Cheri Thomas & grief expert, David Kessler discuss the loss of a child with special needs & divorce

Hi, everyone. David Kessler here want to welcome you on and say hello. I am just pulling us up too on here to find us. We'll pop up in a moment, I'm sure. And when you find us, I'd love for you to say hello and hello to you. Sherry, good to see you.

Hello, David.

All right, we'll have people here in a moment. Oh, good, I found us. That means we're here. All right. Good folks will be coming on and saying hello soon. It is a.

What's the word? Humid day here in Los Angeles. Where are you in the world, Sherry?

Arizona.

Arizona.

Maybe 108. I haven't looked. It's really hot.

Okay. Well, Shirley, it's not. What?

No humidity.

No humidity, right. All right. Shirley's here from pa. Sharon's here from Midland. Vivian's here from New York. Hi, Elizabeth. Good to see you. Arcadia's from Louisiana. John's here from Massachusetts. Mary from New York. Welcome. Paige is from St. Petersburg. Jennifer from Alaska. Where our days are longer. Light till midnight now. Well, midnight sun, isn't it? Hi, Kathleen. Hi, Shabna. I haven't seen you in a while. Good to see you. Well, welcome from Toronto. Nice to see folks coming on.

All right, I'll give just a few more moments for people to come on. Hey, Michelle. Hey, Carolee. Good to see everyone.

If you haven't been here before. I'm David Kessler. I welcome people on. This is a group that was set up after COVID 19. I'll tell you more about it in a moment. But one of the reasons why we're all here is because someone we loved has died. So I just like to take a moment of silence to send them love, to honor them. So if you would join me in that moment of silence for our loved ones.

Thank you for that.

Well, a lot going on in the world still, and.

A lot going on in our world still. And we come together virtually because it's still challenging to get together physically. I started this group after COVID 19. People were isolated at home in their grief. Their grief groups had been canceled. We also had so many people who had a loved one who had.

Died and they couldn't even maybe say goodbye to them. They weren't able to. And I'm just letting some new people into. While we're here. They weren't able to say goodbye then. They weren't able to have a funeral. So it was heartbreak on top of heartbreak. And rituals are so important for us. You know, we were talking about. It was so meaningful for me to have a funeral after my younger son died and my heart breaks for people who haven't been able to have a funeral. So, so it's so, so challenging in these times. And while we can't get together physically and then we have the pandemic and then we've got protesters and we've got rioters and we've got instigators and looters and we've got people dying who shouldn't die in the news like George Floyd. And we have people who are on here that their loved ones died for reasons that shouldn't have been. We come together to at least virtually be with one another and hold each other's hands. Every night I have another speaker on I always say there's no one voice in grief. There's many voices. So I like to hear from different people. Some of them you'll know, some of them you won't know. But we're a community here that comes together. As I've mentioned, I'm also working on a new program that I'll be telling you more about that'll be happening hopefully very, very soon. More information on that to come. It's filling my days working on them. Let's see, Daniel's here from Illinois, Jan from Vancouver, Renee from Lebanon, Ivy from New York City, Phyllis St. Thomas Shakita from Florida, Sherry from SoCal, Jacqueline from Alabama. So nice to see everyone here.

So our guests tonight, we have people who come and volunteer their time. We have Sherry Thomas. Sherry, so good to have you here.

Thank you, David. It's really good to be here. And first I'd just like to take a minute because you've just listed all these losses and I just, I don't know who's out there. I don't know your story, but I know you've had a loss or a combination of losses. So I just want to tell you how sorry I am for your loss.

And we have the corporate loss and our personal loss. I know the love and loss joins our hearts even though I don't know your story personally. And my goal in this time is connection, that I hope that in some way that my heart could connect with your heart and just to ease some of the suffering that we're feeling from all of this. So thank you for being here today and my heart is with you.

Very sweet. Thank you, Sherry. So Sherry.

