Finding Meaning After Loss with David Kessler

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. In that way, my goal is to awaken your mind, body, and soul. It's time to become fluent in the language of love.

David Kessler is one of the world's foremost experts on grief and loss. He has decades of experience with thousands of people on the edge of life and death, and it's taught him the secrets to living a happy and fulfilled life, even after life's tragedies. He's the author of six books, including the bestseller Finding Meaning, the Sixth Stage of Grief. Additionally, David leads one of the most respected grief educator certification programs, and he's the founder of grief.com. he now has released a really beautiful companion to the sixth stage of grief called the Sixth Stage of Grief Workbook. We're getting into the nitty gritty on this episode of the Language of Love. David Kessler, I'm so glad. I'm so honored that you're joining us on the Language of Love.

I am thrilled to be here with you. You're one of my favorite people in the world.

The feeling is mutual. You know, I don't think I've been on your podcast. You have not. This is, like, your first time on my podcast. But just so my peeps know how important you are to me, David is, like one of my favorite humans. I told you who he was already in terms of his accomplishments and everything. But in terms of me personally, it was less than a week after Sammy died, and all of these old Oprah producers that I'd worked with on the Oprah show started reaching out to me, saying, you need to talk to David Kessler. And I had, like, heard it. You know, I hadn't put a lot of attention on grief. I'd certainly been through grief and processed grief, but I had never and was a therapist. But I never read your book, David. You know, I never read David's book, Finding Meaning, the Sixth Stage of Grief. I read it once Sammy died, but I hadn't read it. But I was like, okay, I know this name, all right? I'm supposed to talk to David Kessler, but I could barely function. And all of a sudden, we connect. I don't even remember David, how we actually connected. But so Sammy died on a sa Sunday. And the following Saturday, David Kessler was sitting in my backyard with me and my husband and my youngest son, Jackson. And Jackson had been with me when we found Sammy on the floor gone, and was working with us and immediately started because we were pouring out all of our fears, all of our shame, all of our guilt, and he was just like holding it all. And then, as I've shared with you in other podcasts, when I got this bizarre metaphysical message to just leave my family or I was going to die and go out into the redwoods to heal. And if you listen to the newest update on Losing Sammy, if you want to hear that story, but I left. I don't know if I told you this part, David, but I left. And I was felt horrible. The hardest thing about going was two things. One, the idea of going all the way into my pain, which I knew was going to be the purpose. And two, was leaving my poor husband and son. My oldest was away in Davis. He was holding steady, but my youngest was losing it. And my husband and like being like, bye, bye. I know he just died a week ago. Adios, I'm leaving. And you, David, like, I know you must have talked to them four or five times during the week I was gone. Like, they were really leaning on you and you were really there. And I knew that. And that made it so much not.

Remember this, but I said to you, because you said to me, oh, my, I feel I need to leave. And they're here. And I said to you, I got them.

Yeah, and you did. You did have them. And they leaned on you. I mean, I was really proud of my husband. I think desperation is the mother of invention and also the mother of letting in help. And I was really so grateful that he. Because I think he. You weren't just reaching out to them. He was. Which if. If you know, I mean, you know Sam. But if you know, my husband, he's not one to reach out for help, but he was reaching out to you, which I was so grateful for, and you were so there for him. So was Paul, your partner, who is also work. Both of you were having sessions with me remotely while I was in the redwoods. But just so you guys know, not only is he is David Kessler, an amazing and extremely well respected grief expert, but an amazing human who just showed up for me not knowing anything about me or who not having any relationship with me, showed up for me as one of my dearest friends would. So I'm so unbelievably Grateful to you.

Thank you. And it was an honor. And I'll tell you, you know, from my end, there's, like, in the world, if you hear from one Oprah producer about anything, it's a big deal in your world. And I can't tell you, I had, like, five or six reach out.

Really, You've got it, like.

And I'm like, oh, my gosh. If, like, they all want me to see this person. And, you know, when someone goes, oh, they're a colleague, you know, but they were like, no, no, no. She's dear to us. Oh, that's. I mean, it was really you.

I didn't know that part. I knew they all called you, but I didn't know that they were like, we really care and love, you know. Yeah.

It was like, go do something if we were in town, or, you know, please, we don't know what to do. Go do something. So that was really lovely. And your husband and your younger son that I saw, and I'll tell you, we all still keep in touch. And your son and I have a language that he taught me that I sort of love. That's just between us, really. Text, and it's sort of like. It's. It's that. How you doing? You okay? And it's. It's. It's nice.

It's nice.

So it's funny that languages kind of have rubbed off on him, clearly.

That's so cute. So does he still text you? Occasionally.

I'm just gonna say we've been in touch. I don't want to divulge too much.

But, you know, I'm so glad to hear that, because he shows me absolutely nothing. I mean, he's 19, and he will not let me near the therapeutics. You know, emotional stuff. Because he knows I'll go right in and ask him.

As he should.

Yeah, as he should.

No one wants their parent helping. That's just the law of young people.

I know. I keep telling him, you have no idea. What a good reason. People pay a lot of money for my advice, you know.

