved out of state. And so he didn't remember him as much as the older kids.
00:44:45
Speaker
And then I have a very tender, sensitive third child who his has been completely different. So where I had some that didn't cry at all, like the emotions completely stopped, I would say for my oldest son, it changed him to his core and still we're still processing that four years later.
00:45:07
Speaker
Um, whereas my other, my number three, my, my, my second son, he fell apart and just emotionally, just absolutely. Every time we bring it up, he can't not cry about it even still. And so, you know, they're all just so different. And I think that's the challenge, right? Is, is as a parent, uh, an adult navigating grief with a family member, whether it's in the home or out of the home, then
00:45:30
Speaker
It's like this, you're living in parallel universes of, I'm supposed to deal with my own grief and help my children navigate theirs. And that's another topic for somebody who's way more experienced than I am. No, well, hello. You had to do it with four kids. You had to help four kids. It was a lot. I had to do it with my two when my mom passed away. And even still then also helping them process
00:45:59
Speaker
the grief, you know, even years later, even with the process of my dad remarrying, you know, because grief kind of came up again to the surface, you know, there's all these different things. And so you're dealing at it, you're kind of, you know, learning to navigate it yourself. And like you said, also trying to figure out what's the best way for this child based on who this child is. And then this other child based on who they are. I mean, that's a lot of components to try to think about, you know, and it's a wow, that is a lot.
00:46:28
Speaker
Now, let me ask you, because you mentioned faith, you mentioned personal development. Were those all these factors and of course all these other life experiences you'd had in your past and in your life,
00:46:44
Speaker
all part of the tools that helped you be able to navigate your grief and still be able to navigate your grief right now. Because as we know, it doesn't really end. It just kind of starts, you know, kind of changing and transforming as it goes on. Absolutely. But what have been some of those tools you share with us? A million percent. I mean, a million percent. There is no way around that. I remember at some point feeling overwhelming gratitude
00:47:14
Speaker
overwhelming, I mean, just gratitude for all of the things I'd been exposed to, whether that was therapy, my faith, energy work, all of it. Gratitude for the people around me, which were such an insane amount of support for me. There were so many people at my brother's funeral that were there for me. They didn't even know my brother.
00:47:40
Speaker
And when I really got my head around that, I remember being up speaking at the funeral. I did the main whatever talk, if you will. I don't even know what it's called either. Yeah, whatever. The speech. The speech. I don't know what it's called. I wrote the eulogy. My family was really struggling around this time. My siblings and parents, rightfully so. And I had played quite a role most of my life because I had a single mother of kind of
00:48:08
Speaker
being the other mother, if you will, just really helping being our helper. Okay. So it wasn't unusual for me to, when everybody was falling apart to say, okay, well, what, how can I help, you know, smooth this over. And so I wrote the eulogy, which my, my one other brother delivered, um, because he wasn't sure he could write it, which was fine. So I wrote it. And then I also delivered the thing, but I do remember standing at the pulpit and having all these people there and noticing while I'm talking, you know how we can do all of these different things at one time. It is occurring to me.
00:48:39
Speaker
that there were so many people sitting there who didn't know my brother, who literally came to support me. So that was a huge tender mercy that I acknowledge it, that I was aware of it, but also that I was able to really witness that and experience that. And that was a huge blessing to me during that time, still is of course, but definitely during that time. And so those relationships that I had forged when those people came out to really support me, I realized that's really the beauty of the funeral is obviously really more for us, right? It's not really,
00:49:08
Speaker
Yes, for our deceased family members. It's really for us and that support where people can come our own process. Yeah, in our own process. Yes, absolutely. And so I really experienced that. But I think that all of the work that I done there was a point in time
00:49:22
Speaker
when I really experienced that for myself and really acknowledge the fact that I was so grateful over all the years to have been exposed to so many incredible tools and people and my faith and prayer and my faith community.
00:49:39
Speaker
That now it was like, oh, you've been storing up these tools for all these years. And now look at all these tools you have in your toolbox to be able to navigate this. And it was such a blessing to me. Yeah, I can't even imagine doing it without those tools that I had.