Everyone here has a connection with grief that started at some place. How and when did your connection with grief start?

It started when.

My 18 year old boy Micah died and.

He had severe cerebral palsy all his life. So I was a caregiver, his primary caregiver, and what I called CEO of Mica Company.

That loss was. How could any loss not be? It's all significant. Just having him gone was catastrophic. And then I also lost my sense of life purpose because Micah had dictated my day for the last 18 and a half years with the coordination of all of his cares, and we were so intertwined. So, unfortunately, my losses didn't stop there. I had a tsunami of losses with marriage, health, finances. There wasn't any area of my life untouched. And it led me. I had a deep faith.

I think you ended up getting a divorce.

Yes. And it was really fast. I mean, things were within weeks. I could see the marriage was in crisis. And.

Because of that combination of those losses, even though I had come to it with a strong faith, I literally felt I had been completely abandoned by the God that I understood at the time. And it sent me into.

The deepest dark that I've ever experienced in my life.

Can you tell us.

About Micah?

Oh, Micah.

He had no ability with his body. I mean, he couldn't swat a fly off his nose if he wanted to. But what he made up in his soul and spirit, I used to tell him, ironically, I thought he would outlive me. But I used to tell him, micah, you've done more in your life, your short life, than some people have done their whole life. I just felt that about him.

He was. You know, I've learned so much since he's been gone. Because Micah was present all the time. He couldn't use his body. So anytime someone was touching him or moving him, he just had to be present to everything.

So he's taught me so much. He was humble. He was funny. He had a great sense of humor, even though he. He only had little sounds. He couldn't speak.

He just. He lit up my world. He really did.

And.

Did you have a sense throughout those 18 years? I know you said you thought he would outlive you, but did you have a sense that this was a terminal situation he was in?

No. I'd been told, you know, by some doctors he'd live a long time. He had severe cerebral palsy that, you know, quadriplegic. So it crippled him, but the. It was from hypoxic brain injury. So he'd had damage to the brain, but it was all mostly to the brain stem. So Micah was basically trapped in his body. And I used to tease that he was, like, the healthiest of my kids. He was in the hospital for Surgeries, things that we planned to do that would help him correct some of the bodily issues. But he wasn't a sickly child, and.

I was planning him outliving me. I was getting to the place in my own. He was bigger, bigger than me when he passed. And so I was getting to the point, thinking out ahead, like, what's going to happen when I'm not here to make sure he's okay?

So I was shocked by his death. What came to me very suddenly.

And was his death sudden or was there a decline that sort of happened at the end, even though it was surprising to you?

No, that was it. He wasn't sick. There were other times he had. When puberty hit, he had more issues and. And he did develop aspiration pneumonia. And he was like 15. And once I was actually in the ambulance with him and he coded. I mean, I watched him turn gray. I watched the color come out of his skin. And I thought he might die then. But, you know, he healed from that and, you know, went on. You know, there was. There was no sign that that night he was in jeopardy. You know, I would have sat vigil by his bed, you know, it was that kind of thing.

So to find him dead in the morning, you know, I did the normal routine, you know, see you in the morning, buddy, you know, and what I saw in the morning wasn't what I expected.

And I would imagine that was pretty horrific to find him that way.

It was. It was really horrific. In fact, I was left with a lot of post traumatic stress.

For the longest time, I couldn't see. I would see that image in my head of his. Of his body and how it looked. And.

You know, I did things like try to pick him up, which was. I couldn't pick him up on a normal day. Pick him up. Then I walked by a telephone and ran upstairs and called 91 1. I mean, there were just all kinds of things, but for a long time, I couldn't even. It just would keep coming and replaying in my mind and I would just break down and, you know, now I can talk about it without having that whole body response.

Right.

You know, I'm in a different place, having a connection with him now, too, so.

And with the divorce, was that something that the marriage was in trouble or was it really, like, did the death sort of. Was it the icing on the cake or the death was like, yep, that, we're done here. Well, how did those two intermingle?

