Life in the Grief Pit

Have you ever stood in the face of a storm and felt the resolve to push through? Our special guest, Dr. Kimberly Harms has done just that. Join us  as Kim opens up about her birth marred by thalidomide, the heartache of her mother's suicide, her own battle with depression, and the fortitude required in the wake of her husband’s liver cancer. Her story is a testament to the unwavering human spirit and the shared comfort we find in acknowledging our vulnerabilities.

Loss is a path often walked in isolation, but it doesn’t have to be. Kim shares stories that illuminate the vital role such groups play, the importance of recognizing the value of grieving children as whole individuals, and how happiness can be reclaimed in life after loss. From the intimate tale of a widow's journey to the resilience seen in the face of the Rwandan genocide, we shine a light on the unexpected paths carved from the depths of grief, leading to new life chapters and cultural connections.

How can we construct a legacy that stands the test of time? This episode offers a stirring reflection on the narratives that have the power to shape our final impressions. Kim discusses her poignant work, "Are You Ready? How to Build a Legacy to Die For," and the profound concept of legacy love letters, guiding us on how to prepare for the ultimate future. Join us for an episode that will offer you empowerment to chart a course towards hope and healing.

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: 0:27

Hi everyone. Welcome back again to another episode As I Live and Grieve.

Kathy: 0:31

Grief, o happy to be with you today. And, yes, another great guest. I never disappoint, do I? But before I introduce her, I just want to ask you again for a favor. Some of you are doing it and I get really excited when I see it happen. On Facebook, there is a page called as I Live in Grief. You again for a favor. Some of you are doing it and I get really excited when I see it happen.

Kathy: 0:51

just a group of us to get together. It's not a place with a lot of messages, a lot of posts, so it's not intrusive in your day, you won't have a lot of notifications, but it's just a place that you can talk about something. Sometimes I'll post a graphic. Lately I've been posting a myth of grief and just asking you think this is true or is it not true? And getting some interaction that way. So it'd be great if you would pop over and just join us, follow the page and even, if you want, to tell your friends to do the same. So with me today is Dr Kimberly Harms. Now I'll let her take the doctor off and introduce herself however she wants. But, kim, thanks so much for joining me today. Would you tell our guests a little bit about yourself, please?

Kimberly: 1:39

Yes, and certainly you could take the doctor off. I'm a retired dentist now so you know, once you retire, we could take all those things off. It doesn't really make much of a difference, does it? But I'm someone who has been around the block, I guess, in life quite a bit, and I'm 67. So I'm, you know, those of us who are in our 70s and 80s and 90s. We know that there's a lot of stuff happens. A lot of stuff happens when you have more years to live. Either you die early and you have very little grief, or you die late and you have to see everybody else go in front of you. That's right. So, um, I'm in that, you know, 70- ish area. I like to call us perennial. So you know we are, you know we. There's a lot of names for our group uh, that makes it sound like a flower yes, it's a flower, we're flowering, we.

Kimberly: 2:22

We're flowering now, even all the stuff that happens to us. We're coming back. We're like a weed. We're like a weed you can't get us down. So I'm like a weed, perennial weed. But my story gets a little complicated. But when I was born, I was born with just seven fingers. My mother took some thalidomide before she had me. It wasn't approved in this country yet. A friend of hers gave it to her, as they did back in the 50s. A friend of hers whose brother was studying it gave it to her while she was pregnant, with me going across country. No one knew about thalidomide at the time or that it would cause loss of arms and legs and fingers. So I was really very lucky until about 1962. And by that time my parents were divorced and living with my mother, who was an amazing, wonderful, loving. You know she was bipolar. She was the best mom, best mom, and my father called her up and said we just heard about this thalidomide drug. You caused Kim to miss her fingers and my mom, who was fragile, already went right into the institution, the Cincinnati Mental Health Institution, and we were

Kimberly: 3:27

She got out three months later and said, "bob, I want the kids. And he said, nope, we already bought the furniture, you're not getting them back. And she went back for the rest of her life and eventually, when I was 17, took her own life. So my mother, we lost my mother to suicide and I think there is a myth out there that people who are mentally ill or maybe are not good parents.

