How to Grieve (anxiety + rituals + transformation) with Claire Bidwell Smith, LCPC | Ep. 122

Hello and welcome back to the Holistic Inner Balance Podcast. I am Hadlee, and this is Dr.

Nicole.

And we have a really special interview for you today with Claire Bidwell Smith. And I'm just blown away by how much wisdom and grace and love she exudes. I'm going to tell you a little bit about her. And this conversation is just wonderful. She is recognized as one of today's foremost experts in grief. She's a licensed therapist, therapist, international speaker, and the author of 5 books, which are published in 22 countries. So she is prolific. Led by her own experience in grief and fueled by her work in hospice and private practice, Claire strives to provide support for all kinds of people experiencing all kinds of loss. And that's what we talked about today in our interview with her. It was— I was like basically tearing up the entire time, and it was just— my heart was like so opened up.

Yeah, she, she has this beautiful way about her. And so anybody who's struggling with grief, uh, absolutely, this is a conversation that That you must hear. And if you have a loved one in your life who's maybe dealing with grief, there's really good support for you here too. And then absolutely her book. I love her writing style in general. Hadlee and I were just talking about it, but her most recent book, Hadlee, you were just like gushing over how good it is.

It's so good. The structure of it. She structured it so that it's a couple of pages for each chapter. So if you are grieving, you don't have to read this whole long thing. You can just go pick up the book, read a couple of pages, and kind of sit with it. And I think that it's just genius how she did that. And this conversation, we talk about anxiety that is paired with grief that a lot of people are not talking about or taught about when it comes to grief. We talk about grief rituals, we talk about the role of spirituality in grief. And we even talk a little bit about how you can support other people who are going through grief as well. So it's a really, really rich conversation. And I'm really looking forward to hearing from you all about what you think.

Awesome. So are you ready? Let's jump in.

Let's do it. All right, so we are here with Claire Bidwell Smith, and we are so excited to learn a little bit more about all of the work that she's done. She's got 5 books out. We're like, oh, we can talk about anxious grief, we can talk about conscious grieving. And she's like, oh, well, actually, I've got 5 books. I'm like, oh, okay, cool. So we're going to hear from her all about all of the things, and I'm just really excited to jump in. Thanks for having me. Yeah.

Thank you for being here.

Yeah.

I'm curious about your story, if you don't mind sharing how you got into this whole area of emotional wellness support, grief consciousness, anxiety.

Yeah, you know, I don't think anyone grows up wanting to be a grief therapist, but I wanted to be a writer. So I am, I've written all these books, but both of my parents got cancer at the same time when I was 14. And I'm an only child, and my mom died when I was 18, just starting college. And then my father died 7 years later when I was 25. And so I entered into young adulthood with a lot of grief and a lot of big existential questions and kind of just going through things that none of my peers were at the time. It's interesting, I'm 46 now, And a lot of my friends are starting to see their elderly parents through end of life and different things. And that's something I went through so long ago. But I came through it with, like, a lot of questions about how we hold space for grief in our culture, in our society. And, you know, for the most part, we don't do a great job. It's improving a lot, more and more these days. And I think we've seen a big shift since the pandemic. But I ended up getting my master's in clinical psychology and becoming a therapist and knew that I would want to work in this field because there was so little support.

Yeah, you're providing the support that you needed back in the day that you seem to be doing. Absolutely. I love that you're also merging your passion for writing as well as being a clinician working with people. It gives so much more accessibility to people who can't see you or work with you directly to still get your wisdom.

Yeah, absolutely. I just felt like there was a lot I wanted to impart about grief. I began working in hospice right after grad school as a grief therapist. I was like 29 years old. People would look at me, and I would run these support groups, and they would be like, what does this young girl know about any of this? But I did know a lot, but I also didn't. It was really eye-opening to kind of go into that work knowing my own grief, and then sitting with so many other people in various types of grief and different losses. And I just saw a lot of misunderstanding around grief. I saw a lot of confusion. I saw a lot of fear. I even saw shame. You know, people just feeling ashamed that they were carrying so much grief, or that they were grieving for, you know, longer periods of time than maybe others around them expected them to. And so I wanted to continue to kind of open up the conversation about that and help people understand a little bit more about the process.