You know, I will always think that it was grief. I will always And I. I've heard you talk, you know, it isn't about.

It's the.

It's not knowing how to handle the grief, basically. Right. It's not the child loss or the loss itself.

It's the judgment we have on each other and that we're not grief literate with one another. And we try.

And I think. Yeah, and I think in our case, too, we had a lot of suppressed grief because we weren't taught how to grieve. You know, I had a therapist, you know, after this, and I remember her saying, you know, everyone grieves. We have to learn how to grieve. Well, we have all kinds of grief through our life, but we're such a grief, you know, taboo society that, you know, we think it's the enemy. And so we're not taught how to grieve. Well. And so then when, you know, I think about Micah's life and all the different things that we had as a family that were worth grieving, losses that were. But no one talked to us about grief then. I didn't know grief until Micah died and then everything else that happened.

So.

You know, one of the things I think about hearing you talk about Micah is.

I started part of my career in Children's Hospital, Los Angeles. And so I would go through all the floors and I would work on the floors, and, you know, there was a fourth floor cancer unit, and I also spent a lot of time on the fifth floor cystic fibrosis unit. And those kids back then would live to 12 and 13.

And they would want to get married at 11.

And it was fascinating to me how the adults looked at them and went, oh, my gosh, you're missing out on 80 years. And for them, they knew what their range was at the time. Life. And they had a full life even in their 12 and 13 and 15 years. And it sounds like you did your best to give Micah.

A whole life in his limited time.

Yeah, that's. That's very true. We had a neurologist. He was. I don't know, he might have been in his 80s, too. He was a really wise man, and he just said, take him home and treat him like the rest of your kids. And I had three other children, and we did, you know, as a family, we, you know, rallied around him and tried to make life as, you know, normal as possible.

Given all the situations. And he loved his family. He was so close to his family. And in the beginning, they told us he'd be a vegetable and he wouldn't even know Us, but he totally responded to the kids. Yeah, I have some funny stories about things that, you know, the kids did, but yeah, he. He loved all that, you know, that. That made his life really.

Wonderful, considering. And I used to tell the kids, you know, we all have our things. Micah has different issues than we do, but we all have things to overcome in life. His issues are just different than ours. So.

So there's a lot of people watching who are early in grief, even in their first year. Many people in their first months, they're in that painful place. They're in that place where you were and when you lost your faith. Can you tell us sort of about that darkness you experienced?

Yeah.

It'S. It's easy to remember.

I.

I was completely lost. I didn't know. And I've learned so much about myself. I didn't know good self care. I didn't know a lot of other things that would have helped me to come into that, but I wanted to crawl out of my skin. I didn't know how to describe it. And I've since written and I've written some things, and I have tried so hard to write how that felt. And even what I, you know, put in print never speaks. When I say there are no words, there are no words. I literally, I would be on the floor sobbing. My eyes would be so swollen, I could barely see. My nose was plugged. I'm trying to breathe. I'm curled up in a ball. I'm. I'm. And. And I was. I think that's when I was so mad at God too, because my image of this God was someone who would comfort me when I was mourning. And here I was.

So upset, so full of grief, because the things in the marriage started happening so fast too, that I couldn't. I couldn't grieve. Just Micah. I knew I wanted to grieve. Micah. Now I was grieving a marriage and grieving this just. I felt like I was going crazy. I didn't even understand.

Was really dark and I didn't know what to do. And I just started coming of throwing, you know, people would throw suggestions at me, and I kind of threw myself into everything, just trying to see what would help, which ended up really being. Nature was profoundly healing for me. But that darkness was. I thought I would die. And, you know, in hindsight, I can look back and say, you know, when I was on the floor like that, I did breathe the next breath. I. I didn't die. And I was held right, you know, and now I can say that No, I really.

I wasn't feel held in that moment.

