April Rinne and David Kessler on the loss of parents

Nice to be here. Thank you, David.

All right, I will give people a chance to come on and I'll do my usual, seeing if I can even find us. It's always challenging to find the live ones. All right, let me find my little group. I'll see. This way I can see who gets here first, them or me. All right.

And I'm just going to let some new people in here. All right, and let me get to us. Coming on live is always fun on Facebook because it's a little bit of a search for folks. I don't know if you've looked for things before yourself, April.

To some degree, it's a bit of like a hunt and peck.

Yes, it is. All right. I might need some help finding it. Let's see. All right. Yes. I should have brought my other phone, but this will come up in a moment. Alrighty.

We got some people here. Los Angeles, Phoenix. Los Angeles, Indiana, Pennsylvania. Good, good, good. Hi, everyone. Glad you're here. For those of you who may be new, I'm David Kessler. Some people say hello and share where they're from. You know, I say it's just like when you go to something. Some of us are front row people. I'm in the front chatting away or asking questions. Other people are in the back. So whatever you are is completely fine. And I see Illinois, New Zealand. Wonder what time it is in New Zealand. You might know. April, do you know?

Yeah, it's going to be Friday morning.

Puerto Rico, Pennsylvania, Washington State. Tampa. Wonderful. Ohio. Good, good, good. Good to see everyone. I'll give us just a moment for everyone to find their way on and then we'll be talking. I'm so glad you're here, April. It's just I really appreciate folks like you giving of your time. And folks are going to really find what you have to say quite interesting, I'm sure.

Well, this feels like a gift from the universe to talk to you and to everyone who's joining. Thank you.

Well, thank you. I see Portland. I see New Orleans. I see Western Mass. Tennessee. Lots of good folks coming on from different places. There's always one I can't pronounce. I'm so bad at pronunciations. On a good day. Hopesa. Kong, New Jersey. Oh, I'm sure I did that badly. Michigan, Oregon, Tennessee. Wonderful. Chelsea, New York. I can pronounce that. Macon, Missouri.

Folks are welcoming us. For those of you who may be your first time joining us, by the way, I'd love for you to say that if you want, but you don't have to. I'm David Kessler. I started this group because of COVID 19 and people were all isolated and especially if you had a loss you've been struggling with and or recent loss or someone has died, you are isolated in the already isolating feeling of grief. So I wanted to connect us at least virtually. So I'm so glad we're all here. And I come on in the day, 1pm Pacific every day I pick out some part of grief, a tool, something I think it may be helpful for you to know about to understand what you're going through and help with your pain. Then in the evening I talk to amazing people like April who come on to volunteer her time and I so appreciate that. And I have lots of different guests coming up and it's just, it touches me that people are so giving of themselves. And next week we have some amazing people coming on. We're going to have Susie Orman who's going to talk about finances. By the way, with finances, we're not going to post comments. If you've got a question you want Susie to ask to answer about your money, send them to davidriff.com and just put Susie in the subject line because I don't want any of your financial information on Facebook. And we're going to have Will Reeve is going to be here to talk about the death of his parents, Christopher Reeve and Dana Reeve, obviously Superman. Lots and lots of wonderful people.

Catherine is going to be here. Catherine Schwarzenegger will be here. Amazing people who are here because of you, because we want you to know that you matter and your loved ones are not forgotten. So I so appreciate all of you being here. I'll take a look to see where folks are coming from all over Long Island, Utah, Beverly, New Jersey, I can pronounce Beverly.

Could not get on the group at 4pm today. Someone says, well, the good news is all of the group find later. So if you come on late, they're all here. Lovely that everyone's here saying hello. Glad you're all here. All right. I'm just looking at the comments here, by the way. I'm not distracted. I'm just looking down at your comments. Suzanne said, tough week. Hope everyone is hanging in there. Glad you're here. I'm glad you're here. Joe's from New Zealand. Wonderful to see everyone here. Upper Michigan, lovely. I'm glad you're here. One of the things that I like to do at the beginning is to just take a moment to send love to those who have died. I mean we're all here because one or more people we have loved has died, and it's our reason to be here. And I believe, you know, for me, I believe they still feel our love. So I send them love. And whether they live in your heart, in your memory, in the afterlife, that's up to you. But if you would just join me in a moment to send them love.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate you doing that. Lovely folks here, Edison, New Jersey. Hey, Julie. I'm glad you're on. So, April Rinny is here. I'm so thrilled you're here.

Let me introduce you this way. You are someone who knows about global economy, and you're an advisor and you're a speaker, and you're a writer and you've got great TED Talk. And you are someone, you know, advisor to Airbnb, all that. You are someone. If we were at a party and I heard your credentials, I wouldn't do this today. But 10 years ago, 20 years ago, when I wasn't clear about myself, I would read your bio and you would say to me, what do you do? And I would go, writer, journalist. I wouldn't say greedy, because I would think someone with your credentials wouldn't understand the world of grief. I would be wrong, wouldn't I?

Tell us about it.

Oh, what a beautiful introduction and entry. Thank you, David. And I just want to echo what David just said and thank you all, and welcome you all to being here today and being in Community.

The part that you wouldn't know about on my CV or on my resume is that when I was 20 years old.

