Our Dead Dads

Nick Gaylord found an unexpected beacon of hope in the form of podcasting. His journey, one that traverses the grief of losing a father and the unexpected solace found in dark humor, is the focal point of our latest episode. Nick shares his intimate story of coping with a complicated paternal relationship, infused with the bittersweet relief that followed his father's passing. This dance of emotions is one many of us know too well, yet often struggle to voice. Together, we peel back the layers of sorrow and laughter that define our healing processes.

The power of a good story lies in its ability to evoke strong emotions and offer an escape. Nick and I reflect on how these passions have been a backdrop to our own life stories, influencing our capacity to love in the shadow of complex family dynamics. We dissect the therapeutic process of creating "Our Dead Dads," a podcast which promises to be a refuge for men to express emotions that society often discourages.

Our conversation extends an invitation to listeners to be a part of this community, to share, connect, and collectively honor the memories of those we've lost. Through candid discussions and heartfelt narratives, Nick's podcast aims to create a tapestry of support, emphasizing the enduring nature of love and the shared journey of life and loss. Join us, all the while remembering that while our stories are unique, the emotions that drive them are universal.

Contact:
www.asiliveandgrieve.com
info@asiliveandgrieve.com
Facebook:  As I Live and Grieve
Instagram:  @asiliveandgrieve
YouTube:  asiliveandgrieve
TikTok: @asiliveandgrieve

To Reach Nick:
Website:  http://www.ourdeaddads.com
E-mail : ourdeaddadspodcast@gmail.com

 
Credits: 
Music by Kevin MacLeod 

Transcript

Stephanie: 0:01

Welcome to As I Live and Grieve, a podcast that tells the truth about how hard this is. We're glad you joined us today. We know how hard it is to lose someone you love and how well-intentioned friends and family try so hard to comfort us. We created this podcast to provide you with comfort, knowledge and support. We are grief advocates, not professionals, not licensed therapists. We are YOU.

Kathy: 0:25

Hi everyone! Welcome back again to As I Live and Grieve. Yes, I know the voice is still gravelly, but really I feel better. I honestly do. Thanks again for joining us. And no lie, another great guest. Where do I keep finding them? In truth, many find me, and I truly love that. It just means that this entire mission, this entire goal of making grief a more comfortable topic to talk about, it's working. It's working. I have Nick Gaylord with me today. Hi, Nick, thanks for joining me. Now I look out the window and see some snowflakes. I think you're in Florida, so you're probably looking at it sunshine. But wherever we are, grief is on the table for today. So I wonder if you would start out just giving our listeners a little bit of your background Maybe. How did you and I connect and what brought us together?

Nick: 1:27

Sure, thank you so much. My name is Nick Gaylord. We connected through Facebook through a podcasting group. I am very new to the podcasting world as of the last couple of months. I have been working in the pharmaceutical industry for about 28 years, mostly doing quality assurance. I've worked for some wonderful companies. I actually found myself at the end of last year out of work. I was on a two-year contract with a company which it just was not renewed. There were changes that were being made and unfortunately my contract was not renewed. So for the first time in a very long time to start off 2024, I found myself out of a job. Obviously, my top priority was finding another job and after a couple of weeks I needed to find something to occupy myself pretty quickly because I knew that I was going to start driving my wife crazy if I didn't.

Nick: 2:19

The idea for this podcast. It goes back a while. So I have an ongoing text message group with my three younger brothers and three lifelong friends. These are guys that I've known for more than 35 years. We all knew each other since about seventh grade. We all contribute to this text message group daily. It's probably been going on for about 10 years or so.

Nick: 2:41

All of us have lost our dads. Mine was the most recent. My dad passed away about three years ago. The first conversation that really led to this was about two years ago between my youngest brother and I. He was asking me a question about trying to find a movie that my dad had many years ago. He was suggesting look for it on eBay and he said come on, do it for our dead dad. And I said what the hell are you doing? What was that? And we were just both hysterical, laughing. It was just one of those things that I guess siblings can get away with. So we decided, from that point on, we're going to refer to him as our dead dad because he is, and it makes sense that it's the kind of humor that my dad would have appreciated. We told the guys in the group and it just became the thing we're now talking about our dead dads.

