Grief Speaks Out with Jan Warner

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Hi there, welcome to Grief to Growth Podcast. Your host is Brian D Smith, spiritual seeker, bestselling author, grief survivor, and life coach. Brian believes that the worst tragedies of life provide the greatest opportunity for growth. Brian D Smith says he was planted, not buried, and he is here to help you grow where you've been planted by the difficulties in life. In each episode, Brian and his guests will share what has helped them to survive and thrive. It is his sincere hope this episode helps you today.

Everybody, this is Brian D Smith back with another episode of Grief to Growth. And today I've got with me Jan Warner. When Jan Warner's husband died, she felt an intensity of grief that she hadn't anticipated. Her husband was a recovering alcoholic who spent his sober, sober life being available to other alcoholics and addicts. In order to honor him, she decided to make herself available to other grieving people, thinking if she reached one person, that would be enough. So she started a blog, Stop Thief, Don't Steal My Grief, which even though she doesn't write new posts on anymore, still has over 2,000— often has more than 2,000 hits per month. She has a Facebook page, it's called Grief Speaks Out, and she puts on there 7 posts a day. And there are 2.5 million likes from people all over the world on that page. Her book is called Grief Day by Day: Simple Practices and Daily Guidance for Living with Loss, and it sold almost 70,000 copies and has over 1,800 reviews on Amazon, which is an amazing accomplishment itself. And the majority of those other reviews are 5 stars. She's also been a guest on many podcasts. She's a vagabond who has been to all 7 continents, and she's involved in the arts, having produced documentaries And she's currently producer of the Super U musical. Her favorite role in life, though, is being a grandmother. And with that, I want to welcome to Grief to Growth, Jan Warner.

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

It is really great to have you here. It was— we were talking before we start recording about synchronicities in our lives. And I had someone on my podcast who mentioned your name. That's how I found out about you. And I've been on your, on your Facebook page before that, but I didn't know who you were because you're very low-key on your Facebook page. And we'll talk about that, why that's important. And then I also found that we're co-authors of the book Gathering at the Doorway. We each have a chapter in that. And I just, I just learned that just a short while ago, after I'd actually booked you to be on the podcast. So this is all came together kind of interestingly.

Thank you.

It's a smaller world than you think. I had a request last year. I still can't believe this, from somebody from Mongolia. And they have Amazon in Mongolia, and somebody from Malaysia. So especially with grief, it doesn't matter what culture you come from, or what religion you are, or what your background is. When you lose somebody you love, you're sad, and you miss them. So the commonalities are there. I'm somebody that tries to look for commonalities instead of differences.

Yeah, I think you do an excellent job of that. So I know you're— you have a very interesting life. It's kind of hard to know where to start. But let's start with what launched you on this, this journey, particular journey you're on now with helping people with grief. And I know there was a grief event in your life. So if you could talk about your husband.

I have a life that you could edit and make it look extremely exciting. And you could also edit and just find me laying in bed in my pajamas at 1 o'clock in the afternoon and watching horrible TV. So I do both. I always have time. I like wallowing in self-pity, but I try to limit it in time. So I'm like a lot of people. I am successful and I do a lot of things, but it's hard to make it feel like that it's me doing it. But I guess it is. Um, my husband was older than I was, and I thought when he died— because I thought about him dying— that I would be sad and I would miss him. But what I didn't know was I felt like a house in a hurricane that splintered. I didn't know who I was or where I was. I thought he would come get me. I really thought I was somebody that was going to die of heartbreak. I would literally put my hand in the air and wait for him to come get me. He didn't. Um, and then I thought about killing myself. So there's a chapter in suicide— on suicide in my book. And I decided that I couldn't give the grief to people who loved me that I was experiencing. So I didn't start out by having any kind of goal. I just— my only goal was to stay alive. And I went for lots of help in different places, and I bought a plaque that made me laugh saying, "Have an adequate life." And then after a while, I thought, well, I need a reason to be here, because I felt like just a total waste of space. I felt like— I used to say, "We died by mistake," instead of, "He died." I still do sometimes. Um, and as you said, he was a recovering alcoholic, and I thought Well, if he could make himself available to addicts and alcoholics 24 hours a day, I could honor him and make myself available to other grieving people. And if I reached one person, it was enough. I never expected that it would— I hope there's life after death because I want to ask him— I also have a very dark sense of humor. I want to ask him what he thinks about his dying turning into a career because it's just absurd. But I feel extremely humble, that humbled and honored that whatever I say or do or write seems to bring some measure of comfort to people who, when somebody dies, there's really nothing to do unless you can resurrect their loved one, which I can't.

So, right. Tell me about, tell me about your husband's name was Artie, right? So tell me about, so tell me about, you know, meeting him and about your life together.

Well, um, you know the expression a diamond in the rough? People used to call him a rhinestone in the rough. When he was drinking, he was a real down-and-out alcoholic. I didn't know when he was drinking, but he was homeless. And I said to him once, um, when you were homeless, did you look around and say, how do other people have homes to go to and I don't? And he said, no, I just thought about how I could score at the other another drink. So his sobriety was the most important thing to him. When he was dying, somebody offered him a bottle of whiskey. And they told me afterwards, and he said no, and I never did, because I knew that dying sober was important to him as living sober. So that was the most important thing in his life. And I met him when he came in my bookstore. I owned a bookstore all these— all those years ago. And I used to call him the poster boy for men who can't commit because we were together for 10 years before we got married. And I don't know if everybody will understand this reference, but I call it Vulcan mindlock. We just, he said once that we were connected before we met and we'd always be together. But he was really scared 'cause he'd been married a lot. I used to do his ex-wives like a memory test. But then he said ours was, his first real marriage. And it wasn't perfect. We fought. So we, we supported each other. I now describe it as he held my kite string so I could soar. I had no idea how totally central he was. And I apologize to him all the time. And I hope he can hear me just because there are things about him. I can't— it's hard for me to believe he's been dead for 13 years. But there are things about him that I can't I understand now, but I'm beginning to understand. And then there's things that I really understand deeply, and I wish I had been able to understand them better when he was still living. So I think that's a part of our love story, is that it's not a perfect love story, but that doesn't lessen the love that continues in any way.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So, um, I love your, your honesty about, you know, what, how you felt after, after his passing or after his death. Um, because I think that's a common feeling for— for me, it was a child, but I think when a spouse or a child passes, and when you said, you know, we died, I think that's— that's how we feel, right? We feel like part of us, at least a part of us, is not enough. All of us went with them.