And I never experienced death, I'd never been to a funeral, I'd never lost a pet. I did not know what death was.

Both of my parents were killed in a car accident. And this happened while I was halfway around the world. I got a phone call overnight that the two people that were the most important to me had died, obviously unexpectedly, obviously without warning, obviously without me being. Having a chance to say goodbye. And that really flipped my world upside down and it transformed me in many ways, which obviously took time to play out. But that's a part of me that has really shaped who I am and what I do and how I see the world.

And what was that just a call you got that said. What did they say?

It was the call that you never think is going to happen to you. So I have one older sister. She is four years older than me, and I was living in England at the time. And this is before I had a mobile phone or anything. So I was home. I was not expecting to get a call that she was not expecting to find me at home, but lo and behold, there I was. And I picked up the phone. She did not expect for me to be there. I did not expect to get a phone call. I picked up the phone, it was my sister. And we weren't particularly close at the time. And what first went through my mind is like, why isn't mom calling me? Like, if something happened to dad, mom would call me. If something happened to dad, mom would call me. If something happened to my sister, one of them would call me. But, like, why was my sister calling me? We hadn't spoken for the entire. For quite a long time since I had been overseas. And she sort of said, I still remember we talk about it where she was like, are you sitting down? She said, I just need you to sit down. So I sat down. And then she hadn't planned on me being there, and she herself had just received the news. So, you know, we look back now and she hadn't scripted anything. She's like, mom and dad have been killed in a car accident. You need to come home. And it was just that. Oh, my goodness. Being just right in the moment and feeling. Just feeling like the whole. The floor beneath me was coming out.

No goodbye.

No goodbye.

It was very interesting. So you try to stitch together. How do you make sense of. Of the last time you spoke with them or the last time you saw them? And I had been living in England, and the last time that I saw them, they had come to visit me in England, and we'd spent a week together, and it was a really lovely week. None of us had any idea of what was going to happen. It was difficult. I think, you know, we might talk about this a little bit. Where my dad was truly my best friend and my rock, and my mom and I always. We struggled. She suffered from depression. We did the best we could, but, you know, it was hard. And so even their last visit, it had high points, it had low points, it had laughter, it had tears. And then they said goodbye. And that was the last time I saw them. And the last time, I will be very honest with you, I do not remember, I cannot place the exact time I spoke with them last. But what I do know is that some months after their accident, I discovered there was a recording of the last voicemail I'd ever left them. And that brought great comfort. Even though the voicemail didn't say anything out of the ordinary, it did bring me comfort to know that there was that trace. So you start looking for those traces. Even if they might not be what you expected or what you would want, they can still provide some comfort in.

That, in that initial aftermath and sometimes not. You know, it's interesting, I always say we never know when the last anything is until after things happen. You know, we don't know whether you and I don't know right now whether this is going to be our last interactions.

Right.

That's just how life works.

Yeah. And it's interesting because, I mean, are there things I wish I could have told them? Absolutely, yes. Please give me the microphone now. Right. And are there things. Did we do the best with what we had at the time and under the circumstances we did. And we just showing up as full humans, you know, warts and faults and all the rest and all, you know, you just never know. And I will say that having learned that lesson at 20 has, has really changed the way that I see relationships and the way that I try to think about life and think about others, because you never know.

I want to go back to that about the twenties. You're in your twenties, I'm sure you want to talk to your peers about this. You want to reach out to friends. I mean, how were people to the 20 year old whose parents just died in a car accident.

Yeah, it's a great question, David. And I will not mince words. It was really hard and at the same time hard because. Hard because from my peers certainly had a very hard. It was hard to connect with them, you know.

So my parents died in a car accident and by law we had to have. There was a criminal lawsuit. It's what you have to do when people die. Under the circumstances that my parents died and spring break, my friends are heading off to Mardi Gras or going to the beach and I was heading home to spend the week in a courtroom to listen to depositions about how my parents died. It's not a typical. It was very lonely at that time, I think from my peer perspective. But at the same time what was very interesting to me, I quickly grew up. I mean when you go through something like that, I was no longer emotionally 20 years old.

What also happened is because it was both of my parents and it was quite shock. It was just unexpected to everybody. Some of my parents friends started coming out of the woodwork. They were grieving and they wanted to keep my parents memory alive. And I was the connection to do that. So I ended up forging friendships that I never would have had otherwise.

It really Expanded how I think of family and how I think of who was going to help me survive emotionally. It did. Obviously, it forced me to be very vulnerable and open. But I also realized that we were able to. Our shared grief allowed us both little bits and pieces, little steps to move forward together.

You know, I think a connector is there's so many people who watch this that are very lonely because the people they want to turn to, number one, in a normal world, aren't there. And now in a pandemic world, especially, are not there. And did you have a sense? Because one of the things I say is, you know, if you and I talked back then when you were in your 20s, I would say, april, they don't know. Your friends don't know what it's like to have two parents die. They're not going to get it. And we have this innate need to get people to get it. And it's sometimes hard to take our energy off the people we wish would get it and. And turn it to the people who do get it, which are often other grievers or maybe people who are older or have more experience.

