Sudden Loss, Four Kids, and Unshakable Faith: Clarissa Moll’s POWERFUL Story of Survival!

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. Today's guest is Clarissa Moll. When Clarissa's husband Rob passed away, she found herself a young widow with 4 young children. She found herself having to reevaluate her strong Christian faith. And she found herself having to navigate this thing called grief at an age she never expected to have to navigate it. We talked about that and more in this fascinating interview. So I hope you stick around to the end to find out why Clarissa thinks that darkness is actually a really important thing for us to go through. Hey everybody, this is Brian D Smith back with another episode of Grief to Growth. And today I've got with me Clarissa Moll. And Clarissa, I have something in common that we both experienced sudden loss of a very close loved one.. And we're going to talk about today how Clarissa has dealt with that. And so let me read her introduction, then I'll bring her in. She's an award-winning writer and podcaster. And as I said, she knows this landscape of loss all too well. Her life changed forever in 2019, when her husband Rob died unexpectedly while they were hiking, leaving her with 4 children to raise alone. Her debut book is called Beyond the Darkness. And in that book, she offers a powerful personal narrative as well as an honest practical wisdom that would gently guide you towards flourishing among your own loss. She is an award-winning writer, and she's a podcaster, and she helps bereaved people find flourishing after loss. Her writing appears in Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, Relevant, Modern Loss, Grief Digest, and more. She co-hosts Christianity Today's Surprised by Grief podcast, and she hosts The Writerly Life, the weekly Hope Writers podcast. She holds a master's degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. And she's a frequent guest on podcasts and radio shows, which is what she's doing here today. So with that, I want to welcome Clarissa Moll to Grief 2 Growth.

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

Hi, Clarissa. I'm really looking forward to having this conversation. As I said, every loss is different. But we do have some things in common, and that, that sudden loss, and that's why you titled your podcast Surprised by Grief. Is, I think, a particularly difficult type of loss to deal with. But before we get into that, whenever someone's lost a loved one, I always want to give them a chance to introduce your loved one to us. So tell me about Rob.

Oh, well, thank you. You know, the further out you get from your loss, the fewer people ask, so I appreciate that invitation. Rob was a journalist. He was a writer, career writer, and he was just an all-around awesome guy. I think everywhere he went, people were drawn to him. He was a dad. We have 4 children, and we were married for 17 years. And, you know, folks tell me that some of the things they remember about him were his big laugh in a room and how he'd pound the table when things were just hilarious. And, you know, those kinds of memories draw me back to campsites and to people's living rooms and around the dinner table. And I always appreciate when folks remember his laugh to me because it brings him back to me in ways that are really precious to me now.

Yeah. So tell me, he was— he a pastor, a writer? What did he do?

So he was a journalist, and he wrote for a variety of outlets from The Wall Street Journal to The Hill. He was a ghostwriter for C-suite executives. And in a, in a strange— it's become ironic, it feels like in some ways— he also worked at a funeral home and was a hospice volunteer. So he wrote a book about dying called The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come in 2010, which was 10, 9 years before he died. So in a strange way, we were a death-literate couple before we ever encountered the kind of loss that our family has suffered.

Yeah, I noticed he did write a book about, about loss. And it's interesting because people typically don't like to talk about loss and death and stuff. So you guys were death-literate couples. So you apparently spoke about this before he transitioned.

Yes. Yeah, you know, we had little kids, we had 3 children who were under the age of 7. And he was you know, holding the hands of folks on weekends as they were processing terminal diagnoses, as they were entering hospice. And he was sitting with families in the evenings at a funeral home, working, taking calls from bereaved families at night when they would call in. And so there was no way to avoid those kind of conversations for our family. Granted, I will say I hated them. I hated the conversations. I did not want to think about one of us being gone in the prime of life. I didn't want to think about my kids growing up with a dad without me, you know, it was just too hard to even fathom. But, but he pushed for those conversations because he saw families who were grieving well, and he saw families who weren't grieving as well, because of their apprehensions about facing conversations about death and dying. And so he really, he pressed into that and, and And I'm grateful for it now. Because even though there's nothing that can prepare you for sudden loss, for any kind of loss, there's nothing that can prepare your heart for just the, the weight of that grief. I do appreciate the practical conversations that we had that provided some kind of scaffolding for me in the days that followed his death.

Yeah, I'm curious what got him into doing hospice work.

So he, he had been doing a lot of reporting on euthanasia. And And at the time, the Terri Schiavo case out of Florida was— it was all over the news. People were talking about, you know, right to die, dignity in death. And so he really wanted to understand this from a very practical and intimate kind of level. And he said, you know, I've lost my own family members. I've watched hospice care for them in their last days. Maybe if I became a volunteer myself, I could learn how to navigate this territory better. I remember sitting with him at the bedside of his great-aunt. Aunt as she was dying of cancer, and both of us just feeling absolutely bereft of anything to offer, you know, no words of comfort. We couldn't figure out what to do. And, and that, that experience really rocked him. It bothered him that he was so ill-prepared. And so, ever the curious journalist, he dove right in and, and began what became a really fulfilling volunteer position for a few years.

Wow. That's incredible. It sounds like an incredible guy.

Yeah.

Tell me about your kids. How old are they? And tell me, tell me about them.

