Grieving What Was—and What Wasn't: Finding Meaning in Loss (Episode 68)

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Something about you that I can't help but smile when you smile and laugh when you laugh, Something's around you.

Welcome to the human intimacy podcast. Dr. Kevin Skinner. Marianne Michaelis. Marianne Summers here. The leaves are on the trees. It's getting warmer. We're talking about the weather again. How are you?

I spent a glorious morning this morning in Arizona, hiking in Sedona among the red rocks. It was just beautiful, quiet, still, cool, cactus bursting into, into flower. And so I am grateful for this season. It was also 101 degrees when I left and flew home. So I'm grateful that I'm not in Arizona anymore.

Yeah. So Sedona, if we could do a commercial for Sedona, I was there last year and I'll tell you, the rocks, the formations, it just, it's just a beautiful place. I really enjoyed it there. So to our listeners, we're going to be talking about something. Maybe, maybe we always do this, we talk about hard topics. I, when I, when I get feedback from, you know, people, you know, that was a hard, that was a hard episode to listen to. You know, at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is really lean into some really difficult conversations. And today, no different, we're talking about grieving the grief of loss, not just dealing with, we're not talking necessarily about, with the death of a person, which it could be. The concepts in here will apply for that if you've lost a loved one recently. But grieving over events or experiences that you feel are lost times, lost experiences that you could have had yet you haven't had or haven't been able to have because of whether it's addiction or not having relationship skills, or maybe it's you're grieving over the fact that you misunderstood somebody and, and you haven't been able to connect because of those misunderstandings. And now that time has been lost. Thoughts, Marianne?

Yeah. This is such a broad topic, and as you said, sometimes we come in here and we have really hard topics, and I, I appreciate that because this is a topic that not we. We don't hear people talk about very often. Most of the time, we're uncomfortable with it. We don't know what to say. Somebody suffers a loss, and we're oftentimes we kind of go, oh, I don't know what to say, so I'm going to maybe avoid it and not say anything at all. Most of us are pretty uncomfortable with that. And so I'm so glad we're having that conversation. And my first initial thought, one of the things that comes up for me that I often talk about with my clients is we grieve for what was, for what happened. And this comes from Dr. Edith Eager in her book. This was a concept that just hit ho home for me. We grieve for what happened that was unexpected, that we couldn't control. And we also grieve for what wasn't. The hopes, the dreams, the expectations, the things that didn't happen. And especially when we're looking at relationships, especially when they're rocky, especially when they're difficult, or even the losses of a loved one, we're grieving for what hasn't happened, what didn't get to happen.

A few years ago, I was talking with an individual, and they described their grief in a way that I'd never considered before. And they were actually talking about their childhood, and they were talking about the lack of connection with their mother and father and what they desired, and they're longing for a connection with one of their primary caregivers. And as they talked about the process, it just came into my mind. This person is grieving a childhood where there wasn't a bond with a parent or caregiver and their desire to, to. To have a parent who would be there and just at some point say, hey, son, I got you. I love you. I'm here. You're doing a great job. You matter. And, and as this individual was talking about that experience of just what they wanted from a parent, that I realized they're grieving something that they never really had, that they longed for.

Yeah, I think what. One of the things you're talking about are our unfinished stories. We all carry unfinished stories. And oftentimes when we're doing trauma work, we'll go back and work with those younger selves. And oftentimes, but I'll, you know, I'll have my client go back and. And, you know, see that younger part or that younger self and just go back and say, what does that part need? And so many times that part just needs somebody to say, oh, I see your pain. Oh, I'm here with you. Oh, here, crawl up onto my lap and let me just hold you. And because that didn't happen, oftentimes our nervous system gets. Can get stuck there. And so going back and doing that is so calming and so transformational oftentimes for my clients because that part that didn't get the release or the comfort or the. The ending of the story, what it needed gets to finish there.

