You just lost your loved one. Now what? Welcome to the Grief and Life podcast, where we explore this new reality through grief colored lenses. Openly, authentically. I'm your host, Nina Rodriguez. Let's get started. Everyone else rushed me past the agony, but grief is the one and only voice that told me. Take as long as you need. That's a quote by James Park. He's a hospital chaplain and author with a book coming out called As Long As Your Need. And I believe it's going to be released this April 20, 24. As of this recording, we are in February. We're actually the week of Valentine's Day. And I wanted to check in with you because season two is about the make up of grief, the anatomy of grief, like what is grief? If we could just pick it apart? What are the components that comprise grief so that we can better understand the operating mechanism, the language, the processes, even though there's no one size fits all and grief for everybody looks completely different. But we could at least attempt to see what are the elements that a lot of people experience in common, even if that experience is different for everybody. So one of those aspects is grief, time, and it's what I call grief time, right? And that has many components in and of itself. But breaking it down into the simplest form, there is something about loss that changes our perception of time. It alters our perception of time, it impacts it. So time, for all intents and purposes, still obeys a 24 hour period. But that's not the part that changes. It's really our perception, how we experience it as compared to before our loss and how we experience it after a loss. I don't like to speak for people. That's usually why I use myself as an example in these cases. But grief time was very warped. I lost my brother in 2019. I remember a week in a day blended together, a day and a month blended together, months and weeks blended together, day and night blended together. And so when somebody would ask like, Hey, look that last week, or was that two weeks ago, it was extremely hard for me to understand what that question was. And it sounds silly maybe to somebody who hasn't experienced this, but to rebirth, it's a very real thing. Sometimes you even go days without sleeping and because of the stress and everything that's happening surrounding the loss. But there are other ways that grief time is impacted. The first thing is that grief asks for you to spend time with it. In a way it demands that you slow down. I reframe it in a way that grief is an invitation to slow down, and that's something that I'm able to say now after four and a half years. And actually it's exactly four years and six months yesterday. So today's February 12th and my brother's four year and six month anniversary was yesterday. So exactly four and a half years ago he passed. And in that time, I've been able to reframe how I experienced this grief, the grief time and all these concepts that I'm going to talk about. So in my early grief, this would sound a bit bizarre, but now, with some distance in between, I could say Grief invites you to slow down. Back then, maybe I would have said Grief knocks you on your butt and forces you to stop. So it would have been worded a little different, but. Grief asks you to slow down. It asks you to stop. Sometimes it demands your attention and your energy. So much of grief is spending energy and processing, right? So what can this look like? I was just interviewing a future podcast guest. I'll leave that for for later. You could subscribe to the channel to see who it is, but we were talking about the importance of setting time aside to release the grief. If you've been here a while, you've heard my earlier episodes where I promised myself I learned about chocolate Zuba cardiomyopathy, which is broken heart syndrome. The symptom itself is not, to my understanding, something that can cause you to lose your life, but it does affect your health significantly or has the potential to. Right. And I realized that a lot of that is because people hold it in or that was my understanding when I read the article. I believe it's the first or second episode. So go back to episode one or two. I talk about this in detail and and I quote the study where this came out says Taco Zuba Cardiomyopathy. I remember learning about Broken Heart Syndrome back then and thinking, one thing is very clear I refuse to let grief live in my bones inside of me. I promised myself that I would release it, and in talking to other grievances, they've had a similar experience. We thankfully live in a time and day where there's a social aspect to processing grief through social media. For example, there's more people talking about it, there's more information readily available. That's why perhaps earlier generations had such a difficult time processing their grief. It was not culturally accepted to speak about it. It was like, toughen up and swallow your pride and swallow your grief and slow swallow your pain and keep moving on or keep going on. I'm forgetting the phrase right now, but it's essentially the keep going carry on phrase. And there was very little time for examining or processing or giving room for grief to be witnessed and processed and expressed. Thankfully, that's changing. This podcast is part of that change. A lot of the social media accounts you see are part of that change. A lot of people are writing books about it, and there's a bigger public discourse about the need to express grief. So how does this relate to time? One aspect is literally dedicating time to your grief, whatever that looks like. I've heard the phrase the you have to schedule your time and that sounds