Not at all. That's why I was so angry. It's like, are you kidding me? You know, where's the comfort? Where's anything?

Oh, I was. I was mad. I remember telling my therapist, I am eating anger from breakfast, my lunch, and dinner.

I mean, I am eating anger for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I would imagine there's people watching this who are doing that.

Eating bean for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Yeah.

Yeah.

What's that?

I believe anger is pain.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. What's underneath is just this.

And what helped you? You've mentioned nature.

You know, I went to an intensive therapy five weeks after Micah passed at the Meadows, and that's in Arizona, ironically. I lived in Iowa at the time. I don't know how I got there. I was having panic attacks every day. I went. Someone signed me up for it. Didn't end up even being a grief workshop. It was a survivor one workshop. I learned a ton about myself. I don't know how I got through every day. And I remember thinking, well, I. If I pass out or collapse right here, at least they have an inpatient. They'll take me and they'll treat me. You know, put me on something, do something. I remember at the end of the week asking the counselor, what do I need to do? Like, I am lost. All of this is happening at one time. I don't know what to do. She said, sherry, you need to feel all you can feel. You're detached from your body, and, you know it's going to take 612 months just to integrate what you learned here. I made a commitment at that point that I would be authentic to my grief and let it do its work. And I. I think if I wouldn't have heard that, I probably. I don't know what all I would have done, but I. I had to go home and I started walking. That was the first thing I.

Let me repeat that. You had to be authentic to your grief, let it work.

I did.

That's just worth repeating. You had to be authentic for your grief and let it work.

And it was grueling. I mean, I thought it would kill me. When I made that commitment of five weeks, I had no. I had no idea what I was in for. I had no idea the other. All the losses that were gonna come and more trauma and more stuff. It was.

I really had no idea. And it lasted. You know, I hear people talk about a week or a month or five. I. I cried for so many. I woke up every Day crying. I can't tell you how long, how many months. It wasn't days or weeks. I would cry until I couldn't cry anymore. And then I would get up and get ready and go to work.

Fortunately, I had a job that was flexible, obviously, but I was.

I couldn't think, I couldn't organize. I couldn't do the things. Some of the things were even suggested to do. Because if it took effort, if it took finding a class or doing something that wasn't going to happen, what I did take to were the walks. And that's when, you know, things began to organically happen. But it was slower than I ever hoped that it would be.

And it sounds like the walks in nature helped you.

Oh, incredibly, yeah.

And, you know, we talk about. Sometimes it's just walking to the front of the lawn and walking back. It might be walking around the block. It might be walking to the kitchen and back.

You know, that might be it. You know, there's times I have applauded people for showering.

The fact that you got up today and showered is a win.

Yes. I've said if you're breathing, if you take the next breath, that's a win. Some days, that's it. That's as good as it gets. You did breathe. That is moving forward.

And like Patricia says here, I'm reading the comments. Patricia says I don't know how to be authentic to my grief yet. It's been nine months since I lost my daughter. Anything you would say to her, she's.

Being authentic by telling us she doesn't know how to be authentic to her grief.

Right.

You're feeling what you're feeling, and nine months, it's.

It's a breath.

Right?

It's. And why can we say that, David? Because we passed nine months or a year or two years at the time. It's.

Yeah, it's like give yourself. I remember my therapist saying, give yourself a hall pass for the first year. It's like a hall pass. Remember when you get that in school, you know, just. It's.

I. I think that's why we all need elders, you know, not people who are older, but people who have gone further in grief than we have. Like Diane Gray is on who is certainly one of my teachers, and she's been on here in the evenings that she had been down the road before me.

Can you talk about your loss of faith and if you found it again?

Yes. Well, I'll say it found me. I.

Told you I was pretty angry and I'd been through other Stuff before. I mean, Micah's birth was intensively difficult. And I've been through other things, and I didn't really understand why people blamed God. And then here I was.