Nick: 3:33

The idea of a podcast actually was suggested by one of my friends, probably about six months ago, late last year, late 2023, but not in this format. He wanted to do something that reflected all of our stupidity and our dark humor. We had the idea that maybe the seven of us should be on which, a s nice as the idea was, it was just kind of a logistical nightmare to have seven people who live in different places. I'm the only one who doesn't live in New York, so trying to coordinate that with everybody's schedules it would have been a nightmare. So I said, yeah, maybe, maybe not. It just kind of got put on the back burner, but the idea never fully left my head. And then a couple of months ago, I was talking to another friend of mine who is actually getting ready to start her own podcast and just going over some ideas that I had. I really wanted to talk about grief and loss and how people process it.

Nick: 4:26

When I lost my dad, my dad and I had a very complicated relationship. It wasn't all bad. It certainly wasn't all good. When he died in May of 2021, it wasn't the feeling of heartbreak and loss and oh my god, I miss my dad so much. It just wasn't that. That isn't the relationship that we had.

Nick: 4:46

It was, quite honestly, it was more about relief. That in two different ways. One, I was relieved that he was no longer in pain, he wasn't suffering. He had a lot of physical problems for many years and he was in a lot of pain for a long time. Obviously, it was his own doing, but nonetheless he suffered for a long time. Two I was relieved that it was over.

Nick: 5:07

My brothers and I had basically become his caretakers, and this was a situation where he didn't want to do anything that he was supposed to do. He didn't want to eat, right. He didn't want to do what the doctors told him to do. He always wanted us to take him to doctors and find out what was wrong and what was happening in life, but he didn't want to do anything about it to fix it. So what the hell are we taking you to doctors for if you're not going to be bothered to listen to them? And it was the same thing when he ended up getting put into a long-term care facility around Christmas of 2020. It was initially a rehab assignment which he wasn't doing anything that they were supposed to do that he was supposed to do. His insurance ended up getting canceled. We finally got him on Medicaid and then, three weeks later, he died, which was typical for him that he ended up getting things the way he wanted.

Nick: 5:56

So when he died you know my wife and I were living in Texas at the time we flew out through the funeral, had a funeral, and this is I'm going to give you an example of my stupid, dark humor with my brothers and my friends. That morning, when we landed on Long Island, I met my brother at the funeral home. He was picking up the remains for the funeral and I see him. I go up to him and you know, the partner not in a hug and I said hey, buddy, how are you? And he's like nah, you know, and without even thinking about it, I just said what happened? Did your dad die or something? And he just lost it. We were both hysterical and of course, my wife is looking at me like did you honestly?

Nick: 6:36

I just said that and again, I think that that's probably something that only siblings can get away with and it's definitely something that my dad probably would have said to somebody else and he definitely, I think he would have appreciated it. So we had the funeral, flew back home, got back to work and, you know, I was largely fine for probably a few months or so and then it started to unravel. I was realizing that I was having a lot of internal conversations. I was still angry at him. I was angry because he was generally an asshole. I hope that's okay for you to say. He wanted things the way he wanted them. He was never the kind of person who was going to help hold himself accountable for anything.

Nick: 7:16

The man was divorced five times. Everything that, everything bad that happened in his life, he always would blame on somebody else, as long as he didn't have to take the blame. And I just was finding that I was getting angry at him for never doing anything to better his situation, to for not listening to us, for not listening to the doctors, to improve the quality of his life. But at the end of the day, if the man had lived another 25 years, he never would have changed and I went through the help of my wife. She basically said at one point I think you need to talk to somebody. She was right, because I was snapping at people. I was snapping at her and she certainly didn't deserve it. She did nothing wrong to make me snap at her, but she knew what was going on. And this is why we this is why I married a woman, because I don't have it all figured out. My wife is brilliant and she's she's 100% right about almost everything. She said you need to talk to somebody and I did. I found a therapist and had weekly sessions for about six months and I got to a point at the end of it where I was better. I was, I was okay. I was able to accept that he was who he was, that he was never going to change. If he had lived longer, he never would have changed. I was able to get to the point where I was no longer angry. I was able to forgive him for who he was, for how he was, for what he put all of us through. And this isn't to say that he was all bad. He wasn't. There were definitely. There were some good things and there are some things that I have in my life that are favorite parts of my life that are because of him.

Nick: 8:50

He got me into baseball as a kid. He was a big Yankees fan, all the Mets fan, but nonetheless I am obsessed with baseball. He got me into just learning about weather. He was always obsessed with meteorology and there was a time when I wanted to be a meteorologist. It didn't end up working out, but still I'm fascinated by weather. We constantly had conversations about hurricanes and blizzards and you know I could rattle off dates, and it was one of the one of the great things that we share. We're both obsessed with movies, a huge movie buff. We are also both big fans of professional wrestling, which I know is something that many people are either roll their eyes or they're gonna cheer about it.