It's a wonderful way to put it. And, I mean, if I go back now and I think through, like, obviously, the top two people I'd like to get it are no longer there.

My sister was incredibly. She and I are quite close now. We were not close back then, and losing both of our parents together was additional strain on our relationship. But we also realized that we were all we had left, so we had to stitch together that relationship, which took time. But what's interesting is the people I wanted to be there, in many cases weren't. But I looked to who was there, and I looked to the people that I would not have opened up to or been vulnerable to or anything like that. And yet these are, you know, some years later, these are some of the closest friendships and relationships that I have. And I know that we helped. It's interesting. I don't know how we want to phrase this, but they help me survive, and I, in my own way, help them survive, I think they would say, or help them cope. And it has led to. One of the things I often say is, I lost the two people dearest to me. I lost my core nuclear family, and I gained a larger extended family of choice than I ever would have had if my parents had lived. Now, is that better or worse? I'm not.

There's no better or worse. But I want to just highlight that, yeah, you lost your core family.

And by choice Found another extended family. Now, my guess is that did not happen overnight because I could see someone commenting, going, yeah, my loved one died. Where are they?

Someone said, today, I'm so lost. And I said, feeling lost actually is a part of grief.

How did you deal with that kind of pain over the years?

Yeah, it's such a rich, deep question. And I do. I do want to underscore. There was that initial period afterwards that still just the profoundness, the depth of the grief and that feeling of like, I'm never going to get out of bed again. I'm never like, what am I going to do? And at 20, I was still in college, where I was old enough to sort of look around. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't living at home anymore. But at 20, I was certainly young enough to not really have a sense of what my place in the world was. And there were those days, I think the initial several months after their death, because what happened? So I figured out pretty quickly that this was a big enough change that I had no business going straight back to university and pretending it hadn't happened. So I actually put an X through my calendar and took a semester off of college to. To just put our lives back together. And throughout that time, I remember every morning, you'd open your eyes and you'd be like, I think I'm just gonna stay in bed. And then you would say. And I had, you know, I kept running, like, tapes of my parents back in my head of what would they say? What would they want? What would they tell me to do? You know? And it literally was, if all I can do today is put one foot in front of the other, just get out of bed. I have two choices here. I can get out of bed and put one foot in front of the other and see where those feet lead. Or I can crawl in a corner and just say, you know, that's it. My life. What? I'm young enough. No one has noticed that I'm there. Like, I could easily just sort of crumple up. And I kept thinking I was like, my parents would just. They would say, put one foot in front of the other. So. So do that. And you start doing that, you know, day after day. And some days again, it was a huge blur. And many days passed without feeling like anything had been accomplished. But gradually, you start reconnecting with people who share memories. You start thinking about. In my case, I was really trying to figure out, how do I take this? And not that I would have said back then, how do I Make something good out of this. But how do I move forward with my life? How do I complete college, et cetera? And then you find that there's kind of, over time, a community of people who really wanted to help starts to emerge. That was the immediate aftermath. I mean, it's changed over time as I've gotten my feet back on the ground and, you know, you move on into different communities. But those initial days still feel. You know, I will never forget that rawness, even though now it's not quite. I sort of analogize it to. It's when your heart feels really raw and then your heart starts to heal or sort of scar and it's still bump, still pumping, but it's not bleeding.

Right. So you and I actually know each other because we have the same agent for speaking.

And it's interesting. One of the things people are surprised to hear I speak on sometimes to corporations is on change. And they're like, what do you have to do with change? And I'll sort of remind them, grief is always change. It's always a change you didn't want. You learned another word for what life is all about.

Talk to us about that and sort of your own growth.

Yeah, so this is a lovely, lovely sort of segue where I have this background of a lot of, like, early loss. And I've always been interested in how to. How to create structures and businesses and processes that help create a world that works for all. To really look at this from the perspective of global development, the perspective of people who don't have a voice at the table. And that's what I've gone on to do through my advisory work and so forth. And. And over time, I developed this thesis. I don't want to call it a thesis, but this point of view that, you know, we're living. The term that I like to use is flux. Constant change. And we are today living in a world in flux. So the climate is in flux. The workplace is in flux, Education is in flux. All of these different families are in flux. Our emotions are in flux. Loss is a form of change. Loss is the epitome in a way of flux. And then I was thinking this and writing about this and talking about this, and then a pandemic hit and this notion of like, oh, my goodness, the whole world has just flipped upside down. The world really is in flux. And it's interesting because whether it was having experienced early loss or. Or the fact that this is a separate conversation, but every few years in my career, I will shift and do something Different. Not that I don't enjoy what I'm doing, but I term it sort of leveling up, gaining a new skill, taking what I know and applying it to a new group of people that could benefit from it, whatever it may be. And I realized that that is sort of grooving a different kind of muscle, a sort of change muscle. And the people that I see who are most resilient in the world are those that have grooved a kind of change muscle. And I'm calling it a flux mindset. What does it mean to develop a state of mind that can not just adapt, but thrive amidst continuous change? Because I think one of the things that's really clear right now is change isn't something that you fix and then move on from. Change is ever present. The pace of change is increasing. The pace of change has never been as fast as it is today, and yet it will never again be this slow. And humans, loss or not, grief or not, humans aren't that well adapted at navigating change. And we desperately need to improve that. And if I can help, help do that, there will be no greater, I think, effect, positive effect I can have on others. And what I'm realizing is it draws on both what I do professionally, but the personal story and this, this deep connection to loss and working through that kind of flux actually informs everything else.