Can I tell you one quick story?

Yeah.

Years ago, my kids were probably 6 and 7 years old, and I took them to an event that I was having, and I said, let's go check the room the night before. And they go in there and there's hundreds of chairs. And they said to me, they're so sincere and so innocent at that age. They said, who are all these people here to see? I said, they're coming to see me. And they said, wait a minute. Is there money involved?

Are you paying them?

That's exactly where they went. They went, you're paying all these people to come. You can't afford this. And then when I told them, actually, they pay, come and see me. And there's another organization that puts this together. I mean, they were like, you've got to be kidding. Yeah, you know that don't keep us in check that way. In a lot of ways, you know.

They definitely keep you humble. For sure.

They keep you humble.

Well, during that first week or two after Sammy died, and this is relevant to your book and this new workbook that finding meaning, right? I remember I was doing like, show the post about Sammy dying and wasn't my intention, I was just letting my community know because I felt helpless to. I didn't want any more kids to die. So I wanted to let them know about the dealers on Snapchat and to be careful because I had no clue. And it went viral. And so every single talk show and news show and every like all were calling and I looked at my husband, I was like, there's no friggin way. I can't do hair and makeup. I can't go on. He goes, I'm going to burst into tears. He goes, who cares? Like, just do it because it'll save a kid. So I forced myself for like 10 days to do one show after the other and knowing that I was about to leave and that it was gonna stop after that. But I remember, and then after I came back from the woods, I'd had this whole inspiring week and I was like, made this commitment that one day I'm gonna bring a group of mamas back and we're gonna do this together. And I remember you being really supportive of that. And when I did do it, which we did just this past April, so it was three years later, you were right there, part of the faculty and doing it with me, as we had talked about that week after I came back. But you were also saying to me, especially during that week, that I was going, going, going. You were like, laura, you gotta slow down. Like, don't rush. There was sort of this message, and I think it's an important one when we talk about the sixth stage of grief and finding meaning. You were like, don't rush to meaning. Like there was this admit a very gentle but warning kind of advice, like, don't rush there too quickly. And since then I met so many mamas and so many grieving people who are like, my son died two weeks ago and I'm starting A foundation and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I'm seeing it again and again and again in other people. I feel like this is a really important piece that people miss.

I was wrong, but let me tell you, I was wrong in your case. And let's talk about this. So first of all, as I mentioned, just to be there with you and Paul eventually was helping you when you were in the redwoods. Paul does grief yoga. But here's the interesting thing about all this is when we talk about meaning, and I always have Elizabeth Kubler Ross whispering in my ear, tell them the stages aren't linear. Tell them there's no right way to do stages. So I always want to put that out there. But when we talk about this idea of finding meaning, the first reaction people have is meaning. Are you crazy? There's no meaning in a horrible death.

Yeah.

I always say to them, correct, there's no meaning in the death. Meaning is in you. It's what you do after the loss.

So here I meet all of you and I have seen so many people over the years who, just like you say, they come to see me and they've crashed, that they had a year of meaning making. They did that 5k run, they did the charity and never felt their grief when I. So when I met you and you said like, you were, like, you had everything in line, I'm going to be doing these. I have to do my best. I can't leave without saving some lives. I can't go into me knowing that people don't know about this. I have to get the word out and then I'm going to go grieve. First of all, I thought, yeah, right. No one's sort of that disciplined and sort of that aligned. I didn't know you. And I also didn't know the power of your husband to make things happen there, too. So he's so amazing. So you were the exception that you really, just like you said, chop, chop, chop. You did the media appearances like no one I've seen. And then off you went, and I.

Never did another one.

You kept your word to yourself that you would be there for your grief.

Yeah, I did. And it was in large part this part of going all the way in. You mentioned Paul, your partner, Paul Denison, who does grief yoga or created grief yoga. He also does and is a beautiful breathwork teacher. And he was doing breath work and grief yoga. I mean, this was during COVID lockdown. He was doing breath work and grief yoga with me remotely every day that I was in the redwoods. And that was so huge for allowing me to and, like, creating a pathway for me to really go. Because the message I got that led me to do this, I would have never done this otherwise. And I've said this before, but it was like a voice was like basic. A voice outside myself spoke to me and said, do you want to live or die? When I said, I want to live, it said, well, then you need to leave your family, go someplace away by yourself, and go all the way into your pain. So I. I'm someone that when a voice tells me I'm going to die, you know, it was an obvious voice. I'm like, okay, I got to listen. So I was taking it really seriously. And I didn't know how to, like, I knew how to be a ball, a puddle in the floor, but I didn't have a roadmap. And so Paul was like, you were setting the emotional and intellectual and cognitive context for what was happening and, like, guiding. And Paul was like, bringing me into my body. And it was like this dream team that really set me, set things in motion in such a beautiful way.

And I'll tell you what's really lovely about what you did in your pain and is possible now. The old way we used to do grief was you would see a counselor. And the shocking thing in this country, probably in most places in the world, is you can become a therapist without one grief class.

Yes, that is a one grief class.