Kimberly: 3:47

Well you know, with few exceptions, she was the best mother I could ever ask for. She, just she was the best. That was a huge. My first you know my first grieving was at six, when I lost her the first time, and then again at 17,.

Kimberly: 4:00

That was a big loss and I suffer. I suffer depression, went through a period there. At that point I know what it's like to be in that state. So then I met my husband, jim. He wanted to be a dentist and I thought, boy, maybe this is the 70s, you know. Hmm, if he wants to be a dentist, maybe I should be a dentist too, and then he'll marry me.

Kathy: 4:18

I mean there you go, right?

Kimberly: 4:19

You know, that was that's how we thought back in the day.

Kimberly: 4:22

So I said, okay, yeah, let's do that. And of course I forgot that I only had seven fingers and that might be a problem, but it turned out not to be. I ended up going to dental school. Never was a problem. I practiced for 30 years until my other hand gave out and I had to stop, but never had lots of patients. It never was a problem. So wonderful marriage. We had three kids. We were rolling along in Farmington, minnesota, leading the good life and my husband came down with liver cancer and of course what you do when you have cancer is you go look on online to see what are the chances, because they won't tell you.

Kimberly: 4:55

You know, the doctors don't say, they don't want to say anything but you go online, yeah and I kept checking all the different blind studies.

Kimberly: 5:00

You know, Mayo Clinic said like maybe five years or less, very, very unlikely he'll live beyond that. I went, I went to another one they all said the same thing. So I had to kind of grieve for my husband. However, a miracle occurred and he ended up with a liver transplant six months later, which saved his life. So he now is doing better. On the other hand, I had this wonderful three, three wonderful kids, and my youngest son, eric, was this absolutely brilliant. You know he was. He was three wonderful kids and my youngest son, eric, was absolutely brilliant. He was his freshman year at Columbia University. He was a National Merit Scholar, he played in the jazz band, he was a jazz pianist and he did plays with Barnard College and he was elected to student government at Columbia University and he was on the dean's list in engineering. Just this guy that everything like a golden boy, right Sure, until his girlfriend broke up with him and 45 minutes later he was gone. 45 minutes, 45 minutes.

Kimberly: 5:55

That same impulsiveness that made him such a great jazz pianist, because jazz people are very impulsive. That same impulsiveness and a 19-year-old brain that wasn't fully developed in critical thinking, that doesn't get developed in young people to the 25, it was a fatal combination. And he was gone, just from the top of the world to gone. So you can imagine my husband and I. My husband had just had a liver transplant six months before Anybody listening to a grieving podcast right now that you're at the bottom of that grief pit, you know I was.

Kimberly: 6:32

I was at the bottom with maybe one nostril trying to right, and someone did something for me that I will be forever grateful. It was a few weeks after my term. We lost our son and we were just getting back to work and we were still in that zombie phase, I call it, which I can't last a long time you kind of have a fake smile and you kind of try to get through life.

Kimberly: 6:55

And you're just a zombie. You're just dead on the inside, and that's kind of where we were, and it's kind of hard to go back to a field like dentistry. Sure it is. People don't want zombies drilling on their teeth.

Kathy: 7:05

No, they don't, no, no no.

Kimberly: 7:07

So you had to kind of try to fake it. It was a tough time, and I came out of my office that afternoon and my husband was standing next to his car with his cousin, and his cousin had lost his brother at about 19. He had gotten drunk. His friends had put him in the car and left him there overnight. But it was Minnesota and it was minus five and he froze to death. He lost his brother, but he also lost his parents at the same time, because they were so caught down in the grief pit which is where you get sent when something like this happens they could never parent him again. They just couldn't get out of it, and so he came over to me, and here I am,

Kimberly: 7:46

He came up to me wagging his finger in my face and said, "kim, with kind of anger in his voice don't you ever let those other two girls feel they are not enough? And I can't even say that without getting goosebumps still, because that changed my life. Now there are not many people that can say something like that. You have to have been in that grief pit yourself to be able to say it.

