#585 - Melissa Dlugolecki - World-Renowned Grief Expert Shares How To Turn Grief Into Purpose

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Jimmy Reck Show. Today on the podcast, we sit down with grief expert Melissa Dugalecki. She has been quite an inspiration to a lot of people, coached thousands of people, and helped them with the category of grief. And in this episode, we really dive into it. Everything that maybe is misunderstood about grief, some things that can help anybody going through their own grief experience, whether that's the death of a loved one, a divorce, a tragedy, or whatever else that might be, really enjoyed this podcast, enjoyed being able to sit down with her and dive into these categories. And so, without further ado, let's get to the show with Lysa. Melissa, thank you for being here on the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor. I'm excited.

Yeah, no, it's. You know, you have a very interesting story, and what I love is, you know, you have this thing that you've been able to help so many people with, which is grief, which is what your book coming out is going to. You know, talks a lot about a lot of the people you've had on your podcast, things like that. You. You really dive into that. But as I started listening and kind of following you and what you're doing, you're a lot deeper than just this one topic. And, you know, you can tell when you listen to somebody and they just get it. They understand how the human brain works, they understand how motivation works, why people do the things that they do. And as I started researching you more and more, I started saying, man, this is a. This is a woman that really understands humans, human beings in general.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. I think I. I seek to be a lifelong student of. Of this game of life, of this experience of being human. And grief is one vehicle, one conduit for teaching, but the topics and the lessons that come out of it are so widely applicable. So I'm glad that that landed and resonated, because then I'm doing my job.

Yeah, well, I do want to dive into this topic of grief. I mean, just, you know, being an expert on that and everything that you are, and maybe if you could back into it a little bit and quickly, your story and how this became your own grief story and kind of how this became a huge part of your life.

Sure. Yeah. And, you know, for anyone listening, I'd like to preface it with if you are raw in grief. The way that I talk about grief can be challenging. In fact, even with my book, part of. As I was telling you, like, we redid and pulled it because my book actually isn't for somebody who's completely raw in their journey. It calls people into responsibility for grief. And ultimately my grief journey taught me a level of responsibility, radical responsibility that I didn't necessarily want, but it's a life changing one. And my grief journey began with the loss of my daughter. Her name's Laden and she was born with a heart complex, the same one that I actually had. And they said not to worry about it. I was a Division 1 athlete. I run many marathons. I very much into athletics and it was considered a very minor procedure. But ultimately she had a sick gut that was undiagnosed. The disease is called necrotizing enterocolitis. It's shortened by neck and ec. And at the time that my daughter died, it was so just not really well known. It was thought to only be in premature infants. And she wasn't premature. So it was a roller coaster. We spent 99 nights at Boston Children's Hospital. She had four surgeries, two heart surgeries, two abdominal surgeries. She went on life support, came off life support. We said our goodbyes, family came in, people flew in, everyone came to say goodbye, and she lived. Coming off life support. Talk about the ultimate rollercoaster of just emotional turmoil and surrendering to so much being out of your control. Because it was the most disempowering feeling as a parent, as a mother, to not be able to fix her and to kind of have to watch and see what was going to happen. She died in June of 2014. So it's been 10 years. And they did, they turned her case a catastrophe. And I'll tell you that I held onto that for a while in the beginning of my grief journey. It was like it allowed me to be even more in the victim energy. Yeah.

To me, yeah, I hate these labels sometimes. I. One of the guys I'm coaching right now used the word addiction on something that he's not addicted to. I said, bro, let's just change it to, you're struggling with it because you're giving away your own power, saying you're addicted to it. Like you can't help yourself.

Yeah. And so that really catapulted my, my grief journey. I'd always been in psychology. I had, I was a high school teacher and athletic director. I studied social emotional learning. So I've always been very fascinated by how the brain works, Language based learning, language based disabilities, and spend five years in athletics. I've always been very interested in both sports and the grit and the rigor which I definitely brought to my grief journey, as well as how do humans work? And I say my daughter, I was. I have my master's in education, but my daughter, lady, is and continues to be my greatest teacher. So thank you for allowing me to. To speak into her and her light in life.

Yeah. So how does one begin to process grief both at the beginning of, say, a tragedy and then, you know, through time?