Yeah, in your most recent book, I thought it was really amazing how you, well, first of all, I love the structure of it because it's like sort of bite-sized pieces that you can go through and like, you know—

Yeah, nobody wants to read a big thing when they're grieving.

Exactly, I was like, oh my gosh, this is so well, Just, yeah, so well structured. So, but I really, really liked how you said, like, sometimes you aren't just sad, like most of the time, there's so much more layered underneath. And like, sometimes you didn't actually like the person that you're grieving, you know. And would you talk a little bit to that? Because I think that that is—

Yeah, I think grief is much more complex than we give it credit for. You know, I think the depictions that we see on television and movies of grief being this very sad thing, like Steel Magnolias or something, there are, you know, there are losses like that and grief like that. But more often than not, grief is pretty complicated. And we have complicated relationships with the people that we grieve and lose. We have other things that we grieve, like divorces or jobs that we lose or moving. So there's a lot of different things that we grieve. layers. And often too, we come away from a big loss maybe feeling guilt about something, the way a relationship turned out, or something we wished we could have done differently, or someone had a really difficult medical experience. Or we come away with anger sometimes, we come away with anxiety. So there's a lot more to grief than we usually kind of see out there.

It sounds like you're kind of talking about a little bit of a nuance between grief Versus sadness?

Yeah, well, I mean, sadness is definitely a component of grief. Grief is about loss, and loss is about change. And so we may go through a really big loss of a parent or a partner or a child, and with that loss comes a lot of life changes. You know, we may lose our, our financial partner, we may have to move homes, we have— we may have to change jobs because of our loss. Our identities shift a lot now, you know, when we go through something really big like that too. Our personalities may be impacted. We may not feel as social. We may not feel as vibrant. There's a lot of different kinds of ways that we have these secondary losses that come with a big loss. And I think those are the things that are kind of more invisible to those around us, which is something that makes grief really lonely and isolating.

That's so well put. And I can see how there would be potentially feelings of guilt that you would be grieving those things as part of it. Right. It's like I should just be grieving the person that was gone, but there's all this other stuff wrapped up in it. So, yeah, it's so beautiful the way you put it.

Yeah. Sorry, guys. No, I think that's such a big part of it that it ends up, again, feeling really lonely. And we feel like we get these expectations from people around us to kind of bounce back quickly, or like, when are you going to be back to normal or back to your happy self? But sometimes with big loss, like, our whole belief system about the world can change. You know, when I, when I was 18 and lost my mom, it shifted the whole way I understood the world, you know, that scary things can happen, that you can lose a mom, you know, that those weren't things I understood or believed at all. And so I— it really kind of changed how I went forward and like what mattered to me and how I wanted to spend time and how I wanted to be in relationship with other people. And I see And I see that for so many others. Your whole worldview can change. That's something that can cause a lot of anxiety. You know, it's just, it's so unexpected. I think we have these ideas about grief before we go into them, that it's going to be sad and hard, but that we're going to come through it. And then it's often much bigger and kind of more unwieldy than people expect. And it has these larger ripple effects.

As a clinician, I remember being in my counseling program and talking about the diagnosis in the DSM-IV-TR of bereavement and how long bereavement should last. Yeah. And then if somebody grieves longer than the allocated amount of time, then they have a clinical disorder like major depressive disorder or generalized anxiety. And so I think that you're really, in a sense, calling out the messaging and being trauma-informed about how it's not just a singular process, but rather it can change your entire worldview. It can change everything. And

yeah, it really can. And it's not enough to just diagnose someone with, you know, major depressive disorder after, after a lingering experience of grief. You know, we really have to kind of dig deeper into that loss, how it's playing out for them, what the relationship was, how it's impacting their life. There's so much more there. I work a lot with anxiety after, after, after a loss and grief. And that was something that was a big experience for me after the deaths of my parents. I just had a lot of anxiety, partly And maybe that was due to everyone just kind of telling me I should be fine. Like, oh, you're, you know, you're 20, you should be fine. Just go forward into life. And a lot of my peers not really recognizing what I was going through. And so I was trying to suppress it and just trying to be normal, but that wasn't working. And I wasn't allowing space for my natural grief process. And the kind of anxiety would burble out because of that. And I see that time and again with lots of people, you know, whatever the loss is, there's a lot of anxiety that can come. Also, again, that shifting of the belief system. Like, the world can suddenly seem really scary and unpredictable. I think we saw this a lot in COVID, just in the way that our world changed on a dime, right? We didn't know. And for a period of time, for a period of months, we really didn't even know how it was going to play out, who was going to be impacted, how long it was going to go on for, you know, what else we were going to lose along the way. And so we were kind of thrust into this really intense state of uncertainty. And that happens a lot in loss. And so it makes sense that people get anxious. But I hadn't seen it talked about or written about anywhere. And so I began to write about it. And when I began to write about it, all these people came to see me and they were like, I think I have anxious grief. And I was able to learn a lot more about it, more than just what I had gone through myself.