Kimberly: 8:11

I mean because, like, are you judging me? Are you judging my grief and how I can admit? But it just hit me like a ton of bricks because here's my husband, who had just had a liver transplant. He was grieving, he was not strong, he was. You know, I just wanted to keep him alive. And then I had these two daughters who just loved their brother so much. So that was the time when I really learned that grief is a battle and I had to fight my way out. Now I'm a Christian, I believe in God, and in my mind the way that this helped me is I just said you know what Satan wants me down? In that he wants me way down the bottom. You know what? If it wasn't for him, we wouldn't be in this situation. So I'm going to fight my way out just to show him. That doesn't work for everybody, but for me. It gave me a bad guy that could be a real bad guy. You have to learn how to deal with each other.

Kimberly: 9:02

My husband and I managed our grief completely differently of course so for me, having that bad guy and being able to just like, I'm going to show you, I'm going to work my way, and every day I fought and fought, and fought, and fought, and it might have taken maybe 10 years before I really got completely out. But you know, but I was getting there. I mean, I was like halfway out, right we all know who's been in that journey.

Kimberly: 9:22

I was kind of getting of getting there, but it took me about quite a long time. Then three years ago I lost my husband, jim not to liver disease. He's very happy. He was very proud to tell everyone that his liver was doing well and he thought we should be able to donate it to someone else Again. He thought it would be eternal.

Kathy: 9:41

Absolutely.

Kimberly: 9:42

Absolutely Just one time, and he died of congestive heart failure. But his heart disease started right after my son died and before he had his liver transplant he was checked out as clean for sure they wouldn't have done it yeah, no liver for you. So he, um he, so I believe he died of a broken heart in my mind. You know, in my mind I think that's what happened so he died just a few years ago In the meantime, right after Eric. So those are my big losses were the loss of people.

Kimberly: 10:09

I was a dentist and I was practicing and we had a very successful practice. But a year after Eric died, my other hand my good hand failed me. I had a radiculopathy nerve damage to my other hand. So the doctor said failed me. I had a radiculopathy nerve damage in my other hand. So the doctor said, okay, you're done. I was a primary breadwinner. Jim was not doing well, so then I had to face that. So what all those things were? I believe in my life there were changes. They were like we just had an eclipse, a solar eclipse. It's kind of like we had this eclipse and then I was different. We had an eclipse and then I was different. I was no longer a daughter when my mother died. My son died. I was no longer a mother of a son. My husband died. I'm no longer white.

Kathy: 10:49

Right.

Kimberly: 10:49

When we stopped my practice I was no longer a dentist. I couldn't make a really good living by using my hands Right, so I learned over that time and again with my faith I helped me a lot and I and I also. Two days after my husband died I had a woman friend of mine call and say you know, kim, my she's 84. She said my friends are all losing their husband. You know, they're kind of dropping like flies all around me and I want to start a women's support group, a widow support group. Would you like to join? This was two days after my husband died.

Kathy: 11:25

Oh, my goodness.

Kimberly: 11:26

I just got off a call earlier this morning. We've been meeting for three years and it's been a lifesaver to be around other people, just like you are doing now, to hear other people's stories, to know that you're not alone, to know all the loneliness and the feelings that you have are not unique. It's part of life.

Kathy: 11:47

Well, that is quite a grief pit, and I'd probably heard that phrase before, but as you and I were introduced, and you used that phrase in your background in your story, I thought to myself wow, it really is, because it's something that, as you look around you in this pit of despair, of grief, you are convinced there is no way out. But there is. You just have to figure it out. I want to go back to a minute, to your cousin or whoever it was that was wagging his finger at you and offering you that perspective of never let your girls feel like they're not enough. That is such an incredible, insightful perspective.