nice. But if you've grieved before, you know that grief is not tidy, it doesn't fit on a schedule, it kind of does its own thing doesn't care if you have a meeting or a big project or something with your kid. It's very indifferent to your personal schedule and it doesn't stick to calendar. So if you can do that, great. If that works for you, if that concept works for you about scheduling your grief, that's great. What I'm saying is something a little bit more fluid and more organic. It's allow yourself, especially in the times of big overwhelm, maybe even to create a practice of allowing yourself some time to dedicate to your grief. So what does this even mean? This can look like journaling. It's a very simple act. It's a very powerful act where you empty all of these emotions in whatever form they go. That could be just writing thoughts as they come down. It could be writing a letter to your loved one. It could be writing an article. It could be writing a book. It could be writing one sentence every day. That describes how your experience was that day. But at the end of the day, you have this collection of experiences that you can look back on and see how they have shifted over time. Having that path, like leaving those breadcrumbs to where it all started, helps you see how you process have you come along. And in my case, sometimes even gives me a little bit of nostalgia because I remember that early, early grief, that first year grief was so intense. And when I read those entries from year one, it's almost like I almost feel like a different person. Like that version of me completely shifted and changed. And yet I appreciate having that ability to look back on that time and feel that energy of closeness to the event. Not the sadness part, but the closeness to a time when my brother was alive. So that's one way of setting time aside for your grief. Another one is movement. So whether it's through exercise or dance or stretches, walking, anything, grief is very physical. There's a very physical component to grieve. I told myself I wasn't going to let it settle in my bones, and part of that is movement and making sure that you get some air in your lungs. Right. And I mean it quite literally. If you've read anything about acupuncture or energy centers in your body or Eastern medicine or even western medicine, you will have probably read that grief affects your lungs. Right. So a lot of people who are. Grieving. Their lungs are affected. We live in a time after 2020. Everybody knows what happened in 2020, that making sure that your lungs are working properly is even more important and more relevant. So if grief affects the lungs, dedicate time to breath, work something to strengthen your lungs, to create that moment of awareness and meditation and dedication to yourself and your body To set that time aside, grieve, do some breath, work, and slow down. Right? Another one could be crying, just expressing your feelings. Releasing tears. Crying is the body's mechanism. It's a self cleansing mechanism and it's a beautiful way to release energy. You could also have some time for reflection. Just go on a walk or go somewhere solitary. Go by the beach, by the mountains, wherever you are located, sit on your balcony in front of your house, in your cars. Some people do it in the car. It doesn't matter where for a moment to just kind of slow down and allow your thoughts to say, man, this actually happens sometimes. We're afraid to do that because we think it's just we're going to go down that rabbit hole and not be able to stop. But I've met people who are afraid to feel their feelings because they say, if I if I open that door, it's not going to be able to be closed. Right. And that is a real fear. I honor that. I also know that you are able to stop it. So much of the process of grief is returning agency to yourself and understanding that you are in control despite how good this may feel. And that's a process allowing yourself a certain amount of time to let, say, process some of the paperwork after somebody passes away. There's so much paperwork. Gosh. So allowing yourself, let's say, 45 minutes to filing whatever you need to file, on sending that email, on sending that paperwork, on paying whatever needs to be paid. And when that 45 minute mark, kids, you have a hard stop no matter what you're doing, you stop because the point is to, yes, move the needle along in the things that you have to do, for example, and also prove to yourself that you can stop and contain these overwhelming emotions. That's also a very good practice in returning agency to yourself during grief. Another thing could be to reward yourself for completing the task. So let's say I'm going to complete 45 minutes of paperwork that I need to do that I've been avoiding forever and ever. So I do that I have a hard stop at the 45 minute mark and then I'm going to reward myself by walking my dog at the park. I enjoy that. So if if you enjoy that too, or just whatever it is that you enjoy, in my case, I would walk my dog at the park and just see him play and that would be a reward for me. So scheduling a reward afterwards. Another thing could be listening to music. Music can be so healing. Music has the the words and the sounds that speak to our soul depending on the kind of music, of course. But usually when we're heavy grief, that processing tends to tune us to songs that tend to be a little bit on the sadder side. But they feel so. They feel so soothing in a way. They allow us to feel our feelings through somebody else's words and somebody else's expression of that. So that's one aspect of grief time, which is literally grief demands your