I wasn't one to swear much, and I said things I never knew could come out of my mouth. And I said to God, and not nice tone of voice either. I was. Yeah, I thought this was sheer abandonment. And so I.

By God.

By God and people. I mean, I felt at that point I had lost people. And for one, most of my community was Micah's caregivers and hospital, you know, people I was in touch with through all the cares of his. I didn't have time for friendships. So losing Micah, I lost this huge community that I'd had around me for the last, like, since he was 2. I started having help and some kind of services, and it was a huge. That was a huge loss I didn't even anticipate.

So, anyway, I felt totally abandoned and, you know, with the marriage uncurling, too, and so I.

Didn'T. I just went forward. I believed love doesn't die, and I believed the veil was thin between worlds. I. So whether I felt abandoned by God, I still believe those things. And I was on a journey to connect with Micah. I knew I had a. Knowing he was physically gone, but he wasn't gone gone. And I left room for the mystery. I didn't know how it would look. And I would say, I don't know how it looks. I don't know what it's like, but I know he's somewhere. And when I would walk, I would say things like, I would see a bird, and I'd say, hey, have you seen my mica? You know, or, you know, I would talk to nature, the elements, anything that would listen. A rock. It didn't matter. It was like, there's. Because I believe in creation. And the trees. Think of what trees? You know, the knowledge in a tree. So I think about things like that. And anyway, so I'm walking and.

Things started happening to me. And it wasn't one event. It wasn't two events, and it wasn't one day or two days or it was months. And then I realized, oh, my goodness. I remember the very first butterfly or animal experience I had. I was walking and I just. I was in my head, which I was in my head a lot. And I've learned we can't solve grief in our head. We got to do it in our heart. But I was in my head, and I'm walking and I'm annoyed And I'm swatting something like, what is that in my face? And then all of a sudden, I look up and I see it's a beautiful butterfly. And it would go out a bit, and then it would come back to me. And I'm still walking because I'm still oblivious. I'd walk a few feet. It was a few feet ahead of me all the time. Come back to my face, go back out, come back to my face. And finally it was like, I think it's here for you, Sherry, you know? But that's how in the beginning, how oblivious I was to it. But these things kept happening. And after a while, I realized, oh, my goodness. I had this image of how God should be there for me. Instead, my God box blew up. And the world opened up, the spiritual world opened up. And I realized I'd been getting comforted. Nature was nurturing me. Nature was comforting me. This is part of God, what I like to call the all. That is, the in all and through all loving presence. You know, this is what found me. I didn't have the capacity to figure it out. I needed it, but I just thought it had disappeared. So it was. It was a huge awakening for me, and it restored me to the place that then I could interact. Now I could say, oh, I know you're here. I don't feel you. I don't feel this loving presence right now. All I feel is this gripping pain. But I know now you're here, so help me be aware. And so it just became a matter of awareness of this loving presence around us.

Can you share a bit about your writing?

Oh, you know, it's one of the.

Ways art moments here.

It came as an organic part of my journey. I never intended to do something, and I don't even really call it a book. It's more of a little journal. It's reflections. I was actually volunteering with Children's Hospital. You talked about the hospital. And when I put it together, I don't know if you noticed, but the picture portions are perforated. And I put them in there like the butterfly. They're all perforated. So I had intended that the back was going to be a postcard, and then a person could tear it out and send it to someone with or without the story. The stories overlay those. But they said, you know, I think people would like if it was some kind of a journal back so they could write a reflection that maybe when they read it, made them think of a loved one or some experience, write or draw. So everything that's happened for me. Like this has been organic. I first was taking pictures in nature for things I saw that spoke to me, never anticipating anyone would see them. And one night I was at a yoga class and I had this one picture and this one woman said, that looks like a card. So I started making cards. And then I started giving those to people in grief. And then pretty soon someone said, you need to put the stories that happened when you saw this, whatever event happened. And that's how it became the book.