Kathy: 12:34

Now, I would think, perhaps and I've not been in this situation to be the mother of children who are grieving the loss of even a grandparent or a parent, so I've not experienced that, but I, just as I think about that scenario, I can imagine where it's important for the remaining parent especially to make sure that they support their kids as they grieve, but that particular perspective has never been on my mind. It is now, though, and it will continue to be, because it would be very easy for the girls in their grief the grieving the loss of their only brother and watching you grieve and their father grieve, it would be very easy for them to start to get that concept, that perspective, that assumption that they aren't enough, that the loss of their brother was so great that they are no longer enough to make you happy. So that is an incredible insight and I wanted to make sure our listeners caught that as well, because I think that is critical if you are supporting your kids, that, along with just supporting their grief, giving them a safe place to talk and everything let them know, show them, prove to them that they are still your children and each one of them is enough, that that's not what your grief is about. So thank you for that and thank you your cousin, whoever, wherever that person may be. I think that's incredible.

Kathy: 14:06

Now you went on in some of the background you offered to me. You had some adventures. Was that part of your grief journey or did that develop some other way?

Kimberly: 14:16

Tell us about tha I did have some adventures. After Eric died, I was suddenly hit by the country of Rwanda. Now I have to tell you, the only time I remember even hearing about Rwanda, it was back in 1994 when there was this horrific genocide there. It was on the news but I was raising my kids. You know, we're busy with our lives. I was busy raising my children, I was busy with my career. I thought, oh, how sad, how horrible. And then I went on to the next step, you know, up to the dance recital, right. But after Eric died and you know again, I'm such a Christian I feel God was hitting me a little bit, knocking me on the head. A bit about Rwanda.

Kimberly: 14:52

The first time that happened I was at a prayer breakfast and I was sitting next to a woman from Rwanda for the first time and she had lost her family. She had lost her two children and her husband in the genocide and she kind of described the horrific way that they were killed. She survived and but then she said and this you know this is as a grieving when you're in that grief pit and you're still super zombie right now. I mean it was just within a couple of months, it was in that early stage and I looked at her and I thought, well, wait a minute, she's smiling, she seems happy. How can she be that way? Because you look at the world like how can anyone be happy? Exactly, and she talked about her new family. She had married again and adopted children that were orphaned during the genocide, which is what they did in Rwanda, and I thought, wow, that, wow it, just it just hit me, like she okay. Maybe, if she can be happy and she lost her entire family to this horrific genocide, maybe there's hope for me to be happy, because that's what you want in the grief pit. You want to be happy. You want to be happy. It doesn't look like it's possible when you're deep in the pit.

Kimberly: 15:52

Well, then again, about another week later, the woman gave me the audiobook left t by about the rwandan genocide, where she was in a she and eight other girls were in a tiny bathroom while the killers were running all around the pastor had hidden them there and they were saved and were able to recover and where she lost her entire family, everybody and all of the all you know, everything was burned, all the possessions were either taken or burned, so she was left with nothing and she wrote this beautiful book. And so I read that book and I thought, ow, again Rwanda shows us people that have been through these. I lost one son and they lost their whole families. You know you can't really compare griefs, but you think, okay, how can they be smiling? And you know, how can they have that joy?

Kimberly: 16:39

So then, a couple of weeks later, I was sitting at lunch with a dear friend of mine Her name is Pam Pappastanek, and she was on the board of Books for Africa here, which is based here in Minneapolis and she said you know, kim, I went to Rwanda. I was there for a while before the genocide. I thought it would be good to bring libraries to Rwanda, so let's do a library, a memorial library, for Eric she had an idea.

Kimberly: 17:01

Nice, yeah, because he was a scholar, he would get books from libraries that were being tossed out. I love the classic books. You know he was a book collector and he loved classic books and so that would be a very wonderful legacy, absolutely. So I said, yeah, okay, thinking we do one library and that would check that off my list Right.