You can be a counselor, therapist, coach. You can do all of that. And so many people, luckily, electively learn about it and become wonderful people. And they would, in the past, go to grief groups that were amazing at their church, at their hospital, that could hold six people. And that was it. And one of the rules always was, and it was really about people would be in shock, and people. There was space issues. They would say, you must wait two months before you could get your grief attended. And when the pandemic happened, one of the amazing byproducts is my work all went online.

Yeah.

I started my Tender Hearts grief group. And I got to tell you, people show up right away and they see other people who have had a loss very close to theirs. And whether it's a spouse die or a parent die or a child or a sibling murder or addiction, all the horrible things, suicide. And it becomes evidence that they can survive.

Yeah. Because they see people further down the road.

Further down the road. And what I always say that you did, and I don't have the luxury, and that's why I just did this workbook is I can't be with everyone. Like I was lucky enough to be with you to plant seeds early on. I think in those times is when our belief systems form of I'm never going to survive this.

Yeah.

Never going to be able to get through this. My life is over. And if you can't go to a grief group for two months, well, who wants to ruminate in all that, Sue?

Yeah. And a lot of bad things happen. Addictions develop, numbing out nations. So. And we're putting all of this in the show notes, guys. But grief.com is where you can go to, to find a group and connect with David. He has so many products and classes and live groups and programs and grief yoga is you can find on there as well.

So the beauty with the grief group that's online is it's, you know, it's like four times a week and no one's turned away for lack of funds. I mean, it's accessible to all.

Yeah, I love that. I love that so much. And it's so important because we have to make it. And in this country, and I know this isn't necessarily the same in Europe, we get very little. I mean, you maybe get five days to a week of bereavement leave and then you're expected. I mean, I'm very grateful that this happened during the pandemic and that I work for myself. I mean, I'm still paying for it now financially, logistically. But I took a year, I mean, it took me a year to be able to function, much less be able to work in any kind of reasonable way where I could really do my work well. And people have to go back to work after a week.

Let me give you some information on that.

Yes.

Guess how much time a recent study showed that it takes us to deal with the logistics of loss and all our emotions and everything else, mainly with the states and stuff. And people think, you know, there's no logistics. Like if a child dies and oh, no, there's income tax, there's all kinds of things.

Yeah.

The average person to deal with the logistics of grief is 540 hours.

Oh my gosh, I don't even know.

Not the emotions. Yeah, but the logistics. And the old wisdom was for most people in the world, go to work and make those phone calls on your lunch hour. By the way, everyone you got to talk to is on their lunch hour.

Yeah, yeah. And you're going to lose your shit talking about whatever it is because it's bringing up all the loss and Then it's time to go back to work. So you don't even have.

There's an amazing organization I work with and we can put this in the show notes too, that it's called empathy dot com. And it helps with the logistics.

Ah.

That grief is made harder by the logistics.

Really?

This sticks. Make grief harder.

Yeah, it definitely does. And that's the last thing you feel like dealing with. So we'll definitely put that in the show notes as well, Guys. So the book has been out for several years. It's a. Well, it's one of the best respected mainstays of grief books. Finding meaning. The sixth. Six. I can't say six.

Six stage grief.

The sixth stage. Because there are five stages that most people hear about and that were developed.

As you said, Kubler Ross. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. And they can occur in one hour. And grief is messy.

Yeah.

Want to say that.

Yeah. I was like, they need to be like. Because stages imply like. Yes. And I always say it's like a spiral. You keep revisiting them again and again and again in a very nonlinear way. And the sixth stage is. Yes. So talk about that for a minute because I feel like. And then we're going to get into the workbook and what's.

I will tell you, Laura, as folks may or may not know who are listening, my younger son David died. So I'm. I'm a member of that club, unfortunately, and the bigger club of grief altogether. And I. After David died, I went to a counselor. I had to find my way to a grief group. And I so didn't want to do it. And I went into a grief group. I took my contacts out, I put my glasses on, a cap on, and I had to sit in a grief group five feet from my books. And I couldn't tell anyone. That's me. I'm the grief expert. I had to be the father that buried a child.

Yeah.

And as I. I had. And I don't know if you had this, Laura, but I still had my professional mind observing.

Oh, yeah.

My professional mind said to me at one point, I wonder, is everything you've ever said about grief going to be true? And so I would go, oh, luckily, yes, that's true. And I would see myself in denial. I can't believe David's not coming back. I can't believe he's gone. Obviously. Anger, bargaining, the what ifs, the if only sadness, depression. And then when I started to wrestle with acceptance, and there's not one acceptance.

There'S a million of million yeah. Endless acceptance is.

I thought, is that going to be all? Is that going to be all? I'm going to just accept this and that's that. And it wasn't enough. And I think we're a generation that it's not enough for. We want more. And I had read Victor Frankel's work, and some bereaved parents had issues with it. And I never understood what that problem was. And it was that people mistakenly thought that the meaning is in those horrible deaths, and it's not there. And it's all those things we do after. And it can be. And I think we also make the mistake of thinking that meaning is the big charity or foundation.

Right.

I always say meaning is in the moments. And for us to name those moments, like Laura right now, is a meaningful moment.