It hurt. I mean, that's— I've explained this to— I explained it to regular people, but I also explained it to therapists. You're trying to fix a trauma that happened 13 years ago. The trauma didn't happen— it happened 13 years ago, his death, but the trauma happens every day, sometimes several times in the day. Because I wake up and every day it's like, my husband is still dead. How do I make today a happy and productive day when my husband is dead? When a child is dead, a spouse, a pet— some people get nervous around pets. I know that for some people, pets are their whole life. So I respect any kind of grief. A miscarriage, you have hopes and dreams for that baby. So the longest grief I had on Grief Speaks Out was a woman that said that she'd been grieving for her daughter for 74 years. And I had a man whose father died when he was a child, and he said he was in his 70s. And every day of his life, he's wondered how his life would be different if his father had lived. So grief becomes part of my life, but it goes on forever. And I just did that thing that an actor once said, I think that was a good answer, but I don't remember what the question was.

Yeah, no, that was a great answer. Because you— I mean, the thing about grief, until we— and we all experience it if we live long enough, it's a universal thing we all go through. And it can be— it could be a pet, it could be, you know, it could be a lot of different things. It could be a miscarriage. But that feeling that our world has ended, that, that, you know, life is no longer the same, that, that we're just not the same person. And when you have that connection, I love you explaining the connection you have with Artie. It's not perfect. All marriages have their ups and downs and stuff, but our relationships— but you were— you guys are like twin flames, it sounds like, you know, like you were, you were the one. And so what, what is it prompted you after you're not after, but you're going through this, and you decide to write a blog? I find it to be a really interesting choice.

Stay with us. We'll be right back.

You know, one of the hardest things about grief? Most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up, so you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper. Thoughts I don't always get to on the podcast. Essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night, written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it: the community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing— listening, learning, trying to find their footing. Readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become— a place to go deeper with me, and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth. I hope to see you there.

So this is probably maybe 11 or 12 years ago. And I— a blog just seemed like a way to just put my thoughts out in the public and have people find it. Because as I said, my goal was to reach one person. I didn't know it would get so big. And then somebody said to me, you have to start a Facebook page. And I went, oh, okay. So I looked on Facebook and just sort of put Greece Speaks out and the information you need. And then she said, that's great, I liked it, check like. And I went, oh, fill in your favorite curse word, now I have to put something on. What am I going to do? So I started it. And if you find a way to go back to the very beginning, it didn't have the pattern that it did now. It didn't have quite as many posts. And I remember getting the first 100 likes, and I thought 1,000 likes would be respectable. It would mean it was a real page. And if you had said someday you'll have 2.4 million people from South Africa and Australia and all over the United States and Europe, and I would have said nah. But there's something that I— that the song "Greece Speaks Out" that really honors grief, because one of the posts is simply a heart, and the heart never gets very, very many shares. But it doesn't matter, because the heart to me means that everybody is on this page because they were lucky to love and be loved. And that's my resting place always is. One of my favorite questions is, with all the pain you're in now, was it worth it? And I've only had one person say no. Everybody else feels the way I do, that the love that we share was worth any of the pain of loss.

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a really good point. So let's talk about the page and what it is that, you know, again, what I was saying before we started recording, when I came across the page, I looked at the number of people that liked the page. I'm like, this, I must have read that wrong. Other than corporations, I don't see pages that have nearly that many likes. And I was just looking at some other people in the grief field earlier before we got on to just try to get a comparison. And, you know, 70,000, 80,000 people following a page is a lot. 2.4 million is unheard of. So you're doing something that's really drawing people in. So tell me about the page.

Well, I— when I look at the statistics, I often reach about 2 million people a month, which means in terms of reach, I'm assuming Facebook is counting people that have actually looked at a post and interacted with the post. Um, I know in my world I've liked pages that I don't actually look at, so I don't know how many people are actively involved, but I do have a huge number of people that are actively involved. There are 7 posts a day, so nobody goes to the— and they're always posted between 6 and 6:30 in the morning New York City time, so I'm humbled and it's amazing to me. But if you live in Vietnam or wherever you live. Some people, that's what they do when they get up in the morning, they have a cup of coffee and they see what I posted for the day. And the posts are a combination of pictures, quotes, short comments from me, um, quotes from famous authors. So you get points of view that aren't mine but are beautifully written. You get a picture of a heart, as I said, for love. And then there's always a question of the day, and I make up some of the questions, and I always write an answer if I've had the experience. One of the rules is you have to share share your own experience. So for example, if somebody's loved one has taken their own life, I can't share because I haven't had that experience. And often the questions come from people. So the people learn that what they're feeling is normal, what— that they're not crazy. And it's a safe space because you're not allowed to talk to people in clichés. You're not allowed to tell them to get over it. I do come on now twice a day because there's lots of scammers and, um, spellcasters and strangeness on Facebook, so I block all those people. But I work really hard to make it a safe space so that if you're going to reveal something about yourself that's really personal, nobody's going to tell you that you're doing it wrong. Because sometimes people ask me if what they're doing is normal, and I laugh because I go, uh, why are you asking me? Um, but I've stopped asking myself what's normal. I've asked myself, how does it serve my life? What kind of life do I want to have? I often quote Mary Oliver, whose poem said, what is it you want to do with your one wild and precious life? And sometimes the answer, especially at the beginning, was I don't want to do anything. I just want to be with my husband. So now I've created a thing of some things that don't serve my life I can change, some things I can't, some things I want to work on, some things I don't. Um, in the section in the book where I say, I want you to move. I say, if you want to go out and have a run, that's great. But if all you could do is move your little finger, move your little finger, because you always have to start where you are and where you are is okay. Because when you're ready, you'll know.

Yeah, I think that's one of the things. Well, there's a lot of things that attract people to the page. And I also want to acknowledge how much work it is to do something like this for anybody that tries to put out content on a daily basis to, to come up with 7 things, 7 things a day to post and then to keep the trolls away. On a page is so popular is, is incredibly hard. And, you know, it's interesting you talk about the number of people interact with your page because I'm on Facebook a lot. Most of the time when you post something on your Facebook page, it doesn't reach very many people because Facebook uses algorithms to figure out, are people really interacting with this? So the fact that you're reaching that many people is even more impressive than the fact that you have 2.5 million people that have liked your page. It's an active page. People come And even if they're not, even if they're not commenting or posting, they're coming, they're checking, they're reading, and they're getting something out of it.

