Grief (Part 2) with Lionheart Shelly Skinner and Lauren Breen

PART 2 of our warm table conversation on GRIEF with local bereavement organisation Lionheart Camp for Kids CEO Shelly Skinner and Board Member Professor Lauren Breen.

PASSION:  Building a community where grief is seen as a healthy and positive response to death and life challenges.
PURPOSE: Empowering bereaved children and families to navigate their grief journey through education, peer-support, strength-building and resilience through Lionheart Camps for Kids (a not-for-profit organisation).

We cover:
Sibling grief
What healthy grief is and isn't
What is regriefing?
The importance of funerals and the conversations we should have before death
Physiological symptoms of grief
Myths of grief
What happens on Lionheart camps
Drumbeat
The Lionheart Song

"You might never experience true love, but you will experience grief." - Professor Lauren Breen at her TedX Talk

You can donate to Lionheart to support this important work.

Lionheart Song Credits:
Music and lyrics by Oscar Thomas and Christian Barratt
Produced by Christian Barratt
Performed by Christian Barratt and the 2019 Lionheart Kids Chorus

Warm thanks to:
Sponsor: Females Over Forty-five Fitness in Victoria Park
Sound Engineering: Damon Sutton
Music: William A Spence
... and all our generous and inspiring guests around the warm table this season!

Transcript

Sonia Nolan: 0:00

Welcome to My Warm Table. I'm Sonia Nolan and season two of this podcast about passion and purpose is brought to you by Females Over 45 Fitness, or FOFF in Victoria

Introductory Voice Over of Previous Guests: 0:11

My name is Kate Chaney. My name is Park. Bonnie Davies. My name is Madeleine King. My name is Valerio Fantinelli. My name is Lyn Beazley. My name is Alexandra Helen Flanagan Hi, my name is Sharon Todd. My name is Lucy Cooke and I'm the CEO of SpaceDraft. I'm the first Aboriginal female funeral director. CEO and founder of Motion by the Ocean. I'm a psychologist and a professor in psychology at Curtin University. You're listening on Sonia Nolan's My Warm Table. Just sharing a yarn with her.

Sonia Nolan: 0:36

We're continuing our exploration of grief today, with part two of our conversation with Lionheart CEO and founder, Shelly Skinner. And registered psyhologist and researcher, Professor Lauren Breen. In part one we learnt about the myths of grief, and a program desgined by Lionheart especially for teachers, who might be unsure how to support their students after the death of a parent, or significant family member. Both Shelly and Lauren are passionate about building a community where grief is seen as a healthy and positive response to death and life challenges. And that's exactly what we'll be talking about in this episode. We'll pick up the conversation now. So Shelly, you're the founder and CEO of Lionheart Camp for Kids, can you tell us a bit of backstory, like how did Lionheart come to be?

Shelly Skinner: 1:25

Of course, so I was possibly a strange child. And I used to worry a lot about my parents dying, I didn't really have a reason for that. I just did worry. And when I look back at that now, I wonder if that's because my mum and dad always had very traditional gender roles. So my dad was very blokey, and the dinner would be provided for him and he would go off to work and mum would do all the nurturing and all the, the food and all the looking after, and all the school things. And I guess some- perhaps somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I realised that should mum not be around that there'd be a lot of things that would go missed. And so when I was 26, my mum died. And I was a social worker at the time working in the area of adult oncology. And I was just very aware of what would my life I've been lucky if I'd been six. My dad is a great bloke, and I love him. But he is a kind of old style blokey bloke. And so my sister and I would not have been raised in the way that we were, and we would have had different opportunities in our lives, we would have been in a different financial situation we, life would have been so incredibly different. And I remember thinking, if only he'd had network around him, he'd had some people to support him, and I don't think he would have. And so at that time, coupled with the fact that I was working in a hospital setting with people with cancer, I remember feeling really frustrated. For all those families out there whose family member died of something that wasn't cancer related. And I remember thinking, well, all those people are going to be like I was, or I would have been with my dad, and my mum. So it became a bit of something I used to moan about with some colleagues. And eventually, we decided we needed to kind of put up or shut up. And we decided to start a service that provides support to all Western Australians, regardless of how family member died.