In the beginning, there were a few things that were really helpful for me. One was a grief counselor. I mean, she arguably saved me, to be honest. And, you know, I've always been very coachable. And she was like, you work so hard, but just having a place that I could drive to and sit and be a complete mess and disaster. And I think it's very important that we have a neutral person in this role. Many times we look to our significant other. We look to a parent or a sibling. They honestly couldn't. 1. They were all on their own grief experience, too. It was their niece, their granddaughter, their daughter. My parents, in particular, are watching their child struggle and processing the loss of their grandchild. And so having a neutral professional to be able to hold that space was so important. And she taught me a couple things that, you know, I'll just touch upon, but that really changed my perspective. And the first one was, you know, I wanted to go in and. And make my daughter's father wrong for the way he was grieving. Like, I need him to be there for me, you know, and she really helped me understand we all grieve differently and authentically and truthfully, loving is allowing people to grieve in the way that they need to, even if it hurts, like, even if you're like, all that I want right now is for you to talk about this with me. And if, you know, my daughter's father needed to, like, go be out in the woods and, like, chop wood and be with his daughter from his previous marriage. And that was a huge lesson for me on life on just allowance of people to choose what they need for them, and I get to take care of me and put supports in place. And I'd say one other thing that was really helpful for me was this concept of teammates, and this applies to grief and well beyond now. In grief, there are teammates, and I break this down in my book, actually, but listeners, doers, distractors, and Xers.

I'm a good distractor. That's my role.

Yeah. Yeah. So my brothers. I have three brothers. Fantastic distractors. Fantastic. They can make me laugh, have a good time. They want to be there for me. But if I ask them to listen to the depths of the pain of my heart, they don't know what to do. Right. They get like, oh, like, robotic. And so I had to identify how people could uniquely support me in a way that felt good for them. And almost like a coach put the players in, or I need them to play and build my team, you know, I'm from Boston. If Tom Brady had been forced to be a running back, he wouldn't be Tom Brady. He's not the best runner. But when you put people in a position to win, Jimmy, like, they will succeed.

I really like that because I've had, you know, guilt before over not being able to show up the way that maybe somebody needed me to, but I didn't know how to. And I was trying my best. And what I do really well is the. The make them laugh, you know, bring some energy, those kinds of things. But I'm not so good at being able to sit there and hold space and, you know, and as things, I mean, have gotten better with time, but. But putting a team together. I really like that idea. And not making it what you need that person to be, but rather making sure it works for that person as well, and then even letting them know, like, hey, this is kind of a role I hope you can play for me. Here's what I don't expect. Here's something that I would love, or if you're able to do this, that you seem like the right person for that job.

Absolutely. And truthfully, it. In grief and through this deep pain, when you can create compassion and understanding, it actually strengthens relationships. And my grief counselor told me a lot of relationships don't work after losing a child. Not because of the loss of the child, but for the expectation for the other person to grieve the way you do or to make them wrong for grieving their way, or become resentful because somebody's asking you to grieve in a way that you can't and that you're worthy of grieving how you need to. And so there is this opportunity within the depths and the darkness to actually find a lot of light and find a lot of connection. But it takes a lot of work, I'll tell you.

Well, and it's interesting. I had a valuable lesson I got a couple of months ago. I was actually talking to one of the guys that I coach, and he was. His girlfriend had a baby pass away a couple years ago, and. And I was talking to him. I was. I was surprised that she wasn't more emotional when she spoke about it. And he told me, he said, dude, it's like, people have to grieve the way that they can. And there's actually. She has guilt over people thinking what you just said. And I realized what an asshole comment it had been on my end to, like, judge the way somebody else was grieving. Right. It was like. And it just surprised me. I didn't. And I didn't feel like I was judging it, but I was. And it was just interesting to hear his perspective. And I actually said. I said, I think she's found the perfect guy to help her through this process, because you really get it. I'm like, good for you, man. Like, thanks for teaching me today.

Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah. The authenticity of it is so important. And, you know, you asked how I kind of progressed through, and there's this concept called building your world. It's also in my book. But if you imagine, like, and now people listening, can't see, but I'm making a little circle with my fist, and this is my world. If my. When Layden died, grief took up my entire world. It was my whole world. Most people think we need the grief to get smaller, but I don't believe that happens. I don't love my daughter any less. It doesn't hurt any less that she's gone. I miss her terribly. Right. And I'm grateful for her. But what you do is you build your world so the circle just becomes bigger. And so the percentage of which the grief takes up is less. But the actual, like, grief, you don't have to put this pressure on yourself for it to go away or for a one year finish line. I remember that. You know, Melissa, it's been a year. You're over it, right? Like, no, like, day 366 doesn't feel any different than 365. You know, it doesn't. So I really just began building my world. And in the beginning, the ways in which I did that, I needed to feel as though I was identifying as mom, because that was a huge part. It's called a secondary loss. So a secondary loss is like a ripple from the primary. So primary loss, my daughter. Secondary loss is the experience of being a mother. You know, secondary loss, family unit. Like a lot of secondary losses, people don't quite understand the layers of grief around that.