So they range from, uh, high school. I've got two in high school, one in junior high, and one still in elementary school. So all of the developmental ranges and, uh, and they fill my life with joy. I, I am grateful for their companionship on this hard road. And, um, you know, kids are amazing. They, their bodies are changing, their minds are, are growing, and they are living representatives to me of the resilience that is just written into our DNA. And so I feel like more than anything, my children have, have drawn me forward in my experience of grief toward growth, because they're growing every day right before my eyes. And, and I want to, I want to go along with them. I don't want to be stuck. And, and so their lives draw me forward.

Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure they do. I know when my daughter transitioned— I don't use the word died very often because I don't believe that we die. But that's just a personal thing. When my daughter transitioned, you know, I have another daughter. So I knew I had to go on for her. She was, she was just finishing her freshman year of college at the time. So I know that feeling of your— I love what you said, like they're like pulling you forward. I think that's cool. That's a really cool image. So when, when Rob did pass, I assume I was looking at some of your information, or I assume you were both people of faith at the time. How did that impact your faith? How did— what was that? What did that feel like for you?

I think in many ways, it sort of brought me down to the base of the tree, you know, whenever any kind of suffering enters your life, or difficulty, it, it demands that you really stand firm in what is true for you. And sometimes we discover that for the first time, when something hard happens, you know, you go through a divorce or a job loss, and you— and for the first time, that, that moment of suffering clarifies for you what is really valuable. And other times, it just reinforces that for you to be able to say, okay, these are the things that I hold to be true in my life. These are the things I want to base my life upon. And, and that becomes a beautiful foundation for you to rebuild again. And I think that's certainly been my experience as a person of faith that the things that I believed about God, about life, they have been reinforced in the, in the clarifying process of losing Rob, and, and really have become the foundation, I believe, for the way that I can rebuild my life again.

Yeah. And just, you know, frankly, I work with a lot of people who have suffered loss, of course. And I think that that tragic moment, as you said, it could be a foundation we can use for to go forward with our faith. And with some people, it just seems to shatter faith.

That's right.

So did you go through any sort of a dark night of the soul? Or were you just steady in your faith? Or how did that— how did that happen for you?

I wouldn't say that I've gone through a dark night of the soul. You know, I've never really asked, asked God why, you know, those kind of those sort of existential questions. I think, you know, it's not hard to look around at the world and see that things just feel so broken in many ways. You know, you watch the news and And so in some ways it's, you know, why not? Why? How have I been so lucky to have avoided this kind of tragedy for my whole life? For me, the question, the existential question, was less why than what now? What, what now will I do? You know, how will I carry this? How will— how can my faith inform how I carry this? Are there things that I need to shed in the values that I've held in my life for so long that I see now are just flimsy and unimportant? What are the things I need to grasp onto in this, this new season? So really, yeah, it hasn't been so much a why question, but a what now? How do I move forward?

Yeah, I think that's, that's great. Because as I said, for a lot of people, they do, they get into the why. And there is kind of, I think, for a lot of people of faith, this kind of unwritten covenant that if, if we do the right things, then good things will happen to us. As you, as you said, if you look around the world, obviously bad things happen to everybody every day. So yeah, I was curious as to how that worked out for you. Because I've seen so many people kind of go the other way. Yeah, it's like, this, this can't be true, because bad things wouldn't have happened to me.

Well, and you know, I, I hold space for that. Because, because we are all in process. This is not a one and done kind of experience, you know, you, you experience loss, and then, and then the decisions you make afterwards are set in concrete. You know, we are all emerging from our experiences and growing from them. And so, you know, I feel like if you have big questions like that, if you are wrestling with the why questions, good, good, shout them out to the universe, go ahead and say your piece. Because I think that it's, it's actually when we deny those, when we run away from the deep questions that we hold, that's where we actually get into trouble. I don't think you will ever really struggle in your life with moving forward with grief if you are honest about the questions that you carry. So yeah, if it rocks your faith, if it rocks the foundations of your life, yeah, well, it should. And you can take that space of crumbling and the deconstruction that really comes with that to sit in the rubble for a little while, and that's okay for as long as it takes. And it's amazing that I think of the image of my kids sitting on the living room floor with Legos all over the floor, you know, they, they don't see anything, any pattern, or, you know, they're, they don't have a creation that they have in mind. But the longer they sit there, they put one piece with another, and then another with another, and suddenly there's something that begins to emerge. And I think that, you know, if you're a person who is asking those big questions, who has, who has left faith behind, has found it to be flimsy in a, in a season of grief, sit in the rubble, sit in the rubble, and, and like that child with the Legos all over the living room floor, go ahead and survey the rubble. And then take some time and start picking up pieces and putting them back together and see see what beauty emerges. Um, because I think that kind of honesty is the place where, where real beauty, beauty and flourishing begin.

Yeah, it's— I just, I kind of smile when you mention Legos because I actually just wrote a piece last week. I haven't published it yet, uh, about deconstructing our faith after we go through— and I, I use the same analogy because, you know, you, you have this thing that you've got all put together, um, but something comes along and knocks the whole thing apart. And that's an opportunity to rebuild it for a lot of us. So there can be, I believe, why I named the podcast Grief to Growth. I think that growth can come out of loss if we actually sit with it. I like what you said about that. We have to sit with it. And there's going to be this time of rubble. There's going to be this time of discomfort and of, you know, all those bad feelings. 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 a 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.

Yeah, yeah. And I would say, you know, they're not bad. You know, they're uncomfortable, right?

Right. Right.