Right. So let's sort of take this granular to a more granular level where so many people are. They've just been thrown into the deep end of the ocean with grief. A loved one has died. For many people with COVID 19 or people who just had a loved one die recently weren't able to see their loved ones. Not because, like you, they were separated from being across the world. And they literally could have been outside the nursing home or the hospital and not been able to go in.

So the idea of flux and change and grief.

It'S like I just know that sense of I don't want this. I don't want to adapt to change. I don't want.

You know, some people have said to me things like, embrace the change, embrace the grief. And I'm like, no one wants to embrace the change or the grief. You just got to move away from. That's a little high bar. What's something else we can do? Is it not fight the change? Is it. Is it just try to acknowledge it? What can you do if you're just. You're still 20 years old and you're trying to deal with these concepts?

Yeah, it's a Great question again, just a whole series of them. One of my favorite sayings. Or it is a principle of flux as well, or a flux mindset. And some people listening might have heard it before, but it's this concept of holding the future gently.

Tell us about that.

Yeah, it's interesting. And you know, we can take this in the. In the direction of personal loss. We can take this in the direction of losing your job, personal loss, since.

We'Re here in this kind. Okay.

But this notion of we want to plan and predict, we want to control the future, we're geared to do that. And the more that we try to plan and predict and control, oftentimes the less satisfied we are. I think it was Winston Churchill who said, plans, oh, shoot, I'm going to get it wrong.

Plans are useless, but planning is essential kind of thing. We know it's going to change. And to. Rather than planning and predicting and trying to be like, I need to know what my future is going to look like a year from now, particularly after loss. This, this notion of craving for. I totally get that. Having some sense of stability is really actually quite helpful. But assuming that we know how this is going to play out or how you're going to feel after three months or one year or five years, kind of defeats the purpose. And this notion of holding the future gently, which includes holding yourself gently in all of this, there's an incredible touch of care and compassion in that and also a different way of seeing the future. You know, we're so focused on the predict control. Just sort of give me the straight line answer. Whereas this is inherently really, it's messy, but there also can be beauty and grace in that messiness.

So I want to drill down on the change and drill down on the control.

It's an interesting concept. I even think about, as you know, my mother died when I was young. Shooting happened.

You know, we often have that thing people will say, if you could go back and say one thing to your mother or give her advice, what would it be? And I really wondered what that would be. And I thought back. My mother was sick for a long period of time.

And.

She withdrew. I don't know whether she withdrew because of her fear or whatever it was. And I thought if I could go back and say something to her, it would be, don't leave before you have to.

And I think it's that simple sense of, I knew I don't have control over. I couldn't go back and say, don't die. But we do have control over the time we have left. And just one last thing to relate that then I'd love you to comment on is I was guilty as a lot of people are coming out of a horrific childhood of going, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've had lots of losses. They're all back there. I'm sure I'm going to have more when I'm like 85 and my friends die. I wasn't prepared for my younger son dying. Not that anyone is, but there is this sense of, and I've had to tell this to people in grief. Your loved one who died was so precious. Your children are saying you're ignoring them, your husband are saying they're ignoring you. You know you're ignoring them, or your wife saying you're ignoring them. And, and it's been two and three years now and there is a time to focus completely in a self centered way on your grief, especially early on. But these people have lives too and they might die someday also or you might die. And it does relate to, don't think when your last loved one died, change has ended in your life and that was the big change and there's no more.

Absolutely.

How do we sort of make peace with that so that we appreciate the now and the living and the life we still have.

And I love that you bring this up because in its own way you've just described a big piece of a flux mindset which if we think of it like a muscle. It's a muscle that I think many of us, myself included, don't realize we have. But like any muscle, you need to strengthen it, you need to practice, you need to sort of groove it. And when you, and that takes time, that takes practice. And this not and not that you practice by every. Only through loss. There are a series of, you could think of it almost as disciplines that we can look at in terms of how we react to situations. What is our initial, you know, response mechanism? And I, you know, I can, I can share very openly too. I have suffered, I've struggled a lot with chronic anxiety since then, which, which I'm still, you know, I'm, I'm working on. I addressed that. Okay. I, it's one thing to move through that initial loss, but then you have the waves of how that loss gets manifest.

And so all of that can come to bear. I did want to mention just one thing which is interesting where even back to the control piece where when my parents died, I mean, granted I'm 20, so I don't really looking back, I now go, I had a lot still to figure out. But I thought I had mapped my future out. I thought I knew I was going to go to grad school, I was going to do this, I was going to do that. And in one fell swoop, like all of that sort of melted before my eyes. And you mentioned the ability to be able to focus on your own grief.

I am grateful forever that I was able to take the time, take a semester off of college and just really go in to the grief. But as a result, I share this because my career trajectory, my everything changed completely as a result. And I know now that if I had continued to try to control what was inherently beyond my control, I would have missed some of the greatest. I don't want to say gifts or silver linings. There's just nothing good to say about loss in this regard. But those things that showed up when something broke and the sunlight started to shine through that I was actually able to see those little bits of sunshine.