When you also lose the vision of what you wanted that life to be with that person. Right.

It's, yeah, 100% future you envisioned. It's definitely one. So in the beginning, I was running the marathon, the Boston Marathon for Boston Children's Hospital with Layden's face on it. And I was doing all of these things about grief and about Layden. And I did a lot of fundraisers for Laden, the Laden Cup. And just as much as I was giving, I was receiving because I needed Laden to be remembered. I needed people to say her name. I needed these things. Whereas now, when I host charity events down here, I'm in Tulu, Mexico. The first year I did it here, four years ago, I did talk about how this was inspired from my daughter. And now I'm like, this is so much bigger than her even to be mentioned. I know I don't need anyone else in there to know her in the human form. I just feel her. And so that is probably the best way I can explain the journey in the beginning, what brings me comfort, what allows me to feel less of the pain of what I lost. And then as you strengthen your muscle, just like going to the gym, Right. You build your fitness. It will shift in your grief journey, too. But it's. It's a continued practice.

Yeah. What's the best way to help somebody that's going through that grief process?

What a great question and something I get asked very frequently. I think I'm going to do, like a little. A short book, like a mini book on how to support a griever. Right. I really believe that giving somebody, like, two options and giving them space. And the reason I say two options is when you're in a real trauma state. Like, I couldn't think, Jimmy. I went to Trader Joe's one time and I was lost in the aisles, and I'm. I'm walking around the grocery cart. I don't even know where I am. Like, people probably definitely thought I was on drugs or something. Definitely wasn't. But I'm, like, wandering around and people are, like, bumping into me, like, excuse me, excuse me. And I'm like, I don't even remember what I want went there for. And I just had to abandon my car and walked out completely crying. That was the state that my brain is in at this time, like a trauma state. So if you ask somebody something that requires a lot of decision making, it's very hard for them. Decision making is very hard. So it could be, would you like me to drop off food for you or would you like to go out to dinner? Like, two concrete answers, something like that is very helpful. And I also think continue touch points without an expectation for a response. And this is Something where when we are supporting somebody in grief, we need to understand that them not responding right away isn't personal and they probably still appreciate the check in. So when I have friends who are grieving, I'll often say, like, hey, just thinking of you, sending love and prayers, I'm here, you know, and then I don't take it personally if I don't hear back. And what I have found from my friends who have gone through different types of grief is how appreciative they are of me allowing them the space to process how they need to, but yet still knowing them, I'm like letting them know I'm available if and if they choose.

Yeah. You talk about something called toxic positivity. What exactly is that?

Oh, that's one of my favorites. So anything with the word at least very likely toxic positivity. Like, at least she wasn't older. Melissa. It doesn't.

People say that.

Oh, I heard that. Yeah.

Now there are dumb people.

Now let's think about the intent. And this is where we understand intent versus impact. So the intent was to try and make me feel better because they didn't know what to say, but the impact was like a dagger. I hope it's okay to swear I'm here. Like a dagger in my gut. So toxic positivity is typically from somebody's discomfort or inability to sit in uncomfortable places. That's typically where it comes from. They can't be in an uncomfortable truth, they can't sit in a reality. They can't be there. So let's just kind of bypass it.

Or they'll try to joke about it sometimes too. Right? Same kind of thing.

Yeah. 100%. 100%. Those are all ways of kind of gaslighting experiences. I know that term is thrown around a lot. I think it's overused. But toxic positivity is, you know, just think positive. Imagine all the gifts that you had. What a gift that you had. And if I come to that conclusion, that's my conclusion. But you're not going to tell me to feel that way right now, you know, and so it's a very common thing. And when I see it, I bring empathy and compassion, knowing that somebody like what their life must be like if they can't sit in conflict or pain because it's. We all have it.

I think it's important to fill our emotions, obviously, at the right time. And grief is one of the biggest ones. Like, I think a lot of people don't even know what that means though. I had a guy today because one of the ways I teach my men to give up a bad addiction, whether it's alcohol or porn or just social media surfing or whatever it might be, I said, when that feeling comes up that you want to do it, try to sit with it instead and go, what am I feeling? What am I experiencing here? Why am I being triggered to do this? And one guy said back to me, he goes, how do I do that? I don't even know what that looks like to sit in my feelings. And I didn't really know exactly how to answer it. Um, what would you say with. As far as grief goes and being able to sit with it and. And really experience the emotion?