Yeah. So could you tell us a little bit more about what— well, what causes grief anxiety, what grief anxiety really looks like? Because I think that that might be something that our audience would really, really resonate with. And I know that that's something we really wanted to talk about with you.

Yeah, I mean, it presents in different ways. Some people will, some people will experience anxiety for the very first time after a big loss. Some people will have already grappled with anxiety to a large degree or small degree, and then it kind of has an uptick after a loss. It can present as panic attacks, health phobias, social phobias, catastrophic thinking. All of these kinds of things can suddenly become very prevalent in your grief. And I think we do a lot of that catastrophic thinking afterwards. You know, we're trying to prepare what's the next bad thing that can happen. I've seen it even in cases of people who maybe lost someone to a long illness. You knew that they weren't going to make it, but still after they're gone, it's so startling. And there's just, you start to worry and want to prevent that from ever happening again. You want other people to be okay and safe. You worry about your own health. So you start to try to think ahead of it. But what that does is it thrusts you into a place of seeing the world through this lens of, you know, what terrible thing is going to happen next. And that can be a really stressful state just to be in. It can be really debilitating. The health anxieties— people going to the doctor all the time, worrying that there's something wrong with them, going down Google rabbit holes, checking symptoms. And then just kind of these general panic attacks and I think the other thing too is kind of the social aspect of not quite trusting who you know yourself to be after a big loss. Like, you may have been a really outgoing, happy, social person, and then you, you know, lose your best friend in an accident, and you suddenly are like— the world just drops out from underneath you, and you've lost some of your joy for a period of time. You've, you know, kind of lost the desire to just go out and feel carefree and hang out with people. So you kind of Aren't always sure how you're going to behave in certain social situations, and that can cause anxiety. The good news is that there's a lot we can do to work with it. But when I work with people who are experiencing anxious grief, I'm always working in tandem both on the grief and the anxiety. It's not enough to just treat the anxiety. Like, there's a lot we can always do for anxiety. There's a lot of cognitive behavioral work. There's just a lot of meditation, mindfulness, really starting to understand how to manage anxiety. But if we're not also tending to the grief, making space for the grief, processing the relationship and the loss, the anxiety is not going to go away. So we have to do both at the same time. And it's not enough to just work on the grief. We also have to be really kind of learning how to cope with anxiety and how to manage it. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. And one thing that you mentioned in the beginning that I think kind of ties into what you're expressing now is that in at least in the culture that I grew up in, and maybe you too resonate, is that we don't have maybe as effective grief rituals as we could. And I recall back years ago, I was in a class and we were talking about grief rituals of different cultures that can help us go through the process of grief. And so I was wondering if you could talk about grief rituals, what they are, rituals that you have found to be helpful.