And just like you said, you dealt with, you deal with anxiety. It's interesting. Mine was control. I definitely became a controlling person. And.

Control didn't stop death.

Didn'T stop death from happening. All that control didn't stop death.

And what I find. And again, this is, I'm not a, I'm not a researcher in the lab or anything like that. This is not statistical significance kind of thing. But in all of my conversations and just own experience, sharing others experience.

The more we try to control.

The harder it is to deal when things actually do break or crumble or change. So there's a real, there's a lesson in that for all of us. But also looking forward, I mean, when I look at the world and how many different layers of change are playing out before our eyes today, it. And I don't want this to sound.

Not harsh, but it's not. We don't really have a choice.

It's pemachodron that says change is inevitable, growth is optional. And that notion of we don't have any way around change not happening, how do we lean into it in ways that are helpful for ourselves and our loved ones?

And it's interesting. Obviously meaning has been important to me and that's what sort of got me through things. And when people hear meaning, and I think it applies so well to your life, they think, oh, where's the meaning in the car accident? Where's the meaning in the sun dying? There's no meaning in the car accident. What you did afterwards, whether it's the lawsuit, whether it's who you became, how you've honored. I mean, those are all the meanings. The meaning becomes the cushion, but the meaning isn't. Like. It doesn't cancel the law or turn it into a blessing or any crazy things like that. The loss is hideous even when you find the meaning, but the meaning becomes a cushion. Has that been your experience?

Absolutely, 1,000%. And I will never. I don't think. I don't. I won't ever be able to make sense. I mean, you can sort of describe the accident. We have all the charts that do that. I'll never be able to find a meaning. The accident shouldn't have happened, full stop. Shouldn't happen then, shouldn't happen now. It happened. And there's nothing I can do to bring my parents back or to change that reality. But there's a lot I can do in terms of how I respond to it and how I take that tragedy into my life, moving forward. And a lot of it for me. And, you know, this part is. This is the part that does end up on my bio and so forth, where growing up there was always just a big emphasis on what you could think of as sort of global citizenship and cultural diversity and celebrating our differences. Celebrating our differences as a strength rather than as a. As a fault that we share more in common than that which divides us. And that was something that my dad believed very strongly. It was sort of drilled into me and knowing that I could go or deciding, figuring out ways in which I could cultivate. Cultivate both a global career that allowed for lots of diversity and lots of travel and so forth. But also that helped me be of service to others worldwide in terms of. I've worked a lot in global development and so forth. That was a way of taking what was meaningful to my parents, but turning it into my own unique meaning. Meaning, but also a way. And I don't think I would have said this or had the language for it back then. Keeping their memory alive as well. Keeping. You know, my dad and I always shared this love of global cultural diversity and travel. It's a way that when I travel now for. Typically for business, I've always got him in my pocket. I totally hate the fact that he and I will never be able to travel together. Hate that. But he's actually traveling with me in a different way as I go out and do these things and as I try to. Again, a lot of it being of service to others.

Yeah. And I think there is something so powerful that helping is healing. Not right away, but helping is healing. It is a strange thing. There is that sense of. What's the word? Sort of like it being. It's never worth the cost. You know, it's never worth the cost. Even when you have an amazing career, you'd rather have your dad traveling with you. A. A reporter was talking me the other day who wasn't really thinking their question through, and they said, because my Finding Meaning hit a bestseller list again, unfortunately, because of the pandemic. And they said, well, is it weird? Do you ever, like, wish the pandemic wouldn't have come and your book wouldn't have been a bestseller again? And I said, it's deeper than that. Not only do I wish the pandemic wouldn't be here, but if I get to undo the past, I wish my son was here and hadn't died and there was no book. I mean, there's nothing worth the cost. I mean, we. We have these trajectories. I mean, it is the reality. It is the making the lemonade out of the lemonade. But I rather. Your dad was traveling with you and you were doing something else, and my son was here and there was no book. And, you know, we all have those things.

Absolutely. And similar to you, just this notion of flocks. Right. People are getting it. It's provided this. Almost.

The pandemic has provided this lift. And I'm like, great, take it all back, Take it all back. This is not by choice, but this is trying to. Not similar to how we work through grief. There's no easy way around it. When we look at the state of the world today and just beyond the human loss, when we look at the ripple effects, there's. There's no easy way out of it. We can't skirt our way around the changes that we're experiencing. But what are the tools? What are the. And tools being, you know, flux mindset, being more sharing with others. There's so many different tools that we could have in our toolbox, but we're going to need them to sort of equip ourselves, not just to get through this, but again, it serves us well beyond the current situation also.

Right. So you open to taking some questions?

I'd love to.

If you folks have any questions, feel free to write them down. I'm going to just read a few things here. People are talking about life can't be controlled.

Debbie says, isn't growth hard?

Is it really hard.

Growth? I always find. And again, I'm. I'm a work in progress and I hope we all keep growing until the. Until our final. Our final breaths. But you Know growth when you're in it, I think is just so hard. So hard. And then it's only after that you look back and you go, wow, I'm not the same person. But here are the ways in which other. Obviously I've grown, but I've also strengthened. Yeah.