Yeah.

This is meaningful to me. You and I talking about your son. My son. Helping others. Getting the word out. So meaningful.

Yeah.

And meaning can be. Maybe you are going to do something to help the world. Maybe you don't want other people to die the way your loved one died. Maybe you learn about the brevity of life and you realize we can't take all this for granted. There's so much there.

Yeah.

And so that turned into finding meaning. The book. And people like, I haven't had this with a book before. They're like, we're writing in. And they wanted to do more, and they wanted. And, you know. And I couldn't see everyone I would ever want to see. And finally someone said, just do a workbook. And here's the thing, Laura. I was so afraid. And I finally verbalized this to the publisher. I don't want a workbook. That's a quote or a prompt in three pages of lines.

Yes.

I wanted it to be really meaty. I wanted it to be like, no different than you. I was coming to your kitchen table, and we were going to work on some things every week.

Yeah.

And not only is that what it turned out to be, but I also think for therapists. Therapists tell me they know what to do in the first and second session of grief. And then they're like, I don't know where to go from there. I wanted to give them a map, too. So I'm so thrilled that the workbook is finally here.

Yeah, me, too. And it's brand new out, and I love that idea. I hadn't thought about that idea of therapists. I was one of those graduate students that took the grief elective. You could take it as an elective, but it wasn't required to graduate. And by the time, I mean, I've thought about this often, by the time Sammy died, I had been by the bedside of both when they transitioned and been through the saying goodbye and all the grief and everything else of both my parents, both my grandmothers, my spirit mama, you know, my mother's best friend, who was like my second mother. So I was no stranger to grief and the mistakes that I personally could and did make in my grieving process that led to lots of other complications. And so. But most therapists aren't and most people. And I had done a lot of grief work. I mean, it wasn't the focus of my work. The focus of my work was sex and love, but I had done a ton of grief work with clients, but nothing prepared me for this loss. I mean, those seeds were planted. So I love the idea of this being a resource for therapists and anyone who's wanting to be a grief, who's working as a grief coach. Because if you're not really comfortable with death and bereavement and loss, you really are at a loss of what to do after the first or second session. Like, you really need those ideas of how to help people move through them. So in the workbook, there's lots of self reflective exercises and guidance around how to release pain, which is so, I mean, I'm so passionate about that piece because that can cause all kinds of other emotional.

And that's the thing, people hear meaning and they think it's going to be. Here's a book on how to find meaning. And I always say it's about how to excavate the pain.

Yes. And how to, and how to feel it in a healthy way so that you can heal it. You can't heal it if you can't feel it. And it's so fricking scary to feel. And people think there's going to be no bottom and I'm going to never come out of this. And so with the gentle guidance and prompts and kind of container that you're able to set that gives people kind of a path and a guide, guidebook, a workbook for kind of moving through that, I feel like that's, to me, that's one of like the major pillars of healing is that ability to ride. I always say you have to learn to be an exceptional surfer of the waves. Once you can surf the waves of pain, you're not afraid of it anymore. It often eventually comes as like a lovely visitor sometimes. Not that the pain is fun, but the memory that Brought up the pain. It's just like, oh, hello, you. Here you are again. Let's surf you. Now back to my regular scheduled programming. You know, it's sort of. It gets to that point if you learn how. And I do.

The story of David in the Last hug.

Yes. I don't think you told me.

Can I tell that here?

Yes, please.

Because it's part of. Also, what I help people think about in the book is my son, David. We had to have an insurance meeting to get him insurance. And, like, if any parent could picture what that would entail, it could have been hideous. And it turned out to be a fine meeting. Fine. It was great. At the end of the meeting, we walked out of the office and I said, you know, do you want to do something? And he said, no, I gotta run. And I hugged him goodbye. And that turned out to be the last hug.

It's close to where I live, and I have to tell you. And it's a place I would often walk my dog, and I avoided it at all cost. I. There I was going to drive five blocks out of my way to not go by it.

Yeah.

And then you would be so proud of me for this moment. One day I. In my mind, I accidentally ended up there. I was talking. I didn't realize I was there, and I suddenly got furious. And I'm on Ventura Boulevard and I just started yelling. I was yelling at David, I was yelling at the universe, at God. I was so furious. And, you know, I heard that voice in my head going, you're in public. People can see. And I was like, I don't care. And you would have, like, been so proud of that moment. Because I let go in a way I'm not comfortable letting go.

I love that.

And it's interesting. Gabor, mate, he always talks about, you think you accidentally went there, but it was your inner wisdom that took you there, put you there, and it shifted. And this place that had been my traumatic wound became my cherished wound.

Exactly.

It is now a place. If I drive by it, if I'm walking, I stop and get a hug from David.

Yeah.

And that's sort of what I want to help people get to.

Yeah.

And all grief does not have trauma, but all trauma has grief. And the workbook works on many types of trauma and grief, and it's got lots of trauma. I don't call it trauma stuff in there, but it's got things in there to help with. Because our old wounds come up during grief.