And interestingly, Marianne, I don't know if we think of it as grief as a culture. We might not even use the term grief. We might use terms like I'm depressed. We might not fully understand why. But when people start talking about their experience, what we begin to see is that they're actually grieving over things or events or experiences that they did not have. And so grieving is the word. But from that, we see anxiety or we see depression, or we see this loneliness of things that I wish I could have had or I would desired but never occurred. And going back to my client in this situation, as this person was talking, one of the questions I often ask in a situation is, I want you to imagine with me what you would like to have happened, what. What you would like to have had this person do or say. And sometimes in groups, we will actually do those things. We will have them model, have somebody in that room, be that and say that sometimes it can be very therapeutic and healing just to hear somebody say what you long for and what you desire.

Oh, yeah, I want to, if I can back us up just a little bit, I. I think there's a really important part of this that I want to make sure that we hit. I saw this recently with a client. We were talk about a situation, and I could just see this underlying grief. And I said, there's grief there. What's. What's going on? And what I saw with this client and what I often see is my clients don't want to touch it. If they acknowledge, if they even say, hey, I am grieving this, then they have to face it. They have to acknowledge that something's actually happening or not happening. And so when you're talking about anxiety or that depression or these other symptoms that might be showing up, they may be showing up because we're not ready to deal with maybe what's really going on in our relationship. Because if I see it, I can't not see it. And if I see it, I might have to change things or do things or say things, and I might not be ready. And so I may be in this really stuck place, and that's really a hard place to be in.

So if I'm there, the strategy that I would want to implement might be actually naming it.

Yes. And that's so scary and so hard because it can be in my head, but the minute I write it down or I say it out loud, I can't deceive myself anymore. I can't pretend like it's not there.

Well, and when we look at people dealing with the death of a loved one, sometimes it's. I can't acknowledge that they're gone. Right. That denial of this, I can't imagine that this has actually happened. And I see that in many cases, in a variety of situations, people dealing with addiction, people dealing with trauma, people dealing with the loss of a loved one, that the reality is, is it's a natural human response to not even want to acknowledge what's happened.

Yeah, Let me take that a little further. Earlier this week, I was working with a client who was sharing with me the loss of a very dear, sweet friend. And because of the circumstances, it wasn't. It wasn't shared in the employment and like, in. In the workplace, nobody talked about it. And this particular client said, there's not going to be a funeral. And because I'm not part of this group, I'm not part of that grieving process with them because I'm not part of this group. I'm not. And they said, I haven't told anybody. And. And they were so stuck in not having a place to even talk about, to process, to work through, to even talk about the lovely things that they miss, the things about this person that they cherish. It's just stuck there. You know, in our grieving processes, we often say, oh, yeah, you've got a couple days, couple weeks maybe, and then you should be back together. Right. We. We have these expectations that we don't realize that grieving takes a long time. When we grieve, we change. It changes us.

And I think it would be fair to say that. Let's just say that it is the death of a loved one. The grieving process will be a continuous process. Not like we get done with that, because really, it's. If I Loved a person, it will always be a pain in that separation. So I think honoring that and recognizing it's not like we get over or through the grieving process. The grieving process is a continuous journey. And some days I do with it, deal with it better, and other days I don't deal with it well at all. And that's the roller coaster of loss and love and lost experiences and the things that we wish would have happened but did not happen.

I don't know if you remember, Dr. Skinner, but probably back in 2019, there was a training with Ted. We are Willow House down in New Mexico.

Yeah, down in New Mexico. Ted's a great guy.