That's why it's an open page. Um, the feedback that I get— I'm smiling because I don't really want the feedback— is that it should be a private group. But it's an open page because a lot of people don't want to join a group. They don't want anybody to know that you're looking. So if anybody wants to read what's on the page and will find it helpful. I want them to have access to it. So I'm willing to deal with the, the uncomfortable people, or the out-of-place people. That's what the block button is for. And it is— I, I wish that Facebook has so many algorithms, I certainly— they could get rid of them. But it's— so many people have said to me, I can't even say this, but I'm going to anyway, so I guess I can, that I've saved their lives. I don't believe I've saved their lives. I think they've saved their own life, but that I've really affected how they're grieving and helped them either feel better or find ways of doing different things that I feel like it's too important to stop. So I'll do it until I can't do it anymore because it's such a gift to me to make something unbearable a little bit more bearable for people just by creating this group. So it's— and somebody helped me a lot. They didn't know because I would— I said something. She's talking about her job, and I said, well, I don't work. And she said, yes, you do. Thinking of it as working made it more— this is what I do. So, you know, just get up and do it because It's your work.

Yeah, yeah, it is. It is a lot of work. And I said, I want to acknowledge that. I know it's a labor of love. And maybe it doesn't feel like work, but it is. You're putting in a lot of hours, you're getting up early, you're, you're, and you're creating the space. So I know when, when you're like you are, you're dealing with people in grief, you've spoken with so many people in grief, people always ask, what do I say to someone in grief? So what's your advice when someone asks you that question?

My first advice is don't talk, listen. Sometimes I'll say to somebody, whatever you most needed me to say, pretend I just said it. But ask the person if they will, 'cause everybody reacts differently. People gave me flowers when Artie died, which most people would think was beautiful. I said, my house looks like a fill in your favorite curse word funeral parlor and put them all outside. So when somebody is grieving, ask them, To say, I would say honor it. Say, I know I can't fix it, but can I listen to you? And if somebody's been grieving for a long time, ask them what they miss about the person they love who died, because it opens doors instead of shutting doors. So many people, even after I had— I, I thought I had invented this wonderful phrase when somebody said, how are you doing? I would say, I'm okay with not being okay. And after 6 weeks, whenever a really sweet woman said to me, still. So whether it's 6 weeks or 60 years, if you say, what do you miss about your mom? What do you miss about your child? What do you miss about your spouse? What do you miss about whoever? You just open a door and finally the person can talk. And they can also say, if they say, I don't want to talk about it, it's too painful, respect that. So don't think that you have any words that can make it better. You don't. So, um, because that's the other thing. I, I am, as you can tell, maybe a little— I'm a little snarky. So when people would say, what can I do? I would say, can you resurrect dead people? And they would say no. And I would say, well, then there's nothing you can do, but I appreciate your asking, because that's, that's the only thing I could do. You know, if I could give your child back, that's the only thing that'll really fix it.

Yeah, you know, and we do, we have this. I'm going through grief certification program right now. So there's all these people and the guy that's leading it is like, stop trying to fix each other. Because every time someone says anything in the chat on the Zoom, everybody's like, do this, do this. We all, we all have, and it's, it's not a bad thing. We all want to nurture. But we have to understand that we can't take someone else's pain away. We can't bring that person back for them. And I think one of the reasons why the page is— and there's, again, there's several reasons why it's so, it's so successful— is there is a lot of listening that goes on. There's a lot of witnessing. People want to be witnessed.

Yes.

And they want to be told they're, they're not alone, and they want to be told they're normal.

I will do— I do have training in hypnotherapy and neuro-linguistic programming, so I will do sneaky things occasionally. If you see me saying something like you might find accidentally that you smiled either tomorrow or yesterday or a month ago, but you didn't notice it. That's actually a hypnotic suggestion. And I've never talked to anybody— normally when you're doing hypnosis with people, I haven't practiced. I have a master's in counseling in a long time. I don't know if it works on the page because there's a lot of putting into trance and tonality, but I do have certain sentence structures that I use sometimes. So if you're watching this and you go to the page, you can look for— I don't use them that often, but you can look for them. Um, one I said was when you're ready or not. So when the person says, well, I'm never going to be ready, I've already said or not. So some of it is I've learned, I've had training and how to use language, but I have two kinds of people. I have people that, um, come to the page for a little while and— well, three, I would say. Feel like they don't need it anymore. I have people that come for a long time because it helps them. And then I have people that just, for whatever reason, it's where they express their grief. But again, it's called Grief Speaks Out. So if you only read Grief Speaks Out, you wouldn't know I had a life. Because what I say in Grief Speaks Out is always about grieving. It's always about my husband. You'd have to go to my personal page to see— oh, that's why I don't like advice, because somebody wants— usually I'm very calm and collected on Grief Speaks Out. Out. But somebody said, well, you've been grieving for a long time, you should get a life. And I went, oh yeah. And then I listed like all the things I had done in the past 6 months and said, I have a life. So yeah, it's, it's just, it's so normal. And it's in every culture. I don't think I would have as many followers if there were cultures where people allowed you to process your grief. And it's sad, and people stop speaking to you. And when I was writing the book, I had the example of somebody going to a faith-based person being told that if they really believed in God, they wouldn't be sad. And the person said, that would never happen. And I said, no, I'm telling you a story that's repeated from time to time. So yes, it does happen.

It absolutely happens.

Yeah, your best friend stops speaking. My— I had two of my best friends stop speaking to me. Sometimes the people we look to for support just go, can't handle this, bye. So it's tough.

Yeah. And I love what you said about, you know, people telling you get to get a life, because people think I can— you can either be in grief or you can have a life, but you can't do both. And the fact is, you're going to— you, you have to do both. You know, you're not— the grief doesn't go away. And I, and then I know people don't want to hear that. And I know there's some people who, you know, put on a happy face, maybe. I love your authenticity about, you know, where you are, you know, even 13 years later. I'm 7 years after my daughter passed, and I don't, I don't intend to get over the grief. You know, I don't think it's even possible. And it's not something I really want to do.