Yeah, I think we, we really need ritual. And I think we, I think we saw that and learned that lesson during COVID when we were stripped of a lot of the rituals that we are used to being able to sit shiva or have memorial service or just all of those kinds of things were taken away. And people felt very— it was just very aware that we actually need them more than I think we realize. I think it's about making space for it. And when I say that, I mean, You know, getting up in the morning and maybe lighting a tea light and just thinking about your person or having a good cry before you go into your hectic workday, journaling about it, talking about it, being in a support group, having your grief witnessed and seen. When we're carrying a big loss and we have to go out into our busy days and people don't really at all see what we're carrying on a daily basis with us, that can feel really hard. It can feel really incongruent, right? Like almost like we're faking it. Like I'm going out and pretending to be this person today. And then I'm going to go home and be in my grief. grief again. But if we're able to more naturally make those times and spaces for grief, then I think that we can kind of blend our— integrate ourself a little better in the process. But that requires, you know, these kinds of little rituals and sometimes big rituals, honoring the year anniversary, honoring birthdays or anniversaries, doing things in memory of our person. I think for a long time in our culture, we really put a lot of emphasis on moving on and letting go of someone after they were gone. And we've And I've really finally and thankfully turned a corner on that and recognized that what we need to do is learn how to carry forward both our grief and the people that we've lost. You know, I'm raising 3 kids who never met my parents. And I, you know, that grief is not acute anymore. I'm not actively grieving them, but I still feel that loss, you know, many different times. I'll go to my kids', like, 8th grade, you know, thing at school, and I just have these pangs of, like, God, what would it be like if my parents were here? And so part of that has been learning how to carry that. that, learning how to be able to talk about it and find places for that. And then also how to honor them and bring them forward. So I'll get my mom's favorite flowers for my daughter after her recital and something like that of just kind of continuing to bring them into our lives. And I think that those are really important rituals too. We celebrate my mom's birthday every year and I let my daughters make a cake and it was really cute when they were little. They would make these crazy messy cakes and I would just let them do whatever. And it felt sweet. It felt My mom, if she could see it, would just be really delighted. And that felt good. That was a way of making space and acknowledging and honoring this loss and this absence.

Oh, that's so beautiful. And yeah, I think if you look at traditions from all over the world, that was always part of it, was honoring people who have passed.

It was. Americans are not so great at it. But yeah, a lot of other cultures are much better at this than we are.

I think it's time to bring it back. Even Europe. Yeah. When I was living in Croatia, like, they had All Saints' Day the day before Halloween, and they would clean the graves and they would put flowers on the graves and just candles. And it was so beautiful and just so—

And that is so much better than trying to pretend like you're not— just not doing those things and not acknowledging that these people have passed and that they impacted our lives and that we miss them. It's so important to do that.

What about grieving somebody who may still be living, but perhaps you're estranged from them?

Yeah.

What about that kind of grief?

That's a hard one, but it's, it's very real and it happens for a lot of people. People have to, you know, to set boundaries or take distance from some people due to many different reasons, or someone else has set a boundary or taken distance. And we do, we grieve that. I mean, you can think about friendship breakups. We've all been through a friendship breakup and those are, those can be devastating. And I think we very much grieve those. I think that those are— it's a harder grief because it's still kind of open-ended. And I think there's a part of us that maybe always kind of holds out hope that it will be different at some point or that we can change something down the road. But so it's like a grief that kind of lingers in an interesting way. But I think that rituals around that can be really helpful. I grieved my first divorce, my only divorce, 10 years ago, you know, and I wanted to do I just wanted to do something to kind of like acknowledge that this thing was over and that I was sad, even though it was something I had wanted. I was also really sad for many different reasons, and I felt like I needed rituals around that, but there wasn't anything in our culture to kind of hold space for that or invite that in. And I think that that's another one that we're, you know, we end up holding grief for that is kind of unresolved. Yeah.

I resonate with that very much, where I feel like my biggest losses have been losses with people who are still living.

Mm-hmm.

And that lack of closure can be really difficult because it's ongoing. And I really appreciate what you said about how there's this part that may wonder, could reconciliation happen? Or was this the wrong way that it went? Like, should I have done something different? That, like, second-guessing.

Yeah, I think too it's like it gets confusing because when there's so much pain around that kind of like shift or breakup or estrangement, it, it makes you feel like you're not allowed to honor and remember and love the good things that happened. But I think that's an important piece of it, is that we have to let ourselves also remember those pieces and why we had that relationship and why it was meaningful and let ourselves grieve that.

Do you have a suggestion for a ritual? So you talked about some rituals like lighting a candle and putting, like, cleaning the graves or getting the special flowers. Do you have a suggestion for somebody listening who is in the process of grieving a lost relationship, but the person is still alive and well, what they could do?

I love letter writing. I think it's really powerful. I think it requires a different aspect of our brain than when we kind of talk about something or we talk to someone in our head. So to sit down and write a letter to someone either who is gone and, and who is dead, or someone who you're estranged from. It's like we carry around all day the things that we want to say, whether it's someone we really miss and love, or whether it's someone who hurt us and we're no longer speaking to. We're carrying that stuff around with us all day. So why not put it down on paper instead of stifling that voice that's, you know, when you've gotten in like a fight with somebody and like all day you're kind of like, well, you're kind of like almost trying to like argue it out in your head. Write it. Sit down and write it to them. You don't have to send the letter. You don't have to do anything with it, but write it. Say the things you need to say. I think that that's a really good ritual to do.