Yeah. I remember he did a training on grief that I participated in. And I remember him talking about concept. I think he called it burbles. And he said, burbls are kind of like. Like the bubbles in your champagne glass. You just never know when they're going to pop up. And he talked about, we have these burbles of emotion where we might be in a place where we think, oh, I'm doing okay. And then suddenly this emotion pops. And as you were talking about this grief that we continuously grieve, I. I just was remembering when I was in grad school, I had an commute just to get there. And so I would usually call my grandmother. And when I think, you know, every time I'm on that road now, I'm not. I'm not on that road very often, but invariably when I'm, like, heading out, going on that road, I often think about, oh, I wish I could call my grandma. This is the time that I would talk to my grandma or I think about the conversations that I had with my grandmother. And so like that just as an example of this grieving that people are with us and we still want to honor and cherish those memories that we have with them. And we do have the burbles that pop up out of nowhere that we weren't expecting the pop of emotion. And we need to be able to have the places to honor and express those.

And when they come to be with them, not to ignore them, not to avoid them, just to recognize, yeah. That. Oh, yeah, I miss grandma. Or. Or in a relationship where there's been some. A loss in some way, we do. We want to name it. I. I mourn or grieve what I thought we had or what I thought was there.

Oh, and that's such a huge part. Shifting that into that betrayal trauma lens. When I got married, I had this expectation that my spouse would be loyal to me. And then when he wasn't, all of my hopes and dreams, all of my happily ever after, everything shifted. Now I didn't know who I could trust. My whole landscape of my world changes. And that's part of the grief grief we have to grieve. This relationship that I thought I had, it's not what I have. I don't even know what I have. And part of that grief does tie back into the. That questioning of myself with betrayal, trauma, grieving, did I make a bad choice? Grieving like that second guessing that also comes with that. But that such a huge part of betrayal trauma is the grief. And flipping that other side, we've got the grief of. Of the betrayer, the grief of the damage that's done that. Compulsive behaviors or thoughtless behaviors, like the damage that comes in. And the crappy thing about grief is we can't go back and change what happened in the past. We can't fix the past, but we can work on the future.

I think that's interesting. I often challenge that concept that you just said.

Okay, all right, let's hear it.

You're right. I can't change the behaviors of the past, but I can change my emotional response to the behaviors of the past.

Say more about that. So deeper.

Okay, so I obviously can't change a behavior. If I acted out, if I cheated, if I was unfaithful in some way, I can't change that. But I can also my attitude towards the event can change, which can actually help and be reparative to the relationship. Because initially I may be defensive or gaslighting or stonewalling, pushing the energy away because I feel ashamed, I can do that. But if I change how I now speak about that event and I have deep regret and sorrow and awareness of the pain I've created in you, in a person. I've not changed the event. I've changed how I responded to that event. And that actually helps change the past.

I love that because I see. I see us sometimes get stuck in that. That it's all about me space. Especially when I'm dealing with. If we're talking about like addict brain or what it looks like from an addict perspective, it's really hard to maybe see my partner's pain. I get caught in my shame, I get caught in my grief. I get caught in my regret. And I might even feel some resentment that you're not functioning very well and, or. Or whatever that you're mad at me, that I hurt you, and so I Love that. What I'm hearing you say is we need to be able to move out of that space where it's me focused and it's stepping into a responsibility and I can then sit with and hold your pain and be with you in your pain.

So when I do that, in essence, what I'm allowing this process to do is, yes, it's grieving of what we had, but now it is a we. We are grieving the loss that we shared together. We're grieving and the shift there is me independently or defensively, and you being all by yourself. And now we're joining it together as a we. We are. We are mourning the loss of what we didn't have. And, and this is the then the transition, Marianne, into a place of hope.

I think, Dr. Skinner, I think what you're talking about, I, as I'm hearing you talk about it, I'm just noticing a little bit of resistance in myself going like, hold on a sec. I think there's some timing in here as well. I think this is some mature conversations. This isn't something at the very beginning that can happen because, oh, for sure, if you're betrayed, partner, I'd just be like, oh, no. I need some space and time to be angry at you. I need some space and time to make sense of my hurt and my pain and to do some grief work before you come over here and maybe join me. Because I may not be ready or feel safe with you there.