There was a psychologist, Dr. Stolarow, that posted on Grief Speaks Out a couple of times. And he understood because his wife had died. And I liked what he talked about was finding a relational home for grief. So that you don't try— now I do know people who have asked to be released from grief and say they have been. So if you can find a way to do that, that's, that's powerful. But for me, there's part— it's a layer. It's like, think of sunflower that always has a dark center, but I have lots of yellow petals now around it, or a layer cake that has a layer of grief, but I can build it up. So because part of it— you, we talked, you talked about Gathering at the Doorway— is I'm an interesting author in that book because I had a lot of proof that there's an afterlife and that Artie's around. He's saying, would you stop it, just like admit that I'm here. Um, so, um, but it's how do I have a relationship with somebody who is— I like the word transitioned— but who's dead? I want a physical person. I want him here in his body. I want to know what he thinks about things. So I feel like the, the relationship continues. And I'm just going to stick it in here because one of the most important things that I got to at some point was, I'm sad because I always think about my husband is dead. He was alive for a long time. So if I think of him as being alive, and not only alive, but healthy, healthy, then I'm happier. And I want his life and our life together to matter more than his death. Because if all I ever think about is his death, and all I ever talk about is death, I'm not doing anything to celebrate every struggle that he had, every success that he had, everything that he taught me. So he still inspires me. He's still— that's the other thing is hopefully in an afterlife, I want him to be able to say, hey, I'm really proud of you. Yeah, sometimes you fell down, but then you got up again.

So, yes, absolutely. And again, what you said, I think is so important, this idea that in the early part of grief, and, you know, in grief speaking, I see a lot of the early part of grief where everything is dark, and everything is black. And we all know that we've all— we've been through that, and everybody goes through that phase. But then there comes a point where we do start to integrate the grief into our life, and we start to think about our loved one and the wonderful times we had together, you know, and, and if you like, you and I both believe that they're still with us, and that we will see them again. So I tell people, it's not only that I have a great 15 years with my daughter, and I will see her again in a few years, but I have her with me now, just in a different way. And so that when people think of grief, I think they think of like, mourning, sadness, you know, but it's, it's a lot more than that.

Yeah, I confused somebody who interviewed me because she said, what do you want to call it? And I said, why don't we call it celebrating grief? And she went, how could you call it celebrating grief? What's to celebrate about grief? And what I said was the fact that I got to love. So, and also that my husband doesn't have to grieve for me, which is a sacrifice that I didn't make on purpose. But I'm glad that he's not going through what I'm going through.

Yeah, and that's such an important thing that— and that's just flipping, you know, everything's a matter of how we look at it. That's the kind of flipping it on its head. We could say, well, what if we didn't have that person in our life at all? Then we wouldn't have the grief, you know. And like you said, when you put that question to people, 99.99% of people say, no, it was worth having them in my life. I'll take the pain. And that's, that's part of— that's part of love.

And I, I— my personal belief is that because some people feel like you're not allowing your loved one to do what they need to do. My belief is that time and space are different where they are. So I can say, hey, I need you, and Artie can be with me in any way he can be with me, but also do whatever it is that he's called on to do wherever he is now. I don't know if it's true or not. But I did have some phone calls with a friend who was a medium when he first died. And he said, because he always ran an AA meeting, that he ran meetings for people who couldn't adjust to being dead, which seemed like something that he would do. So, you know, it seemed like he had some work. He also said that he— nobody was judging him. He had to look at everything he had done in his life and see how he had hurt people and learn from that before he could go on. So that was interesting. But yeah, that he celebrates with me when I laugh, but he understands when I cry. I don't think our loved ones expect us to be perfect. And I don't think they're angry at us when we're happy. I think he'd be annoyed if I like didn't miss him at all. But that would never happen. So he doesn't have to worry about that. Yeah, maybe I'm making it all up. I don't know. But I also say, if I say, you know what, I don't believe in Paris, Paris doesn't exist. It's not going to affect Paris. Paris is going to keep on going. The Parisians are still going to be eating much better bread than we have here. So whether or not you believe in the afterlife, or I believe in the afterlife, doesn't have anything to do— it allows me to function. But it doesn't make any sense to me that so many of us could have such powerful journeys with people that they would end. And the— if you watch any documentaries on the universe, it's so big, and it's expanding. So there actually is plenty of room for all of us. So I don't know.

Well, so I want to talk about that. Because you— I know you a little bit, and I've listened to other interviews with you. And I know you're, you're— I would say you're still a skeptic when it comes to the afterlife. But I know you've had some incredible experiences with Artie. So could you share some of those, some of the experiences you've had with Artie since, since he's passed?

Yeah, the first one was, and some of you who have watched other things might have heard me tell the story because it's my favorite one.

We'll get back to Grief to Growth in just a few seconds. Did you know that Brian is an author and a life coach? If you're grieving or know someone who is grieving, his book Grief to Growth is a best-selling, easy-to-read book that might help you or someone you know. People work with Brian as a life coach to break through barriers and live their best lives. You can find out more about Brian and what he offers at www.grieftogrowth.com, www.grief2growth.com, or text growth, G-R-O-W-T-H, to 31996. If you'd like to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/grieftogrowth, www.patreon.com/grieftogrowth. Grief2growth.com to make a financial contribution. And now back to Grief 2 Growth.

Was— I went to the— we had a local UPS store in Carmel. And there was somebody that worked there that knew us as customers. So he wasn't a friend, we didn't go in that much. But he would recognize because Artie and I were both people that would talk to somebody when we were in a store. And I needed 2 more boxes because I only lived in California till I could move back to New York. So I was— since he died, I was moving back to New York. And the UPS man was very serious looking. He was thin and nicely groomed and had wire rim glasses and spoke well. I guess I'm trying to say he didn't appear to be anybody that— there's some people that just look like they have all these spiritual experiences. I'm saying that that's like, that's a bad thing. That's not a bad thing. But he just looked like an ordinary person. He said, can I carry the boxes to your car for you? And I said, no, it's okay, I can handle it. And he said, please let me carry the boxes to your car for you. Okay. He's insistent. So we got to my car and put the boxes in my car. And he said, your husband appeared to me. And he told me that I have to tell you how much he loves you, and how much he always loves you. And you must never forget how much he loves you. And I laughed and I said, that must have been a heck of a dream. And he said, it wasn't a dream. It was an apparition. I'm telling you the truth. You must know how much your husband loves you. And then I started to cry. And I've since made it into the joke, into a joke, because I say, what does UPS deliver to you? If a friend had said that to me, I would have just thought they were making me feel better. But there was absolutely no reason for this man to tell me something so personal if he hadn't seen Artie. Why would he even be thinking about my husband? Um, so there was that one. I've had other people, um, Artie always in AA if somebody, a newcomer came to the group, somebody came for the first time, you had to take them out to coffee. This was a fellow alcoholic that might go out for a drink after the meeting. And somebody said, you know, Artie came to the foot of my bed and said, always remember the newcomer. And then I talk about him all the time. So I've had friends that have never met him. I have a friend Kevin who said, you know, I started meditating, and Artie just like showed up and said, "Attaboy, keep doing it." So I— and I've had people— I've walked into a classroom. Everything I did after Artie died was sad. It was bereavement groups and therapy. And I went, "This is crazy. It's like all sad." So I started taking a comedy sketch writing class. And when I talked about Artie, somebody in the class said, "Oh, that's interesting, because I saw somebody with you when you came in. I didn't know who it was. I guess it was your husband." So all those stories. I have more evidence that there's life after death than I have that there isn't. But I also know we all also want it so badly. My favorite thing on tombstones is reunited. So that's my hope, because I couldn't function if I thought that I would never see him again. It would make it impossible for me to live. Although I do, I've turned into Alice in Wonderland, I seem to do 6 impossible things. Not before breakfast, somewhere in the afternoon. But Yeah, so it's— I just feel like we don't know. I feel like we're so limited by our bodies and our brain. Because when Artie took that last— I was with him. I had the blessing of being with him when he died. And when he breathed in and breathed out, it was a big breath. And he didn't breathe in. And the other person was like, Artie, Artie, Artie. And he was gone. He had gone. I felt like he had gone somewhere. His body was still there. And I loved his body. And I said goodbye to him. But I didn't— I felt like his spirit had left. And it seemed— and his face relaxed. And I've heard people say that before. So it makes more sense to me that he's— but I don't— some people definitely know, like they'll say, yes, there's a heaven. And my husband or my loved one is in heaven. And they know what it's like. I tend to think of us as being bouncing energy balls. But then how do I get a hug without arms? But somebody the other day said, you know, no, we have bodies, because that's how we recognize each other. I'll find out. I always said, death is the next big adventure. And I call it the great party in the sky. Because we're so happy to see each other again. But if there isn't anything, I'll be dead. So I won't know. So it'll be okay.