Kimberly: 17:25

Well, we went there and when we went there, the people of Books for Africa said, you know, the genocide is kind of a political topic, maybe just don't really talk about it, probably not polite. And I was like, okay, okay, but the genocide came to us. We ended up meeting people who talked about it and talked about how they healed and talked about how they moved forward and I met. One of the groups we met was a collective of Tutsi women. It was the Hutus that were trying to kill off the Tutsis and any moderate Hutu. If they decided they weren't going to kill the Tutsis, they'd be killed. I mean, it was like a just gang warfare.

Kimberly: 18:00

So in this village that we went to there were the two groups, the Hutus and the Tutsis. The Tutsi women were widowed because the men were killed first, so men were all their husbands. The Tutsi, the Hutu women husbands had done the killing, but they were now widowed because their husbands were in jail. So they were kind of widowed by jail for 20 years. So there was this big group of women in a culture where the men did. You know that kind of women did a lot of work, but you know they were single again.

Kimberly: 18:28

And the Tutsi women went to a priest and said you know we need some help. And he said you know what I'm going to do? Some grief counseling for you. We're going to have some special programs we're going to set up. We're going to meet a couple of times a week and we're going to try to work together to figure out what we do. Well, the Hutu women said well, we need help too, because we're also widows, because our husbands are wow, and so this is because they were talking to these women. So they came in and they said at first they sat on opposite sides I'll bet, I'll bet they weren't going to talk to each other.

Kimberly: 18:59

But over time, they realized and this is such an important point and I learned it so well, you know our commonalities are much, much stronger than the things that separate us. Yes, and they things that separate us, yes, and they realized that their commonalities were stronger than and this is death, I mean this is your husband killed my husband.

Kimberly: 19:18

Oh, yeah, yeah, um. But they, they started over time to work together and by the time we got there it was about 16 years later. They had been working together as a community to make money to help support each other my goodness and they kind of adopted some of the hutu women. Would adopt a widow you know, to come to their home, for you know to feel they had a larger family. They became like a family.

Kimberly: 19:41

How could this be? It's like you just killed my whole family and it was brutal, absolutely horrific ways to kill people and rapes and all of that. Absolutely. How can you do that? And I looked at those two and what they did for me is when I told them I was there to bring books in honor of my son that I had lost. When they found out I had lost a son, they surrounded me with just the greatest love I've ever felt. They just surrounded me.

Kimberly: 20:04

We are so sorry about your son. We know how that feels. We are so sorry, oh my goodness. That community of grievers is so helpful, and so we now have 65 libraries and 320,000 books that we sent through. They're all over the country. I've been back a number of times. Oh wow, but they're like my grief counselors.

Kimberly: 20:24

I think we need to learn from them that, no matter what happens to us I mean even a genocide you can rebuild your life Sure. And they rebuilt their country. It's now a Burundi which is right below. That country went through a similar genocide but didn't really have good leadership, and so they're still kind of in a mess. Rwanda is one of the safest countries in Africa. In fact, it has the same State Department safety rating as Canada.

Kimberly: 20:47

So I tell them oh my gosh, you're going to Rwanda. It's scary. No, if you go to it's like Canada you're not afraid to go to Rwanda.

Kimberly: 20:54

It's safer than Belgium or Germany yeah, oh, my goodness my goodness, yeah, but they've rebuilt their country because they realize again kind of what we said before. They realized if they did not learn to heal and come together and reconcile right. You know, killers were put in jail for 20 years, so they, they, you know they did pay. If we don't realize that we have to do this, this country will, our children, we're going to live through the same horrific thing they did.

Kimberly: 21:19

We need to do it for them and they did, and it's an absolutely amazing story about when you're talking about grieving. I don't think there's a better story in the world than looking at Rwanda and how they have.

Kathy: 21:30

That absolutely is correct. Now I have to ask what happened when the husbands got out of jail?

Kimberly: 21:36

Well, when the husbands got out of jail and this is interesting when the husbands got out of jail. They have these things called the Gackacha courts. So in one of the some of the libraries through Books for Africa, we're able to do law libraries and talk to some of the lawyers. There aren't enough to go around, certainly. So what happens is Rwanda is interesting in that every month you have a village meeting where you have to attend. Everybody has to attend. If you don't attend, you're fined, or if you have an excuse, it's you know, okay, I'll check you off, but you have to go. It's mandatory. And then, after you have the meeting, then you have to go clean up the village.