time and the need to set aside, to process and to feel your feelings. Essentially, another aspect of grief, time is delayed grief. So if you heard one of my earlier episodes with Judy Lipson, she is in season two. She is the author of Celebration of Sisters. You will know that in her story, her grief was delayed 30 years. And she has a beautiful story about how she now honors her sisters through skating. But it took her 30 years to start grieving, and that is a very real thing. Delayed grief is a very real thing. In her case, her parents. Yeah, two sisters, unfortunately, lost both of them at a young age and her parents didn't speak about it was too painful for them. And like I said earlier, the culture of processing grief openly and publicly wasn't a thing back then. This is a relatively new concept. So back then she just had to go to work and you know, she had daughters of her own. She had to process her own grave. Nobody gave her time off. People weren't into asking how you're feeling. It wasn't a thing. So she went many years and it wasn't until her father was diagnosed with a terminal illness that she then realized how much she had not processed. And so one aspect of that is grief delayed. I really believe, based on my own experience and the experience of other people I've talked to, if you don't deal with it, it will essentially deal with you. Whether it doesn't sound fair, it's not fair at all. None of this is fair, but it manifests one way or another. It demands attention one way or another. So I believe that is the importance of dealing with it, both in the physical way. So like moving it through your body, doing breathwork, addressing it, allowing yourself. To release through tears and emotions, etc., etc.. And there's also the component of It'll wait for you. And even Judy herself knows how it affected certain things throughout her life. You could listen to that podcast episode for more information about that, but using her story as an example of you cannot avoid it. It'll it'll be there. It's very patient, so it'll be there waiting for you, for you to actually address it. Another story that exemplifies delayed grief is one of my best friends. Unfortunately, her husband, her own husband passed away in 911, like the 911 in 2001, the attack on the Twin Towers. He was one of the victims, unfortunately. So she instantly became a single mother to her two children. And 20 years later, they're adults. They leave their house and now she's in the home that she was supposed to build with her husband. And she says it would be less weird for him to walk in through the door right now and for me to think that this was just a bad nightmare then for me to accept that this actually happened and I am supposed to live the rest of my life without him. And this is a woman who has been aware, obviously, that her husband's been gone for 20 years. But in that time, she was in full survival mode, trying to make sure that she created a stable home and and life experience for her children. And now that they're adults, she has that space quite literally within her home and in the context of her calendar. So she has the time to kind of take a breath and say, where was I? What happened? I did it. But my goodness, that is a powerful example. That grief can be delayed, whether it takes 20 years, 30 years, 40, 50. I don't know how long somebody can delay it. At some point you will have to deal with it. You will have to face it. You will have to reckon with it. So the beauty of listening to a podcast like this and other people who are talking about grief very openly is that there is a communal normalization about these conversations and about what needs to be done. And no one person has an answer. It's just what works for you. So you have to find that thing that works for you. So another aspect of grief is that it is non-linear. It's not Monday through Sunday. It is, well, one, it's a manmade construct in the first place. But that's not what we're talking about here. Have you heard the expression of grief comes in waves? I think that's one of the first expressions I heard literally week one after my brother died. And it's one of the most common expressions I've heard. Any time you mention the word grief is that it comes in waves. By definition, a wave is not a line. So that's a really good, succinct way of saying that it does not stick to a tidy, linear sequence. Initially, the waves are very strong and in a way they have a cadence that you can almost expect them. But as time goes by, those waves get fewer and far between. And they're they tend to feel a little bit more manageable or they don't catch you off guard as often. But when they catch you off guard, man, it's almost like you're back to square one. And that makes Greece non-linear. If you've seen a picture of your loved one, seeing that picture can bring you right back to the day that it happened. Or if you smell something that reminds you of them, like the body remembers your senses. Remember, sometimes those senses are triggered at times where you weren't expecting that to happen. And yet that's that moment brought you back to the reality of the loss as if it had just happened. Even though years have gone by. I know that that's happened to me. I know that a lot of people find that trigger at certain places like grocery stores or while they're in their car, something triggers it, right. The other is the perception of time, especially early grief. For example, a month could feel like an eternity and a blink in time is actually those early days. The early days are so intense and they're so disorienting. Or they can be, in most cases, that the grief feels as