Kathy: 9:32

Yeah, there aren't many people on the fence about that. They're either one side or the other.

Nick: 9:36

You're right, they either love it or they hate it. I mean, I've been watching it since I was six or seven years old and it is one of my guiltiest pleasures. I watch it. I love every bit of it. I don't always watch it as it's happening, I usually dvr it and then I'll go back and catch up later, but it's a part of me. That is one of my favorite things. Because of him, all of those things are, and I was able to get to the point where I could put everything aside. I was able to recognize that he was the asshole who he was and that was never going to change. And I could also recognize that he did have good sides of it. I know that my ability to just love the way that I do, and some of that I know that I get from him. I also get it from my mom, but I also know that I get a lot from my dad.

Nick: 10:19

The therapy was amazing and it really helped me a great deal, and so when the time came to create this podcast.

Nick: 10:27

I wanted to create a platform where people could have someone to talk to or be able to listen to someone else, because not everybody is able to be open about things. As we discussed earlier, men especially. We just weren't at least men, boys of my generation. We were not raised to deal with our feelings. We were raised to be men and to, as you said, leave that to women and not talk about it. It's not the right way, because grief is real, lost is real. There is no one way to deal with it. There's no book to say like, oh, you've got this problem, do this. No, it doesn't exist that way. Be nice if it would, but we don't live in a perfect world. So I decided to work toward creating a platform that gives people either the opportunity to come on my show and talk about the grief and the loss that they went through and how they dealt with it. But I also want to, because humor, especially dark humor, was such a big part of my growing up and it still is with my brothers and my friends. It has worked for us and I know that it works for a lot of people, even if they're not willing to admit it right away, but I at least want to have that as an option, because laughter really is the best medicine and sometimes you don't need to talk to a therapist. Sometimes you don't need to sit on a couch, sometimes you just need to talk. I agreed. That is how I got here.

Nick: 11:53

It just evolved into different ideas and again, literally this all came together within the last couple of months, while I was unemployed, which is probably, as a couple of people pointed out, was probably the best time for this to happen. If I had another job, I wouldn't have been thinking about this. I had three months to just put ideas together and bounce things off of people, and it has come together through this and, yes, the show is not as of the time that you and I are talking. It isn't live yet. It will be going live in June, but what I'm building toward and what I hope to be able to do, it resonates with what I've wanted to do my entire life, which is help people Just figure out a way. I'm not a therapist. I didn't go to school for this. I'm not a licensed or trained professional and I will never say that I am or come off as I am.

Kathy: 12:46

Well, and I have to say that I think, because of that fact right there and that's one of the things that when Stephanie and I started this podcast, we even put it in our intro we're not clinicians, we're not therapists. We're YOU, yes, and we're not selling anything. We're not selling you a workshop or a service or anything like that. We truly are interested in and invested in you. Every listener out there, and you have said so many things that just really resonated with me. And when you were talking about starting the podcast, I would podcasting has made me feel energized, and I guess that's the best word I can think of, because I can have a day that I'm feeling not so good. Maybe the memories are coming back, and I know just in a few days it will be the sixth year since my husband died and I'm already starting to feel a little of that trepidation, a little bit of those those memories and that tension coming back, and I know it'll be with me. But as soon as I start doing something for this podcast, I get this surge of energy and I feel so connected with everyone, all of the guests I've spoken to and met, all of the listeners who have reached out to me with a comment or feedback and you mentioned good and bad with your dad. But in truth, that good and bad is what helped shape you, just as it did from your mom. But those are the things that we get from our parents that help us become the adults we are. I see it, and I have had over the years, the pleasure of watching my two grandsons now grow into young men, adults, with the older one, Nathan, in college, majoring in music. He's a lead guitarist and a darn good one. So he's got places to go and I love watching him grow. AJ is a senior in high school. He's the athlete. I don't think there's a sport this kid cannot play. He's been on the soccer team. Right now he's starting back on the golf course and everything like that.

Kathy: 14:55

But I remember when AJ the younger one, when he was in sixth grade. That's when my husband died and my husband was not their biological grandfather, he was a step-grandfather, but he was really involved in their lives. Every day after school we were there for the boys while Stephanie and Neil, their parents, worked, and we really bonded with them. So in sixth grade, aj had a project to do at the end of the school year, where every child had to do a presentation on something, a cause. This young man, sixth grade, chose to do a presentation on the effects of Agent Orange on Vietnamese soldiers.