Yeah, that's a good point too. You know, the thing is, and this is a— it's a dilemma. How do we know anything? You know, how do we know anything for sure? You know, I've heard scientists say that gravity is only a theory. I know that if I drop this pen, it's going to fall to the floor, but there is some chance that it won't, I guess, in a quantum physics universe. But it always does, you know. Um, you, you mentioned Paris. I've never been to China. I assume China exists because other people have been there, and it's, it's on a map, and people report what it's like. So I love near-death experiences because I can talk to people who have been there. Um, you said you've been to a medium. We can talk to people who are on the other side. So there is so much evidence, but I— there's, but there's also that feeling like this is too good to be true. Am I fooling myself? And this is what, this is what a lot of people tell us. You just, you're just fooling yourself, you know. But there's there's also a ton of evidence. That's, that's undeniable.

That's one of the things I love about Gathering at the Doorway is most of the people in that book don't have any doubts. Um, and I ended my chapter— I can't remember exactly what I said, but I said I'm a skeptic, but my husband is standing at my shoulder and he's telling me to believe. So, um, yeah, I, I— it's to me not believing is just as— I don't want to put an adjective on it— as not believing, because there is proof both ways. Because so many people have experienced things. How do you decide? When I'm dead, I'll know. The other thing that helps me is that The pandemic for me was lots and lots of history podcasts. When Cleopatra became pharaoh of Egypt, Egypt had existed for 1,300 years. So Cleopatra experienced ancient Egypt in a different way than we experience it, which taught me that my life right now seems like it's— I'm 71. I don't know how I got to be 71, but it seems like it's lasting forever. But in terms of eternity, It's going to be over in a second. So that helps me to, to think of the part of me that wants to be with him, that every day I live, I call it decorating the waiting room. I try and make my life as rich as possible by showing up and helping other people. But in some ways, I'm decorating the waiting room, and it seems like a long time, but when I get there, it's going to seem like a short time.

So when you say decorating the waiting room, do you mean that this life is just the waiting room? And so what we do here is not really lasting? Or what is— what is that? What does that phrase mean to you?

So many people, um, including me, feel like it's just really difficult to live without our loved ones who have died or on the other side or transitioned. Or one of the questions I ask sometimes is, what word do you like to use? And I like dead because it's— I'm a blunt person, but there's so many words for it. So transitioned on the other side. They just want to be with that person. So that's one of the ways of— if I look at it as decorating the waiting room, because my grief comes with me everywhere. I can go out and have a really good time and bring my grief with me. That was— oh, that was one of my experiences with Artie. I, I knew I liked theater. I'm in New York City. Most of the time. And when he first died, I would go to theater and I would— I slept through Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig. I slept through everything. I wake up when people applauded. Um, and then I went to see Carrie Fisher, and not only did I stay awake, but I laughed. And I went, oh my God, I could still laugh. This is really interesting. And then I went to see this huge Stephen Sondheim gala, and I was feeling really sorry for myself. And I heard Artie say, you know, when I was alive, you'd ask me to go places and I'd say no. Now that I'm dead, I can come with you everywhere. And he even came to New York. He wouldn't come to New York City because he didn't like to travel, um, when he got older. But, um, this is— I hope this doesn't offend anybody, but he was cremated and his ashes were in the overhead compartment. So he did finally come with me to New York, just in a different form. And I wanted to say to the person sitting next to me, you know, my husband's in the overhead compartment, um, but I was afraid I'd freak him out. So it's, it's that's what I have left of him. Which is, I think, why people go to grave sites and have a relationship with what's left. But I also have this richness of his spirit that, from what I hear from other people, it's not just here for me, but is here for everybody.

Yeah, it sounds like Artie, you know, gets around and is helping a lot of people, even, even, even in his, in his form that he's in now. And so I'm still a little bit confused about decorating the waiting room. So does that mean that you feel like this, this life is the waiting room? Is that correct?

Yeah, but when you say it that way, it makes me feel like I would say that the part of me that's grieving thinks of this life is the waiting room. The part of me that over 13 years have learned tools, because I'm really very ordinary. I know I seem extraordinary sometimes, but I'm not very ordinary. Um, and I've never walked easy on the earth. So the part of me that's alive thinks that everything I do in my life is very important. Like right now, I've been given the opportunity to help people in Ukraine and That's very important. We can make choices in our lives. And people say, well, you must love other people a lot. I don't. I, a lot of times, I'm, you know, I'd rather be in my room by myself. But I hate suffering. I just absolutely hate suffering. So anything I can do to relieve suffering. So, and this may be all that there is. So I should make it as amazing as I can. Somebody said to me when I was young, I was, I was I was about 20 and I was going to Europe for the summer. And she said, she was an older woman, probably in her 60s, which is younger than I am now. She said, "I wish I had done that when I was young." And she doesn't know this, but she changed my whole life because I then lived in a way so now that when I'm 71, if I could, I did it.