Could you read us a little short something from it?

Do you want the darkness or do you want the light? There's all the colors of grief, I think.

Well, we all know the darkness. Well, why don't you share about.

Okay.

So I. I love the sun now the sun warms me. And I. I said I was in Iowa. It gets very cold. I'm sorry, I can't see.

Yeah, you can see it.

But the sun. Oh, man. Sometimes just the sun. And that was one of the gifts to me of just, you know, maybe coming retrie or sometimes, like you said, you're in the house and you can't get out. But the sun would come through the blind in the window, and I would just stand there and soak in the sun. So I say, ah, the healing power of the sun. It has nurtured me so many times. I love the warmth of the sun. I love to stand, close my eyes and let it warm me to my core. I don't have to do anything. I can just be. I stand in its presence and let it fill me. As much as I love its warmth, it loves giving it to me. It never cares how I feel when I stand in its presence. It doesn't matter if I stand there sobbing in pain or smiling from the healing I feel being in its presence. It has no expectations of me. It doesn't ask me if I'm worthy or good enough to be in its presence. It holds such deep symbolism, a wealth of attributes.

Very sweet. Very sweet. And tell us about, you know, you've talked to me about the idea of finding meaning. How's that for you?

From the beginning, I knew I wanted to honor my life. Like I said, I felt his life, even though it was short, I felt it was sacred. And, you know, kids like Micah, you talked about the cystic fibrosis children, I think.

And had I, you know, thought he would only live or been told he would only live a short life? What I find with special needs kids or sick children, they teach us more. I think about ourselves than they're here to teach us. I think they teach us so much. So I felt like, you know, that was true of Micah and his life was so sacred. So I knew I wanted to honor his life. And because Micah was non verbal and because he was so involved physically, people wrote him off. People looked at him, he had no expression for the most part, till he laughed. Once they realized he could laugh, it lit up their world too. But for the most part, he had a very straight look on his face. You know, he drooled some. All the things that make people, you know, people would move their children away, you know, and hush, hush, you know, walk away kind of thing.

And I knew his life meant so much, so I knew I wanted to honor him. And I knew the value of his life that you didn't see just from the outside. So that was there right away. And I.

So that was the meaning for me right away is, well, how does that look? You know, how do I honor his life? And that just became about a heart connection because I felt like when my heart connected with another heart, then Micah's essence was right there. And so that could be at the grocery store, on the walking path, I would see people. I met people that were grieving along the path at times, you know, just these coincidences that happen.

So it organically, you know, came from that. And then about two and a half years in the process, I.

I had an aha moment after listening to someone actually on a TED Talk, a woman who'd lost her husband and something she said, it was like, oh my gosh, I want to multiply the love. It's not just about honoring him. I want to multiply the love. And so then again, because I'd been further in the journey, I kind of look back and see, see ways I had been doing that. But then I had some new grief. And it led me to a move and it led me to.

A time of being displaced. And I had really. I had started one of the things they told me at the Meadows about being displayed being detached from my body. I didn't know what that meant at the time. So by this time I had learned that pain and trauma get stuck in the body and we needed to do stuff to help get the grief out of the body. So I had gone to a compassionate friends. It took me seven months to even venture out to something like that. But a lady was doing a meditation, which they told me to do, and I. That was my first, and she offered a grief yoga course. So I started that, which opened this whole world of then yoga and, you know, energy work and breath work and all this kind of stuff that also opened that portal.

So. So we met because you did Paul Denniston, grief, who's done grief yoga here for this group, and he's going to do grief yoga, I think, in the next couple of days here. He has a grief movement training, right. That if you're not. I know it's for people who are yoga teachers, but you don't have to be a yoga teacher for that one.