00:49:56
Speaker
So the tool, well, when you had the support system of friends and family, you had then your faith, you had the personal growth and development and all these other aspects, everything that, you know, the power of prayer, all these things you could tap into in this moment that maybe, like you said, you had had them in your back pocket and not all of them had needed to be used all at once. And then in this moment, you were able to kind of tap into them depending on what it is you needed.
00:50:24
Speaker
That is so important, yeah. Yeah, I was just going to say I was so lucky. Truly, I felt so lucky about two days, a day or two after my brother passed. It was in that first few days where it's all the craziness. And I had to call our really dear family friend who was very close to me my whole life. She helped our family of six children navigate my parents' divorce.
00:50:51
Speaker
Because we were all fairly youngish. I was 11-ish when my parents divorced. And so she's been with me my whole life. She's always been just a huge source of strength for me. And she was also very, very close to my brother. They'd even been in business together. And I had to call her. I wasn't sure if anybody had called her and I felt like I needed to tell her. And so I had called her.
00:51:14
Speaker
And she was one of the first people in my life from such a young age to work with me, if you will, as a therapist. And I asked her in this very vulnerable, almost parent-child relationship, sort of, right? She's always been like this other mother figure for me, a spiritual figure.
00:51:34
Speaker
And I remember asking her, can you work with me? I was so desperate for relief, for help, for guidance, for all of those things. And she said, I am way too close to this. I mean, she was grieving on the phone as if she was his mother. I mean, those.
00:51:49
Speaker
those that morning sound, that type of crying is what came out when we were speaking and it was very painful. And she had enough wherewithal to say, I am way too close to the situation, but I have somebody who can step in in this situation. And it ended up being a huge blessing. I worked with him from the first, I think it took less than a week to get in. He kind of put me to the front of his line, if you will. And I worked with him for about a year and a half, regularly, actually.
00:52:18
Speaker
that very regularly. And so I had a lot of help and support navigating this I, I did not do this alone. It's just like in a birth, there's people there to help guide and support and comfort and all of those things. And I do feel like grieving is exactly like that. I do a lot of analogies with
00:52:36
Speaker
with birth and grief, you know, sorry, birth and death, because you don't get to decide, you know, even the most controlled, quote unquote, birth. And maybe some of us have had those. And I've also had the train wreck ones that were totally felt out of control. And it's like that, you know, it's a portal for so many things to come out. And it isn't just the grieving that comes out. There's goodness that comes out. There's lessons that come out.
00:52:58
Speaker
Gratitudes, there's awarenesses, there's a depth to your absolute soul, your whole being that is birthed out of such tragedy, always. And I felt that, but I had a lot of help.
00:53:14
Speaker
I have to take a pic. I'm going to tell you right now that I have goosebumps. I'm going to take a picture so I could send them to you because you have what you just said about all those different aspects of everything that is birthed from that experience.
00:53:35
Speaker
That is just so, so true. I want to go back to the fact that you reached out to get help. So therapy had been a part of your life because that's one of the things sometimes people don't want. There's even taboo about that, right? Sometimes I've even reaching out for help. Sometimes people don't know that there's even resources out there.
00:53:56
Speaker
But yeah, the fact of knowing that you were going to need help in that process of grieving and reaching out to first this family friend, but that she then really connected you with the person that was the right one. And that's actually, I want to say to commend her for that, because that's also something super important for all of us to learn, that we have to know
00:54:18
Speaker
when to know that we are not the best person to help somebody in that moment. And the fact that she knew that and she said it and then just guided you to the right person, that's really commendable on her side. So for you then,
00:54:34
Speaker
You had already had therapy then before with her, and had you ever had therapy with other people in your life? No. Yes, absolutely. Oh, gosh, yes. Okay. Yes. Lots, lots, lots of healing, lots of- Okay. Lots of- Different kinds of, yeah, tools. Lots of different types. Again, part of that. I just, you know, I feel like when I think about getting help, you brought up this point of reaching out for help and how it's a little bit taboo. And isn't it so interesting?