Sonia Nolan: 3:49

So when was this?

Shelly Skinner: 3:51

So we ran our first camp in 2017.

Sonia Nolan: 3:54

And Lauren tell me about your research in grief? What led you to having this specialised area of research?

Lauren Breen: 4:04

So I guess like Shelley, I was also a strange child.

Sonia Nolan: 4:08

That's a common theme, right.

Shelly Skinner: 4:09

We become strange adults.

Lauren Breen: 4:11

Yeah we do. Yeah. So I didn't have a lot of loss experiences as a child. But I guess what you might consider typical things, you know, grandparents, you know, hearing about someone through a network of something, you know, dying. And when I was 20, there was a death in my extended family, which had a big impact. And so I think it was the year later than I was - no maybe a couple of years later when I was looking for a topic for my PhD. And I'd already gone to the research literature to try and understand the experience of what had happened and the impact on the people around me. And I really felt that there was so many gaps in there, so I thought, well, I'll do something to just, you know, fill some of that initial gap. So my PhD was on people who had a family member die in a road traffic crash in Western Australia. And then from then I just continued on doing all kinds of stuff to do with end of life, palliative care, grief and loss across the lifespan, all of that. And I used to worry that I would run out of questions to ask, but that does not happen. No, there's so much more than I want to do in in research. And yeah, it still gets me excited and interested every day. But yeah, there's so many things that we still don't know in terms of research, because I suppose if you look back even just a few decades ago, a lot of what we knew was based on middle aged women grieving the death of a spouse following illness. And they were predominantly from North America or Western Europe, kinds of areas. So there's a lot of stuff that we don't know, including about different causes of death or different ages of people who are grieving, or, and yes, so many other things that we don't know. Cultural differences. For example, there's still, you know, not a lot of research from that perspective.

Sonia Nolan: 6:20

Yeah, it's interesting, you say that, my background is Italian and for my mum, the thought of a wake for somebody's after the funeral is horrific. She just can't understand why you'd go and have a party after someone's died. So it's really disrespectful, in the Italian culture to have anything but a really sombre experience of just the immediate family. And there's, there's no laughter and there's no storytelling, it's very, very sombre, so that that idea of a wake is just horrific from that cultural perspective is, is that the sort of things that you're talking about when it comes to grief and cultures as well?

Lauren Breen: 7:00

Yeah, I think in terms of things like the funeral practices, and mourning practices, so, you know, I know in some cultures, there's people whose job it is, in fact, sometimes they're paid to wail at the funeral. Because the more noise that is made, and the more obvious shows of upset, the more clearly then the family loved the person who died. And then of course, in other cultures, it's very stoic. You know, no tears, no nothing.

Sonia Nolan: 7:32

And no children in some as well.

Lauren Breen: 7:34

Yeah. And, you know, very stiff upper lip and just did not like that at all. So, yeah. So and of course, then how it comes to grief, you know, how out would lead to people grieve? Are there shows of grief, like wearing black for a year? You know, how in the past, there were different ways you could show that you were in mourning, and now there's maybe not so many ways. So is that a good thing or a bad thing that you, you know, you don't know, who maybe needs a bit more compassion? Or who needs some support? And yeah, all of those kinds of things around those rules or those social norms about what is acceptable in mourning, or what is acceptable in grief.

Shelly Skinner: 8:17

I remember when my daughter asked me last year, so she would have been seven. And we're watching an AFL game. And they had the black armband on for Remembrance, and she asked what it was, and I explained and she said, "so did the family get to wear one of those? Like, do they wear it so everyone else knows that they're really sad?" And I said, "they don't but that's a really good idea." Be kind to these people, because they're really sad at the moment.

Sonia Nolan: 8:47

A visible signal almost, isn't it? Tell me about sibling grief. Because I suspect that that is different again, for children who've lost a sibling, not not just a parent, but you know, a sibling, in fact.