Stephanie: 22:10

So it's a very clean country.

Kimberly: 22:12

We're not allowed to bring paper bags, you know, plastic bags or anything. It's a very clean country but it gives that sense of community to the village.

Kathy: 22:19

Yes, yes.

Kimberly: 22:20

So when somebody gets out of jail for murdering and they know exactly who they murdered, they come back to the Gacaca courts. The Gacaca courts are courts that are kind of held by the local governance, the local people, so they'll sit around and they'll say okay, so what are you going to do? You killed Mary's husband and her family. What are you going to do to help Mary out? Because you burned down her house and that person might go back and build the house. So they have a specific program designed to reconcile that person to come back into the village. Wow, and that's what they do. And it was funny because when I was there in 2012, they were still in jail and they had pink jumpsuits and they would go out and they'd farm their own food, they'd grow their own food.

Kimberly: 23:04

So they'd be out in the farms growing their food and then they'd come back and they'd walk along to go back to jail. Well, there would be like 30 guys in pink jumpsuits and they'd have sickles and machetes and all the things that they use to kill people right in their hands. 30 of them on the right, ahead of them and in back of them there was one guard with a rifle, one guard, one guard, one of the front of the back, so two guards for 30 people. And I looked at that and I was talking to Father Remy, who was our guide. I said, oh my gosh, that looks so dangerous they could kill him. And he looked at me just strangely.

Kimberly: 23:38

This just shows you a difference in our culture. He looked at me strangely and he said, well, no, they're not going to do that, because where would they go? Their families would just send them back to jail. Everybody knows what's going on. They they can't you know. So it's not only are they in jail, but they're. But everybody knows they're supposed to be in jail and their families support that and just you know. And then when they get out, then they're fine. But it was just. It's just such a cultural shift for me that the families of the accused would send them right back to jail.

Kathy: 24:06

And that they would be so, so compliant. Yes, yes.

Kimberly: 24:10

Because they had been murdered. That's amazing. Yeah, it's 30 murderers in a row with a murder weapon.

Kathy: 24:15

Yeah, so now these two factions get along better?

Kimberly: 24:19

I mean, yes, you're not allowed to say you know, of course people know, just as we all know, but you're not allowed to. It's illegal, I think, to define yourself as Hutu or Tutsi. Okay, before the genocide that would appear on your identity card, and so it's illegal to do that and they really those. I think those village meetings really helped to hash out a lot of this stuff so that small groups are not going back and forth. It is more of a. The government is actually the very first government that was mostly women in the entire world, because you know the men were dead or in jail. So you know it was mostly women and it continues to be a majority women controlled parliament. The leader is is kind of has more power than what we're used to and of course there are people that criticize him, but I will tell you that the people that I know in rwanda are grateful that they have those rules.

Kimberly: 25:08

Like you can't say you're who to or tootsie yeah, another, and they enforce that you know, and so I don't know, if it's more strongly than we would like to see, yeah, but overall, you know the the result is a safe country where I go and I'm not like mr I'm not mr adventure woman. I I I'm not very adventurous on my guests. I go there by myself and I get hotels by myself and I travel around the country by myself and I perfectly, I feel perfectly safe at all times. Wow.

Stephanie: 25:37

Wow.

Kathy: 25:38

I'm fascinated with other cultures and I do love to travel, but that to me really sounds like a country that has learned a better way and is really working hard to instill that and make sure that its citizens feel that, too, and abide by it. So kudos to Rwanda. That's a great story. Now are there any books that you would recommend about the genocide and this process that they have used? What book?

Kimberly: 26:10

The book well Left to Tell by is a good story about Rwanda. It's the actual genocide. Gosh, I don't know books. I kind of found out my information from just being there and talking to the lawyers and so on. But you can certainly. Gakacha is the name of the courts. You can certainly Google that or Google the information about the legal system in Rwanda. I think we have five law libraries right now. We were able to bring fun.