Right.

I just wish I could still do it with Artie physically, but I can't. Yeah, I have to do it on my own.

And I did— I didn't mean to press you on that, but I really wanted to understand what you're saying, because I think that is— there's— to me, the older I get, the more I know we have to live with paradoxes. There are two things can be true at the same time. So in a way, what we do here, there's no real harm, there's no permanent damage, the pain all goes away. One day we're going to be on the other side, I believe. And even if you don't believe that, if you believe there's nothing, then it still all goes away. It's all— it's all very temporary. But on the other hand, the love that we create here, the memories that we create, all of that, I believe, goes with us. And even those little things like an offhand comment. So I might say to you, like, I really wish I'd done that when I was young. That changed your life. That woman, some people will call an angel. You know, an angel is just a messenger from God. And we never know the little things that we do, what we call little, how those ripples can affect other people.. And so I see you living your life like, you know, I heard you— I was listening to another interview, you said you get these head taps, I think you call it, from Artie, where he kind of taps you and he's with you. I hear you talking to him all the time. And, and I see you, you know, this page, it's changing millions of lives, and the book that's reaching people. So you're, you're creating these ripples, and you're living your life as though it really has a lot of meaning.

Thank you. I have come to believe that it's hard to find their purpose for some people. I was easy, it was easy for me because when I thought about it, I had already as an example and was able to translate it. But it can be as simple as being in the grocery store and saying to the checkout person, those are really pretty earrings, or your hair is beautiful, and it just brightens up their whole day. So it I have tremendous admiration for all the people that turn grief into something big, um, in terms of a book or a Facebook page or, um, I don't know, teaching or whatever. Something like what you do, you know, you turn it into your work. But it doesn't have to be that. It could be art. It could be, um, Mother— even Mother Teresa said, if you want to change the world, go home and love your family. Take care of your pets. But those were my two things, was to show up. I still do that. I make plans because I'll probably have a good time when I get there, even though I don't want to go. And especially at the beginning, I didn't want to go anywhere. So showing up, like at the theater, you know, being willing to fall asleep until I could wake up and helping other people, even when I was like mostly in bed watching endless, endless— a long time ago, CDs. Then, um, I would go on Facebook and I would find people that were suffering. They would like talk about being depressed or talk whatever, and I would just make— write a comment that was supportive of them. And some of those people are still Facebook friends today. So if I'm thinking about somebody besides myself, I'm not thinking of myself even for a second, right? And rest in the love. That was— I had a friend, she's since passed. Um, Celeste was an amazing woman, but her husband died, and she said, I always sit in his chair, and people think it's because I love him so much, and it's because I can't look at it when it's empty. And then her 50-year-old son, who was a marvelous human being who always helped other people, had a brain aneurysm and died. So when and he was her only child. So when Artie died, she wrote me a letter and she said, I can't do anything about the pain. But what I've learned is what's important is the love, and I can rest in the love. And the actress— some of you know the actress Betty White— um, she was in New York and she was being Betty White. She was being cute and funny, and we could ask questions. And I said, my husband died recently, do you have any advice for me? And she immediately got totally serious. And she said, it never goes away. Something brings it back, the smell of a flower, just being somewhere. And she also said, what you, what you rest in is the love. And there's been something I've been wanting to say, and I keep forgetting, it's in the book. A lot of people feel memories become painful. And there's an exercise that they started using with soldiers that have PTSD. And it's called rolling your memories backwards. And so you find a comfortable place and you can play music or not, not. And what you do is you go back in your imagination to the time when the memory happened. So for example, Artie used to like to dance with me and sing As Time Goes By in my ear. When he was doing that, what did it feel like? What was the temperature? What did it sound like? And you make it really vivid. There was no knowledge of his death. There was no sadness. There was no pain. It was just fun. And I, I'm totally uncoordinated, so we call it thug dancing. Um, So it was also funny. And then you concentrate on that memory as it was at the time, giving you pure happiness, and then you bring it back into the present intact. And sometimes you have to keep doing it. Sometimes you can succeed the first time. But if it works with soldiers that have PTSD, it can work for me. So that is some of the exercises in the book you won't see anywhere else because I made them up. But that's one of the ones I put in because that's the worst thing grief can do, is to make my, my good memories painful or to make my good memories sad. And that's— grief is wicked. Grief will try and do that. But it's like, you know, yeah, I'm saying that a lot. I've never said that in the interview before. Fill in your favorite curse word, uh, grief. You know, it's like, those are my memories, and, um, I can now listen to As Time Goes By and feel happy. I first used to hear it, I would just start crying.

That's, that's so awesome and so important, um, because I've heard of people saying, um, just a couple days ago, I can't listen to music anymore, period. Like, I can't listen. And I'm like, that would be horrible. That would be hell for me. Or I can't listen to my son's favorite band, or, um, you know, stuff like that. And it's like, you're, you're— I understand why it happens because it triggers that missing them. But it's robbing you of that precious memory that you had. And I remember I lived near a Taco Bell, and my wife doesn't like Taco Bell, so it was a place that Shane and I would go together. And the first few times I would drive by that Taco Bell, it would make me very sad. I would just break out in tears because I would think about, like, was not being with her anymore. But now I can drive by there and think about the times we had there together, just the two of us. And so that's the integration that we want to try to get to, to reclaim those memories.

That's so important, and it's so normal because that's one of the questions that comes up a lot. I'm still having trouble reading because Artie and I read together. We read to each other. We read plays out loud. And I don't know if you can see behind me, I buy books all the time, but the quiet when I'm reading, and not being able to say, hey, I just— so there are certain— it's normal for people to stop doing things they love.

Yeah.

Reading is something I'm still working on putting back in my life because, as you say, um, they— when Artie first died, he loved tennis and it was— and boxing. So I'd see like Wimbledon or a boxing match and I'd get all sad and angry. How could they keep doing it? He's dead. He can't watch it. Um, And then I went, wait a minute, instead of thinking that he's not here to watch it, what if you think about all the joy he had from watching it when he was alive? So that, that's part of the neuro-linguistic programming is thinking of your brain as a computer. You can literally retrain your brain if you, if you, if you retrain how you're thinking about something. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not so easy, but it's possible.

Speaking of that, I think that's a good segue to talk about your book. Talk about the book and the structure of the book. It's not just It's not just your bio— your biography.