And you know, someone Jennifer writes, trying to control can be exhausting.

Don't I know it. Isn't that true? Pamela says, beautiful people say service to others. I mean, so true. I think, you know, it's one of the reasons I do this. I. It heals me every day. I do it in honor my parents and my son. Someone says they're Debbie says, I think about my family gone daily, sometimes hourly. I'm afraid I'll forget my brother, my mama or my son. I want to know day and night. I want them to know day and night. I love them and will not stop thinking about them. You want to address do we forget them? Have you forgotten your parents?

Yeah. What a great question. It's honestly something that I have worried about. I think ever since they've been gone. Right. It's always in the back of my mind.

One interesting thing I can share. I don't think this came up actually, David, in our. In our prior conversations to add a little bit of intrigue to the story. My mom was an identical twin.

Wow.

Yeah. And so I. And she died young, my mom, but so I didn't have my mom. But in some ways I had the next best thing. Right. I could imagine my mom aging. I could imagine my mom's voice. Now what's very interesting is the first time my aunt called me after my parents accident, I dropped the phone and I fainted because it was as though I was listening to my mom's voice. So we quickly realized that we actually couldn't talk on the phone. We. We needed or she needed to let me know she was going to call and so forth. But I share this because it actually became quite a nice. It was a blessing to be able to imagine my mom. Well, my mom's twin died last year unexpectedly. And so I share this because I love this question. I realize now that that fear of losing my mom's memory has come because for many years her twin was like her proxy or you know, at least comparatively physically. Right now I'm having to be like, oh my goodness, how do I make sure I feel this anxiety again? I will say if it's any consolation, and I know that it is a different experience for everyone, but when I proactively try to keep My parents memory alive like my dad's in my pocket when I travel, I still talk to him. My mom with my aunt, her memory was kept alive.

Beyond just me thinking about it. But we would celebrate birthdays and that sort of thing. I can tell you it does take, in my experience, being proactive and keeping them in mind. But if you do that, they don't, they don't disappear from memory. They don't.

I mean, my mother died. It's now, gosh, close to 50 years and.

You know, doesn't. I mean, I. You don't lose it. You just don't lose it. People are afraid you're going to forget and you don't.

There's something in your souls, I think, you know, it's. I wonder. I know that my relationship with my parents would be obviously in some ways deeper if they were alive for sure. But I feel like in my own way I've become. I've had to become much more sort of creative and imaginative with how I keep them alive. And for some people watching, I mean, this could be interesting because like I said, I had a really challenging relationship with my mom and keeping her memory alive. There's also a lot of positive that comes with that. There's a lot of, you know, you're able to sort of take what you had before and build upon it, but build upon it in ways that are. The word that keeps coming to mind is sort of generative. You're not taking something away that you're. You are still adding to it even though they're gone.

Right. Let me look at a few more questions. I always say, by the way, if you think I'm like distracted, I'm actually looking at the comments.

You know, it's interesting. Jerry says, what rituals do you have that you honor your loss? Do you have rituals?

Oh, goodness, yes. And this actually. All right, this is a. I will admit I have a. I have rituals. And there's also an interesting story which maybe can provide some hope or inspiration. So my parents accident was on June 5th. And every year over the years, the tradition that evolved for me initially was that I would buy two flowers on June 5 and two different flowers, whatever struck me, you know, a yellow flower or a rose, a tulip, whatever. And partly I did this because I travel a lot and so I couldn't guarantee being in the same place, but it was an easily transportable tradition.

I still do that to this day. And what I would try to do is get the two flowers, honor my parents, and then put the flowers into the Closest body of water that I could find, which for many years was the San Francisco Bay, or when I was living in London, it was the Thames River. I mean, it just. I did what I could. Over the years, I started realizing that the week of June 5th is always quite hard for me, even today. But the day of June 5th, it doesn't always. The grief doesn't hit me necessarily on that day. It hits me sometime around then. And over the years, June 5th became a day that I just didn't know what was going to hit me. And so I knew that I needed to be gentle with myself. I knew I needed to, over time, I would distract myself. Just take care. And so I went in doing this. I went into June 5th with this attitude. And 13 years ago, I was invited. I was told that I needed to meet somebody for a cup of coffee. And they were an interesting person and, you know, good conversation, good ideas, so forth. And I thought that sounds like a really good distraction. And so I agreed to meet them on June 5th. And actually, another tradition, I always wear my mother's engagement ring on June 5. It's a way that I keep connected to her. It's the only day that I wear it. So off I go to Coffee on June 5th wearing my mother's engagement ring. This was a really interesting cup of coffee. I was just. Just very intrigued by the people that I met. And I will fast forward, but suffice it to say that that person I met when I was wearing an engagement ring on June 5 turned into my husband.

Wow.

So now the day that was always the hardest, it's still hard. And this comes back to the traditions. The day that was hardest for me has now also become a source of joy. And my husband and I together celebrate these traditions.