And I think that was perfect. That was perfect for me. So. So I'd had this experience with yoga and these things, but then I lost the connection. So for a year, Paul was my yoga teacher without knowing it, through just his programs that I purchased online when I got sick and displaced and I couldn't get out. And that was very powerful. Then he started the grief movement course. So, yes, I took his course, proud to say I finished and I am a grief movement guide. But that has been a profound way, I think, that I would love. I want to develop even further and use as much as possible because the, the movements are simple and powerful. Like you said, you don't have to be a yoga teacher. And I'm not a yoga teacher. But his watching him do that yoga all that time, and he, he put ways to express and work this grief in and through the body, which is so important to us that are grieving. And so the grief movement is all about that, but it can be done from a chair. And so right away I was thinking, oh, my gosh, my Micah could have. He would have loved that. He couldn't do it himself, but he would have loved me doing these movements with his hands. And, you know, I would have had to do hand over hand. And so it's led me to think about all of these encounters. Caregivers as myself, I have, if, if you, if you're blessed to have enough money to get out and go do things, sometimes you don't have the time anyway. And I didn't have either. So it's like, okay, how do I. How would these things I could have worked in. In moments of time, though it didn't take an hour of time. So I think that these can be used right now. The pandemic. I was thinking how beautiful it would be that parents and children, children can grasp this stuff. And, you know, so many times we don't know we're grieving, but we start moving and we, you know, and things come up and we know, oh, I really do have something to Move through, you know, So I think it's so powerful, simple and powerful, which is a great combination.

Well, Paul is on and he said, sherry Thomas, you're a wonderful grief movement guide. So apparently you've done well.

And I was actually just looking because I wasn't sure. But for all of you who are wondering what's, what's this Paul and what's this grief yoga? Paul is doing grief yoga right here. I just looked at the calendar tomorrow at 5pm so you don't want to miss it. Anyone who hasn't seen Paul, and believe me, when you hear grief yoga, you might think pretzel yoga. And it's not that 80 year olds in chairs can do it. He's actually had, I think someone 87 in a chair do it. So that'll be tomorrow night. So it's good that you're talking about that. That'll help people feel comfortable with trying something new if they haven't.

Yes.

So tell us.

Tell me about, there's a couple other notes that I wanted to mention. I love that you talk about multiplying the love. I think that's just really cool concept that, you know, we don't often think about grief part. You know, grief is a reflection of the love. Grief and love are intertwined. We don't grieve if we don't love. We don't, yes. People we're not connected to.

I, I remember making a decision. I, I hurt so bad at points that I didn't want to feel. And my process lasted so long because it didn't let up because of the continuing things that were happening. And I, I thought, I, I, I'm, I made this commitment to feel all I can feel, but I don't know if I can do this anymore. And then I thought, well, what would be the, what would happen then? Well, I'd have to close off my heart. I have my own personal mantra of better not bitter. And I say that again. Better not bitter.

Better not bitter. That's good.

And I decided that if I do that and I close off my heart, I knew already that grief was love, that grief just gets a bad rap. But I didn't want to live without love. I wanted to come from love. I wanted to multiply the love. And if I closed off my heart, I would miss all of that and I wouldn't be able to feel the love. So I, I love this, David, because something so critical here is love doesn't die. And so if it doesn't die.

And, and this is just, I know this isn't about Micah, but about a loss of relationship. And I know there's other people that have lost relationships. So whether it happens around a child or not, I had a hard time knowing what to do with that because I felt it for Micah. But now I had really a disconnected relationship where there wasn't any new love coming into it. And I had to kind of look at it that way. Well, there's no new love coming in, but the love that I had, the love that I received and the love I gave, that's mine. It doesn't die. And so I can multiply that. And it goes with me just like Micah goes with me. You know, it. The love of the flower, the love of the tree. When. When I hug the tree, it goes with me, you know, so all of this love.