But they, but they're so enriching when we, and that's part of our cultures, you know, the kind of myths that our culture carries about emotional content, about how we face difficult times that, you know, being angry is a bad feeling or being despairing is a bad feeling and being joyful or optimistic. Those are the good feelings we want to strive for in grief. But I think that all of our emotions serve us if we will listen to them, turn with them to in self-compassion. And, and really pay attention to their wisdom. So yeah, even those things that our culture might say, oh, you know, you don't want to feel that kind of stuff. I say, oh no, that there may be some wisdom that is being spoken to you there. Attend to that. Be curious about it. See, see what kind of fruitfulness you can gain from listening there.

Yeah, I actually, I slipped up with my language there because I think there are no bad feelings. Feelings are feelings. And we have— we've been given feelings by God. And we're supposed to feel them, you know, they're there for a reason. And you can take those things and you can transform them into something else. I was looking at your Instagram, I love this post that you made. I'm gonna read just part of it. You said, traumatic loss pulverized my hopes and confidence in the future. In the last almost 3 years, I've had to relearn how to plan a week, 2 weeks, a month in advance. I've had to rediscover how to look forward to things. Well, I'm now pretty good at hoping for small things. I still dislike thinking much about my future. I could plan up to 3 months in advance now, but I don't find that I dream much about what will be far ahead. It still feels very lonely and shaky to dwell on the future for very long. I get goosebumps just reading that because I remember that feeling. For you, it's been just about 3 years. For me, I'm coming up on 7 years. But talk about that feeling of, of not being able to plan so people can understand what that means.

Yeah, you know, when you experience sudden loss, there was no plan, you know, it really drops in and interrupts the calendar in a big way. And that's a unique aspect of this kind of loss, traumatic loss. And I think when you experience that sort of disruption, it just, it blows up the entire calendar, there's no way to anticipate, you didn't clear your calendar to anticipate the kind of physiological and emotional, spiritual, psychological effects of this loss in your life. And, you know, practically speaking, for me, it meant quitting a new job that I had just taken on and saying, hey, you know what, I can't handle this right now. I'm in a brain fog. I do not have the capacity for this. It meant restructuring. I mean, my husband died while we were on vacation. So it meant restructuring even the the details of getting home, of the very basic kinds of things. Where are we going to stay? How are we going to get back from where we are? And so those very basic and those first things that you deal with in grief, well, they're not the only things. 3 months from now, you know, how do I want to commit to bringing my kids to a school concert, you know, where dad isn't sitting there anymore? Do I want to even attend anymore? And then thinking about plans for the future, you know, we, we were getting to the place where we could think about being empty nesters, where I was hoping to further develop my second half career. And now I have to think differently about my future. And it's scary. It's scary to try to plan for a future that I never anticipated. And, you know, for me, I have just decided to to take it small, take it small, and not try to release those fears about the future, because it is scary to look into a future where suddenly there are no plans. But, um, and, you know, I'm, I'm an optimist. That's just how I'm wired. And I, I would like to say that there are all kinds of good things in store, but the reality is that life is hard, and I know that firsthand now. And so there's a bit of wariness, I think, even to an open calendar, to an own future. It feels uncertain now in ways that it never did before.

So how have you found, or any techniques or anything to deal with that uncertainty? Because I, you know, like I said, when I read that, I was like, I know that so well. And unless you've been through it, I think it's hard for people to understand. Even to this day, people talk to me about, you know, 10 years in the future, or whatever. I'm like, I can't even—

my mind would not even allow me to go Yeah, well, I mean, you know, when I talk to folks about any, any kind of relearning, because this is really what we're doing, right? We're relearning how to face the future. And these, these techniques, I think, work with relearning all kinds of things. You know, I always say start small. You do not need to plan a month in advance. Start 2 days in advance if that's where you can start. You know, even if you're not there yet, Plan your next hour. That's okay. At the very beginning, when grief feels really acute, you don't need to think past this 24-hour span. So start very small, and small means whatever small means to you at that time. I think the second thing would be to, to be aware of your triggers. You know, there are certain things that aren't a big deal for other people that become a big deal for you when you've experienced loss. I think about invitations to holiday get-togethers where folks are excited to give you an invitation and you receive it with a sense of trepidation. Now, do I have to commit to this a month in advance? You know, it says RSVP by, and, and that can feel like a real weight that can be a trigger for you. And so identifying, hey, you know what, this is an RSVP date that's further along than I plan right now. And being able to acknowledge that, maybe even reaching out to the person and offering a maybe instead, that can be a helpful way of of just being aware of the things that, that set you off. And, and then I like to encourage folks to choose concrete goals. You know, if you, if you're planning a week in advance, okay, what does that mean for you? Does that mean planning what you're going to eat each day? You know, making a menu plan? Does it mean planning who will pick your kids up from baseball practice? Maybe that's what the plan is. Choosing a couple of concrete things, not looking to plan your entire life, but the few a few small things that you have some reasonable control over can be a really good anchor point for you as you try to step into that level of uncertainty. Of course, acknowledging that it's gonna look different. Your experience of losing your person has totally reshaped your life. And so you're not going to ever plan in the same ways that folks around you who haven't experienced loss are planning. And, you know, you can release those expectations on yourself. And, and remind yourself of that, when people in your life who genuinely just don't understand would try to place expectations on you. And I think, you know, as you, you start small, you, you pay attention to your triggers, you look for small goals that you can achieve, and then you seek a sense of connection with your person. You know, your person isn't here in that concrete way that they were before, but it doesn't mean that you can't tap into the wisdom and the love that you share with that person still in, in their physical absence from you. And so, you know, I invite folks, bring your person into your planning, whatever that looks like for you. Does it mean paying attention to your person's favorite foods? Maybe that's what you plan to make for the next week. You're going to make a menu of your person's favorite foods as a way of bringing them into that, into that very concrete goal. Maybe it's tapping into their wisdom. You know, he or she would have fill in the blank, and, and having a sort of mental, emotional conversation with your person about your planning. One of the hardest parts of looking to the future is feeling like you're doing it alone, and I think seeking connection with your person and then in a community of support can be a really helpful way of saying, okay, this road feels lonely, but it's not as lonely as I might perceive it is sometimes, that there are other people who are willing to walk into this uncertain future with me. And I'm going to find them and I'm going to grab their hands on tight and we're going to walk together.