Kathy: 26:35

That's exciting. That's exciting and what a great legacy. You know we've done a couple of episodes about legacies and I just think they are so great because everybody kind of chooses something different from well. We've had pancakes for Roger and we've had ice skating, fundraisers and libraries in Rwanda, and I think this is just amazing that you can take a loss that is so devastating and turn it into something that is so helpful, so impactful and so powerful. That just says so so much. What a great tribute, what a great tribute to your son.

Kathy: 27:13

Thank you, sadly, im, time goes too fast. But the reason we try to stick with 30 minutes is most of our listeners are listening on a commute, whether it's a commute to or from work to, or from taking kids to school, to sports activities, to dance or whatever. So we like to do these little snippets, and that's often why a lot of our guests come back a second time, because there's always more to tell, and I think, in your stories especially, you have so much more to say to our listeners. So I'm going to first extend an offer to come back again. Absolutely, we'll figure out those details later, but for right now I want to do what I always do for our guests, and that's to turn the focus and the microphone over to you. Let you have the floor and let you speak directly to our guests. Let them know what you might offer them if they opt to reach out and connect with you. Just tell them anything you want them to know from you. So the floor is yours.

Kimberly: 28:12

Well, I think the first thing. You know, I'm 67 now and I feel that, as I said before, od's not done with me yet I think we have a purpose. I don't really I'm not one that, but I'm retired, but I'm not. This is kind of what I'm doing as a retiree, but I feel important as I'm retired. As I reach this point, I feel it's so critical that we understand that we have a legacy. We all have a legacy in what we do and we're going to die. When my husband died, I saw my grandchildren suffer. When my husband died, my children, and there are things that we can do now to make their grief journey easier. You can't prevent grief completely, but you can maybe lessen it, and so I wrote a book. It's called Are you Ready? How to Build a Legacy to Die For. It's available on Amazon or Barnes and Noble by Dr Kimberly Harms. That's how you look it up and that really goes to focus on the things that we can be doing now, the legacies we can be living now, like love, it's the biggest one.

Kimberly: 29:10

I was in Rwanda. I was with a group of widows and I was talking about this legacy issue and they said through an interpreter they said that, well, they can't. They were all widowed during the genocide. Well, they were very poor, so they really can't leave a legacy. And they happen to be Christian, so we share faith. And I said well, you know who left the greatest legacy? And in our faith it's Jesus. And I said what legacy did he leave? How much money did he leave to anybody? And they're like well, he didn't leave money.

Kimberly: 29:36

What did he leave? He left love, you know, and so that's one that everyone can leave. Everyone can leave love, or learning to trust, or hard work, learning all these things that we've learned over the years that we can hopefully impart to the next generation, and also to get our affairs in order. Get that stuff done.

Kimberly: 29:53

I have a little book we have a workbook in the back of the book that talks about how you build a legacy folder where you have all the stuff that you need in there your passwords, your titles to your car, all that stuff in your folder. So when I die, my kids they're going to go, they're going to open the folder, everything they need my titles, my social security card, my marriage certificate, birth certificate. They got everything in that little folder and it's going to make their journey easier when I go. And also, I want to talk about legacy love letters where we write them, love letters that they open after we go. So I think that the one thing I'd like your listeners to just start to think about is what can they do now to show that they love their kids so much that they're going to prepare them for a time when they're gone? That's my focus as a retired dentist out there.

Kathy: 30:42

Yeah, and that's absolutely beautiful. I know my mother left a letter for me and then one for my brother and I read it and I've reread it and reread it, and reread it and it just became so special to me and I think about that now and I think, gosh, it must've been hard and I just kind of discounted that. But now that I'm getting I'm aging and I'm 73 now I'm starting to think of those things and at first I think, oh, my gosh, I don't want to do that, I don't want to do that. Then I turn it around and I think, oh, but how did it make me feel yes and don't? I want my daughters to be able to have that same sense that, wow, mom loved me enough that she thought to do this so that I'd have it after she was gone. What an incredible gift.