I love that.

And writing is somatic too, because you're actually moving your hand as you go across the page. So

it's like really powerful.

Yeah.

So spirituality.

Yeah, I think it's almost like its own stage of grief. It's really hard to go through a big loss and not wonder, no matter how you were raised, what your belief system might be, it's hard not to wonder, like, where are they now? Can they see me? Will I ever see them again? Are they okay? I work with a lot of women who've lost children, just, you know, to watch them really grapple with this idea of, like, will I ever be reunited with my kid? Are, you know, are they okay? All of those questions. Those things. And so it calls into question a lot of our belief system. Sometimes it feels really unanswerable, you know, nobody knows what happens when we die. And some people have really, you know, strong faith or devout frameworks for which to understand these things. A lot of us don't, especially today in the younger generations. But I think it's an important kind of door to push open in the grief process, even just to let yourself ask questions, let yourself wonder, let yourself try things. One of the books I wrote is about the afterlife. And I went on this mission to try to figure out what happens when we die. I did not find out, by the way. Spoiler alert. But, um, I, I did all kinds of stuff. I talked to psychic mediums. I sat with a rabbi for a year. I talked to priests. I got into shamanism. I did past life regressions. But really, it was like my way of trying to create some framework because I, I didn't really have a religious upbringing, and I was moving into my adulthood with like just a lot of kind of existential thoughts and questions. And what I came away from the experience with was, again, not the answer, but really this idea that if we can stay connected, and if we can open up to a larger idea of what it means to be a human in the world, and why we're here, and what is our purpose, and what's meaningful to us, those things are really healing in the grief process. And I feel closer to my parents now than I did in the first 10 years of them being gone. In the beginning, it was like, kind of too hard to imagine this more spiritual or ethereal relationship with them. But now I feel like I've been able to really bring them into my life and into the lives of my children in beautiful ways that make me feel, you know, continually connected to them. And I think it's really important to find ways to do that no matter what you end up settling on, you know. But it requires a bit of a journey and like going down some rabbit holes. But I think that's okay.

Totally. Do you think that it comes later on in the grieving process

I do. It's really hard in the beginning. You know, we go through this severing of the physical relationship, and nobody wants to imagine like this, you know, lofty spiritual, you know, internal relationship that you're going to have with them. You just want them to walk back through the door. You want to hear their voice. You want to hug them. You want to talk to them. So it's kind of hard to— it's just hard to even really open up and consider that. But in time, as we grow more comfortable with their physical absence, it's so painful. It's just such a painful period of time that we have to move into of just learning how to be in the world without them. But once we kind of adjust into that a little bit more, then I think that door begins to open of, okay, how can I, how can I still connect with them even though they're not physically here anymore?

It's why the, you know, someone saying, oh, they're in a better place. It's why that feels just Yeah, people say all kinds

of terrible things. I run grief retreats, and at my grief retreats, I always ask— I do a lot of dismantling in the beginning of the retreat for the group of like what they kind of— what they knew about grief going into it and what messages they've received from the world around them. Maybe it's their own family, maybe it's coworkers, maybe it's someone just saying something really insensitive. Like, what are these? Every time someone says something like that, there's a message that comes with it that's like, you should be better than this. You should be doing better than you're doing, or you should be moving on faster, or you should be okay with them being gone. And those messages are really hurtful. So at the retreats, I'll ask people like, what was the worst thing someone said to you after your loss? And like every hand in the room goes up, everybody's got something or multiple things that people have said to them. But a lot of those kinds of things, you know, they're in a better place now, or, you know, God needed them there more than you needed them here, you know, or something like that, which is just like, well, I don't know, I might disagree with that.

Yeah, yeah. I'm curious if you have anything that for those of our listeners who aren't currently acutely grieving, some things that could be helpful for them if they have loved ones who are grieving, things that they could say. I know that there's not a perfect thing ever that they could say, but things that they could say instead of those things that feel just so awful when you hear them. Yeah.