Yeah. I'll never forget my counselor said to me, melissa, sometimes you just have to sit with the shit. Because I was. Without realizing it, I let me go shopping and distract myself. Let me go be with people. Let me go out to dinner, like, if I can keep myself busy. Busy is a form of numbing ourselves. So what I've coached, and I've coached a lot of people through grief, is schedule in. In your calendar, like an hour a week to go sit with your grief. Now, it happens most time, and I'm like, if you want to go for a walk, do that. But you're going to be intentional about your grief. If you want to go to a batting cage, like, batting cages were actually really helpful for me in my grief journey. Like, I was like, get this emotion out. But a lot of times my clients will tell me I felt nothing for about three, four weeks. And then all of a sudden, it's like they're just chipping away. You know that game don't break the ice?

Of course, you know, Right.

It's like, chip one, nothing. Chip, chip. And then all of a sudden, it'll be like the fourth or the fifth week where they just completely break down and free themselves of the emotion that they've been stuffing down.

Yeah. I think of the scene on Goodwill hunting when he finally breaks, right? Like, it's just like, you got to chip away at it. And then eventually. So that's good practice. I. One of the things I teach, you know, the people that I coach to do is to go into nature once a week for an hour, no phone, and just sit. Just let whatever come up, come up. Give it a chance to breathe and come out 100%.

That's a beautiful way of doing it. Connecting with nature. It's. It's powerful. I mean, there's such a potent energy force around, I think, also connecting with a Big world. Like, even just energetically thinking that we're just a part of a big world can be very grounding and humbling as well.

Yeah, I think a lot of people have guilt over around grief as well. It kind of goes together. Like, as a mom, you know, one thing that I've heard you talk about before is, you know, your job is to protect your children, and you had a child die. And so maybe grief is associated with a level of guilt. Maybe. How do you separate those two feelings and try to heal them simultaneously?

That's one that I still come up against. You know, the. The what ifs are a real challenge, and I just got to do my best every day to knock them out. Now, particularly when my daughter's case was called a catastrophe, it's really hard to not replay, well, what if I didn't eat bagels when I was pregnant? Did bagels make her sick? Like, that's where my mind will go, Jimmy, you know, what if I had caught this when it happened? What if when she was in the hospital, we did this instead? I mean, 99 nights. That's a lot of decisions that were made, a lot of meetings, a lot of surgeries. Now, I would say guilt, for sure. I would actually say shame would be the true emotion that I came up against and had to really work through. Now, I don't know that it necessarily goes away as much as you can counter it with trust, faith, spirituality, God, and for me, really becoming. I did a lot of studying around spirituality and understanding, you know, karma, energy, soul contracts. And so really, for me to land on a story, for me around soul contracts and purpose, and then channel that pain, because transmutation is a thing. Right. Energy can't really be created or destroyed, but it can be transformed. Right. The alchemist. Right. So if I could take the deepest, darkest, heaviest emotions of shame and transmute that into purpose, into service, into impact. Well, now at least I'm leveraging that in a light energy and in a way that actually feels empowering. And so I would say building my relationship with trust and faith and whatever somebody might believe in. And secondly, transmuting the energy because it's there. So can I work with it instead of resisting it?

Yeah. I mean, giving purpose to that pain with my men's group, you know, all these different experiences I've had in my life that caused me pain, and I get to share with the guys and then get to see them have transformations because of the information that I've collected or the group that I've been able to form because of this. And it like, it feels like it retroactively somehow heals the pain of the past when you give it purpose and the pain goes away. And all of a sudden it's all part of this beautiful journey that we get to call a life 100%.

I mean, I probably literally ran from it for the first few years because I was running the marathon and I was just running, running, running, running, running, running. And I think almost when I stopped running marathons, did I stop running from it and began to transmute it and leverage it more.

Is the grief of a death the same as the grief of losing a relationship? Maybe like a divorce or a girlfriend, boyfriend, something like that?

It's such an interesting perspective and question. And so I really, I don't believe in like a hierarchy of grief though. There is kind of a hierarchy unspoken and I would be at the top of that. Right. Bereaved mother. What I seek in that kind of perspective for people or how they view my opinion on grief is to be a permission slip for people to understand that grief happens every day. Every day. Now I do think there's depth charts. So the depth of losing a child is going to be really deep, right? The depth of a long term relationship is going to be deeper than the depth of a new relationship. But whether a new relationship, a long relationship or a child, it's all grief. It's all that primary loss and secondary loss. It's all emotions and triggers and things coming up and it's all there to work with and leverage. So, yeah, I think it's all grief. I think there's just different kind of depth charts. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. So do you have some practices or like, how do you help people get over a breakup?