Shelly Skinner: 9:04

So most often, when a sibling dies, it is after an illness. And so the before the death part is really challenging as well. Because as a parent, it's impossible to know how to divide your time and divide your attention between your children when you have one child who needs to be in hospital or is requiring extra care, and your other children who need you as well. So, children, siblings, who've had a sibling with a disability or a life limiting illness who die will often say "I didn't feel like I was the priority. I felt like life was really hard. Perhaps no one came to my school assemblies. I didn't really know who was picking me up after after school. Like I didn't have a consistent bed time" those types of things. And then after their sibling dies, they watch their family be so sad and distressed, that they don't want to cause trouble. They don't want to make their family or their parents more sad. So they will often say, "I just try really hard to be good." So they see their job in two ways, I guess one is be good. And the other is don't die.

Sonia Nolan: 10:30

A lot of pressure, isn't it?

Shelly Skinner: 10:31

It's a lot of pressure. And again, like we talked about before, they don't want to be seen to be raising menial woes or menial worries when their family have bigger things to worry about. So when they have normal child like concerns or worries, they are reluctant to bring it up because they don't want to cause extra stress, but also feel like

Lauren Breen: 10:57

I think as well as siblings are often our very they're a bit trivial. first playmates, you know, our partners in crime against the parents, all of that kind of stuff. So that loss of that relationship, obviously can be big in it, there's ongoing challenges that, you know, I'll never get to be an auntie or an uncle to that person's children, or they'll never get to be an auntie and uncle to my children. All of those kinds of challenges. And you know, often it's one of the first questions that you're ever asked when you meet a new person, whether it's in a romantic sense, or a friend, you know, oh, how many siblings do you have? And you have to find a way to answer that question constantly. So yeah, it's a sort of, in some ways, kind of, I guess, a niche experience, but also really, clearly an important one. And something that a lot of siblings who are bereaved siblings actually do find some connection with each other.

Shelly Skinner: 11:54

And often siblings will say that it was the good one who died. So the one who was good at sport, or the one who was the cleverest, or whatever it is, so they feel like they're never going to live up to their siblings kind of status.

Lauren Breen: 12:13

And once someone's died, they get to be perfect.

Sonia Nolan: 12:16

They're immortalised. Yeah, it's true.

Shelly Skinner: 12:20

And then, particularly if you're, if your sibling was older, then you know the moment you're older than them, like how does that work? You're not supposed to ever be older than them. And if you go to high school, and they never got to go to high school, or you get your driver's licence, and so that's a, you know, it's a grief for your parents, but it should be a moment of celebration for you. And how do you as a family navigate all that's, it's really tricky.

Lauren Breen: 12:48

Yeah, and certainly someone I know who's a bereaved sibling who's only sibling died, said, said to me once, well, you know, my parents at least had each other. I didn't have anybody.

Sonia Nolan: 12:59

That's hard. There's just so many different perspectives that aren't there? And it is not just one simple,"Someone has died, you grieve," if only those stages did work, Lauren, you know that would be so much easier. If we could just get the handbook out and follow that path, then it would be much more simple, but it's just not, it's just not.

Shelly Skinner: 13:20

And then if you think, again, I guess about the

Sonia Nolan: 13:20

Every family is different. You've just made me cultural side of things. You know, we have a number of Aboriginal families who come through our Lionheart programme. And just the layer upon layer of grief for them in so many different ways, is so hard for them to unpack, because once you start pulling a thread on a woollen jumper, it just unravels and and we need to make sure that we're not unravelling anyone in a way that either we can't put them back together in those two days. But also that they're not going home to an environment where people, there's a safety net for them. So it's a very delicate balance, and a challenge because every family is different. think of something in that. I've recently heard a couple of people say, "Oh, and you know, my father chose, you know, not to have a funeral or so and so chose not to have a funeral." And, and these people were then feeling really I don't know that they weren't able to start the grieving process in a I guess, more linear way because their loved one had chosen not to have a formal farewell. Is there any research on that or any thoughts on that, Lauren?