Yeah, it's less about finding the perfect thing to say. Like you said, there really isn't the perfect thing to say other than, I'm here, I love you. Like, but it's more about the showing up, like continuing to show up. People always show up in the first few weeks, first few months, and then everyone kind of drops off. And that's when it gets really lonely. And that's also when you start to internalize that message of like, oh, well, no one's asking anymore, so I should be better. And so continuing to show up long past, you know, when the person is gone, the simplest thing you can do is like put dates and anniversaries in your calendar. I put them in all the time for my friends, for my clients. Someone will say, you know, my husband died on April 24th, and I'll just stick it in my calendar. And on that date every year when it comes around, I just send them a text and just say, like, thinking of you today. It means so much to people just to feel like you remember that they're grieving, you remember their person. It means a lot. And so, and you could just also do things like show up at someone's house, take out their trash, take their kid to the park for a couple of hours. Like, you know, Just show up and don't ask what they need because they don't know what they need. So just do some stuff that you feel like would be helpful.

Yeah. My mom always brought lasagna. So Midwest.

Totally. I love it. That's great.

Make casserole. Yeah. Well, that's great. That's really great.

When I was teaching in school, they talked about in the curriculum, and I was like, oh. And so I'd actually love to hear your perspective. They always taught about the— they had designated, I think, 8 stages of grief. And I was curious if you could speak on that from your experience.

Well, there's Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's famed 5 stages of grief, which are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And those have stuck around forever. They have really— like, our culture picked those up and they were like, okay, here's our grief formula. And in some ways, it kind of makes sense that we would be drawn to a formula, you know, when we're in so much pain and we're going through like, just such big life changes, it would be so great if there was like these 5 things we had to do to get to the other side of it. But the truth is that Kübler-Ross came up with those initially for people who were dying, not grieving. So it was for people who received a terminal diagnosis. And when they received that diagnosis, then they would go through those 5 stages, you would be in denial first that you were dying, then you would be angry about it, then you would start bargaining with yourself, your doctor, your higher power, then you would slump into some depression and eventually come around to an acceptance that this is happening. They work really well in that context. But for grief, they don't work as well. And she herself even said that, you know, they weren't meant to be a formula. They're more fluid than that. And I think that there's a lot of other aspects that come into play as well besides those 5 stages. And so I think, you know, anxiety obviously is a big component that I talk about a lot. But then there's like, you know, things that we need to work through like guilt. There's a spiritual aspect that we need to discover. There's just a lot of different layers. In my new book, I outlined 4 orientations, I call them, because I think grief is so disorienting. And they're entering into grief, engaging with grief, surrendering, and transforming through grief. And, you know, when we go through a big loss, it's something that happens to us. It's not something we asked for. It's not something we invited. It's not something we would've chosen for ourselves. It's something that happened. And that can make us kind of feel like we don't have any agency, but really how we grieve is up to us. So we enter into grief kind of unwillingly, and then we can begin to engage with it and figure out tools to move through it, how to make space for it, how to honor people, how to support ourselves and do emotion regulation and reach out to others and connect with people who are grieving. Then we can kind of surrender to it. We fight grief so much in the beginning. We want to control it. My clients will ask me for homework or like a timeline. You know, we really want to like get on top of it. We'll read 10 grief books and be like, okay, I'm gonna figure this thing out. And at some point, we just kind of have to surrender to the fact that this is happening and open ourselves up to it. And that's where the transformation often comes, because I think grief asks a lot of us, but in some pretty powerful ways. It really asks us to examine what matters to us, how we want to live our lives, what our relationships mean to us. I've seen people make incredible changes after a big loss. There's some stupid saying that you shouldn't make any big change in the first year of a loss. I disagree with that. I think I've seen some people have these moments where they're like, oh my God, I've been living like a totally surface shallow life and now I don't want to do that anymore. And I'm going to cut out some of these toxic relationships. I'm going to pursue this career I always wanted to. I realize now that we have finite time and that these are the things I want to value in that time. I've seen people really kind of transform into the best version of themselves following a big loss. Not right away. Again, for someone who might be listening who's in really the new throes of grief, it's hard to imagine that kind of stuff. You don't want that. You don't want to become the best version of yourself without the person you lost. But in time, those things really are possible.