Yeah. And I share this as an anecdote. Obviously, I'm wearing an engagement ring. So the question becomes like, what's up with the ring? Like, you were interesting, but I don't think you're. I don't think you're dating. And at that point I was like, I have nothing to hide here. I'm not gonna tell you that. Like, you know, so from the get go, I shared the story of my parents, which actually just took a layer, took our relationship much deeper, fast. And, you know, he had no idea. So a bit of a ritual.

Think of that concept. If you had tried to control that up, today's not a good day to meet this person. Let me meet them next week. Maybe you wouldn't have shared the story right away. You might have not became vulnerable. There might have not been a. I mean, there's. It's interesting about how your mind could have made up so many stories around doing that, not doing that, bad day, good day. Your mom wanted that. The engagement ring can. I mean, there's just a million stories your mind can make up.

Yeah. And I still remember walking to coffee, being. Candidly, I was petrified that I was just going to start crying because I didn't know when the grief would hit. And if I hadn't opened myself up to that. It's just interesting where, you know, I didn't know, but I knew that I. You could. You could certainly call it vulnerability.

Right.

Like, I'm just gonna show up. And you know what? I am doing this. There was a piece of me too, that was like that same voice that was in the back of my head in the immediate aftermath, which is what would my parents want me to do. It was like my parents would want me to go meet an interesting person. So let's give it a shot.

And. And I'll tell you something you're talking about that we don't often name that. I think I try to think about this and change some of my thinking to it is I have this feeling, or I have that feeling, and I go, what if I was just curious?

What if I was just curious? You know, curiosity is like. It takes you to a whole nother place.

Oh, I love. There's. There's a whole other call we could have on curiosity.

It's probably the. It's just this super skill superpower. What I'm finding the most curious people who can remain curious, and again, not judging, just curious about whatever it may be, are those that not only retain a kind of youthful joy, if you can think of it that way, but also continue to see the uplifting parts of life as opposed to seeing. And I don't want to minimize any of, like, the depth of what we're talking about here, but this notion of glasses half empty, glasses half full, the curiosity is the spark that really does, I think, keep the human soul alive.

Now let me go to a question about that, by the way. There's so many lovely questions, and one of the things I love about this group is people are answering each other's questions. And then I look at their answers. I'm like, oh, that was good. So I think Debbie says, I tried, but it seems so hard to get. I hang on. I lost it there. I tried, but it's so hard. It seems to get harder every day. It's been 11 and a half years. And my mind goes back to everything that morning that I found him in. The whole day is like a bad movie that plays over and over again. And Debbie, first of all, I would just tell you we've done a few videos already on those bad images and the why and a lot of those things. But I'm curious what you would say.

Because we all do have a choice. You know, I decided for me I wasn't going to remember my son by the day he died. I just made that an active choice. Early on that first year I was all about that day. But then I went, that's one day out of my son's life. And there were amazing days. So tell us about that. Your mind and what you've learned about. You can remember the car accident, at least what you heard in the court.

Yeah.

Or you can remember other things. So how do you deal with that?

Yeah, I mean it's in such. Where do I want to take this?

So many way if this person told me they were in their first year or first six months, I wouldn't be telling them that. But if it's 11 years, you know that being defined by that day is challenging.

Yeah. And I mean I'm 20 plus years into this process, into this journey and there are still bad days, no question. But it's a. I think it's more a matter of how do I look at those days, how do I treat myself when I'm having days like that now also just sort of full disclosure, I struggled with ptsd.

Not just around the accident, but around other stuff where I started to realize that. And again, this may not be for everyone, but that I was holding on to images in a way that was not neither normal or helpful. And actually there were some deep seated, particularly around when I hear images of like I can't get myself out of this set of feelings that I had. Even though my brain, half my brain knows it happened in the past, but half my brain, it is happening right now and it will not go away that that required or I was greatly assisted by EMDR over the years for that. Also though this notion of being. And it easier said than done, the sense of being selective about how we look at a situation and how we choose to integrate that in.

Because.

Yeah, 11 and a half years later, some parts of life have moved on. Many of them have moved forward. Other times it's like it can take you straight back and when it takes you straight back to just you can be in it again. It's. It's totally okay. You're not the same person you were 11 and a half years ago. But over time, to sort of figure out what kind of relationship do you want to have with that image, with that set of emotions and is. And how can you be kinder to yourself? I mean, so much of this I find if we're not. If we haven't figured it all out, that something's wrong with us. And I'm like, no, this. I will forever have days in which I can't. I feel like I can't get out of a funk. But I have a much clearer sense of the relationship that I have with myself and what I can control versus what I can't. And it may be that I need to write in my journal. It may be that I need. What I really need to do is reconnect with my body. So maybe some yoga would be helpful. Breath work, a lot of that. I mean, it's. There's not one. One solution or one recipe. But I think so much of this is we're really good at being hard on ourselves. We're really good at being our own worst critics. Whereas the best thing we can do is be gentle with ourselves and rethink the kind of relationship that we could have with some of these emotions.