Lauren Breen: 14:39

I think one of the things that is often encouraged is to talk about what you want in you know, for your funeral, or even for you know, for your care as you get older and end of life and all of those kinds of things, but I also have in the back of my mind the question of well, who isn't going to be for though? Because obviously, you might want to honour the wishes of the person who's dying. But those wishes might might or might not align with what you actually want in order to, you know, remember them and to honour them. And, and so maybe part of the discussion is actually about saying, "well, oh, it's interesting that you've decided that you, maybe you've indicated a preference that you don't want a funeral? Because I actually think that I might actually really like that. Could we have - are you open to having a discussion about that?" Yeah, because I think sometimes it can be very different, what the person who's dying would like, versus what everyone in the family might like, let alone the people within the family might also have very different perspectives. So this idea that the family has this amorphous view on something is obviously clearly problematic as well.

Shelly Skinner: 15:53

And I think it's so important in today, that we're having these conversations, because having someone in your family die, is incredibly challenging anyway. And you'll have people have differing opinions, they'll have different ideas about what to do with the money and what to do with ritual and what to do with the person's belongings. But if we think back even before that, if we think about things like organ donation, or voluntary assisted dying, or if we think about writing a will, who's going to get what, these types of things, if we, if we're not preparing our family and our loved ones, to know what to expect, when the time comes, then those things can really divide a family. So what could have been just a sad experience because you know, Nana died, could actually become something that splits a family apart, and has long term consequences.

Sonia Nolan: 16:52

I want to flick back to something that you said earlier, Lauren, you talked about some of the physiological type of expressions of grief, you know, things like, you know, your head feels muddled. And I think then Shelly, you said something about, you know, it's recognised that sometimes it takes a good two years before your body actually can function fully again. So I'd really love to understand more of that the physiological symptoms of grief.

Lauren Breen: 17:23

Yeah, a lot of grieving people will talk about how they feel it in their body, so that there's, it's maybe it's in their chest, there's this heaviness in their chest or somewhere else, or you know, that they're in a brain fog, and they can't concentrate and they couldn't, you know, they had trouble with work and they had to change all their activities with work or a whole bunch of different things. And there can be different immune responses. And you know, I remember speaking with one bereaved mum who said to me, you know,"inside I'm haemorrhaging, on the outside, I look normal." But that's how she described it.

Shelly Skinner: 17:59

And kids will say, I have trouble sleeping. I have bad dreams, or I just have a tummy ache, or I just have a headache. So I think it shows itself in so many different ways. Parents will talk to us about anger, like lots of anger flareups or they say that grief really polarises who you are. So if you're someone who's quite shy and quiet anyway, that you might become more withdrawn. If you're someone who's a bit of a jokester, it might kind of make that come to the front, if you're someone who likes to talk things through, might do bit more of that. But it is it is kind of all encompassing.

Sonia Nolan: 18:43

So when we're talking about grief as the end of something that's important. So we talk about that potentially in the format of like divorce or alienation of a parent or something that sees the parents are still alive, but not present in the home anymore. So just Lionheart deal with that or is mainly about the death and bereavement element.

Shelly Skinner: 19:09

So at the moment our programme, so our camps and

Sonia Nolan: 19:11

And that's l our drumbeat and our Lionheart lounge are working on bereavement and grief. However, as part of our strategic plan, we are looking in the future to start looking at grief as a whole. So certainly in our education programmes that we do in schools. We do talk about the grief of divorce and separation of FIFO, of living with a disability, of all the challenges because that's what schools are facing.

Shelly Skinner: 19:45

And they're such transferrable concepts. Which is so incredibly important. So certainly we are a children's bereavement and family bereavement service currently, but we do teach those life skills kind of about grief.

Lauren Breen: 20:03

And I think those kinds of things are really important to recognise but are often under recognised that people might, you know, one of the myths of grief is that "oh, I can only experience that if someone has died," which of course isn't the case. So talking about it and realising that, "oh, I can have a grief response because of this non death loss, or this non death loss" is also really important for us to recognise, but something that can often be what's called disenfranchised. So it's not something that's socially recognised or socially sanctioned as a real loss. So you might hear that a lot. People might say, like, if a pet dies, for example, you know that it's not a real loss. But of course, that pet might have been a key part of the family for 17 years, it's absolutely an important loss. And you can have quite a big grief response to that. And same with other kinds of non death losses.