if it happened yesterday, even though it's been six months. Also, sometimes you'll feel emotions swell up randomly when you're maybe at work or just doing something seemingly unrelated. This could be a huge trigger and it affects the perception of time to some people. It may seem like a surprise that six months later, a year later, three years later, a person is still grieving. But in my case, for example, it took me three and a half years to come out of the fog. So exactly a year ago is when I started to feel like where was I standing before all of this happened? But it took three and a half years where it was very disorienting. And if you go by any of the standards that most people expect. To follow. For quote unquote, coming back to your life three and a half years seems like a very long time. And yet you talked to many grievously three and a half years. It's a blink. It's a blink and an eternity in grief time. And on top of that, anybody who lost a loved one recently think about the event that happened in 2020. Think about that and how that warped everybody's sense of time. So where we're in 2024 now, beginning of 2024, but isn't there like a year missing there just because of everything that happened with the pandemic in 2020? So it's the same concept with grief. There is something a little bit disorienting about it or very disorienting about it that warps your sense of time. It's that same concept as that famous question of, Can you remember where you were on 911? And most people can, because it was something that really marked that moment versus Can you remember what you had for lunch last Tuesday? So unless last Tuesday was a very special day for you, most people won't remember what you had for lunch or it'll take you a moment to remember. Right? But if I ask you, where were you on 911? You remember right away it's that same concept. It's something that marked our lives so significantly that it the memory of it takes us right back to that time and it feels as if no time has gone by. And I remember this reminds me of a colleague. She was going home for the holidays and she said, oh, I don't want to see my grandma because she keeps talking about my grandfather who passed away 20 years ago. I wish she would just get over it. And at the time I was fresh from my grief and I just looked at her and I said, gosh, 20 years, two days. It's all the same thing. It not literally, but in the sense of our heart and the pain and the longing that we feel for that person. There's a reason her grandma misses her husband, especially during the holidays. That could be a very strong triggering time for the person we have to normalize. There's a bit of a disconnect when a person is grieving, when you've suffered of a life altering loss, experiencing timelessness, it is normal in the context of grief. So we have to see what normal is in which context. So particularly for early grief, some say that it could last 1 to 3 years, but really there's no set timeline because it differs for everybody. And there are circumstances that impact how long it takes a person to process that early grief or as I like to say to come out of the fog. It depends to the relationship of the person who died. The worst loss is the one that we feel the most. First of all, I want to normalize that. But obviously our losses are going to be the most significant ones. But there are layers to certain losses because let's say somebody's passing away from natural causes peacefully in their bed at the age of 110, let's say, you know, a very well lived long life may not carry as many layered elements as losing a child. Or losing somebody to a car accident and maybe it was caused by a drunk driver, let's say. So there are layers upon layers to the losses or losing all of your siblings or all of your families are all of your stability. So there are layers that maybe need to be unpacked more carefully and take longer to unpack than other losses. Right. It's all about the relationship to the person you lost, the circumstances surrounding their death and how much support a person has. The one thing that influences the outcome of somebody's grief, experience or loss is how heard and supported the person felt in their early grief. Repetition of stories of feelings is part of the processing of especially early grief. So if you have somebody that years and years and years after is still repeating the same thing, they probably didn't have the opportunity to process early on or they had limited support and they're still processing all of this. That's not to say somebody who had support will never talk about it. That's not to say that. But typically when you have somebody who's repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating, it is a sign that they were not supported. So allowing our person to speak and repeat the stories over and over again, even though we've heard them 20 times, it's part of the process and it's part of how we get to remember them. And in my case, for example, even to this day when I say, Oh, my brother died. Every single time I say it, there's something visceral. There's a visceral reaction within me that's like, well, that actually happened, right? I'm not going to get into, for example, when it becomes acute grief or prolonged grief, as they say, because, one, I'm not a doctor or a therapist. I'm not qualified to say that. In any case, at any point, if you ever feel like you need help, it is always, always a good idea to seek out help. But the point is that when you see fresh expressions of grief many years out, you can see who had support, understanding and validation during the early days. With all of the said, there