Yes and yes. No question about what you just said. But when couples heal, it becomes a we. It becomes a we. We are grieving because I'm able to be with you in your pain and, and, and in truth, you're able to see the part of me that was dark and ugly and, and inappropriate. And you can see that. And we are grieving over these experiences that we're not able to be our full, whole selves and we can grieve together. That's the healing journey. When couples heal, they grieve and mourn the loss of what they didn't have. And it's no longer a blame or accusing or denying or blaming. It is a grieving process where I'm able to sit with you in your pain and you in my pain. And you can see me. And that's. Yes, that takes a whole bunch of time and a whole lot of self work.

You know, at the ITAP conference or symposium that we were at a couple weeks ago, one of the keynote speakers was Michelle Mace, and she was talking about this couple's work. And this. This concept that you're talking about, especially that in the early stages of betrayal and discovery and addiction, she talked about this is like the destabilization time where, where people are trying to figure out who am I and. And how do I make sense of my world. And then she talked about something that just really caught my ear. She said, and then when we move into this couple's healing place, we need new tools. We have to use different tools, because instead of being on this, this is all about me. This is just what you're saying. It now turns into the we, and we've got to. We've got to face things in a different way. I. I want to slow down, though, still, and back up just a little bit. And, and I don't know what you call this, but I've recently had some clients just as we're. As we've been working on grief, really talking. I say talking about, but not really talking about. There are griefs, there are pains that there are no words for. There is pain that takes your breath away and just lays you out that all you can do is breathe sometimes, and that there just are no words for. What are your thoughts on that, Dr. Skinner? I don't know if you have a word for that or what you call that, but. Yeah, what are your thoughts on that?

I don't know if I have a word for it, but I've. I've witnessed it many times. Yeah, I. I have been to many funerals, and some of them were suicide, some of them were tragic accidents. And I have felt that. And I've been present with people literally hours after those deep losses, sometimes within an hour or minutes of those deep losses. And no, there's not words. And this is. See, what's interesting here, Marianne, is we can speak about grief. We better talk about hope, too, because, yes, we have to give voice to the grieving. And yes, there is. There is a time where we are going to be in our grieving. But if I stay in that place, I don't realize that place of hope that comes because the sun does come up in the most grieving cases. And so you talk about this. This place where I'm just knocked flat. I've sat with people in those. Those experiences, and I've watched them get up off the mat, off the ground and move on with life. Some of the most inspiring people of my life are them. And, and. And I have some deep friendships that will always be my friendships because I was with them in those moments and those bonded us in no other way.

Yeah, because you're there seeing their pain, seeing the unspeakable. You're witnessing it, and you're sharing that.

With them and them with me. They allowed me to be a part of that journey. And sometimes as therapists, that's what we do, is we sit with people moments, because the answer to those questions is that we have somebody who's there with us, not solving our problem, but simply being with us in our suffering.

I. I am so glad you said that, because I just want to be really clear for our listeners. There is nothing that you. When. When I'm having pain, it's mine. You know, if. If a car ran over my foot, that's my pain. And you can empathize with that or have compassion for me, but you don't feel that pain. You don't feel my pain. That is my pain. And when we are going through grief or even these moments that we're talking about, other people, they feel their pain from their experience, but they don't feel my pain. And so many times we may get stuck or feel like, I don't know what to do or I don't know how to fix this or I don't know how to take this away or whatever it is, because we're in a society where we want to fix things, and heaven forbid we should have some pain or feel pain. But recognizing what I can give you, what I can do is I can be with you. I can sit you and witness and be with you in your pain.

I love the concept of being in our presence. I can be present with you.

Yeah.

Again, I'm not solving the problem, my presence. And if I'm in this place where I can be present with you, you feel it. So I think the grieving process, again, just to iterate a couple concepts, it needs to be a need. There needs to be a langu. We need to really look at this process of what this is, and we need to be able to process the grieving. What are my emotions? No judgment. But what is it that I'm experiencing? And I find that often in our grieving process, we're afraid of it because we're afraid we'll get stuck in it or we'll get lost in the grieving process. And so we. I don't want to go there because it's too triggering or too painful. And some of the most effective grieving is what I talk about when we buffalo up. I don't know if I've ever shared that story of buffaloing up here.