Shelly Skinner: 21:03

And I think it's such a unique moment in time to be able to have discussions in this space, because COVID has afforded us I guess, an opportunity that the entire world is talking about the fragility of life and about dying, and about what that looks like and what the practices are.

Sonia Nolan: 21:27

The idea of healthy grief is something we've been talking about today. What does unhealthy grief look like?

Lauren Breen: 21:38

So this is something that's been very controversial, I guess, over several decades, whether or not there even can be something that is, I guess, a pathological form of grief that is like mental illness. And it's, yeah, been very, very controversial. It is, there is a condition called prolonged grief disorder that's now recognised by the American Psychiatric Association in their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and also recognised by the World Health Organisation in the International Classification of Diseases. But getting there, as I said, has been quite controversial. And I think it's been interesting because a lot of people might believe in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, for example. And there's more research with more evidence for the existence of prolonged grief disorder than there was for PTSD before that was recognised and included in those kinds of diagnostic manuals. So what I guess what it is this very, very high intensity grief that stays at a very high intensity over a very lengthy time, that impacts hugely on all aspects of your life and your ability to function. And that is something that's also related to then physical health concerns, and potentially suicidality as well. And that it is something that can be - there can be good interventions for so there can be appropriate treatments for. So it's not necessarily- it's certainly not a common experience when someone is bereaved. It's you know, a fairly small percentage of people who might experience grief, just such an intensity and over such a length of time, and has such a big impact on their functioning. But yeah, it's definitely still quite a controversial idea. So some people don't like it at all. And yeah, so I think there's, there's that idea around, that most people will grieve normally. And then the very small proportion, perhaps who will need a completely different set of interventions or a different level of support.

Shelly Skinner: 23:59

And what we say to kids at camp in terms of unhealthy and healthy grieving styles is, so long as you're not hurting yourself, hurting someone else, or hurting something else, then you're doing okay.

Sonia Nolan: 24:16

Describe to me the process of somebody coming to Lionheart after the death of of a parent.

Shelly Skinner: 24:22

Yeah, it's actually really timely question to ask because we're about to go to some funders to try and pilot a new grief pathway. Because what we're finding is that at the moment, we provide services for families about six months after the death, which is when we tend to find people are ready for group work and ready for peer support and ready for camp space onwards, but families are saying it's the first six months that they really wish they'd had someone to walk beside them. So we are looking really closely at our kind of our families journeys with us at the moment, and so it always starts with new family camp at the moment. And then over time, families offered to come to Drumbeat. Or they're offered to do our online programme, which is Lionheart Lounge, which has over a space of a few weeks, and everyone does it online from home and we send out activity packs week by week, which is super fun. Our last theme was superheroes, every week it was a different activity.

Sonia Nolan: 25:27

So they're not necessarily grief based these activities or they are.

Shelly Skinner: 25:30

So they all have... it's a bit like vegetables in the spaghetti bolognese, you wouldn't know it. Because to be fair, if you said to your six year old, you know,"I'm really sorry, mums died. Let's go and talk about all that sadness with a bunch of strangers on the school holidays." Then you'll go, "That sounds amazing. I can't wait."

Sonia Nolan: 25:54

Yes, it's all how you sell it. It's a hard sell, sure.