So you mentioned seeking a sense of connection with your person. What is that? What does that look like? Or what does that feel like for you? I know it's different for everybody.

Sure. Yeah. Well, for me, a lot of it is tapping into his wisdom. We, we worked together for almost 20 years in our marriage. He was a writer, I was an editor. So we worked together professionally a lot. And so when I think about professional work that I'm doing, you know, stuff in my work life, I'll often think, okay, what would Rob say in this moment? You know, how would he handle it? And not as a way of kind kind of relinquishing my own agency, but as a way of tapping into that love and thinking, if he were here now in this room talking to me, you know, flesh, and putting his arms around me, what would he tell me to write in that work email? What would he, you know, how would he speak into this tough situation I have with my colleague? And so I do those things a lot. And it's a balance, of course, because even as we seek connection with our loved one, we are developing on our own, we are tapping into our own wisdom in new ways. And, and part of seeking connection with your person is also, I think, a sense of joyfulness in your own flourishing, and knowing how much that pleases them. You know, all of our loved ones, they, they would want the best for us. And so tapping into your connection with your person isn't just a reliance on them. But it's a shared joyfulness that, you know what, I'm doing this, I'm doing this solo parenting thing. And I'm, I'm kicking butt, I'm doing pretty good, pretty well. I sense his joyfulness in me in that moment. And, and that's a further way that I feel like I can connect with him even in his physical absence.

So, um, I'm curious because, um, I was, I was raised as a Christian, and we were raised to kind of believe that, you know, when you— when people pass away, they either are asleep, you know, until Jesus returns, or they're in heaven. They're not really here. Um, what's, what's your— what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, well, you know, the tradition of the church is, um, is this belief in the communion of saints, that those who have died, you know, their flesh is, um, is broken down, they are in the ground, are still a part of us in a really beautiful and mystical way, that we are still of one body. And so that is really the, the core of my hope, that I'm less concerned about where he is and, and more interested in who he is now. And who he is is beloved of God. He is part of this body in which I am also a part. And so there's a sense of communion even in his physical absence.

Wow, great answer. Thank you. You refer to grief as a companion. What does that mean to you? And how can we— how can we— what does that mean to you?

Yeah, well, you know, I will admit it's kind of controversial for a lot of people, because it, it gives the impression that grief doesn't go away. But I think, you know, Brian, you've experienced this as well, you know, you carry grief with you, it changes, and it, it matures over time, but it's always there. It is always there. And that's why I really like the paradigm of grief as a companion, because it acknowledges that long-lasting nature of grief, that it is birthed into your life, and, and that it sticks with you, that it has a personality of its own, that it goes with you places where where you have to go, and in sometimes difficult ways. You know, folks in the office keep you at arm's length now because they see grief in the room with you, right? You sense grief at the table with you at dinnertime when there's an empty chair. There's just a way of embodying that experience for us. And, and then also, you know, the other side of that then is that grief speaks to us. It offers us wisdom, when we don't turn away from this companion who at times is incredibly difficult, who has, you know, barged into the house, as it were, set down its bags and said, I'm staying. And, and yet, when we turn to it with compassion, when we nurture its wisdom, boy, you know, grief shares so much with us. It reshapes how we see the world, it can become— make us more compassionate people, more tender in the very best of ways. And so, yeah, grief as a companion feels like something I can live with. And it, it takes the pressure off the sort of 5 stages of grief, you know, I've got to get from A to Z in a certain amount of time. And, and if I don't, then I'm languishing I always say, okay, grief, come on, come along for the ride. Let's see where we can go together. We'll get back to Grief to Growth in just a few seconds. Did you know that Brian D Smith 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 D Smith 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/grief2growth to make a financial contribution. And now back to Grief 2 Growth.

Yeah, that is a scary thing. A lot of people will ask, will I ever get over this? And I'm like, depends on what you mean by get over it.

That's right.

We can, we can heal, we can learn to accept the grief. And I love that analogy that in I love the image of grief as a companion because it's always going to be with us. So we might as well learn to embrace it. And the thing is, for me, the grief is a result of the love and the love's never going to go away. So I will always carry the grief with me. And that doesn't mean I'm always going to be sad or mourning or things like that. But there's still— I still have those days. I mean, it's going to be 7 years and a little bit over a month. And I still have days or times when it's like, yeah, I don't like this. You know, I don't want this. So, but I think what people— I love you, you're giving people hope that, yeah, it will get, it will get better, and you'll learn to kind of accept it and let it become part of the, part of who you are.

That's right. Yeah. And, and it also releases us to feel those feelings long after our person is, is not with us. Um, you know, I think about a dear friend of mine who lost her husband suddenly, uh, to a heart issue, and And 13 years after his death, her daughter got married, and she was anticipating this beautiful day celebrating her daughter, and just felt a deep, deep weight of grief at the, at the reception as she saw folks dancing and having a wonderful time. Grief was sitting there at the table with her. And I think that that paradigm of companionship, that image of companionship, allows us us, even 13 years after our loss, you know, 20 years, whatever, to say, okay, you're still with me. What kind of, what kind of gentleness can I offer myself in your companionship? And, and how can you speak to me now about the love, as you say, that still remains?