Honestly, very similarly to. I would treat it very similarly. It's just probably a shorter timeline that it requires to move through it, you know, than maybe a death, especially an out of order death. Right. If our, if our parents are older when they die. Right. It's a normal. But one is you've got to make room, you got to make room for the loss and you have to process it. I do a lot of journaling. I do color coded journaling. So if you just let everything out, you just like go, you go, you go, you go. You can see behind me. I have a lot of charts. I'm a teacher, right. This is just me. So my brain works. But it. I'll take someone who's journaling and I'd encourage anyone listening to try this because what happens is when we're journaling or when we're processing something, it's all surface level, but it's really all tugging at something deeper. So let me explain. My grief counselor said to me, melissa, grief doesn't actually change a person. It just takes a magnifying glass as to what's under the hood. It just pulls it up. So the more intense your grief is, the more magnified things are going to be. I really never been an angry person. I didn't have a lot of anger in my grief. I. Bits of it, sure. But anxiety, I had a lot of anxiety. So that was like. And I had to really manage that. So anyways, in this journaling practice, what I'll do is I'll have clients under this myself. Okay. If it's related to shame, highlight it yellow. If it's related to. I remember one of mine was like, I ruined it. I messed it up. It's my fault. Highlight that in green. When you start doing this with whatever your experiences are. Now we get into the real conversation because the real conversation isn't about if the relationship didn't work or it didn't, you know, or what so and so did, or what so and so said. It's all the root emotions and energies that need to be kind of healed under the stories around what happened. I would also teach them to have teammates, just like I talked about, have people that can support you, build your world. If your whole world was your relationship or a huge part of it was, let's start building that world. And I'd say the last thing, and this is a bit counterintuitive, I think when people are struggling, particularly in grief. Right. What do people do? Like, here's a bottle of wine, here's a lasagna. You know, like, we just want. We just want people to feel better. You actually have to double down on your rituals and self care because when you are emotionally completely distraught, you gotta at least help yourself out physically. And even if that means, like, if you don't have the energy to go work out hard, like just sleep, go to a sauna, you know, and drink a green juice. But if you can help yourself physically, it's going to counter some of the emotional lacking capacity that you have.

Yeah. So how do you avoid being a victim but still being able to process your grief and allow that to come.

Through, I think that's actually the message that I believe. Jimmy, I meant to share. I tell the story and it's 100% true. Sometimes I didn't know what to do and I Would just drive to the hospital and walk around outside, like, really sad, you know, like. Or go to the coffee shop. Like, just, what. What do I do? And I remember walking outside of Boston Children's Hospital a few. This was probably six months after Layden died. And it was like this light came down and this thought came through, and it was like, melissa, you've been walking around like, you are entitled to a healthy child. You can want one, you can be devastated you didn't have one, but you're not entitled to anything in this world. And what I realized in that moment was that the victim energy, I believe, comes from entitlement, right? Like, something was taken from me, therefore means that you were entitled to something. And I swear, from that moment on, I just started living my life like I'm not entitled to anything. Nothing. Nothing. So can I be present? Can I be grateful? And so can I be grateful that I experienced pregnancy, that I experienced childbirth, that I experienced holding my daughter against my chest. Some people will never experience that. I. Now, we don't want a toxic positivity and say, so great. You got to do that. So don't feel pain. No, it's both. It's the word. And. And a lot of times people go to victim because they actually don't give themselves permission to feel the pain. Or they look to be a victim to someone else for someone else to give them. I think a lot of times people go to victim to try to have a need met that they don't know how to meet themselves. So, like, they don't know how to take care of themselves. So it's like, poor me, poor me. Someone help me take care of me. But this is where radical responsibility is the most loving thing we can do. Because when you can be whole and when you can take care of yourself and when you can give yourself permission to grieve and to heal and know you're not entitled to anything. Now you can show up really powerfully in relationship. Now you can show up really powerfully in business. Now you can show up really powerfully at the gym. And I realized that I had had it swapped. I had spent most of my life thinking I was entitled to things. Not intentionally, just little things. Like, there's traffic. So annoying. Like, okay, Melissa, you live in Boston. Are you entitled to no traffic? Right. Just that much of a discernment for calling myself out. But I was walking around, Jimmy, like I wasn't worthy of anything. And that was my shift in my life and my grief. So it was like, can we realize that we're worthy of everything, but entitled to nothing. Whereas my worthiness had been outsourced previously. When my partner validate me and tell me I'm worthy, would the number of likes on social media make me feel good? Would a job title, would a number on a scale number in a bank account, would those things make me worthy? And when I realized I'm just innately worthy for who I be and how am I the guardian of my worthiness? How do I value myself, not look for other people to. And when I realized I'm not entitled to anything, everything changed. So that is like the greater message. You know, it was a long answer, but that is the greater message that the biggest gift that I got from grief.