Yeah. I know the story, but I don't. I don't remember if you talked about it here, but it's. It's been a while. If you have. So you probably better.

So a few years ago, I was reading a book, and the author talked about how the buffalo and the cows share the same plains in Colorado. And he said, when the storms come over the mountains and the cows turn and move away from the storm, and as they move away from the storm, they can't outrun a storm. And so they're exposing themselves longer to the storm because they're moving away from the storm. And he said, interestingly, if you watch buffalo, they will actually turn and face the storm. And in some cases, he said, they will actually run into the storm. The metaphor here is absolutely beautiful and powerful. When we ignore, avoid, move away from difficult emotions, things that we don't want to feel, that's when I can turn to my sexual behaviors or drinking or moving away. I'm literally ignoring or running from experiences. Now contrast that with a buffalo who turns into the storm, exposing themselves to it for a shorter period of time. When I don't run from pain or problems, when I step into the grief, give it a voice, be with my emotions, I'm going to expose myself to it for a shorter period of time.

And. And that fear, I just want to validate the fear that's there because we are afraid. Like, I don't want to go into that because oftentimes, as you said earlier, I'm not sure how to get out of it. I remember years ago, I had a client who, you know, as we were working together, I said, what is it that you feel like you want to do? What is your gut telling you? What do you want to do with this? And she said, I just want to crawl under my covers and not come out. I just. I just really want to bury myself. And so. And so I said, but her fear was that she wouldn't come out. Her fear was that she'd get sucked in, and then she wouldn't be a mom, she wouldn't be a wife. She wouldn't be able to go to work. She was so afraid that she would get sucked in there. And so we said, well, why don't you set a timer? Why don't you give yourself 15 minutes and allow yourself to go and go under the covers and be there? And the next week when I saw her, I said, how did that go? And she said, I got bored. I did it. And I got. I got. I got bored. And so I Think it's important to. If it feels so big, we can give ourselves time. I know in my own personal, some of my own personal emotional work that I've done, there are some workbooks and some work that I've done that, that I had to kind of say, ooh, I know I'm going to need about five hours. And so I need a little bit of space, of time to mentally prepare myself to go into this space, and I'm going to need some time afterwards. And so I had to kind of look at my calendar and say, I've got a plan. And I know that sounds, so, it may sound weird to our listeners, but giving myself space and time, or giving ourselves space and time to allow ourselves to work through the grief or the pain or whatever it is that we're working through. So we can plan it ahead of time or say, here's where I'm going to go. But we can also say, hey, maybe I can't handle this right now, today at work, right now. But today at 5 o', clock, I'm going to set aside 30 minutes and at 5 o' clock I'm going to let myself feel all of the stuff that I need to, that I've been holding on to.

And my only caution with all that we're talking about here is this. If you can't do it by yourself because you're afraid you're going to get stuck and you're afraid of your own emotions, you really need to talk with a professional therapist who's comfortable in being with people in their difficult emotions, Right? And so you might need to reach out for a therapist because these are some of these emotions, some of these grieving experiences are so painful and so profound that it's hard for you to be with your own self and you're, you're afraid. So I, I love the time there. Like for 15 minutes, just go, do this, be under those covers. I've had people say, I need to run it out, I need to punch it out. But, but when we have grief in order to have these difficult emotions, what do you want? And this is a whole different concept, but what is your body wanting to do? Because sometimes in that grieving process, you see, I just want to scream. And I see, scream, run, do whatever the body is telling you it needs to do. When we don't do that, that's where the trauma gets stuck, because it doesn't have a voice, it doesn't have a physical expression of what needs to happen. Grieving needs to be expressed and it needs either written movement, it needs a way out.