00:55:03
Speaker
the narratives we put on certain things, but not others. So for example, if I'm getting ready to have a baby, so I liken it to this, if I'm getting ready to have a baby, which is, you know, this amazing, beautiful, joyful experience or can be, right? You don't expect me to go out into the wilderness by myself
00:55:26
Speaker
And go through this entire process, it is culturally would be unacceptable and cruel to do that. And yet, somehow, sometimes within ourselves, we take it upon ourselves to do those types of things, and to not invite people in because the hardest part about grief isn't just
00:55:45
Speaker
the help necessarily itself, because those people, they want to help. They don't know how often. So it's almost like we have to invite them in and say, hey, I need this. I need help. I don't know how to do this. I need your help. And it's almost, is it OK if I even say, it's almost our obligation to not abandon ourselves
00:56:14
Speaker
and say, I need you to come to me. Because they want to come, but they don't know how. Like, let's say friends or family, they don't know how. And it's OK for us to guide them and say, here's what I need from you. You know, just like if you've got your quote unquote, you know, nowadays, we didn't really have this when I was having kids, but your birthing team and your birthing plan. And you have all of these things around you and you're making preparations.
00:56:41
Speaker
but we don't necessarily view it like that. One, it's vulnerable, but so is giving birth to a baby is a very vulnerable place. And birth and grief and death is also an incredibly vulnerable. We don't know what's going to come out. We don't know what's going to come up to be healed. We don't know. We can't control it. Sometimes it's a really messy, hard, painful, ugly process.
00:57:06
Speaker
And it's in that vulnerability that's where the strength is found. It's that willingness to say, I need you to be here with me. I need to surround myself with the support. I need to seek out that help and support. And I just think that if we could change that,
00:57:25
Speaker
um if we could change that maybe that narrative around or that paradigm around death it oh my gosh if there was ever a time to get a support system around you it's now if there was ever a time to dive into maybe some of the shadowy things inside of us it's now like let's take this opportunity
00:57:45
Speaker
and really dig in. And I think that is the beauty, that's the gratitude, that is the beauty that is born out of tragedy in my opinion, is being able to get to a depth you've never been to before, to get to a vulnerability that you've probably never experienced before, to allow yourself the mercy, the grace,
00:58:07
Speaker
To go through all of the ugly messy dark parts because I promise you if you're willing to do the work
00:58:16
Speaker
The light on the other side and during is the most beautiful light you could ever witness in your life, just like birth. And that has been my experience. There was a point of time, about 90-ish days, I don't know exactly, I'd have to go back into my journal and look, but where I just kind of had this feeling of like, Amber, there is enough pain and trauma
00:58:44
Speaker
of a lifetime that you could be in this grief forever. Something occurred to me. There was something that just dawned on me. And I just had this feeling of like, you could stay here forever. Like there would be a million reasons and valid reasons. And good excuses. Yes. For some reason it just occurred to me. And maybe it's because I've had this affinity for growing most of my life that I just, this kind of occurred to me. And I just felt like I had to almost draw this like,
00:59:11
Speaker
Um, line in the sand is like, you know, I don't know what the word is, but just end of this, this like tangible, spiritual, physical, I don't know, line in the sand, emotional line in the sand of saying, okay, now I need to start this process of, even though I was already kind of moving forward, it was more of a psychological, like I'm now going to
00:59:31
Speaker
really choose to focus forward. And it almost, there was a period of something inside of me that I almost felt like, and I'm sure a lot of people who are grieving must go through this, but I almost felt like am I betraying my own grief? Am I betraying, quote unquote, my brother, if I now claim that I'm going to move on or move forward or grow or whatever word you want to use to articulate that. And I remember,
01:00:01
Speaker
whatever the time frame was, I don't know, it's all collapsed in my own mind, but I remember being in my garage.
01:00:08
Speaker
having a verbal out loud conversation with my brother, right? Like I know other people do this. I'm not the only one who does this, but just talking to you. I believe would love to say, no, we exist. We move on. We just shut our body. We're going to live on in the spirit realm. I have felt that to my core. You could not convince me otherwise. I've had so many spiritual experiences around even this.
01:00:34
Speaker
But I just remember still feeling this very human emotion of like, if I say I'm going to move forward, am I betraying my brother? Like, does he expect me? Does he want me? Am I honoring him somehow to stay in this grieving, hard place?
01:00:48
Speaker
Which is so weird that we even connect those, because I know my brother. He would want me to have joy. But there still was something I had to reconcile. And I just remember having this very tearful, out loud conversation in my garage. It's either the closet or the garage or the car. All the places where my kids aren't. Those are my places, right?