Kathy: 15:35

My husband was a combat medic in Vietnam and this six-year-old young boy stood there in front of parents, teachers, the entire school and presented a PowerPoint presentation with pictures of my husband, who had been dead less than a year, tears streaming down his face, and he stood there and gave this presentation. There wasn't a dry eye in the audience and I look back on that now. And you know they have been fortunate to not have had a lot of losses in their life. But I know, because of that and because of the way their parents helped them through that, they will be better equipped as men to deal with whatever grief comes their way. And I see what you're doing, what you've had to go through yourself and the fact that you which very, very few people do, let alone men is agreed to go to therapy. So I applaud your wife for pointing it out to you and, even more strongly, I respect you so much for listening to her and doing it.

Kathy: 16:31

You have so much to say to people, and I can't wait for your podcast to hit the airwaves and get out there.

Nick: 16:39

That means so much and I really appreciate that. I mean, all I did was, you know, go to therapy and get some shit off my chest.

Kathy: 16:46

Yeah.

Nick: 16:47

Again, I listened to my wife, because why wouldn't I?

Kathy: 16:50

Well, good for you.

Nick: 16:51

Good for you, absolutely, anybody who's anybody who's out there listening and debates whether or not their wife is right. She's right.

Kathy: 16:58

Right. I'm especially curious, since I told you about my grandsons and everything, yes, and going through what you went through and having this group of friends and brothers that have gone through especially a dead dad experience and I love that phrase, it reminds me of the Dead Poet's Society, but you know the Dead Dad Society. But what, what suggestion do you have, first for young men, so say teenagers, especially males, and then for parents of those male teenagers to help in instances where a loss such as this hits your family?

Nick: 17:36

Okay. So for my advice for the kids would be first would say you're going to feel things. Don't fight those feelings. Embrace them, regardless of what they are. They you might laugh, you might cry, you might just want to sit in a room by yourself and just think and all of those things are okay. What's not okay is to try to pack everything away, to try to ignore it, to try to pretend it didn't happen, to try to pretend that everything's okay. At the end of the day, when anyone, whatever age we are, experience loss, it is impactful, and also for any person that leaves us, we are all still here and we have to deal with it. So my advice to the kids would be do not ignore your feelings. Embrace them Again, whatever they are. Whatever you're feeling, it's right and it's okay.

Nick: 18:33

It's okay to laugh about times that you had, like in your case, with your husband, with your grandchildren. It's okay for them to think about the good times that they had. They should do that. And if they're sad and if they're upset and if they have moments where they just want to scream, they want to cry, they want to throw a pillow down and just be angry that he's gone for a few minutes. That's okay too. Just don't take the anger out on anybody else, for the parents. Pay attention to your kids, because they're going to go things that they're probably not fully equipped to handle and the parents are also. In your case, your kids were also dealing with a loss the way that their kids are dealing with it. So, unfortunately, in that case, I would think your kids probably really got the raw end of the deal, because they have to process the loss of their dad, but they also have to be there for their kids for the loss of their grandfather. It's all going to happen. It's all going to come together at the same time and there's no way really to deal with it other than to deal with it head on. If you try to pack it away, if you try to just forget about it until it goes away, it'll probably work for a little while and then it's going to come back, and when it comes back, it's probably going to come back worse than it was before.

Nick: 19:51

In my case, I didn't realize that I still had as much anger toward my dad until a few months after he died, and I dealt with it at the time Pretty much as soon as I realized it was becoming a problem. I did what I needed to do. There are people out there adults, kids, probably more so adults that are dealing with things, with traumatic events in their life that they've been holding on to for years. It's not healthy. The parents need to process their own grief as well. Sometimes it might be really helpful. I think it is very helpful to discuss things as a family, for parents to talk with their kids, to make them understand that it's not a taboo topic. It's not like 30, 40 years ago, when I was growing up, boys didn't talk about these things. It wasn't something we did, and I'm not saying that my parents or my mom or anybody never said you know, think about the good times. Yeah, those lines did come out, but largely it was just let's, you know it's over.

Nick: 20:58

We've got to deal with it. We have to move on Right.

Kathy: 20:59

Exactly, it's not that simple.

Nick: 21:01

It's simply just not that easy and it shouldn't be. Everybody processes grief and loss in a different way. We laugh about it, we make stupid jokes, but we also we grieve. We had sadness.