Yeah. So what, in your case of your husband's passing, here you are with 4 young children. How did you deal with their grief, or, you know, trying to take care of them while you're, you know, trying to take care of yourself. That's got to be a real challenge.

Yes, certainly. Parenting, parenting 4 children while grieving has been the mammoth task of my existence. I feel like if we get through this all alive and well, I'm going to put that at the top of my resume. That is my number one accomplishment in this life. Because children grieve very differently than adults do. You know, they are, they are changing bodies and minds and spirits, and, and they don't, they don't take in the reality of loss at the same, at the same way, in the same way that you do, at the same time you do. And so I found that it's just really a process of becoming a student to my children, you know, teach me how this feels to you, how you're doing this, how you're navigating this, instead of me sort of imposing my ideas about what grief is supposed to look like, how you're supposed to grow through it. I say, okay, how are you feeling today? How, you know, can I just listen and learn from you? And I found that that reflective kind of listening posture is really helpful in all areas of my parenting. It's made parenting my children easier in ways that don't feel, you know, they're more tangentially related to grief. And, you know, the difficulties of adolescence. Okay, well, I probably needed that reflective listening practice well in order before we entered that season. And grief has afforded me the opportunity to practice it So yeah, I try to give them space to feel what they need to feel, to be normal. You know, kids just want to feel normal after they have experienced a loss, whatever normal looks like to them. And they want to be able to fit in with their peers. So looking for opportunities to just help them navigate this, knowing that they're going to carry this even longer than I will. You know, they, they're so young, they were really young when they lost their dad, and, and they're going to need to learn how to shoulder this over time.

I would imagine— I only had to have two children, um, and I know how different their personalities are. I would imagine your four children handling the loss in different ways. Is that true?

Yeah, yeah, certainly. And, you know, my youngest, uh, was very little when Rob died and didn't really have a strong conception of what even was happening, uh, what that absence meant. And you see that developmentally that, you know, really young children, they— we've just taught them object permanence, you know, the idea that when mommy leaves the room, I'm still here, I still exist. We're so excited when we can leave the room, and the baby doesn't start to cry anymore, that we can. And, and, you know, we've barely taught them this idea. And then we have to teach them that, you know, Daddy's never walking back in the door again. And that is just rest. Wow, that's, that's a huge mental leap for them to take. And so you find with these little ones that they, they really don't understand what, what it means to die, what happens to the body when it's shutting down. And so their understanding emerges over time. And of course, you know, they ask concrete questions, the sort of who, what, when, where kinds of questions that will pierce our our hearts sometimes, because they are so literal. But, you know, our older children, they tend to ask the why questions. And those are certainly the harder ones to answer. And that's where I think that practice of reflective listening can be really helpful, regardless of what their personalities are.

Yeah, I— wow, as you were saying, I just can't even imagine doing that with, with, with, I can say, an age range of children who are at different levels of developmental capacity. And then, you know, trying to deal with your own feelings is going through that. So you're right. That is, that is something to put at the top of your resume. And I love that you said that because, you know, I was talking with someone, a client I was working with, and her daughter had passed away. And she was talking about her other daughter. And she said, well, I really feel like I need to make something in my life. And I want to do this, I want to do this. And I'm like, wait a minute, you're, you're a single mother raising a daughter who's like that's like 13 years. I said, that's your thing for right now. Yeah, do that. You know, we don't, we don't give enough credit to, to being a parent. It's— I think it's the most important job we'll ever have. And, uh, being complicated by, you know, sudden loss like that, it's— that's, that's quite an accomplishment to get through that.

Well, and we model this for our children too, right? We, we are teaching them, we're teaching them coping skills, we are teaching them compassion, deep compassion, and And the world needs people who have those skills. And so while it feels like we're just slogging through and, you know, barely making it to the next thing, our kids are watching, and they're watching not in a critical way, but they're watching in a really beautiful kind of way. And, and I think that we can trust that as our kids watch us grieve, and grow and begin to thrive and flourish again, that they are are, you know, we always say, you know, it's not, it's not what I tell you that you learn, it's, it's how you watch me live. And, and boy, they're getting a great example right there. They're seeing the messiness of it. They're seeing the struggle, but they're also seeing some really beautiful triumphant moments that I think are going to produce a generation of kids who are really thoughtful and loving toward others.

Yeah. Well, we spent a lot of time talking about growth after loss. Is growth inevitable?

No, I think, I think we have to choose it. You know, grief gives us this, we're at this pivot point after a loss. Are we going to calcify? Are we going to harden? Or is grief going to break us open? And, and I think that, you know, our, in the deep pain of grief, we want to just turn inward, we want to harden. But, but it's a choice. It's a choice to allow our sorrows, our suffering to break us open. But that breaking, as painful as it is, it produces good things, you know, the soil has to be tilled before planting can begin. And, and it's in that broken soil that we can plant the seeds for a new life. So yeah, It's, it's not inevitable. And, you know, I think we can all think of folks we've seen who, who don't seem to have grown through the hard things that they have endured, that they have become bitter, that they have become hardened by their circumstances. And so, you know, that idea of, you know, what, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. I don't think that for grieving people, you know, as I talked to widows and other folks, I don't think that's what most of us actually want. You know, it's, it's a cliché aphorism. But I think most of us actually don't desire to be so much stronger, as we desire to be wiser, to be more tender, to allow our experience of loss to shape us. And, and that is, that's an act of choice. That's something that we each have to choose.