Kathy: 31:29

And I also remember my mother, who was the inveterate planner, went to a funeral home, picked out her own casket, paid for, planned her entire calling hours celebration, went to the church, planned her entire funeral, right down to what hymns were going to be played, and had it all laid out in a plan. And I used to. I used to criticize her because she would want to go over it with me every so often, and I didn't. That was when I was afraid to even think about death. It was not in my list of conversation topics.

Kimberly: 32:03

So I would avoid it. Yes, yes, we have checkoff lists for that. Yes, for your funeral, for your obituary how to write your obituary Absolutely Anything you want to do. You don't have to do everything. Yes, but it's that checkoff list, so we can just check that off and get ready.

Kathy: 32:17

Yes, yes, but for all the criticism I had in my head and in my mind after she died, what an incredible gift that was, that all I had to do was go to the funeral home and of course they had the file pulled out and they said this is what your mother had planned, and I think we made one change. She even made suggestions on who we could order flowers from. That was my mother. Okay, she did everything except pre-order them to pay the bill on that. But, as I say, you know I laugh about it now, but at the time when I was just so distressed and I knew she was going to die she was in her nineties and she was on hospice and I knew the day was coming, it was close, it was inevitable, it wasn't a surprise. Yet that to me, was one of the greatest gifts she ever gave me was so that I didn't have to go through all of that myself at that time.

Kathy: 33:10

So consider that, listeners, and I know the last thing you want to do when you're grieving a loss of someone you love. The last thing you want to do is think of things like that. But, as you heal, put that on your list of things to take care of. At some point you will be satisfied, you'll have a sense of peace. I think with yourself that you've done it and it's take care of. At some point you will be satisfied, you'll have a sense of peace. I think with yourself that you've done it and it's taken care of. And I know that for those you leave behind, they will be so, so appreciative that they can focus on their love for you at that time and not which coffin to buy or which service to have or anything like that. So, okay, off my soapbox, I guess.

Kimberly: 33:50

Wait, can you sell my book for me?

Kathy: 33:53

I advocate for all of my guests Absolutely, and we will. Of course, in the podcast notes we will mention the title of her book so it'll be easy to search for. We will give you her contact information that you know. If you want to reach out to her and tell her you know what you thought of what she said, or ask any questions, you are free to do that. If, for some reason, you can't reach her, reach me and I will forward your information on.

Kathy: 34:22

We always do that and people do reach out, sometimes afterward, and it's just such a special, special feeling when someone takes the time to come on and literally put their entire story out there for the world to hear, because they're doing it, not because they just want to tell their story. They're doing it because they want you to know that somebody is thinking about the journey you're on and somebody else can appreciate how very, very difficult that is. So we're hoping that all of this and all the stories you hear on our podcast help you feel that A you're not alone, that you're not abnormal, unusual or crazy for what you're experiencing. That's all part of that man, that nasty thing called grief, and there's just no way. And if you've had lots of loss in your life and most of us had think about it. You know, probably as a toddler. If I lost a stuffed animal, I probably grieved as a toddler. Even toddlers grieve. We're introduced to it early in life. We just don't talk about it. We don't acknowledge it to it early in life. We just don't talk about it. We don't acknowledge it. We don't work through those smaller, less critical types of grief. All of that, gee, think of it for parenting skills. Even that would help somebody when they got to be an adult and suffered grief.

Kathy: 35:40

Okay, I'm going to be on another soapbox in a minute, so let's wind down. Let's wind down Again. Thank you for listening today. Today we talked about many types of grief and being mired in that grief pit. Yet, somehow, someway, im found a way out. She still grieves and there may still be grief left in her lifetime, but she is better equipped, I believe, on how to handle it the next time Because of the work she's done already, the inspiration she has found and now offers and willingly shares. She'll be back again. I just know it. Until then, please take care of yourselves and join us again next week as we all continue to live and grieve. Thanks, kim, thank you so much for having me.

Stephanie: 36:28

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 as I live and grieve. com, 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.