Yes. Yes. That is something I've been Thinking about a lot. And especially as I talk, you know, because we do these grieving mama meetups and work with grieving mamas and all, so many of them. It's really interesting. I always say that grief loves an open door. So if you're like crying over a touching super bowl commercial, your grief over your dead grandma will come barreling through like woo hoo. She's feeling some grief. Let's go kids. But it's the same.

Finally an opening.

Yeah, let's go, let's bring it all. There's an opening. And it's sort of the same I've noticed with trauma. I was just talking to my husband about this. Cause I noticed this is me doing what you said, experiencing and having my clinical mind on. I'm like, isn't this interesting? Because I've noticed it even with myself. And I think for most people, unless it was a really gentle long death, like for a lot of deaths it is traumatic. Just the loss is traumatic. Even if the way they died wasn't traumatic. And then all like their PTSD over, their sexual abuse, their abusive childhood, the assaults they had, the car wreck they had. It's the same thing. It's like trauma loves an open door. As you're experiencing the trauma of the loss, all the old traumas fricking come up. Which of course is like, can be a nightmare if you don't know how to deal with that. So you're saying, I mean, and I saw some exercises that were really specific.

To this because here's what happens. And you know, we live in a grief illiterate world.

Yeah.

Our friends and family don't get it. I often say that grief is a time when your best friend, your sister, the person who gets everything. Strangers can become family and friends and family and friends feel like strangers because they don't get it.

Amen.

And one of the things is not only do they not get the grief, they don't get that your traumas coming up, your old wounds. And it really comes up in distorted thinking. And there's so much work in the book, gentle work to help us notice our distorted thinking. Just simple exercises like noticing when we say things like always, never everyone, no one, I'm always going to be in pain. Old wound, no one's there for me. Old wound, the little clues like that. I wanted it to be really practical and helpful.

Here's a shout out to any woman who has experienced, experienced a horrible loss is going through grief. I just want you to know you don't need to do this Alone. And you also don't have to go through this. You can grow through it. You can come out the other side of horrible loss, a more self actualized, tapped in, tuned in, empowered version of yourself. You can continue a relationship with your loved ones on the other side. I am living proof of that, that with the losses I have had, especially of my sweet boy sammy who's forever 16, I can tell you that you actually don't have to just suffer through this. And that is why I am holding a retreat for women in Chicago called From Heartbreak to Healing. I'm bringing in a whole bunch of my favorite healer teacher friends and we are together going to take take you through the process not only of showing you how to heal, but making it inspiring, uplifting and beautiful. It's only women. This time I'll do some for men and for couples as well. But this time it's only women. So come be embraced by a sacred sisterhood, meet other like minded people and learn how to not just have to go through this horrible pain, but grow through it in beautiful ways. Just go to the link in my bio on my Instagram page of Dr. Laura Berman or go to Eventbrite and search for Heartbreak to Healing Chicago and it'll come right up. I hope to see you there.

Yeah, I love that. And we're going to get into, we're going to do a little tool because one of my the hardest things, and we've talked about this, of grief is the guilt.

Yeah.

That to me is like a big hurdle and comes up a lot. So we're going to talk and you're going to hopefully take me through a tool or a technique for the guilt piece. But I want to just talk first for a second about complicated grief, what that is and what it looks like because I don't think that is discussed enough.

Well, you will appreciate this and may get upset by this.

Okay.

But.

Complicated grief, first of all, I think unless, just like you mentioned, I think unless your 99 year old father dies gently in bed, who's had a great life and says goodbye and I love you to everyone and we appreciate there's other worlds for him to go to and it's time, doesn't mean we won't grieve him still. But unless that happens, I often think all grief is a little complicated and sometimes it's really complicated. Really complicated can be a sudden death, a child's death, addiction, fentanyl poisoning, suicide, mental health. I mean like anything. And what's interesting is, you know, a parent can die and what complicates one sibling's grief may not complicate the other because they had two different relationships with mom.

Yeah.

So there's that piece now. Complicated grief in the DSM 5, which is how therapists get paid, has now been turned into prolonged grief.

Prolonged grief.

I think just the name Prolonged grief is a judgment. Yeah. What's too long it's a judgment.

What do they justify? What are they?

Are you ready? It used to be if you are grieving longer than six months with it interfering with your life with it yearning, sadness, they realized they were going to have so much pushback that they extended it to a year. Now get this, the Elizabeth Kubler Ross, all her works were going to be housed at Stanford University. So they had a huge event and they had all these different speakers and one speaker was one of the researchers of the prolonged grief. And I couldn't help myself, I raised my hand and I said, I just want to clarify. If my son died and I'm still missing him, yearning, it sort of is a part of my day to day life. It interferes with my day to day life. One year in a day. Are you saying I had prolonged grief? And I swear, Laura, I thought she would go. Go. Oh, David, of course not. We don't mean that. And she goes, yes, that's exactly what we mean.

Ew.

Well, you just diagnosed everyone, but yes.

Then every single one of us. And there's no such thing as prolonged grief because that. And you can't put a frickin timeline on it. I'm sorry, that's ridiculous.