Yeah. A couple things I've noticed people have the hardest time moving past and I'd love your opinion on just any advice you have. So it's either a huge financial loss, right. Like I was coaching a guy that lost millions of dollars in when crypto tanked and he just has never been able to move past it. You know, you meet a lot of people that had sexual assault or were maybe molested as kids.

It.

And it kind of just is always in the background of their life and, and kind of, you know, running, unfortunately, a lot of their decision making and things like that. Another one is when somebody leaves a religion, I know that feels like a death. I've experienced that myself. And for a lot of people that get caught in this place where they end up becoming obsessed with that religion in a negative form instead of, you know, and they still let that thing have all this power over them. So how do you help somebody move past these dramatic or traumatic events or just these huge emotional experiences so that they can get on with their life but still be able to, I guess, feel whatever that needs to come up from those experiences?

Yeah. You know, I don't want to oversimplify or downplay the intensity of many of the things you just named. Right. Or my own experiences, but an easy analogy is athletics, right. Let's take a football game, right? Something bad happens, you make a mistake or there's an injury or there's a fumble, you either are taken out of the game because you're mentally completely gone, or you got to adjust to move forward. Might need a timeout, you might need to regain plan. And yeah, if you have an injury going forward, you're probably going to play a little bit differently at first because you're nervous that you're going to get hurt again, but over time that, that will go away. Right. Or if you made a play that led to an interception, you're probably going to take the feedback to not do that same error again. Right. Or have that same experience again. You might be a little gun shy in the beginning, but over time, you become more confident. And so I always look at what can I control and what can I control? I cannot control what's happened. It's done. It's facts. It's done. But I can control how I move forward and how I respond to it. So can everything. I mean, Kobe Bryant said this all the time. There's no failure. It's just feedback. So can everything be feedback? And when you see it as feedback, can you leverage the value of it to grow? Most people miss the value in their challenges. They miss the value in it because they don't see it as feedback. They make it wrong or they shame it, or they can't get out of it, or they're obsessing over why poor me. Victim. And I know. I don't mean to sound harsh, but.

I think that, you know, it's. I. I preach this all the time. I, you know, take this from Tony Robbins, but, like, anytime you find yourself in any kind of victim mentality, it's just really hard to get out of it because you're giving up your power to actually change it 100%.

And so what can I control? What can't I? And really, the only thing we can ever fully control is our own energy. Like, that's it.

What. What do people misunderstand or not understand about grief?

I think that there's a big misunderstanding on a timeline. There's like a fabricated timeline of, like, one year or whatever it may be. Like, that year two was really hard for me. That was actually probably the hardest year because people forget. They move on with their lives, and they should. So I'm not making it wrong. I don't expect everyone to wake up every day for years and be like, hey, Melissa, how you doing? But year two was harder because you're kind of more on your own. It's like training wheels are off. Like, grief journey on your own. Melissa. The five stages of grief, the way that they've been presented, as if they're linear.

Could you. Could you give those five stages.

Oh, my goodness. I don't know if I can name them offhand right now on the spot. Like, so nervous. But denial, anger, sadness. I have to look them up, honestly. Isn't that funny? My whole book is about. Cut that part out. My whole book is kind of taking them down. So I do have it all in my book. But I think that there's much more than five stages. And I think it's kind of like a web, and you kind of can bounce back between different ones at different times. And we don't move past it, but we can choose how we carry it forward. I haven't moved past what happened. I will still get a trigger. And I have to acknowledge and take care of my trigger. Now. My triggers used to be multiple a day. Now maybe it's like once a quarter. I'm kind of taken out by grief. And I just have to honor that and allow it, put supports in place, place, be aware of it, communicate my needs, and then continue moving forward. But I think the pressure for timelines. I think the pressure that everyone should grieve the same way. I think the pressure for a man to take care of women in grief. Now, do I believe in provider protector? Yes. But not at the cost of that man not being able to honor his own grief.

How do men in society grieve with while still supporting a family?

I think it's. Honestly, I'd have a counselor or coach, 100. They need a place to go and pour out. Because if you think about it, so many people are dumping their needs on that man's bucket or plate. And that's the role that he's a provider and he's a protector. And like, that's beautiful. But at some point when he's carrying, he needs a place to go and lay that down. Otherwise, what happens? I mean, the suicide rate is the highest. Right. Among adult men. I believe I saw that somewhere. I don't want to quote an exact number.

Yeah. Or three out of four adult deaths. Suicides are men.

Yeah. I mean, that statistic doesn't lie. It really doesn't. And I very much do believe in masculine and feminine roles and duality and polarity. However, not at the cost of the man. The masculine not being supported, whether it's by his partner and. Or counselor or a coach or community, which I know obviously you believe in.

Yeah.