Right. I think about. For me, I, you know, I talk about the trauma versus the traumatic moment. The traumatic day has ended. That traumatic day you got the call, or the traumatic day they were in the accident, or the traumatic day 11 years ago for this, I think was. Debbie mentioned it. You know, that day has ended. Now when you have trauma, the images appear. And early on the images are going to keep appearing. And I tell people eventually when I work with them that you don't have a choice in trauma about those images appearing. It did happen. Eventually you will learn, because I don't want you to be a victim of your own mind. Eventually you will learn when those images pop up, you have control over how long you linger. You may not be able to stop them from coming up, but you don't have to. Like she says, it's a movie I replay. You don't have to stay in that particular movie. You know, I always use the thing about pretend we're at the movie Cineplex. I'm watching the Day My son died. Yeah, I'm getting out of this movie. I'm walking to another movie. I'd rather go to his 10th birthday to a Father's Day. I mean, there's a lot of other movies I want to watch. And I don't have to be a victim of that bad one. The other thing I'd be curious about from you.

I. And as a writer, I don't know if this is for what it's like for you as a speaker. And I know you're writing too. I. I did not want to tell the story of my son's death over and over. So when I was writing, finding meaning, I went, I am going to be brutally raw and brutally honest. I am going to put that down there. So it is there. Anyone who's curious, it's there. But I don't want to keep telling that story. It was hard for me at first to speak about it in front of audiences because it's obviously, how's that been for you to learn to as a speaker then weave your parents death into your work?

Yeah. Oh, that's beautiful. Well, as I mentioned, you know, in my 20s, right after this happened.

There was a big gulf between me and primarily my peers. And talking about it publicly was just hard. It was hard for me, it was hard for them. And it kind of got not buried, but it certainly didn't get the oxygen that I might have breathed into it otherwise. And then as I got older and as I started connecting more dots, I guess you could say, around the role that my personal loss had played and how I had started seeing the world it in terms of my worldview and the ways that I was seeking to work with and serve others. The personal story was just front and center. And so a couple years ago I passed the milestone where my parents have been gone longer than they ever were in my life. And that was just sort of like, whoa. I remember years ago I would think about, oh God, that day is going to come. And then it came pretty quick, you know, then it's like, wow, here we are. Okay. And not that I was looking for a milestone, but I do think that perhaps my unconscious registered a milestone that also said, you need it is time to share this story more widely. Not. But what's interesting is it wasn't so much the story about me, it wasn't a me centered narrative. It was a, I went through this. And I want others who are struggling with their own versions of grief and loss and death to be of service to them by sharing the story so that not only is there a shared sympathy, but also what might others learn from my experience. And so I was like, I want to share this. And I been doing some public speaking before and so that, that part I understood. But I can also tell you full Stop. The first time I told my story, the full story on stage, it wasn't a keynote. It was just. It was a panel. I was on a panel and I told it and I was a mess. But in. In a way that when I finished telling the story, I had people rush up to me on stage who were like, you just. You sort of. You brought something alive in me. Or you were the first person who actually could be that raw. And I now don't feel as alone. And so I realized that I was going to need to work on some of my delivery, so I needed to be able to tell this story without crying. But also, it was almost as though. What is it? It's an overused analogy perhaps, but this notion of like the Phoenix that, like, burns, like, I just burned it all to the ground so then I could start building something fresh and something that incorporates my story but does so in a way that first and foremost has others and helping others at the core.

That's a beautiful ending. We flew through time. We flew through the time.

Oh, my goodness, we did.

Thank you so much. I just, I'm. I'm in awe of you. I'm going to see you speak someday. I look forward to the day we're all physically can see each other speak. Thank you for your work. Thank you for your vulnerability here and sharing your story. I so appreciate you in the world. If anyone wants to find you know more about you, how can they do that?

Well, first, thank you, David. And thank each and every one of you who has joined today. I'm just really grateful to be in your presence and really honored to have this time to share. Thankfully, I Google really well. No one has my name, so my website is. It's all aprilney, so aprilrinney.com my handle is April Rinny. Yeah, so that's one easy thing. And I would love to hear from anybody who wants to follow up or share more. And David, just thank you again.

Thank you for being here. I'm so glad you're here. I really appreciate it. And for any of you who are joining for the first time, just know I'm on 1pm Pacific time. Then I'm back on. That's 1pm Pacific time. Then we have these evening sessions. Amazing people like April are joining us tomorrow night. We're going to have two people from the Dougie Center. One I interviewed for my book who talked about.

Miscarriage, infant death. We're also going to talk about children and grief. We have someone coming on in the weekend that's a sex therapist that's going to talk about what's infidelity all about. People find that out after there's been a death and about sex and grief. So that's going to be an amazing conversation. Then next week, Catherine Schwarzenegger is going to be here. Catherine Schwarzenegger, Pratt, Susie Orman, Will Reeve talking about Christopher Reeves. Remember, if you have money questions, don't put them down anywhere. Send them in an email to me because I don't want your details on Facebook. To davidrief.com Put Susie in the subject and we'll address all your money questions, whether it's about money in the pandemic or dealing with estates or whatever money issues you have. Susie Orman is the go to person. So lots and lots of amazing people coming up. Thank you all for being here. I love to see your support of one another. I say I'm only here two hours a day. You guys are together 22 hours a day supporting each other. Share your good days, share your bad days, share your hopes, your sadness.

Be an elder. If you're having an okay day, share it. It lets other people know okay days are possible, even after grief. I so appreciate you here. I thank you and I will see you tomorrow. Take care.