Here's the thing about it. It's really important people get their insurance to pay for help. And therapists and counselors and other helpers get paid. So there needs to be a mechanism to pay them. I'm sorry, it was around time and not activity. Yeah, because there's people who need help at three months and there's people who need help at five years. Yeah, it should be around how. What's your activity? Can you not leave the house ever? It shouldn't be around like, oh, time too long for grief for you.

Yeah.

So that's complicated and prolonged. And by the way, we can add in the show notes if I'm just throwing things in your show notes, but I have like a whole little talk on prolonged grief and complicated grief and prolonged grief. I think it's prolonged grieftalk.com, but we'll, we'll verify that and make sure it's in the show.

We'll put it in the show. Notes. Okay, we're making a note of that. But, well, so that's interesting because what I have noticed is that there are lots of people that are a year out, two years out, three years out. And it's interesting. I'm curious what you think about this because as we know or you know, and I've talked about this on the show before, my husband and I grieve in really different ways from the get go. And you very quickly, and I've told you this before, helped save my marriage because you were like, like, there is no wrong way to do this. You cannot make your way the way. And because he's not feeling his feelings all the way through and is making it into more activism stuff and not really want, you know, you can't make him wrong. And he was so. Has been so beautiful and wonderful about letting me do my thing and. And we navigate this completely differently. So what he does is he's like changing the world. I mean, he's like started all these coalitions and parent advocacy groups and going to Washington every month and advocating for Sammy's Law. That's going to make social media more safe and all these different things. And then there's this whole community of parents who are involved and their whole lives, like his is focused on this. Now, I meet many of those and many who aren't doing that advocacy work, but it seems to be more in the people that are spending their time this way who have not yet allowed themselves to go all the way into the pain or even into the pain. Like they're using this activism to not feel the pain. Which I guess is what you were afraid I was doing that first week.

Absolutely. And I will tell you, you going off could have ripped apart marriages. There's marriages that like, you could have said, and wait, you're not coming, you're not feeling. And he just said, wait, you're going. But I'll tell you, it's because you two realized you are two whole individuals who are different and will deal with this. Different?

Yeah. I'm just curious, like, I guess there's no timeline. Eventually you got to deal with it. But I see so many people years out, and when I stand next to them, it's hard to describe it. And there are tons. I mean, there's all kinds of people in all kinds of ways, obviously as unique as each of us to experience grief. But sometimes I'm standing next to someone who's like two or three years out and it feels like every cell in their body is clenched. I don't know how else to explain it. They are holding on so tight so as not to feel.

Yeah.

And so I just am curious. I mean, it's not. And some of these people, I'm like, will you come to my retreat? When they're like, no, no, I will not be doing that. And that's okay. But I worry about them. Like, I.

Those same people often feel like healing is a bad word.

Yeah.

Healing is insulting.

Yeah. And a betrayal to their love, their loved one.

And I'll tell you, in the book, I even have a checklist around disloyalty.

Oh, good.

Really uncover, like, where you hold disloyal beliefs because of that. And I'll tell you, it's a little like this. I used to on my social media pages, Facebook, Instagram. I actually made it to TikTok, shockingly. But I would always have people as a grief specialist. I would say something about healing and releasing the pain, and they would say to me, yeah, don't you dare. Don't you dare. You haven't had a child die. You're clueless. And I had to go, look, I haven't. You're right. I don't know what that's like. And now that it has, I still stand by. Healing is possible.

Yes.

There is no healed. Right. But healing is possible. And I'll tell you, just today, someone wrote on my Instagram, how dare you say that the pain isn't going to be forever? Talk to me when your spouse dies. And I'm like, oh, okay, it moved there. It is there. And, you know, I write back and I say, look, I'm sorry you're in so much pain. You're right. My spouse is alive. And I also want you to know, after thousands of people whose spouses have died, the pain does change. But I will tell you, it is those unconscious core beliefs that make us think we need to stay tough stock. And the other piece I'll add to that is sometimes we have had so much change, we need to dig deep into stuckness.

Yeah.

And stuckness becomes familiar and it becomes safe.

Yeah. Oh, it's so painful for me.

Oh, it's so painful. And the thing is, look, I can tell you, you talked about when you went back to work, when I finally rescheduled all my lectures that I had missed, they just regurgitated the same thing and said it was. It's been rescheduled. And they used the same picture. And people wrote in and said, how dare you? How dare you smile on your brochure, David, You've had A child die, and I had to immediately go to my son, and I had to go. David loved my smile. There is no part of David that would want me to have new pictures taken frowning on behalf of him. That's not who he was. And so you have to sort of learn that old thing about what they think of us as none of our business. And you got to go with yourself. But that's the common wisdom that life should be over. And it wasn't over for our grandparents.

No, I've thought about that often. Like a hundred years before penicillin, before antibiotics, there wasn't a parent probably on the planet that didn't have at least one, if not multiple children die. And so it was just. I mean, it was painful and horrible and devastating, but it was not. It was also commonplace. And it's not today, thank God. So let's dive into. Because there's so many tools about all the. To work through all of this, but in particular, these ideas of guilt, rumination, overwhelming feelings. I wanted to see if we could do. I feel like one of the biggest milestones in healing is, at least for me and for many of the people I speak to is guilt. All the woulda, coulda, shoulda's.