No. And, um, I was actually— well, first of all, I opened it. I was always going to write a book, and I never did. And I opened my email one morning, and because I have so many people on my Facebook page, it was from a publisher who said, we think we'd like you to write a book on grief. And I went, oh, okay, well, I can answer the email, I can make the phone call, you know, I could do it one step at a time. Somebody just said, how could I write a book? I said, one word at a time, one picture at a time. So they gave me an outline which at the beginning I didn't like, because I'm somebody that doesn't like frameworks. But now I love it. It's 52 topics. And I made it so that the topics are like— I refused, like when I was talking about despair, or loneliness, or suicide, to make them cheery. Because I would say there's nothing cheery about this. No, I am going to honor somebody who's feeling desperate. I'm going to honor somebody who's feeling like their life is over. But I have resting places, I call them, like every 5 chapters is something like beauty, or music, or hope. So, and then, let's see. So there's 52 subjects, each subject has a quote for every day. Finding 365 quotes, that sometimes was difficult. So you not only get my knowledge about grief, you get these beautiful words of all kinds of people. And they're also really handy because I know people who won't talk about grief, and somebody will just say, I read this quote. And then when they say the quote, the person starts talking. I comment on the quotes, I write a little bit about myself. And then at the end of each chapter is an exercise. And some of them are ones that you, if you've been trained in some way, you might recognize, but then I'm also very creative. So I've taken all my training and made them up. So some people buy the book and start from the beginning and go all the way through. But a lot of people just pick it up and say, I'm feeling like I don't know how to take care of myself. Is there a chapter on care? Or I'm feeling really desperate. Is there a chapter on that? That's why I had a fight with the publisher because they wanted me to call suicide contemplating the end. And I said, absolutely not. People that are thinking about killing themselves are not contemplating the end. They're sitting with a gun in their lap trying to decide whether or not they should pull the trigger. And if one person opens my book and doesn't see the word suicide and they die, it's your fault. So they allowed— call it suicide. So you can just like— or you could be somebody who just like says, here's the book, and opens it. And one of my favorite feedback— there are 1,800 reviews on Amazon, so you can read the reviews if you want more information. But they said, I hate to read, but I love your book, because I can just take small snippets of it. And every time I go to part of it, there's something that means something to me. So it turned out to be a nice combination of sharing my own experience and my own story, but also being able to Goodreads.com is a wonderful source for quotes, of just being able to mine the thoughts and feelings of some of the best minds in the world and include them as well.

Yeah, it sounds like an absolutely wonderful resource. And, you know, publishers— yeah, I could say a lot about publishers, but because they, they tell off that you can't do this and you can't do this and change the title to this, and they screw up a lot of stuff. But I do, I do like the fact that it's structured because people in grief typically are— we have grief fog. We can't, we can't read, we can't read long things. We read pages over and over and over again. So having a page or a section a day, give you that orderly fashion, whether you read in order or not, just so I can— I know I can finish this little thing. I think that's a very important thing.

Or just read one quote or just read what I wrote about my experience with grief fog. I just had a question on Grief Speaks Out where somebody— her husband had died 2 and a half years ago, and she went for a job interview, and she couldn't handle it and didn't get the job and wanted to know if that was normal. And just a lot of answers about how people, sometimes 10 years later, you know, grief changes who you are. It doesn't mean that you can't learn skills again. But a lot of times it's, it's a rebuilding. Sometimes it's a rebuilding from the ground up, but it's also normal. I also had a question from somebody whose mother died and didn't have the meltdown she expected. That's, that's why what's normal is sometimes our bodies can't react to the loss, so it doesn't bother us that much. And then sometimes it hits later. It's also— somebody told me about what I now call the fifth year blues. Sometimes grief can be exhausting. So you might be doing fine and feel like you're really making progress. And then you get to a certain point and it feels like it's all gone back to the beginning. It hasn't, because you've learned things, but it feels like it. But you want to go, why am I— somebody wrote a poem once and she said, my mother always dies in March. Well, my husband always dies in July. Somewhere around June or July, I just start having more trouble living than I do. And I go, oh yeah, even if I'm not thinking about it, it's affecting me. It's, it's, it's, it's like, you know, wrestling a dragon. But there's all those stories my granddaughter loves where you, you know, how to train your dragon. This is all about how to train your grief.

Yeah, that's— those are some really excellent points. Because— and, and you're helping, again, to normalize with people, because people always want to know, am I normal? Am I okay? Am I going crazy? Because because you might— some people, as you said, that they might be in grief. I know where my— when my grandmother passed away, my family's very shut down. We don't express emotions very much. So I didn't really grieve that much when my grandfather— my grandmother passed away. I thought maybe there's something wrong with me, but 3 years later is when it hit me, right? It was like— it was like 3 years later.

Yeah, it's— it's all— everybody has their own way of reacting. That's why This whole idea— oh, part of all this work came because I had a, a very kind therapist. She was lovely, but she said that if I wasn't over it in 6 months to a year, then I had complicated grief and it was pathological. And I thought that was the stupidest thing I ever heard, because how foolish would I have to be to stop loving my husband? How foolish would I ever even have to be not to be sad? I mean, If you don't have any anger about what's going on in the world right now, or sadness, you're not paying attention. So I'm more about being authentic than about this idea of it's all good and follow your bliss. Some of it is really wonderful. I have a bad habit. I never learned when somebody says, how are you? I'm supposed to say, fine, thank you. How are you? And people say, how are you? I always say the good part is wonderful. And this part that is not good is horrible.

Next. It's funny you bring that up because just yesterday I was talking with someone about that, you know, how are you? And, you know, we're talking about— it was a meme that was funny about how you respond to that because people say that, they don't even wait for an answer. They don't care how you are. And, you know, I think you and I are very similar. It's like, how are you? Okay, do you really want to know? Or is this just a way of saying hello? I want to just say good morning. Um, but yeah, you, you're— it's— life is about balance. It's about both. And I love that you, you know, with, with Grief Speaks Out, you are talking about the grief, but you're also sneaking in the integration, the getting back to living our lives again, along with— it's not putting it away. It's not, you know, bypassing it and saying it's all good. It's sometimes it's not so good.