Right. You know, it's interesting. I think back years ago, my. My website's grief.com. and it's interesting. Years ago, when I first was doing that website, I was talking to a web person and he was going, oh, so depressing. And he goes, you need a little line under grief dot com. And he said, sort of what it's about. And he said, gosh, it's so depressing. It's all about like love dying. And I go, no, no, no. It's actually love doesn't die. So it's grief.com because love never dies. That's like became it.

You know that I love what you say that love. How long will you grieve? How long will you love?

Right.

You know that's beautiful, right?

Absolutely. So tell us, tell us about you, how to find this. If people want to know more about heart moments here and how to find you. And.

Well, I have a website. It's www.your journey of the heart.com and information.

Your journey of the heart.

Your journey of the heart. Right.

So there's information there, phone number, email. And I do. I'm. I'm also. I was a certified coach before I became. Before. Right. Before Micah died, I had done some coaching, but after that happened, I kind of just. Everything went topsy turvy. But I also became a grief facilitator. Scattered some ashes of Mica in Sedona after he passed. And I felt called back there in 2017. And when I went back, I was.

I was awakened in the night with an inspiration for a lost group. And the beautiful part by then was I had started to learn about this moving grief through the body. So sharing is important. And I've heard you say it so many times. We have to tell our story. We have to tell our story as many times it takes over and over, but we also need to move it through the body. So I have integrated some experiential components and using nature as much as possible in cards and things. So it's a neat experience. So I do that. And I'm doing everything virtually as well. Phone or aren't we all now? Right. Yeah. And so I do nature experiences and other kinds of things. So I would love, if my heart is connected with yours, I'd love to continue the action to anyone out there.

Well, Sherry, thank you for being such a gift. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for sharing Micah with us today. Thank you. We all know Micah now, and that's beautiful about this is that, you know, we get to know each other's loved ones. You know, we live in a world where people get mad on Facebook when we post a picture of our loved one. And here we get to honor our loved ones. We get to talk about them, we get to have a relationship with them. And today you shared Michael with us. So that's such a, such a sweet gift.

Well, I'm going to stick his face up there.

Very, very sweet.

He's my sweet boy. So thank you so much, David. It was really just an honor to be here today. Thank you so much.

Thank you. I want to tell folks about some people that are coming up, wonderful people like Sherry come on just to share their experience. So some people who are going to come up and people I'm trying to get as I'm trying to get Leslie Gray, Leslie Gray Streeter to come on, she wrote the book Black Widow. And I just found out that next week I'm going to do the Today show with her on Tuesday. So I'm like maybe and get her to talk.

Have Eric Hodgdon come on. Many of you know Eric from option B from being in there. So he's going to be joining us. Melody Moore will be here, a wonderful therapist in town. My buddy Frank is going to be here. Many of you know him. He wrote the book the Five Invitations. And then we're going to have Esther Estelle Perel on. We're going to have a conversation with her. So amazing people coming up. And, you know, I just want to remind all of you, especially if you're new, we communicate. We support each other with words here. We don't use graphics, we don't use.

Memes. We just use words. We don't use a bunch of links. We just talk to one another. And that's how we support one another. I also think about.

I'm here an hour a day, but I'm also in there throughout the day. I hope that you will talk to one another. You know how we all talk during this time when I'm on. I love when I see you doing the same anytime. If you're having a tough day, feel free to come on and post about it. If you're having an okay day, feel free to come on and post about it. It gives other people hope. If you're having a good day, you show people you're not being disloyal by having a good day after someone died. So my heart just sometimes I'll look in and see all of you supporting one another and. And it warms my heart so, so much. So I want to thank you for that. Remember, also, I'm so sorry to say there are scammers out there. I'm in touch with all the other groups too. We all talk about them. They're in all our groups. Know that no one should be asking you to private message or private message you. If that happens, please report them to us right away. And I'm so grateful to all of you. And Paul will be here tomorrow night. I'm speaking to the Library Associate association tomorrow night. So Paul will be doing a grief yoga session. So thank you all. Thank you, Sherry. And see everyone very soon. Take care.