Absolutely.

And I remember you saying to me, because I was like, maybe we should have. And you were like, I'll never forget. You were like, laura, I know thousands of parents who did exactly what you think you should have done, and. And their kids die. And I know thousands of parents who did exactly what you did, and their kids didn't die. And so. Right. I remember that, and that really helped. But I still feel guilt.

Absolutely. Now, here's part of the thing I want folks to know right up front. And I devoted a lot of this new workbook to guilt, because guilt is a big companion.

Yeah.

Here's the thing. Our mind would always rather feel guilty than. Than helpless. That makes your mind wants to find some control.

And it doesn't want to live in a world where people can just die and you have no control. So it latches on to something that you could have done. Yeah. So is there something. Let's do a little exercise here. And I'm going to sort of do it, but explain it for people who are listening to.

There's so many things I feel guilty about.

Let me. Okay.

I can't give you 20. Okay. So the biggest one, and this is one that was present from the time he died, and I still keep coming back to it in a million different ways, is that Sammy died because A drug dealer through the algorithm on Snapchat, pushed, which it does, pushed a drug dealer to him who offered him this menu. I had no idea. I knew he was on Snapchat, but I, at this point, had no idea there were dealers being pushed to our kids and finding our kids on there. And sent him a colorful menu of drugs he could deliver to the house like a pizza. And that's what Sammy did. He was bored, sheltering at home and curious, and decided to order a few Percocet or Xanax. I don't know what it was, but it turned out to have been either counterfeit or laced with enough Fentanyl to kill him. He didn't mean to take the fentanyl, but like, 65% of the street drugs that had Fentanyl in it, this was all new. I didn't even know about fentanyl. I thought you had to know someone who knew a drug dealer or knew a drug dealer or went someplace where drug dealers were. I had no idea they not only were online and could be easily found, but they would find you. So I have so much guilt around all the things that I should have known those things. I'm an educated. I knew everything. I mean, I knew I was pretty up to date with all the shit going on with kids. I didn't know I didn't check in on him enough. I didn't monitor. I mean, not that you can totally monitor social media, but I was not, like, micromanaging it. I was letting him online as much as he wanted, as long as he did well on school because he couldn't do anything else. During the pandemic out here in la, we were stuck. So I have so much guilt about not knowing that this was happening, where I could have stopped it somehow, at least temporarily. I'm not. I mean, I don't know, but I could have stopped him from. Potentially from taking that drug.

So your mind. One of the things our mind always wants to do is to keep us jumping because it doesn't want us to knock one of these out. So what if we did something like. And you tell me what lands true for you, because there's a 20 of them we could do, and you got to sort of do each one. But what if we said.

I should have checked on. Would you rather do I should have checked on him that day, or I should have told him all these things about drugs, or I should have known all these things about drugs? Pick one for us to do.

I would say I should, because the other two, I can't shake. Like, I talked to him excessively, not about. I didn't talk to him about fentanyl, but I talked to. And he knew. Like, I talked to him excessively about drugs. And I saw him right before I left on my errands and went to see him right after. But what I do feel guilty about is not knowing what he was up to and stepping in, not knowing that he was turning to drugs and exploring this. I knew he experimented with cannabis, but I had no idea that he was ready to experiment with other things and in touch with drug dealers and all of that.

So do you believe I should have known.

When he was considering using drugs?

Yeah. And starting to explore it. I should have somehow been keeping an eye. Like, somehow been one of those, you know, watching and looking at his stuff and being more intrusive and boundary breaking, you know, I should have been checking up on him.

Okay, so what if. Let's just go with one of these. What if I had opened his door unexpectedly and checked on him when he was in line online? So what if I had opened his door and checked on him more when he was online?

Yeah.

It is the specifics that will haunt us. Okay. All right, so if we do that one, the first thing I talk to people about and we do it in the book, is confabulation. Your mind believes your story.

Yeah.

You get committed to that story and you repeat that story over and over. And as you probably know from brain science, like neurons that fire together, wire together, and that becomes an ingrained belief. I should have opened his door and just checked online. So that's the confabulation. Then I talk about proximal causation.

Proximal causation is what happened before the death we often believe caused the death. Yeah, like, if I would have opened that door, none of this would have ever happened. Yeah. Okay.

Proximal causation is not true. The stories we tell ourselves is not true.

And how do we know that? Let's talk about science. Do you remember fifth grade science? For something to be true, it had to be repeatable, replicatable. Yeah, we know. If I drop this book.

It hits the floor. Gravity is true. But it couldn't just be. I dropped the book. You need to drop the book in a different part of la. Someone needs to drop it in New York, Paris to make sure it's true. So you have this belief, parents who check on their kids online never have kids who die.

Yeah. Well, that sounds crazy.

Now notice we've opened a crack in the story and you Just walk through. That sounds crazy. Maybe it could just be rather than crazy. That doesn't sound always true. That doesn't sound always true.

Yeah.