Wow, I love that. I really haven't heard it put that way before. Instead of being stronger, being more loving and more caring, I think, more— and wiser, That's, that's what we really, that's what we really want. And yeah, I have, I know, I remember one of my first grief meetings I went to, I don't think I'll ever forget, I was, I walked in and this woman was there, her daughter had passed, like 10 years before, she was still bitter, still angry. It was like it just happened the day before. And I was not even ready to think about healing at that point. I was like, you know, I, because I don't know what your experience was. But I was like, I don't know if I'll ever heal. I don't I don't know. But when I looked at that woman, I said, but I do know I don't want to be her. And so she was a, she was a great role model for me for what not to be. So your book's titled Beyond the Darkness. What's the meaning behind the title?

Yeah, well, it comes from a really old hymn that I found talking about the hope that we have for for brokenness to be redeemed and to be made new. But the COVID of my book actually is a flower, and it's in the dark. And as a— I'm— I've got kind of a black thumb, sort of black and green. We'll call it a black and green thumb. As a somewhat amateur gardener, I love the idea of bulbs that we keep in our garages over the winter. We put them in paper bags and we hide them away away with the idea that come spring, we're going to plant those and that they're going to grow. But they need this season of darkness. It's actually a necessary season for them for rest, for renewal, to get ready to do the job that they're going to do. And I think that, um, that our experience of grief is like that, that we live in this darkness of sorrow, that it is deep, it is despairing, it feels hopeless sometimes. It is deeply painful. But there's something going on there. Also, there is— there are nutrients that are being formed in us that are going to allow us to flourish again. And so, you know, I, I hope that the title of the book both acknowledges that the depth and the sorrow of the darkness of grief, but also points us on to something that happens beyond that, when the paper bag, as it were, is torn where we're planted in that broken up soil of our life. And with the inevitability that as we do that grief work, as we do the diligent planting and nurturing of that life that we've been given, that we can flourish again.

Yeah, I love that analogy. It's one that I use often, you know, the planted, that's actually the subtitle of my book, Planted, Not Buried. Carried that we, you know, we, if we, if we allow it to, as you said, if we allow it to break us open and to grow from it, we can, we don't, it is a choice, you know, we don't, we don't have to. But, you know, as you were saying that, you know, and sometimes people because of their faith, or they'll say, well, I have to be happy, you know, I can't, I can't acknowledge these feelings. And I'm thinking about a particular person that I with. And this is a person who suddenly lost a grandchild, this terrible tragedy, and just would not acknowledge the fact that they even felt bad. Have you, have you experienced that?

You know, I, I'm blessed to not have been in a church culture that reinforced those really damaging kinds of messages. And, and my heart breaks for folks who have heard those messages in settings that were, were supposed to be safe and nurturing. Because it's certainly not the way of Jesus. You know, when I think about the way of Jesus, I think to the book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Scriptures, where it says that he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And the word acquainted there in Hebrews actually means close friend. And so if you are a person of faith, and you've been told, you know, get happy, push through this, shoulder on, you know, be joyful. That is not— that is clearly not the way of Jesus, not the way of someone who is intimate friends with sorrow. So, yeah, yeah, that's— it's always sad to think that, that there are folks for whom those hard feelings are not welcome. Because I think we see over and over again in the life of faith that that, you know, we have someone who embraces suffering, who sees suffering as a pathway to joy, and doesn't feel like he needed to leave it behind to do the good work that he was called to do.

Yeah, that's— I love that answer. And, you know, unfortunately, I'm in a lot of communities of ex-Christians. I'm actually in a group on Facebook for ex-evangelicals. And, you know, this idea that we can't feel the feelings, that we have to be happy, that drives some people away from the faith, because they're like, "I'm a human being." I think people forget that Jesus was very human, you know. And I always think about on the cross when he cried out, you know, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He was feeling the pain.

Yeah, that's right. And so we can be like him in that way. We can cry out those desperate cries of abandonment. We can say the things that it feels almost un-Christian, as it were, or unfaithful to say, knowing that in his humanity, he receives those, that he suffers with us. And gosh, grief is an incredibly isolating experience. You know, that you, you go into your workplace, you even sit with family who have a shared loss, and you don't feel like they can connect deeply with what you are feeling. You know, we each, even when we share a loss, we each grieve that loss in unique ways. And I think that's the beauty of, of being with Jesus in our grief, is that here we have someone who is deeply acquainted with it. So if you're looking for somebody who gets it, when nobody else in your life gets it, you can turn to Jesus, because he understands it, he carries it with you. And, and he'll walk with you.

Yeah. So you, I think I saw in some one of your publicity materials, something about Jesus walks with us through this. So what does that, what does that look like for you?

Well, I think when we, when we understand that Jesus isn't afraid of grief, that he was good friends with it, then we just follow in his footsteps, we befriend grief, we say, okay, in one hand, I'm gonna, I'm gonna walk with the hand of grief for the rest of my life. I'm going to take it places where I never thought I could go. And I'm going to take Jesus along with me in my other hand, that the three of us will walk together. That's sort of the image that I take. And, and so it means that in those places of deep despair, I can sit with grief in honesty. And I can know that in that darkness, I am not alone, because Jesus walks with me. And in those moments of joy, because they do come, and you know, I feel feel like sometimes it's easier to talk about the hard things after you've lost your person. And it's almost like, I'm not allowed to feel the joy anymore, that it feels wrong to feel that joy. And yet again, as grief speaks to us with joy in remembering our person, in, you know, celebrating accomplishments after a loss, we have Jesus again attending to us, that one with scars in his hands and his side, saying, I understand that when you are being resilient, when you're being redeemed, resurrected from the darkness of your loss, you experience joy and sorrow in the same hands. And, you know, I will walk with you and smile and cry and, and do all of that messy stuff that is our life. I'll do it with you. And, you know, his name is Emmanuel, God with us. I think that's a great gift to grieving people.