Nick: 21:13

The group of seven of us we have been able to To be there for each other through all the loss, Like all of our moms are still alive, but all of our dads are going through those times. We've been able to be there for each other at the times, at some of the worst times in our lives, and not just our dads like through other times, if we have that support system and not everybody does and so for parents who have kids who are dealing with grief, be the support system that they need and you know, get rely on your own people as well. Rely on your family and your friends and whoever you need to be your own support system, but also be a support system for your kids. And, at the same time, maybe parents and kids can be a support system for each other. Just because they're 10, 12 years old Doesn't mean they can't be the support system for an adult.

Kathy: 21:58

Right, they certainly feel. Yeah, they certainly feel yeah.

Nick: 22:02

Look at the project that your grandson did. I mean, he's a sixth grader and he's putting together a project on the effects of Agent Orange and he's got probably an auditorium filled with people and they're all crying. Yeah, you're going to try to tell me that an 11, 12 year old kid can't make an impact. Oh yeah, because he just did.

Kathy: 22:19

Definitely definitely did. Yeah, the other part of your comments and you've mentioned it several times is humor. There are actually people out there, there are men out there. I know of one gentleman who is a standup comic and grief is his topic. So there is a place for humor and I know even you were talking about one of the heaviest topics you could ever discuss. But we laugh. We've laughed today. Yes, you know almost every podcast we laugh because humor is important.

Kathy: 22:51

My dad felt the same way and my brother and I are likely to do a little of the dark humor too, not as much probably as you and your siblings do, but I think that's only because my brother might be a little more sensitive to the fact that I'm a female. We've argued about that all our lives. But there is a place for humor and I do hope that that comes out on your podcast as well. I also. Yeah, there's just so much and so much room and so much need for the male perspective of grieving to come out. I also want to compare for just a moment that many times in the what has become the traditional family setting, where there's a mom, a dad and kids and loss strikes that family. Oftentimes it has been thought that it's not obvious if and or how the men, the dads, are grieving, because they have that sense of being the supportive person. You know, gotta go, gotta go to work, gotta go do this, gotta move on, gotta push forward, gotta make sure my family's taken care of. So that's kind of been the perspective.

Kathy: 23:57

I, for a long time in the lives of my daughters, was a single mom. So I do just want to mention that there are many times of a single mom, a single parent not just a single mom, it can be a single dad goes through that experience as well, because they don't have that partner to kind of help them either. And sometimes for people in that single parent situation that can be especially difficult. So that if you happen to know of any single parents out there that are going through a loss like this, that have children, they certainly could use some support. They certainly could. So I encourage people to reach out to them.

Kathy: 24:37

As always, Nick, time flies by, and it doesn't fly by any faster than when I am doing a podcast, because I get so wrapped up in the conversation and you and I have spoken by phone before. We probably easy could go for hours, the two of us, I'm sure we could, but I have to kind of trim it down, just you know, because most of our listeners, I think, are probably in their car driving somewhere. I've been known to drive an extra mile to finish a podcast or a chapter in a book, an audiobook, same here, yep. But you know, I want to respect their time as well. So I want to start to wind down, and this is the point in my podcast where I turn the microphone over to my guests. So I'm going to give you the floor without any interruptions or directing questions, and let you speak directly to our listeners, tell them more specifics about your podcast, when they can expect it and what you and I are going to do to remind them when it's ready.

Nick: 25:37

Thank you. So again, the podcast is called Our Dead Dads. Yes, it is a very unconventional name, but it's going to be memorable, I believe it's going to hopefully get some attention and once people hear about the name, they start paying a little bit of attention to what we're talking about. They're going to realize that there are so many things that resonate with people, that grief, loss and humor. They all resonate with everybody. Every one of us has experienced loss. Anybody who's going to say that they haven't is not being honest with themselves or with you.

Nick: 26:13

This podcast is meant to try to help people. I'm going to be talking with my three brothers, with those three lifelong friends, and we're talking with a lot of other people. We're all going to be sharing stories of grief and loss. The first episode will be me giving a brief description about some of the things that I went through. I will try not to be too wordy because I don't want to bore people to tears and I'd rather put the microphone, put the spotlight on somebody else. But I'm going to be talking to people who are going to share their own stories of grief and loss and how they got through them. A lot of them are going to be with humor. A lot of them are going to be just grieving and just being heartbroken. I've already had several interviews of some incredibly traumatic and heartbreaking stories, and they're also talking about how they got through them. I'm doing this because the conversation needs to be jump-started, it needs to be shoved into overdrive Because, as I said, this is something that everybody deals with and, unfortunately, it's something that too many people just aren't comfortable talking about. So I'm going to create a platform where guests can, when listeners are listening to the show, they can reach out to me if they have their own story that they want to share.