And then. And I do this very gently in the workbook as people work through their beliefs, then we go to Occam's Razor. Occam's Razor is a theory that says the simplest explanation is the truest. What's the truth about what happened to your son?

A horrible, horrible tragedy. A horrible tragedy that was someone's fault. And when we can't find a clear person to show up and take responsibility, we take it on.

Yeah.

Thank goodness you and your husband have had the clarity to know, oh, there's lots of people here with blood on their hands. There's big companies here.

But the responsibility doesn't lie with you. And just like I shared with you, I can talk to people can tune in any day, and I'm talking to a parent who said, you don't understand, David. I opened the door three times randomly. You don't understand, David. I could watch them online. I have a remote PC that I could go on and see. You don't understand where. I mean. And these things grip us. And now the thing is, if you can just go, wow, that did not sound true, that I caused his death by not checking online on him enough. And, you know, it probably took him two minutes online to order, if that.

Yes.

And you could have checked 14, 30 other minutes of the day and not hit those moments.

Yeah, that was good math.

Okay. I didn't even get it exactly, but I got it pretty close. Do you know how I know that?

From 14:40.

Multiple 40 minutes in a day. And so to really think about that idea and underneath, once we can open the door that that belief may not be really true, then I want to let another belief in, okay, you were a great mother.

That one's hard.

You were a great mother. And I'll even add to it. You were a great mother who was also imperfect, just like every other parent.

That is true. Yeah.

That's a great mother who was imperfect. That was trying to find the work life balance, that was trying to figure out how much independence, how much autonomy, how much privacy to give our child. All those things that parents balance. Yep. I'll tell you. Have you ever had that thought about, was I a good enough mother?

Every freaking second.

Let me tell you. I've been with mothers who aren't good parents. They don't worry about if they were a good parent. Yeah. Bad parents don't worry about was I. They're not wrecked with guilt.

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. And we all make mistakes.

And part of this put it on paper, there's something about it integrates in their mind. James Pennebaker talked about the importance of healing work by putting stuff on the paper and us witnessing us.

Yeah. And really witnessing those distorted beliefs and also kind of being taken through the process of challenging those beliefs and maybe trying on a different one.

And that's like exactly what I wanted because I'm not going to be able to do this exercise with everyone. I wanted to make it feel like if you're sitting at your kitchen table doing this, I'm right there with you. And I'm sure we'll put it in the show notes. But if folks go to griefbook.com griefbook.com I'm even going to have a free three part class that goes along with the book if they order it now to like walk you through and really get you started on this. Because I'll tell you, I'm so committed to finding some light in this darkness.

Amen.

Listen, I know you have questions and things that you want some assistance with, and I am here to help. So that's what my Language of Love sessions are for. I. I can talk to you live on the line, or you can email your questions and I will answer them and you can send them anonymously. It can be about a friend or a neighbor or someone you know. But what I want you to know is that when you ask that question, you're asking not only for yourself, but all the millions of other people who have the same question because they do and are learning right along with you. So if you have a question, question, or you want me to talk about something or answer something, or help you with a struggle, you can always email me at language of lovepodmail.com that's language of love pod, as in podcastmail.com.

Yes. And I'm so unbelievably grateful that you're on the planet and that you're doing the work that you are and making this available. So we'll put it all in the show. Notes, guides, grief.com, griefbook.com, the other stuff, which I'm sure our producer Sam wrote down, but I can't remember right now. But we'll put those in the show notes.

Prolonged grief talk.

Yes, yes, the empathy. Empathy. That was the other one.

Empathy.com. yes, we'll get them all in there.

Yeah, we'll put them all in. And there's. And it's Amazing. It's really, I think, a must have for anyone going through loss or grief. And. And I think it's applicable even to people who have lost someone through divorce or abandonment.

Absolutely. Any kind of grief, any kind of loss. The other thing, Laura, I just want to mention, we haven't ever talked about this. I don't think you probably. Are you familiar with the Hero's Journey?

Yes. Yes.

I got to tell you, and anyone who doesn't know what it is, any movie you've ever seen, Star wars, they're all based on the Hero's Journey. Joseph Campbell's work. I did in this book, the Hero's Journey for Grief. Ooh. I want people to go on their own Hero's Journey.

Amen. And that's really what the Hero's Journey is making me. You know, it's really about. Going through the desert was Jesus's journey, too, right? It's going through the desert, going through the hardships, letting it transform you, releasing what no longer serves and. And seeing the light. Like, yeah, I love that.

That's Luke Skywalker. All of those things, they always begin with a death. Star wars begins with a death.

Yes. Yes.

What a journey. Thank you so, so much for being here, David, and for being you and all the beautiful work you do in the world. I'm really excited that you've made this offering and I know it's going to be so, so appreciated by millions of people. So thank you.

Thank you, Laura, for all you do. I'm. I'm. You know, you're a fellow traveler on this journey, and, boy, you are someone who has turned your pain into purpose. And a bazillion blessings on you for that, because it's amazing what you do.

Thank you, love.

Thank you.

I went to the doctor said I'm crazy for your love.

Around me A prescription, but there's no cure for crime.