Shelly Skinner: 25:59

And what we find, though, is that when people arrive at camp, they are terrified, and rightly so. But within half an hour, the kids have just made best friends. And it doesn't feel like work. Because all of the activities are fun based, they're all practical based, they're all movement based. And they all have therapeutic intention behind them. But it's like a big camp for kids. I honestly, they come terrified. And then on the end of the second day, they're like, can we come back tomorrow? Can we do it again next weekend, which is lovely. But once we build that network and connection, we don't want them to lose that either. And so by having the periodic ongoing programmes, we have Children's Grief Awareness day in November. And we hold a big picnic for every family who's ever come to Lionheart before and we do a lantern ceremony, which families all love. And that's beautiful. We hold different events kind of throughout the year, we also then have started doing a returning family camp. And so coming to campus a once off doesn't allow for those periodical ups and downs throughout life. And so by coming back and revisiting their grief and revisiting their support networks and their systems and their friends, gives them an opportunity to say when I came last time, you know, this is how I told my story. And this is what my life looked like. But this year, this is how I tell my story. And this is how I think about my dad. And you know what, I didn't realise it. But I've come so far. I thought I was still just really stuck. But I've like incorporated or integrated grief so well into my life, or I've done so well. And what I love about our returning family camps is that at the end, so at the end of first camp, you come and there's a graduation ceremony where you get a certificate and it's beautiful. But at the end of returning family, can we get the parents to stand up the front and talk about how they've seen the progress in their child. So it's a lot of crying, it's very emotional.

Sonia Nolan: 28:11

And I'm feeling quite emotional just hearing you talk about it. Because I imagine that you're emotionally spent by the end of these, these weekend camp, but also, I guess so uplifted that you've given them some tools to actually make it easier going forward.

Shelly Skinner: 28:28

And it's beautiful, because parents will often say, particularly if they've lost a spouse. If they've lost a spouse, if their spouse has died.

Sonia Nolan: 28:36

That's right, use the proper terminology.

Shelly Skinner: 28:40

They'll often say, "I don't have time to delight in my children anymore. I don't have time to just spend with them. Because I have twice as many jobs. And I don't have as much brain space and I don't have as much emotional space. And there was a reason I wasn't doing those jobs anyway, I didn't like them. I didn't know how to do them. Not good at them." So many people come and say "our internet stopped. And I was never the one who did that. So we haven't had internet for six months. And so if my child needs to do their homework, they go to the neighbor's because I haven't worked out how to sort the internet out." And so allowing families the opportunity to stand in front of others, to be witness to them saying I'm so proud of you. You know if we can get through this last 12 months we can get through anything. And because you were strong because you were kind because you whatever, that helped us get to where we are and I'm so proud of you. Just offering people that validation in that space is so powerful.

Sonia Nolan: 29:39

I'm sort of reflecting on - there's few moments in life, I believe, when we give ourselves permission to be completely vulnerable and raw and allow ourselves to speak at that deeper level. And when those moments are presented to you they are such a gift. They're so scary, but they're such a gift. And there just aren't many of those milestones in life, I think anymore, where we, where we have those opportunities. I don't know, I just sort of have been reflecting on that in regards to weddings. And in regards to certainly funerals, and milestone birthdays, you know, people just don't want the fuss and they don't want to talk about things. But they're moments where you can, I think, be raw, vulnerable, and, and reflect. And I think we should take more of that in life.

Shelly Skinner: 30:35

Absolutely. And I think one of the things that beautiful about camp is because by the end of two days, families do feel connected, and they do feel safe, and they do feel part of a community. But when someone in your life is really close to you has died, and you realise that life is vulnerable. Sometimes you do, take those opportunities presented that you didn't before. "I'm going to make the most of being able to tell my child I love them. I'm going to make the most of being able to tell my child that I'm so proud of them. Because I know that there might not be tomorrow." There probably will. But in case there's not, I'm gonna take this opportunity where if your family's never been touched by death or grief, then you kind of don't know that you need to like harness it and embrace it and make the most of it.

Sonia Nolan: 31:25

Yeah, really true that fragility when you know just how fragile it can be. Yeah, you appreciate it a lot more.

Shelly Skinner: 31:31

Yeah absolutely.

Lauren Breen: 31:32

Certainly we've found that in research with bereaved people saying that they've value life in a different way. And they don't sweat the small stuff anymore. They focus their time on the things that really matter or that it's, you know, those family relationships or friends relationships or becoming more compassionate when thinking about others and their experiences. So yeah, there can be those kinds of really bigger picture changes of us on the inside, too.

Sonia Nolan: 32:03

You mentioned music, and I want to just bring us back to Drumbeat. Tell me about that programme.