Yeah. And you, you touched on something there that I want to go back over, that, that idea that, you know, I'm never going to feel joy again. Um, I think most of us go through that. I know that I did. And then when you do start to feel joy, then the guilt that comes.

Yes. Yeah, it's, it's disconcerting to feel joy because you think that maybe it should that you— that it needs to feel one-sided, that if I love this person, grief is my connection of love with them. And so maybe if I'm feeling happy again, that means I'm grieving less, which means I'm loving them less. And so that's where the grief as love— it's, it's a helpful comparison, but the analogy breaks down because because if we only equate grief with sad feelings, then sad feelings equals love. And, and we can't live that way. You can't live a fruitful life that way. But, but when we see grief as a companion, when it's the love that walks with us through the rest of our lives, then we can say, okay, this companion is entering into joy with me, that love that remains, it looks different. But I can fully experience a new relationship, a new job, you know, selling my house and buying a new one, taking a trip, you know, whatever those things are, that, that feel joyful, knowing that grief as the companion says, I want you to live again. Grief, I have taught you so many good lessons about what it means to live fully. Now go and do it and really enjoy it.

Yeah, well, as you were saying, I thought about that, that grief is love. And I've heard the adage or whatever, that sometimes the depth of the grief, grief is equal to the amount of love you had for a person. And that's a very dangerous analogy.

Yeah.

And I say this from experience, because I thought, okay, I love my daughter so much that therefore I have to be miserable for the rest of my life to prove how much I loved her. And it sounds crazy when you say it out loud. But these are the kinds of thoughts that go through your head.

Yeah. And it's certainly these are things that our culture has taught us about how to grieve. You know, there are so many myths about how we operate as bereaved people in the world that just become oppressive to us. I mean, that, that analogy that you give there breaks down if you're a child, you know, a child who's experienced loss, they didn't have that long history with the person that maybe an adult would have had. So they won't carry grief in the same way. But it doesn't mean that they don't love them. And so yeah, a lot of our work, I think, as grieving people is to to chart our own course, to be able to identify those held beliefs, culturally held beliefs about what grief is, whether it is, you know, the time heals all wounds, or the some losses are worse than others. You know, you could think about all kinds of myths that we have in our culture about grief, to identify those held beliefs, and then to step away from them and kind of observe them a little bit critically. Okay, where, where do I see this actually existing in my life? Like, are there truths here that I can pull out of this? Or do I just need to ditch this altogether and chart my own course? So it requires some level of engagement, critical engagement for us as bereaved people. And that's why, you know, grief is work and flourishing is work.

Yeah. Well, it's kind of back to the Lego thing you talked about, right?

That's right.

We take them all apart. And we say this one, yeah, I'll keep this one. But this one, I don't need anymore.

That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

So what do— what do grieving people need most to flourish after loss? What would you say is the thing they need the most?

They need the gift of presence. You know, that you'll bring your casseroles to someone who's lost an appetite. You will, you will send a card to somebody who can barely read the writing through their tears. But you will never go wrong in showing up. You will never go wrong in showing up for someone. And, and this is a commitment It's a commitment for the long haul. And I think that's why so many people who are grieving feel deeply alone. Because, because we think that maybe it's our commitment of presence is just like for the first month, you know, we'll get the meal train going, or we'll, you know, make sure that their kids get to school for the first month, and then we've kind of done our job. But presence is a lifetime commitment. It is. It's a commitment to to show up at kids' graduations, or to go to the cemetery with someone. You know, it's, it's something that goes far beyond the few weeks or months before or after a funeral. And, and presence makes all the difference. It reminds us that we are not alone in the deep suffering that we endure. And it also reminds us that there's life beyond, you I think grieving people need to be always drawn forward gently, always gently, but drawn forward into new life. And so, you know, if you're supporting a grieving person, I encourage folks to just keep asking, keep inviting them out, you know, inviting them over for dinner, knowing that they may say no 9 times before they ever say yes. And, but it's that commitment to presence. I'll be here for you when you're ready. Ready, I'll be here for you. And, um, I'm going to keep showing up. I'm going to tell you how much I love you. And, um, and I'll be in it for the long haul with you because what I want for you is what I know you deeply want for yourself, which is to flourish.

Yeah, that's so well said and so important. Um, I've actually gotten to the point now where if someone loses a loved one, I'll tell them, call me, or I'll call you in 6 weeks or a couple of months because everybody comes down for the first month. You're just— you're overwhelmed. You're in that— you don't remember who came around, but they all come around, and then everybody goes away. Um, and that's— that's when I think it's really important. So this is just advice for someone: if you know someone that's lost someone, 2, 3 months, 6 months down the road, that's when it's really important to reach out with them, when everybody goes back to, quote, normal.

That's right. Yeah, I had a widow who would send me dinner every month on the 19th, which was the day of Rob's accident. She sent me dinner every, every 19th for the first year after, after my loss. And I was significant. But she had lived it. She knew how much showing up over the long haul mattered.