Nick: 27:34

This is not a limited scope of who can be on the show. This is a show for everybody. Everybody can relate to it, and if you start listening to the show, if you start listening to some of the stories that you hear my guests talking about and you feel that you've got a story that you want to share, there's going to be a way that you can reach out to me through the website. There will be a form you can fill out. Just answer some questions. Tell me a little bit about your story.

Nick: 28:02

All the guests, obviously, are screened ahead of time so that we make sure that the stories are in line with what we're trying to promote, but everybody has a story to tell and I want to hear as many of them as I possibly can. And for the people who aren't ready to talk, maybe you'll be ready to just listen, and that's okay too. If you've got some things that are going on in your life and you don't know how to start the conversation, you don't know who to start the conversation with, that's okay. Listen to the stories that are being told and you will realize that you are not alone in anything. Grief is never well. I should say it should not ever be about comparison saying whoa Well, this person's story is so much worse than mine or my story is so much worse than theirs. No, I'm not interested ever in having a comparison. I want this to be a platform where we can talk about what we all have in common, and that is grief and loss and how we got through it. That's what I'm trying to build this platform to be, and I hope that, as everybody listens, they will start spreading the word to anybody that they know who might have something that they're going through or might need to talk about as my guests come on the show. I hope that they will share it with all of their listeners and their social networks, because the more people that hear about this, the more the conversation will get started.

Nick: 29:22

It's like any other issue. I'm not looking to make this a hot button topic. This isn't like some of the biggest hot button topics in our country, in our culture or politics and religion. I personally am not looking to bring any of that up. My guests will at times.

Nick: 29:41

I've had a couple of guests who talk about how they rely on their faith to get them through the situations that they went through, and that's amazing. There is no judgment here. It doesn't matter if you are a person of faith, if you're not a person of faith, if you're conservative or if you're liberal. I don't care about any of that. I care about how you need to get through what you're going through and if we can find a way to help you make that happen, because, at the end of the day, we're not Democrats, we're not Republicans, we're not religious or atheists, we're not Catholic or Jewish or Protestant or whatever. We are human beings. We are all human beings and we unfortunately live in a world, in a society that is far too cruel and far too self-destructive, and we don't help each other enough.

Nick: 30:30

Yet we have all seen the best parts of humanity. We have all seen how we come together in times of need and times of crisis, whether on a large scale or a very small scale. We all can do it, and so let's get the conversation started.

Kathy: 30:46

Absolutely, and to that I will say amen. I have one quick question about your Are the stories told by your guests going to be restricted to loss of their dads?

Nick: 31:00

So that's a great question. I appreciate you asking that. Initially, I am kind of thinking that I would like to stick more toward that, but no, I've already had conversations with people. My wife and I were actually talking about that yesterday. Yes, eventually I do want to open this up to different types of grief, because there are so many types of grief. The title is Our Dead Dads, and that's how we came to this point where this is now a podcast. It went from stupid conversation between friends and text messages to oh my god, this might actually be something. Initially, my goal is to start out in this area, but I do not anticipate that it's only going to be about just dads. Fair enough, fair enough, it probably won't be for very long Okay.

Nick: 31:52

If there are people that I could help, then let's get started.

Kathy: 31:56

Absolutely, absolutely. I really appreciate what you said, too, about being non-judgmental, because just like grief is different for everyone, our belief system is also different for everyone, and our belief systems change throughout the course of our lives. Oh the stories I could tell you. That would be a whole another podcast. So we just won't go there For today, though sadly it is time to wrap up.

Kathy: 32:20

I always mentioned self-care, which is important. It's funny what self-care can really mean. For some, it might mean going for that pedicure, because spring is literally around the corner here in upstate New York and my toes do need to be made happy. But it can also mean just hanging out with the right people. That's also a great way of self-care. It can just mean listening to a podcast or doing something that might distract you from those darker thoughts for a moment. It might just be a little bit of laughter. So, whatever is in your day, first remember to speak their names. Speak the names of the people you have lost, because as long as you speak their names, they'll live forever. And take care of yourselves everyone. And please, please, please come back next time as we all continue to live and grieve.

Stephanie: 33:12

Thank you so much for listening with us today. Do you have a topic that you'd like us to cover or do you have a question from one of our episodes? Please email us at info at asylevangrievecom and let us know. We hope you will find a moment to leave a review, send an email and share with others. Join us next time as we continue to live and grieve together.