Shelly Skinner: 32:11

So it's the Holyoake Drumbeat programme. And the reason we started looking at that programme was about, I don't know, three or four years ago now Lauren, we had a young boy who came to camp who had witnessed the death of his mum, by a drug overdose, and he was living with his grandma. And he never talked about his mum. And it was it was grandma's daughter. So she wanted to talk about her daughter. And this young boy did not want to talk about mum at all, and just didn't. And he was really into music, and was doing classical piano lessons, a few other bits and pieces. And he came to camp and he kind of set off a little bit to the side and he was a bit aloof and he was the joking and very good looking kind of kid as well. So got by on his looks got by on his humour, and his charm. And it got to the end of camp and the team was saying, like, just not sure that this fellow got anything out of camp, like I'm not sure that we just got there for him. And his grandma called the next day to say that he'd gone home and written a song, all about how his mum had died, and how he was there, and they were walking down the street, and his man came and gave her some drugs and just was this beautiful song that he wrote. And about when she was dead, he didn't know who was going to look after him. And then grandma came and just beautiful song. And so it was around that time we started talking about music and how we could incorporate that into our programme being very small, not for profit with no money and no staff. How do we then add this element to our service offering? And this young boy about a year later was really struggling in school. And so being a small charity offered us the ability to start a mentoring programme. And so we paired him up with one of our team members. And they started what we call the Music Mentor Programme. And we said,"Can you write a song, can you write a piece of music about anything you like that has something to do with grief." And he decided that he wanted to write a song about Lionheart to show all other kids what it was about, so that they would all come to camp if they needed to. And so he wrote the Lionheart song. And he then got the other kids who had been to camp over the years on board and we went to an official music recording studio. And we knew it was, like they knew it was legitimate because Justin Bieber had recorded there.

Sonia Nolan: 34:44

Oh my gosh, must be real.

Shelly Skinner: 34:46

And so Justin Bieber had left his sunglasses, so it was all very legitimate. They were very excited. And they played different musical instruments in saying and we did a professional recording of this song. And just the sense of accomplishment and confidence that these kids had made us realise we really needed to incorporate some music into our programme. Because as Lauren touched on before, after someone dies, like, it's generally accepted that for about two years, you can't concentrate, you can't sit still, you can't sleep. You can't recall on any kind of knowledge, that's in your brain. And it's hard to take in new knowledge. So what this means for kids at school is that they feel like they're failing, and that their grades often drop, we tend to find it goes one of two ways. One is they just become very studious and become, that's their avenue, and they become very good at school, or things just start to slip. And they then feel like they're failing at that. They're failing at kind of being happy, they're failing at supporting their family, and now they're failing at school. And so we try to find any opportunity to be able to have a confidence build, a life skill lesson. And so music is definitely one way we do that. We use stem smart, be stem smart. do pro bono coding, robotics and moviemaking for us twice a year, which the kids love. And we try to offer as many opportunities to succeed and to build confidence and to engage in that learning kind of again, as much as possible. And that's where Drumbeat was born for us.

Lauren Breen: 36:22

I think one of the things that Lionheart is really, really good at is seeing each child and each family as full complex humans, it's not just this thing that has happened to them. It's yeah, it's part of their whole story.

Sonia Nolan: 36:37

You mentioned, Lauren, about you know, you might be in the shopping centre, and you might hear a piece of music, and it just takes you right back to a memory and then it might take you to a place of grief. You know, I call those the waves of grief sort of hitting you out of the blue when you least expect it. And you know, sometimes you just feel like you're drowning in grief, and then you pop up again. So is that, is that a normal experience? It's been a year. It's a bit like, you know, you

Lauren Breen: 37:07

Yes, 100% absolutely normal, because we have these cultural ideas about how grief is supposed to be or wear black for a year, and then you're done. And then you move how it should be. That it's meant to go in a certain way. And then it's meant to end. It makes people who have that very on. So you know, which are some of the rituals, which are normal experience think, "Oh, I must be a bit crazier. This was-this weird thing happened to me today at the shops", and it's not, it's completely normal. There are these strong concepts when or ideas about grief that you meant to move on. And you're meant to find closure. And all these kinds of words like that, that Shelly and I wouldn't, I'm sure typically use, at all, we don't like that. There's no sort of end like I'm done and dusted with my grief today. Boom done. important. But yeah, it is. There isn't a finite time. Yeah. And it's just part of who we are all those losses, just like all the I don't know, achievements, or all the experiences of life are part of who we are. And we take them forward every day. And so grief is definitely like that. It's not something that "I finished it today and now it's behind me. And I'll never think of that person again. And I've got complete closure, and I've moved on" like no, nothing like that. No, I ban those from the vocab.