are different aspects of grief and this is not a comprehensive list, but it's to give you some context as to the operating mechanisms and how it's perceived and how the time doesn't stick to this clean meat. Consecutive sequential timeline. Right. The first thing we talked about was setting time aside for grief. It demands to be witnessed and experienced and it demands your time. So setting that time aside to do what you need to do, to process, to journal, to move, to cry, to reflect, to do the paperwork, to listen to music. All of that is very important. Or the fact that it could be delayed for a lot of people. It's not strange that especially perhaps if you come from a family or cultural or a generation that did not was not open to processing grief publicly, that delay may be reflected 20, 30, 40 years afterwards or longer, who knows So if you meet somebody who said, you know, I lost my person 30 years ago, but I hadn't really thought about it until now. It is quite possible that this is the time when they're ready to grieve and they may need that support that they didn't get early on. Another aspect is that grief is non-linear. It comes in waves, it doesn't stick to a timeline. It could be fresh. It's an eternity and a blink in time all at the same time. And that is very real in early grief and it could also be very real in later grief. To add to that story, I remember I spoke to this woman. It was at her funeral, a relative's funeral, and there was a woman there who was introduced to me as the mother of I'm not going to say his name, but this person, let's say Michael Wright, Michael's mother and Michael passed 19 years ago. And I look at her and I say, oh, so basically yesterday and the look on her face, I remember her saying, thank you for saying that. Thank you. And she meant it. She was very touched by that comment because in her heart, 19 years ago and yesterday, the day that she lost her son are all the same thing. She's function. She's she had other children, but her heart remembers her son like it was yesterday. And I think honoring that is a beautiful thing and it actually helps people. So the whole concept of Blink and an Eternity and your emotional triggers and how photos can bring memories back is very real. Having your coping strategies, so normalizing that there's no timeline and grief, taking off that pressure that maybe you feel something's wrong with you. If you feel like it's both an eternity and a blink in time, it's not. That's part of the process for so many of us. And talking about it, open yourself up if you need to. Right. Some people keep it a little bit closer to the chest, but talking about it is important. And lastly, there's this concept that I learned from Meghan Divine. She's the author of It's Okay Not To Be Okay. I recently took her course and she calls this the right time horizon. So the right time horizon is when you ask yourself, what is it that I need to do to feel safe to get through this next moment? So much of grief is that fear of what's going to happen next. I don't know how I'm going to survive this. How am I supposed to live my life like this? If you lost a spouse, do I remarried? Do I stay single my whole life? How am I going to take care of my kids? How am I going to live my life this way? And the right time horizon basically says, cross that bridge. When you get there, you you're not that person yet. Right now, you need to get through today. And so when you look at the future, you shorten that timeline to the present. That's how you get through the next moments and the next moment. So much of grief, especially early loss, is feels like survival. And it really quite literally is. Instead of worrying, what am I going to do 30 years from now or even five years from now or even a month from now? Ask yourself, what does the next moment look like? What do the next 5 minutes look like? What does the next minute look like and come back to center? Because what you have to deal with is enough for the moment. So stay here until you take another tiny step forward. Tiny step forward. Tiny step forward and step by step. I know it's cliche, but it's so true. Step by step is how you move forward. But sometimes looking at that long term horizon is not helpful because that is a time that doesn't exist yet. There are too many elements to predict what's going to happen and you are not that person yet. Wait till you become that person. Wait till you are in a different place, in a different headspace, in a different emotional space, and wait till life plays out the way that it needs to. In the meantime, come back to center, have a time anchor so focused on what you need to do to get through this moment. What does life look like right now? How can I get through this next moment? I leave you with that. Life is a series of tiny steps forwards. Together, you can make leaps and bounds in the context of grief. It is an invitation to slow down. It's an invitation to address it. It's an invitation to be present so that you can get through the next moment. So I'll leave you with a quote from Leeann Friesen. She is the creator of Grieving Room. Her quote says, Grief takes room in our bodies. And that means it needs room in our schedules. It needs room. It needs time. That's it for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe to the Grief and Light podcast and also love to connect with you and hear your thoughts and your stories. Feel free to share them with me at my Instagram page at Grief and Light. Or you can also visit Grief and Light dot com for more information and updates. Thank you so much for being here, for being you. And always remember, you are not alone.