I think what you said is really important, Dr. Skinner in and, and so maybe let's just talk about this as, as you said, there are specific times where it is bigger, where our mentality may tell us everything's lost. I can't go on. And when we might be thinking about harming ourselves or harming others, those are absolutely times of where we definitely need lots of help from lots of resources. And so as you brought that up, I. That hadn't even come to my mind as we were talking about this. But it's, I think it's really important that we recognize that oftentimes we are with walking wounded. We don't know what other people are carrying and boy, the kinder we can be and the more intuitive we can be. Listening to our gut and really seeing each other, I think is so important.

Yeah. And, and so again, when the emotions arise, just check yourself. Am I able to be with these emotions or am I running from them or am I escaping? Right. So part of the grieving process is actually to understand the emotions that come with the grief. And if it's overwhelming you, that is a really good sign that you need to go seek professional guidance and help to help you with those difficult emotions. If you don't deal with that, then those emotions either get buried or they get explosive. So when you don't know how to be with your own emotions, that's really important sign. I need help.

Hey. And so I think it's really good that we're clarifying that. So sitting in your emotions is healthy, but there's a point when it feels like I can't sit in these emotions there too much. This is when we need to reach out for help, say, hey, I'm struggling and, and we might not. It might be hard to say, I don't know at 11 o' clock at night where I'm going to find a professional for this. And there are like the suicide hotline there, there are different places. But even just turning to a friend or a loved one and saying, I'm not doing well and I need some help, can you help me? Because I might not the frame of mind if I'm in that space, I'm probably not thinking very clearly and having a lot of logic of saying, oh, let me troubleshoot this, let me, let me figure out how to manage this. And this is where we do need other people to help.

And if you can do it on your own, let's talk about that for a minute before we close up shop today. Right. If you can do it on your own, then. One of the things that we learned at the ITAP conference, whole session on grieving. Beautiful keynote. That we make rituals associated with our grieving. So sometimes that's going to be writing, sometimes it's releasing it through some kind of a symbolic goodbye. Sometimes the ritual is creating a new experience to let the old one, so to speak, float away or move away from us. So creating a ritual or an experience to. To acknowledge the grief and letting it flow or go is one of the valuable resources that you can utilize when you're literally letting it go.

Yeah, if I can. Before we wrap up, I just want to touch base, something that was really helpful for me to learn, that I really like to share with my clients. Years ago, I had had some health problems, and I had a miscarriage, and it was life threatening for me. And my sister, who's a counselor, drove all night long and showed up at my door, and I was like, oh, okay. And I was kind of numb and trying to piece together, okay, what now? And. And I remember asking my sister and saying, okay, what are the stages of grief? And. And I wanted to know what they were so I could check the boxes to know exactly, okay, this is where I'm at. And. And she just said, marianne, it's like a pinball machine. They just ping back and forth. It's everywhere. And so I want to make sure that as we're talking about grief, oftentimes we associate the, you know, the five stages of grief from Elizabeth Kubler Ross. That's what often comes to mind that was created for death, people grieving death, usually. But recognizing that. That that model contains some components. Absolutely. Usually anger shows up. Usually we're numb, or we don't want to face something that's part of grief because we don't want to accept it. Because if we accept it, then that means I have to change or I have to step into whatever the emotions are about that. But recognizing it is like a big old pinball machine that it's so hard to figure out which one I'm in right now. And so giving ourselves permission to feel whatever emotion we are feeling right now is okay. And one of the conversations I had with a client just this week, she said, but how do I grieve? And my response is, you let the emotions come. You let them come up, and you give yourself space and time. And if your body says, I'm tired right now and I need a nap, then you listen to it. And if your body says, I just feel heavy. Then you let yourself feel heavy, and you don't have to push yourself. And if somebody says, hey, come do this, and you don't feel like, it's okay to say, right now I'm just working on some personal things, and I can't right now. It's giving ourselves a lot of grace and a lot of compassion and kindness. And recognizing this is hard, and my body is trying to carry me through it, and I need to listen to my body because it is my best ally, and it's trying to help me make it through for sure.