Yeah, that's awesome. And I just heard something. I was listening to a grief podcast a couple days ago. And they said, you know, if you don't say something, if you don't say anything, that's saying something. So a lot of times we feel like, well, I don't know the right thing to say, because our culture doesn't teach us the right things to say. And I don't want to say the wrong thing. But I don't— was it your experience? Did you find people that just like disappeared?

Yeah, you know, some relationships are galvanized by loss, they are just cemented, we— they become something new and, and really sacred. And then other relationships thin. And it's a hard reality when you need so much support to see some folks in your life who who just can't walk this road with you. And it's something to grieve. It's what we call secondary losses, the other things that we've lost besides our person. And it's worth writing them down. It's worth grieving them actively. And then there's also this amazing capacity of folks to be drawn to us in loss. There are certain people who just have it in them. And it's, it's not because they have some special gift. It's that they have probably endured something hard too. And they have seen how much presence matters. And they show up, they show up and they do, they do kind works for us. You know, I think about my HVAC guy and my electrician who became surprisingly great friends after my loss. But, you know, when you've gone through something hard, you know what people really need. And And experience teaches us, but we can also actively learn to be those kinds of people in other people's lives.

Yeah. So tell me about your podcast. It sounds really interesting. So tell me what the topic is and what the name of it is and how people can find it.

Yeah, so I host a— co-host a podcast with my co-host Daniel Harrell, Surprised by Grief. It's hosted by Christianity Today. And it follows the first year of our losses. Well, first and second years of our loss. Daniel lost his wife to pancreas cancer in 2019. And I lost my husband in a hiking accident. So, you know, we have different experiences of loss. His was a prolonged goodbye. And of course, mine was sudden. And we just wrestle together, honestly, it's a place where people of faith can wrestle together and ask the questions that are kind of awkward, I think, for folks to ask, but we're not ashamed to talk about the intersection between the hard things we face and the God that we profess to love and want to follow. So it's a good space to be honest, if you're asking questions about faith, or you just want to hear somebody's story as they're going through it. I think, you know, in the loneliness of loss, it just feels good to know, oh, I'm not the only one feeling this crazy I don't know anybody else who feels it, but to hear, okay, there's somebody else out there who is struggling to eat or having trouble with sleeping or having difficulty going back to church or engaging with folks in their work life, it can normalize that experience for you. And I hope that we offer that to folks in the podcast.

Yeah, that's awesome because I think that's so needed. It's— we feel like when we go through stuff like this, like, I'm the only one. No one will— I know other people have lost their husband or had a daughter, but nobody knows exactly what this feels like. And then we go through these things, and we don't want to talk to anybody about them because we think we're going crazy. And I've heard so many people say, is this— is this insane? You know, is this crazy? And it's— it's important to have that safe space. And again, sometimes our faith— that not our faith, but the people that teach us our faith will not allow us to question. And it's important to have a safe space where we can, we can say anything, we can ask any question, because I don't believe that God's afraid of our questions. I think God welcomes our questions. And I've seen people just get themselves all tied up in knots because they said, well, I'm a person of faith, so I, I can't feel this way. And we still feel it, we just don't express That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. And so it's, you know, I've had folks write to me who have experienced divorces, and we talk about ambiguous loss, the kind of loss that comes to us when a person hasn't died, when they're still here with us, but there's some kind of change that has deeply affected that relationship. So yeah, it's, it's an, it's a space to ask those honest questions. And hand and interface with your faith at the same time.

Awesome. Awesome. So, Clarissa, we're coming to the end of our time. Anything else you'd like to say before we wrap up today?

Yeah, well, I think, you know, I am committed to honest and soulful grief support. You know, there's, there's a space for clinical support, and I, and I deeply value therapeutic support in grief. I think it's an awesome tool for folks who, who really need it. I know I have benefited therapeutic model in grief support. And then there's also a space for companionship support. And, and companionship support is support that, that each of us can do. And that's the kind of support that I'm committed to offering when I interface with folks on my Instagram, which is sort of like my happy place, or, or in this book, you know, Beyond the Darkness, it's a, it's a soulful guide for folks to be able to say, okay, we're going to talk about intimacy, we're going to talk about sex, we're going to talk about eating, we're going to talk about emotions. And we're going to talk about this all in a community where we're open to faith. And we're open to exploring those questions in an honest way, and charting a path forward. Because that kind of companionship support is the supportive presence that will take folks for the long haul, the support that they'll be able to carry with them for the rest of their lives.

Yeah, well, you're doing, you're doing great work, really important work. So thanks. Thanks for doing that. Thanks for being you. And thanks for being here on Grief to Growth.

Thanks so much for having me. 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 know 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/grieftogrow. Growth. That's patreon.com/grief, the number 2, growth, and sign up to make a small monthly donation. Patrons get access to exclusive bonus content and knowledge that you are helping to spread the message of Grief 2 Growth. For more about Brian and Grief 2 Growth, visit www.grief2growth.com.

Hi there, I'm really excited to tell you about my latest ebook. It's 4 Lessons That You Can Learn From the Near-Death Experience Without Going Through All the Trouble of Dying to Learn Them. I've been studying NDEs for several years now. I am completely convinced that not only are they 100% real, but that there's some very universal wisdom that we can get from the near-death experience. And I've distilled that down in this book into 4 short lessons. And I've also given you all the reasons why I believe the NDEs are absolutely real. So go to www.grieftogrowth.com/NDElessons to pick it up for free. www.grief2growth.com/NDElessons. I hope you enjoy it.