I was surprised because when I post something really bleak, it gets a lot more shares than when I post something hopeful. So I asked what people prefer. Do you, you know, would you like, I made the question of the day, would you like things that are only about the dark side of life or do you want hopeful things as well? Do you want, you know, and I was surprised because the answer I got was, it depends how I feel. I really want most, the majority of people said, I want you to post both because even if I'm not relating to something that shows me that the light can come through again, you're putting it in my head. So I learned something from that. It's not all about how many people check like and share something about— so that's really where the tension always is. It's in my own life as well. It's— well, and to also ask myself the question, like during the pandemic, there was a point when it was kind of over, but it's also kind of not over now. It was like, I just don't care anymore, so what can I do? And so for me, it was, um, somebody was doing a history trip where I had gone before, and I know the author, and I thought that would be really fun for me. Kind of, it was and it wasn't, but I, I met some amazing people. So it's, um, I worked through a side profession years ago in London, and I had somebody that was maybe a little younger than me. And one of the things we talked about was new beginnings. It's, it's, that's what grief does is it takes away something so important, maybe the most important thing. So what can I put in not to replace it, but to, you know, make me feel excited again, or make me feel interested again. So I don't— the word when you're depressed, because grief isn't depression and it's not PTSD, but it can cause those, right? But my favorite model for depression is Winston Churchill, because depression doesn't need to be a box that you go in and close the door. It can be, uh, how do I walk around this huge hole, right? Right. What— some people can't, so that's why it's always okay to be where you are. But for me, it's to always keep trying. That was— I have a letter from my husband because I used to travel by myself and he would write me. I always asked for a letter before I went away. And he said that one of the things that he most loved about me was that I helped other people, but that he would watch me fall down and get up again and keep trying. So that's what I do.

Yeah, well, you're doing a great job of it. I appreciate what you're doing. I appreciate your— your— the book sounds fantastic. I haven't read it yet, but I will definitely get a copy of that. I love the page. And, you know, you were talking about do people prefer the bleak posts or the lighter posts, and, um, I agree, it depends on— it depends on the day, depends on where I am. The, the year when my— that my daughter passed away, it was in the summer, and I walk every day, and I was listening to this album that's just really, really sad And the whole album is about death and, you know, and she wants to go with the person that's died. And I listened to that over and over and over again. I don't listen to it as that as much anymore, um, because I'm, I'm not in that place anymore. But there's something weird about when we're in that place. It's like people listen to the blues. You listen to the blues and you're sad because you don't want to feel alone.

Louis Armstrong has a song called In My Solitude. I sit in my chair Full of despair, I know I will go mad. And I love that song because it just described how I was feeling. And I do feel that way still sometimes, but it's— I do try and time limit it, you know. I still give myself times to just go to collapse, especially around certain days, right? I sort of build them in, like Artie's birthday or the anniversary of his death. When he first died, I totally isolated. I couldn't deal with it. It. Oh, that was— you were asking me about him sending signs. Because some people totally believe in signs. Some people say they can't see them. The first birthday after he died, I bought a cupcake and I put a candle in and I lit it. And I said, okay, you have spirit, blow out the candle. Come on, come on, blow out the candle. And I was really hopeful. I mean, I really expected him to, because he was a powerful guy, to blow out the And so I blew it out, ate the cupcake, and just picked up this random book and opened it. And in the front page was a letter from him saying, if you don't believe I love you, I'm gonna— no, don't be insecure. If you're insecure, I'm gonna cry because I love you and I adore you. Now, maybe that was a coincidence, but it was a heck of a big one. And it was as if he was saying, You thought you could control this and make me blow out the candle. Well, you can't, but here's your note. So, yeah, it's always very clear and very confusing at the same time.

I love what you said earlier about, you know, you're still doubting it and already sitting there going, okay, stop doubting it. You know, I can see the wheels turning as you're thinking about this. I think you're a lot like I am. I'm a very rational person. Things happen. It's like the other day, I like, I get, I get 11:11 or 1:11 on my phone. I'll take a screenshot and I post it to Facebook, and I have a few followers on Facebook and they think it's really cool. So the other day it was like 1:11, so I take the screenshot and looked at my phone. Well, the screenshot's at 1:11, but the time on the phone said 1:10, and I showed my wife. I'm like, how is this possible? And then I watched the phone go from 1:10 to 1:12. So I was like, and my daughter does stuff like that all the time, just like crazy stuff. And I'm like, and I always wonder because I'm an engineer, I have a degree in chemical engineering. I'm like, how does this work? Did she, you know, I don't, I don't, that one like totally got me. I can't figure it out at all.

Well, you can't, you don't have to.

Yeah.

Um, but yeah, it's, it's I, yeah, I, I, and my friends are used to it. I, I have new friends, um, because not all the old friends stuck, but my friends are used to it because periodically, not all the time, but we'll be having a conversation about something, I'll just go, oh well, Artie says, because I get that feeling that he wants to, um, be part of the conversation. So they don't say to me, what do you mean Artie says? He's dead. They go, oh, okay, and then they respond. But he's— I used to think that Artie was the most alive dead person I knew until I started Grease Flicks Out, and then I realized our dead— somebody asked me, do you joke with your dead? Which I love that question. But all of our dead people are alive to us. They don't die with their death. That's why it's so easy and so hard. It's so hard because we want them to be alive with us again so much. But it's so easy because we still have that love in that relationship. Is it Mitch Albom that says death ends a life but not a relationship?

Yeah, absolutely true. Well, Jan, I want you to let people know how they can, how they can reach you.

Um, so I have different— on Facebook, it's Grief Speaks Out, which is facebook.com/griefspeaksout. But I also— oh, I know what I said the last time, which actually works. At this point, if you Google Jan Warner and grief, a lot of stuff will come out. And I also give out my email, which is eyssepic@aol.com, I-C-P-I-C, e-y-s-s-e-p-i-c@aol.com. And if you put grief or you let me know something in the subject matter, I might not answer you right away, but I will answer you. So I don't get that many responding. To my email, but I'm perfectly willing to talk to people that way.

Great. Again, thanks. Thanks for everything that you do. Thanks for being here today. The Facebook page is awesome. The book is awesome. You're doing great work. I know Artie's proud of you.

Thank you. I hope so.

All right, have a great rest of your day.

Your daughter's proud of you. So there you go.

Thanks for listening to Grief to Growth. Brian hopes that you find this episode helpful and will come back for future episodes. Brian's bestselling book, Grief to Growth: Planted, Not Buried, is a great resource for anyone who is coping with grief or knows someone who is. If you enjoy the podcast and would like to support it, there are 3 things you can do to help. The first is to share the podcast with someone that you think it will help. The second is to go to iTunes rate, and review the episode. The third way you can support the podcast is by becoming a patron. Head over to www.patreon.com/grief2growth. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/grief, the number 2, growth, and sign up to make a small monthly donation. Patrons get access to exclusive bonus content. Acknowledgement that you are helping to spread the message of grief to growth. For more about Brian and grief to growth, visit www.grief2growth.com.

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