So. Interesting concept with grief. I'm not sure it's fair for us to say that we're done grieving. I think it's more appropriate for us to consider grief as something that transforms us, that alters us, that shifts the way we see ourselves and the world around us. And it can shift us into a better us, a stronger us. And I want to emphasize that because grief can feel hopeless. It's not hopeless. It's transformative. It evolves. It helps us through, and we learn our resiliency, and we learn our strengths, and we learn. Marianne, you're a stronger person because of what you went through, the grieving. You went through that whole process of feeling maybe that sense of that deep grief and loss. But, Marianne, you're a strong person. I witnessed it. I recognize that in you.

Thank you. Well, and I would say. And I can understand my clients, and I can understand pain and loss, and I can see that in other people because I have experienced it. It shapes us. It shapes how we see the world and how we interact with. With other people. And while I can't see your. I can't know your pain, I can meet with you in the pain that I've experienced that I know, too. So I can speak that same language.

And in doing so, you give a gift of your heart and your experience and validation. And hope. Yes, and hope. Because I. I can get. We can move through and we can be strong. And the term I love here is resiliency. Right. We become resilient beings stronger. And at some point, we're gonna have to talk about post traumatic growth, post addiction growth. At some point, we're going to need to talk about those things because that's really a natural transition of growth after these difficult experiences. Because I recently talking with a couple, and we can focus so much on the negativity that we stop and we don't. We don't see the stars and we don't see the light and the Good. And the trees. And we stop seeing the beauty of this world that we live in. That is being stuck in the grief. At some point, there is a transition where we gradually, and I say gradually, right. If we're talking beginning. No, we sit with a grief, we be with a grief, we deal with the emotions, we understand the emotions. And then we gently move over time into a space where we're stronger, where we're better, we're more informed, we're more intelligent because we've been through this process and we haven't moved away from it, we've moved into it like the buffaloes.

And I love that you use buffalo in a plural. As we get ready to wrap up, I want to tie that in just a little bit with, with some of my own story. And so I may have shared this here before, but in my own experience, showing up to my first support group for betrayal trauma, sitting for two hours listening to women share their stories, seeing someone smile while they told their story, seeing someone be able to laugh, and the therapist who is leading the group sharing, I've been through this, I get it. And saying, oh, here's somebody who made it through this. To me, the visual that always comes to my mind, like the image that I saw in that moment was just. Everything was black and there was like somebody had taken pin and just poked a hole in a paper and there was this pin prick of light way down, so far away. And I was like, oh, okay, there is some hope there. This isn't hopeless. And we need other people to help us when we're in those places. And so to our listeners, whether you're in that grieving place or whether you're moving into that place of post traumatic growth, I encourage you to reach out to others, to support others, and to share your hope and your stories, because we all need it. What. No matter what we're going through, whether it's betrayal, trauma, or addiction, or whether it's the loss of a loved one or there's so many losses, we could, we could categorize with this. But sharing our stories, showing up and giving hope, it's the greatest gift I think that we can give.

Well, thank you, Marianne. A great, great way to close my only final, my final thoughts. When we go through the process of grieving, we're going to do it in a way that it develops or creates a better, stronger us. And when I see that in people, I admire them because they're doing such profound work. I look at my clients, I look at the people I've interacted with who I've seen lose love, seen them lose loved ones. I. My. My deepest admiration is for people who go through the grieving process, and they come out stronger, better, more refined. And so my hope is that you walk away from this with hope. Thank you to our listeners for being with us today. Our hope is that you find meaning as you go through your grieving. Marianne, thank you so much.

Thank you all. Thanks for being here, and thanks for your time. Dr. Skinner.