Right. And you support that. But I mean, it's just. It's really important to me. Yeah, it's really important to me.

I know that one of the biggest causes of divorce is the death of a child. Like, it's one of the hardest things for couples to overcome. So maybe if you could take a couple minutes and talk about what is a game plan that a couple could use or that people could use if they have, you know, a death of a child.

Yeah. Well, as I mentioned my grief counselor said to me, most people, the divorce doesn't necessarily happen because the death of the child, but of the contrasting ways in which people need to grieve and making it right or wrong. And so it's a huge opportunity for you to understand. And as someone who I did, I relied on my. My daughter's father at the time for, like, a lot in my life, to be honest. You know, my validation, my worthiness, take care of me, you know, And I was kind of probably in that toxic feminine, you know, I wasn't fully caring for myself and valuing myself. And so when we are grieving, I would say, first thing is like, you gotta. I mean, it's the old saying, right? Put your oxygen mask on first. You've got to take care of you, and you've got to take radical responsibility in doing that. Whether it's getting a counselor or whether it's building your world a little bit, having different outlets. We cannot lean solely on our partner to grieve because they're going to have wildly different experiences, Wildly different experiences, and it's the same loss. So that's huge, I think, finding some time to independently grieve and then collectively grieve. So there were things that my daughter's father and I did differently, separately, and then there were things that we did to honor her together. But they were talked about, they were agreed upon, and it would always be a conversation of, does this feel like something you want to do? This is what I'd like to do for her birthday. I'd like to go. We did a charity thing, gave food to the homeless. That feels really good to me to do acts of service. Does that feel good to you? You've got to be okay if it doesn't feel good to someone, because what happens if you force them? Resentment. Well, resentment is going to compound over time and probably be, you know, a piece of straw that leads to divorce eventually, if that is the case.

That makes sense. So it's more the resentment over how they're acting or reacting to kind of the grief of the two people that really causes the. The problems.

Yeah, it's the resentment. It's expectations. I think it's a lack of knowledge and educate yourself on grief. Educate yourself on grief. A lot of people enter it. We don't even know what the heck is happening. The more you understand what's happening to you emotionally and biologically, fight or flight, nervous system regulation, the more you can actually understand it, the more equipped you're going to be to navigate it.

When a lot of people, you know, I was talking to a kid the other day that I coach, and he called me up and his dad died two months ago and had a very successful construction business. And he was given the business and he has all these employees and all this responsibility, and he's basically was just like, I don't know what I'm doing exactly. That people are staying, they believe in me, but I don't know, like. And I said, man, I said, dude, just, like, just do the best you can do. Show up every day. You haven't even had time to grieve your dad yet. And he goes, no, I haven't had any time to do that. So I think a lot of people get thrown into these situations when there is a death where they have to kind of go into this hyper mode of, like, taking care of. Right. I know my buddy Jeremy, when his dad passed away, I mean, it was months of this that he had to go through. And they don't get time to go through their own grief process. And so maybe for somebody in that position, like, what would you have, advice would have you given to this kid that I'm coaching in his situation?

One is I would minimize and simplify as much as you can in your life, like, as many things as you can take off your plate. Take off your plate.

That's good.

And then give yourself the grace and allowance. And yeah, I mean, I had to completely clean house because I couldn't afford to have things that were draining me, you know, and work did, actually a bit. I remember, like, I'll never forget a parent saying to me, she didn't know what happened, but she was in my. I was an athletic director. And, you know, people have a lot more opinions about playing time on the football field than they do about the valedictorian. Like, it was a. It was quite the role. But I'll never forget a parent in my office saying, well, you don't know. You don't have a child. And I was like, or you don't know what it feels like. You. You don't have a child. And I was like, you probably want to get out of my office right now. But. So my point is that you can't always eliminate all the things that are going to drain and pull at you. Try and minimize them as much as possible. Simplify, get comfortable saying, no setting boundaries. A big strategy that I used was having plans. Abc. So, for example, Christmas Eve is coming. Mom wants to know, will you be here? Because she wants me to be there. And I Have to communicate. Plan A is to be there, but plan B, which might happen, is going to be, I'm going to be home alone. And plan C is I might go to, you know, the church by Laden's memorial trade, because that might feel good to me. Plan D, I don't know, you know, and giving yourself permission to meet your needs. And then lastly, I would say, like, if you think about it, like, I don't know, we have hurricanes here a lot. Let's just say my house was taken out by hurricane. If I didn't have the time or the ability because of, you know, family or work or whatever it is to completely redo my house at one time. You just gotta chip away. You've gotta chip away, but you still gotta see it to completion. And so what I would advise is if you have to pace it more slowly and there's less room, let that be okay. Make it meaningful. Have coaching, but see it through. Don't. Don't think that, you know, after a couple months it's gonna go away because now you're just burying it.