01:01:10
Speaker
There's probably the reasons in scripture it talks about going into your closets. I'm like, uh-huh, I understand that. But it's like that place where I knew I could just be authentic, I guess, and I didn't have to curb my emotions. So I'm in the garage and I'm having this conversation and saying, I want you to know you did not die in vain.
01:01:33
Speaker
Because one of my biggest fears for some reason, because even though we all have light and dark within us, we all have some skeletons in there, we all have some things, and we have so much immense light, I was just so worried somehow that he, because of the immortalization of the suicide, that this is now your final stamping, that he was just going to feel like
01:01:55
Speaker
This was all in vain. Like look what I did. I caused all this pain. I've done all these things and like people are never going to get over it. And I just felt like I maybe needed a little permission and I needed to share with him what was on my heart in that moment. And for me, I just had to do it out loud, I guess. And so I just said to him, I want you to know you did not die in vain. Like this experience has cracked me wide open. It is raw.
01:02:22
Speaker
And I'm so grateful that it is because the person that is being born out of this hard tragedy is such a gift to me. And there was something in me that knew that there was so much strength that was going to come out of this somehow, like intuitively, even in the pain, even in all the grieving. And I just felt like I needed to tell him that like,
01:02:49
Speaker
I wanted him to know that even though it was so raw and so painful, that so much goodness was going to be able to be born out of this. And it has been. I mean, is it hard? Yes. Oh my gosh, it's still hard. I literally cried like a week ago out of nowhere. It's been months since I had that experience. I don't remember what triggered it. It was a photo or something I had seen. And all of a sudden, I just lost it, allowed myself the grace. I allowed myself the space to grieve that moment.
01:03:19
Speaker
the grieve, the what should have beens, to grieve him not being in my life physically right now, all of these things, and allowed myself that grace. But in that moment, it was just such a tender coming together. It was such a culmination of all the help I'd received, all the support I'd received in my life, all the modalities I'd used, whether it was meditation or prayer, my faith community, my relationship to God. It was all of it coming together.
01:03:47
Speaker
and using those tools and being able to then express to him like, hey, I need to move forward. I know you'd want me to. I just need to let you know.
01:03:55
Speaker
that there is goodness that has come out of this tragedy. And there was just something in me that like needed to express that. And it's been a huge, a huge gratitude of mine to even have the awareness in and of itself, because is there pain? Yes. Do I still grieve? Yes. Has it changed massively? But it's also allowed me a depth of my soul that when somebody like this, this last week, I knew they'd lost somebody to suicide. I was very gentle and just said, Hey, I saw that you'd post this.
01:04:24
Speaker
I don't know what happened, but I'm deeply sorry. I've also lost a brother. And she right away, it was like she wanted to tell me because it's such a lonely club. Suicide Forever is such a lonely place to be. It's such a lonely club. And it was like she wanted to tell me because I remembered feeling that way. And she kind of gushed for just a little bit and then she went quiet and I remembered exactly what that was like.
01:04:52
Speaker
Um, and so now I can play a little bit of a supporting role. I'm not necessarily, she's not like a super close friend, but I just, this week was like, I need to send her some flowers. I just remember this lonely club, like you don't want people in, but you need them in, but you're grappling. And so it's so important now that we, that we reach out for help, but the depth of understanding that the gifts that were born, then I can go on and help other people. And it's not just with grief, it's with lots of things.
01:05:18
Speaker
yes especially because like what you said when it cracks you wide open and that vulnerability that empathy just multiplies and like you said with just so many other layers in life and how we can help others because of that experience that we've had
01:05:36
Speaker
And that was just so beautiful that you were able to express that to him, but also as you're expressing it to him in that conversation, it's more of that confirmation to yourself and giving yourself permission to also move forward with the grief. It doesn't, again, it's not like you're leaving people behind. And what you said was so true a lot of times that
01:06:03
Speaker
that guilt that people feel of even feeling emotions of happiness and joy, even when they're grieving. It's as if like, wait, if I laugh, does that mean that I don't feel sad anymore? When it's so intertwined, you know? And it's, because it's just such a complex, it really is a complex emotion. And a lot of us, and going back again to how we all grieve so differently,
01:06:26
Speaker
The way we express grief is different, right? And so some of us, like, I know for me, like in our family, we did create a lot of humor around our process. And, you know, that's just one of the ways that for me, that I kind of cope with that. And that's how I even coped with it through this, you know, quarantine too. I just started creating little funny videos, you know, of the stuff that was kind of started happening because it was kind of like, Oh my gosh.