I love that. And I was thinking about how when we go through loss, There's an adaptation that our nervous system has to go through. Yeah. The world was oriented in a certain way, and then suddenly everything changes. And so that requires a process of adaptation. And so that's looking at your nerves, it's looking at your gut, it's looking at your immune system, it's looking at your hormones, it's looking at your entire mind, body, and spirit. And that whole you as a whole person has to adapt to whatever's new and different. And there's so many ways of approaching that, one of which can be making changes to how you exist in the world. Yeah. And so I really appreciate giving people permission. Like, if there was something that was holding you back from moving forward into maybe a more authentic, intuitive you, then this is providing you the space to really look at that. I love that you're giving permission for people to do that, to take those steps.

Yeah, absolutely. I just, I really wanted to kind of start a more hopeful conversation about grief and loss too, because it's really looked at so often as an affliction or this horrible thing that you're going to have to slog through. And yes, there are deeply painful aspects of it. And it can be really upending in your life. But there's also positive, you know, things that will occur and shifts that will happen and, you know, things that you can't quite imagine. And

And I love that you're also just stripping away the rules. Like you said, there's a weird saying not to do anything when you're first here or that you have to go through these stages of grief one by one. There are no rules. This is the wild, wild west. Now let's actually do something that's going to be useful for you instead of—

And I think just leaning into it is the way to kind of do that, to open yourself up to it and just kind of surrender to it. And I think that, again, we fight it, we avoid it, we suppress it, but really just lean into it. Let it show you how to get through it.

And what would you say to someone who's like, yeah, but if I lean into it, I will never get out of it?

Definitely. I think that's a really huge fear for so many people. And I get it. People tell me all the time, I'm afraid if I start crying, I'll never stop. I'm afraid if I open up to this grief, my life will fall apart. And I'm trying to take care of a family and go to work and my marriage and all these things. Really, it's like the only way out is through. But often, I think we need more support than we give ourselves credit for. So don't be afraid to get a therapist or a counselor or a grief coach. Don't be afraid to join a support group, go on a retreat, like do these things that will help support that process so that you don't feel like you're going to just fall through the floor and disappear into your grief. Like that doesn't need to be the case for anyone. There's so much grief support out there. There was nothing 20 years ago when I was going through this. And now there are so many incredible forms of grief support. So I think

So

I'm wondering about transformation, and you talked about— and so I'm curious about stories of transformation, stories of hope that you could share with us before we finish up today.

Yeah, I've seen so many people just, again, really kind of come through a big loss. And again, that takes time. But when they do, they end up really kind of living a life that is more meaningful to them than ever before. Their relationships are deeper, their purpose is clearer, have deepened, you know, their sense of the world or the work they want to do here is in an entirely different place. I've seen a lot of people take up causes around, you know, how their person died. And that can be a really beautiful way of just trying to, you know, trying to turn all of that kind of painful energy into something useful to help others. There's just a lot of kind of beautiful ways that I think we come to understand each other and connect with each other. People ask me all the time if this work is sad and hard, and it is sometimes, but more than that, it's really beautiful. I feel like I meet people at their kind of rawest points of humanity, and, and I see so much of a reflection of love and relationships and the way that we get to connect with others and how beautiful that we have these relationships that we grieve. It's amazing that we had them at all, these deep loves and these deep connections. And I think when you kind of come through that transformation process of grief, you come away with that, and it really informs the way you walk through the rest of your life in pretty powerful ways.

So your latest book, tell us how people can find your book and find you. You mentioned retreats. I'd love if you could share a little bit about that too.

Yeah, all my books are wherever books are sold. Conscious Grieving is the new one. There's Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief, and then there's the afterlife one. And my, my first book is a memoir called The Rules of Inheritance, which is about my own personal story. So they're all available anywhere books are sold. And then on my website, which is just clairebidwellsmith.com, you can find retreats, support groups, one-on-one work, grief resources, and a directory of lots of grief therapists around the country. I try to put out as much as I can just to provide as much support for everyone at all different availability of resources.

Thank you so much. I'm so very grateful for you holding the space and speaking in a way that feels accessible for people about grief. Thank you for that, because your work is just so important.

You're welcome. Thank you for having time for this conversation and putting it out there for people. I'm sure that anyone listening who's going through any kind of grief will feel kind of seen and understood in it.

Absolutely. Thank you so much.

You're welcome. Thank you.