Yeah, that's good. I think something that people have a hard time with is asking for help when they're in those situations. And so if you're in a grieving position and not very good at asking for help, what advice do you have?

Yeah, it's a skill that you get to strengthen. That was a hard one for me. So first bring an approach to. Okay, this is uncomfortable. Don't make it wrong. Okay, don't make yourself wrong. This is really uncomfortable for me. And I get to strengthen this muscle. I also find it really helpful to remember that people innately like to be helpful. People feel good when they are making a difference. So if you can get clear and the teammates that we talked about and what could feel really good for a way that somebody could help. I had about three or four people when I needed to ball, like fall to the ground crying, couldn't even talk. Three or four people. That was it that I would call because they could actually hold that. It was hard, it was dark, you know, but they felt really good being able to do that. You know, when they hear me talking about it in my book, like, they feel good. Oh, that was me. I was one of those people. You know, when I talk about distractors and I laugh about my brothers and the stuff that they did, you know, they made me laugh so hard during some of the most painful times. And I can tell my brothers feel good about that. And so I would usually take my brother Timmy for example, I would just be like, timmy, like, mother's Day is coming up. It's gonna be a really hard day for me. Would you be open to hanging or doing something? And when you put it in a way that's not putting pressure on someone, I think that's really important too, because asking for help and demanding it are a little bit different. And so if you can ask and be okay if that person cannot help, and then be like, okay, next person to ask, it's a great practice in not taking things personally, too.

Yeah, no, I think that's great. Last thing I wanted to ask. Like, a lot of times people want to hold space for somebody. They want to be a good listener, but they really don't know how to do it. I recently had to teach my father how to hold space. Kept interjecting comments when the person was trying to talk, and I was just like, dad, shush for a second. Like, just sit. But could you maybe teach people, like, what is the best way? What are the important things when you're holding space for somebody in a grieving situation?

Yeah. It's funny because many times you have to educate and coach and train the people for what you want and need. And I think that's true in life, honestly. But one of my best friends, he's a male and a very powerful guy, and I needed him to hold space for me on something that had come up and I had. Before I could even get on the phone, I'm like, I'm gonna need you to hold space. All I need you to do is listen. Please don't try and fix it for me. Please don't tell me how we can solve the problem. And so I think there's a very big instinct for whether it's male or female. We just want to fix and we want to help. But if you're actually holding space, you know, you are creating a container in an environment of safety, of neutrality, of non judgment. You really, I mean, that's the number one thing is you want to create safety. And that's going to come from neutrality, non judgment, just allowance of what they need. And then usually what I would say is, you can ask, would you like any support on that? Would you like input on that? Do you just want me to listen while you process? Like, ask the person? Because also, don't put pressure on yourself to be a mind reader. You know, if you're holding space for someone, you want to create the environment and let it feel good. Like, oh, I'm holding space for this person. And let it create the environment that they want but you don't have to read their mind.

Yeah. One thing I like to say when I'm trying to hold space is like I don't have any good answers, man. I'm just going to be here, you know, say something like that.

It's powerful.

Yeah, powerful. Well, this has been amazing for people that want to get your book. I know it's coming out here in the next couple little bit. What is it going to be called? Where do I send them to learn more about you and what you're doing?

Amazing. Thank you so much for this time. Just flu. My book is called Scar Tissue. Really playing on the power of the scar tissue surrounding our biggest cut spoons injuries and it will be coming out shortly. Pre sale will be going up in like the next week. You can find me on Instagram, Melissa Dugalecki. Really? If you just type in like Melissa dlu probably the only one that pops up. Otherwise my website is speakingofmelissa.com took my last name out of it to make it easier. Speakingofmelissa.com and the book will be available for pre sale there as well.

Awesome. Well thank you so much and guys go check it out. If you are going through a grieving process and want some help and support, I highly recommend to add her on Instagram. Grab the book and get the tools. Thank you so much Melissa.

Thank you.

Bye bye. Thank you again for listening to the Jimmy Rex show and if you liked what you heard, please like and subscribe. It really helps me to get better guests to be able to get the type of people on this podcast. It's going to make it the most interesting. Also want to tell everybody about my podcast studio, the Rookery Studios, now available in Salt Lake City and Orem, Utah. If you live in Utah and want to produce your own podcast, we take all of the guesswork out of it for you. We make it so simple. All you do is you come in, you sit down, you talk and leave. We record it, edit it, even post it for you. If interested in doing your own podcast, visit our Instagram and send us a a DM Rookery Studios or go to our website, the rookerystudios.com.