01:06:53
Speaker
because we're definitely grieving, you know, we're in that moment of grief, but all of us are dealing with it a little different. And for me, it just happened to be humor because that's just kind of my mechanism. So while Amber, you've just shared just so, so many
01:07:11
Speaker
tools and inspirational quotes. My notebook here where I take notes of just of ideas of what's going to be the intro of what's going to be the title. I'm like, I'm like, this one, this part would be the intro. No, no, no. Oh, this will be the title. I'm like, oh, my gosh. That's going to be like.
01:07:31
Speaker
Amazing. It's so funny. I was just thinking about throughout this process. I was thinking about a quote from Russell M. Nelson, who is the president of the LDS Church. And one of the things that really guided me when I was feeling like
01:07:47
Speaker
Like, why am I grieving so hard? I've done a lot of work on myself. And there was a quote that he said, I know that sounds crazy, right? We want to put things into boxes and say, how much is enough or not enough? I just remember at some point it would feel overwhelming. And he was quoted as saying, the only way to take sorrow out of death is to take love out of life. And when I think, yeah, he said, the only way to take sorrow out of death is to take love out of life.
01:08:18
Speaker
Because grief has so much to do with love. Yes. And we loved hard. We loved so deep and so hard that the grief was deep and hard and I had to really honor that, that that was okay. There was so much love and so there was going to be grief. And that there can also be peace and joy and love and fulfillment and happiness and evolvement.
01:08:39
Speaker
Also. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It doesn't take away from those other emotions. Just because you're feeling one thing, it doesn't mean that that other emotion is not there anymore. Yeah. So that is so true. Yeah. Just because in that moment of pain, are you going back again to the birth analogy that you gave? In that moment of pain,
01:09:00
Speaker
of birthing this child, you're also feeling so much joy, right? So it's like there's pain and there's joy and it's all back right there and one doesn't take away from the other. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, thank you again so much, Amber. Anything else that you want to share that I did not give you the space to that you'd like to share with the listeners or with me?
01:09:26
Speaker
you know, I don't think so. I just I think if I had any nugget to share with somebody as I've been listening to my own self, share this again, it's been a while since I've really been this in depth with it, is just the importance of allowing yourself the vulnerability to experience what you're experiencing. It's going to be messy, it can be painful, it can be so hard, but
01:09:50
Speaker
We live in such a world where everything's through a filter, right? We live through filters. Never before people feel like they need to filter everything. And I think that could really be a challenge when it comes to grieving. Everybody's going to do it in their own way. There's going to be parts that are going to be really messy and you're going to feel incredibly vulnerable. But it's in that vulnerability that you will find your deepest strength.
01:10:17
Speaker
is in that vulnerability because I think the biggest challenge is if we don't allow ourselves to fully grieve, there can be huge backlashes for not allowing ourselves the process. It's so important to seek out the help that you need, whether that's from an experienced counselor, good friend,
01:10:39
Speaker
whatever I mean all of it everything yeah all of the above basically check all the boxes yeah exactly whatever you need whatever you need use if you have all those tools use them all or use one at this moment in life then use another one at another moment in life and what you said about being able to express and give yourself time to grieve it is just
01:10:58
Speaker
So I feel like grief is like if you just tuck it in, tuck it in, tuck it in, tuck it in, it's like a pressure cooker. It is like a pressure cooker that if you do not let some of that steam come out at one point or another, that thing's going to burst. So you better be prepared if you want it to burst, you know? We saw that. This is a topic for another podcast, but we saw that in our family. I could go through that whole thing of what happened to the people that the different family members who didn't
01:11:27
Speaker
allow themselves or accept or whatever, or we're ready for the resources. Oh, we saw everything we saw it all are some families really come together. I can't say that that was true for us in that way. It was very challenging. That was a whole different thing. But but I think it's so important to allow ourselves that vulnerability to
01:11:46
Speaker
know that we are enough and worth it to take whatever time we need to use whatever resources we need to reach out to whoever we need to, to be able to do that. Because if you're willing to do the work, the rewards, the peace, the joy, the hope, the gratitude, the love is so great and so needed.