Sonia Nolan: 38:29

Yeah. So instead of using closure, Shelly, how do you frame it?

Shelly Skinner: 38:35

So we talk with our families about how we incorporate grief into our lives. Because we know that at the time, so call it when the lasagnas stop coming. So at around the six week period when the funeral is done, and everyone goes about their regularly scheduled lives. Then and you know, in Australia, we get four days bereavement leave when someone in your family dies. So that means that after four days, you should be ready to go back to work and get on with things. And so we try to help families to see that it's more about incorporating grief and incorporating that person into your life now and in the future. So it's about making meaning what's meaningful for you in carrying this person forward with you. And so for kids, that can be a bit easier because it's things like "do I have the same hair colour as Dad, do we share the same birthday? He loves dogs and I like dogs, and he likes strawberry milkshakes. And I like strawberry milkshakes." And so all of those things help you to make meaning of your relationship with that person and your identity in that relationship. So every time moving forward, that you have a strawberry milkshake at the shops, then you'll think "oh I'm just like my dad." So about how do you continue having those relationships? I guess the phrase that - the jargon we use is continuing bonds, how do you remain bonded to someone into the future, when they're not kind of in your day to day life, and it's so important for all of us, and it also helps around times, like re partnering. So if your spouse dies, it's important to know that the expectation is that they're - particularly if you have children together, they're going to be part of the ongoing conversation of life, and they're going to be part of your life moving forward. And that that's okay, that doesn't take away from the new love and the new family and the new unit. It's, it's part of incorporating all of that together and that's the tricky bit.

Lauren Breen: 40:56

And there's that saying that "death ends a life but not a relationship." So there's lots and lots of ways we can continue that relationship. And some of those things will of course, depend on cultural issues as well. So it might look quite different for different people in different places. But yeah, for, I guess, those of us in sort of the dominant culture in Australia, it's perfectly normal to have photos up, then to have a conversation with that person, whether it's in your head or even out loud. Or you could make them a birthday cake for their birthday or set a spot for them at Christmas or at holiday gatherings or other kinds of things that you can do, that they can still be part of your life and that can still be very, very normal and doesn't necessarily mean that you're stuck in your grief or that you, you know, need to have medication for your grief or anything like that.

Shelly Skinner: 41:47

There's so many ways and the important thing is just working out what works for you and your family.

Sonia Nolan: 41:54

Thanks to Lionheart CEO Shelly Skinner and Professor Lauren Breen for their generosity and sharing their knowledge and insights on grief with us around the Warm Table. Be sure to listen to part one, if you skipped that one, on this very important topic about the human experience. And a note that Lionheart is a not for profit charitable organisation, I'd encourage you to support their work into the future. Thanks for joining me, Sonia Nolan, around the Warm Table. Let's grow the community please follow My Warm Table podcast on socials and like and share this episode with your family and friends. My Warm Table is brought to you by Females Over 45 Fitness. Keep listening now for a health tip from FOFF head coach Kelli Reilly.

Introductory Voice Over of Previous Guests: 43:33

Hi, it's Kelli Reilly founder and head coach of Females Over 45 Fitness or FOFF for short. Strength training and menopause ladies, right, go hand in hand. Strength training helps with your muscle mass. It can help with osteoporosis, helps with your bone density loss can help with your metabolism rate by keeping it high and even help with your stress levels. So really try and get out there and get some strength training in because it's really important as we age and go into those more mature years keep us out of wheelchairs and Zimmer frames. So remember ladies, it's your time to shine.