01:12:06
Speaker
And by doing that, you're also, especially as a parent, you're also being able to mirror that for them. And you are showing your children, we are showing our children by example of what we need to do so that that way they don't keep on following patterns that might have been there
01:12:27
Speaker
in the past in the family, you know, of keeping things in. And so I think it's important. And what you said, and I could totally, totally relate to what you said of being able to ask for what you need for help in what way you need, because everybody's so unique.
01:12:44
Speaker
I tend to be that way like when somebody is going through something, I'm like, listen, I am not the type of person that will just go ahead and just send you flowers because maybe flowers is not what you need right now. So please just tell me what you need. And it sounds like not the right thing, but the reality is that I lived it even myself in the birth of our first child.
01:13:05
Speaker
Like, we really didn't want visitors yet at the same, we really just wanted that moment for ourselves. We really didn't want visitors yet. People thought that that's what we would want and would want to come to the hospital, but we're like, we really didn't. So it's like, you know, so it's like the same thing goes with in this moment of grief or birth or whatever, just make sure you're respecting what the person is meeting.
01:13:32
Speaker
That's okay to say it's really truly not only okay. I think it's important to say I don't know what to say. I don't know what you need but I'm here. Please know I'm a safe place for you to express whatever it is you need or want that I will be that safe place because oftentimes what we we all get on both sides I've been the silent one and I've been the one that's received the silence but the truth is if we could all just be evolved enough to say
01:14:01
Speaker
I love you dearly. I have no idea what you're going through, where you are, but I want you to know I'm here for you. Whatever you need, please tell me I am your safe place. I will move heaven and earth to help you.
01:14:14
Speaker
Yes, yes, yes, yes to everything because yeah, and that also takes vulnerability on our part, right? When we're reaching out to be able to help somebody and also again, back again to being truthful. We don't have to make up any words of condolences, but we don't really know even what to say. It's okay to say, we do not know what to say and what to do and how to help that person. It's okay because again, not everybody needs the same thing either. Yeah. And what's received is the vulnerability.
01:14:43
Speaker
So when I say to somebody, I don't know, I am deeply sorry that you're hurting. I would never say I know what that feels like. Even another suicide survivor, I would never say that. Because I know every experience in life in general is just so unique. But just being authentic, people receive that with so much love because they realize you're showing up as yourself.
01:15:04
Speaker
Exactly. I had that conversation with the lady that was the hospice nurse for my mom at the episode I recently released. She was saying that in some cases, in some of the families when there's been a passing, there was somebody that she just sat in the living room for three hours, just sat there quietly while they all cried.
01:15:27
Speaker
and that they would turn and they would look at her and they'd say, just thank you. Just her presence there was what they needed. She didn't have any words to say. All they needed was knowing that she was there. So the fact of just reaching out and again, like you said, showing that vulnerability and telling people, I'm here.
01:15:48
Speaker
just reach out if you need me and checking in periodically, you know, and doing those kind of reach outs to people. That's, I guess, us as having gone through that. I guess that we can kind of give that feedback back to our listeners that that is something you can do and you don't know what to do.
01:16:08
Speaker
I could repeat that again. It's just morning with those that mourn. Yeah, just mourning with those that mourn, that we're gonna be with those people. And I had plenty of people, I felt very blessed to have plenty of people to stand with me in that mourning process, even though the lonely road is you and you. It's you and God. It's you and your inner soul, right? It's you and sorting all that out. So I'm super grateful for the opportunity to share. I hope it's,
01:16:35
Speaker
You know, help somebody that would be super grateful if it could help one person to just realize they are not alone in their traumatic grieving of anything, but especially of suicide.
01:16:46
Speaker
Thank you so much. And thank you for being vulnerable and that this cracking open experience that you had of your brother's passing has just allowed you also that vulnerability to then be able to share with others and reaching out to others that are needing it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Love you, honey. Virtual hug over here. Love you, sister. Bye, dear. Bye.
01:17:18
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.
01:17:47
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.