72: Forgiving The Unforgivable

Foreign welcome to Grief and Guts. I'm your host, Melissa Dugulecki. It is my honor and privilege to serve you by sharing stories, tools, interviews, and strategies that will help you transition from what do I do now? How do I get through this? Those feelings of overwhelm and uncertainty to truly standing in your power. From my grief journey in losing my daughter laden in 2014, that I learned, practiced, was exposed to all these tools, but they are not grief specific. In fact, they apply universally to all of our unique situations. You've already done the hard part by showing up, by opening up to something new. So without any further ado, let's get to the good stuff that's going to help you in your journey. Let's dive in. Hey, friends, and welcome back to Grief and Guts. I am your host, Melissa Dugalecki, and today we're actually going to be talking about a topic, a question that I've been asked a lot, either in Instagram or at events, and that's how have you forgiven the unforgivable? How have you released anger and resentment from your loss, from Laden's case? And I'm going to talk about it specifically in my grief, but how I actually translate that to my life and how what I've learned from this process can support you in your life, in your challenges in different ways as well. And I just want to start by saying, you know, thank you so much for sending these questions, for engaging, for letting me know what's the most helpful. I am. One of the things I'll talk about today is actually detaching from outcome and attaching to process. It's something I'm borderline obsessed with. Right. If you listen to me, you know, I talk about it a lot. It's very Belichickian hashtag hero. And it's all about, you know, what can we control? What can't we control? How are we going through the process in a way that is more important than necessarily the outcome? And I'm going to talk about it in terms of letting go of anger. Right. And forgiving. And forgiveness is challenging. Forgiveness is very challenging. But before we get into that, I just want to say thank you because when I started this podcast, from everything I had Learned, I had 0 and still have no attachment to numbers and, you know, necessarily growing it for anything monetarily. It's just I'm attached to the process of putting work out there that feels meaningful, holding space to have difficult conversations, talking about things that Layden taught me or brought light to, and allowing her to continue to shine in ways that hopefully help you. And so that's what I've been completely attached to. And recently for the book that I'm publishing, I did have to look at some of the numbers and we have gone now to 68 countries, which is pretty incredible. And it's actually a pretty top downloaded podcast and well reviewed and well subscribed to. So thank you guys. Thank you for showing up. Please let me know how I can best serve, what I can best share to support. And in the spirit of that, today we are talking all about how do we deal with the anger, Right? How do we deal with anger and whether it's in loss or in something else, Right. It could be maybe in the end of a relationship, maybe it's in something in your personal life, maybe it's something in your professional life, but how do we let go of that? And it's not easy. For those of you who don't know my story, I lost my daughter laden in 2014 at Boston Children's Hospital, which has been consistently ranked the number one pediatric children's hospital in the world. So you can imagine, when I was there, we felt safe, right? We felt safe. But even in Leighton's case, there were so many things that just didn't feel right and didn't hit the right way that we actually asked for a second opinion internally within the hospital, and we're looking to have one done externally outside of the hospital. Now, when Leiden first began her treatment and she was going in for her heart surgery, I'll never forget, I asked her doctor, I said, you know, how what are the chances? Like, what are the chances that, you know, something goes wrong or, you know, what are the chances of survival? And he kind of smiled and said, do not worry. I would say, you know, 97%. Right? And for cardiologists to say 97%, in my mind, I'm like, well, that's 100%, because I'll never say 100% anyways, because they can't. So we really didn't have any worries when Laden had her heart repair. It went really well. We had a date scheduled to go home. And from there the wheels kind of fell off. All of a sudden, her stomach began exposing. There was a delay in her being seen in an abdominal exploratory surgery because of some communication and just differentiating or differing opinions rather. And arguably that delay in her getting her abdominal surgery done could have contributed to ultimately her death. Now, this was in May of 2014. She lived for an entire month after that. And she went on to ecmo, which was basically life support, which was another controversial decision on the team. There were some differing opinions there. When she came off of ecmo, they said she wouldn't live. And she did live, and then went on to dialysis, which was another hurdle. And she lived through that. And it was a couple weeks later where I thought, we are at this point, smooth sailing. I mean, smooth is relative, but I just thought it was a weight game at this point. She had lived through coming off of ecma. She had lived through going on dialysis. Now we just had to be patient. This was in June of 2014. I remember saying, like, oh, I just want to be out of here before Christmas, but it would be okay if we're just out of here before her first birthday. And I just, I remember with my mom just saying, she is going to have the best first birthday. Now that didn't happen. On June 19th of 2014, my daughter laid and took her last breath. So in our arms, in her parents arms, and with an apologetic medical team. And the words used to describe her case was actually, your daughter's case is a catastrophe. Now hearing that your daughter's case is a catastrophe brings a lot of emotions. One, appreciation for the honesty, Two, a lot of anger, a lot of what ifs, a lot of pain, a lot of guilt, a lot of shame, a lot of regret. Now I would take all of that pain, regret, shame, anger to have had the honesty that was said to me. So the words, your daughter's case is a catastrophe isn't actually the most painful because that was the truth. And I think it's our duty, right, it's our privilege to stand in truth, even when they're difficult. So a lot of times, you know, and I've talked about this, people have said, well, the doctor never should have told you that. That's not. I disagree. That doctor was allowing me to stand in truth. That's a gift. Now had that doctor not allowed me to stand in truth, I might not be doing what I'm doing where I am and understanding what I've understood. So many of you have reached out over the years and said, how do you let go of that anger? First, I want to say that it is not easy. It is not easy when you have this huge energy coming up. Now, this can be loss or not associated with loss, but when you have this energy coming up of pain and sadness and sorrow, you want to place it somewhere, right? It's like that stereotypical, you know, movie scene where somebody holds all this anger and then they lash out on someone. Or it's that example I use all the time, that if we don't process our emotion, we're going to snap at the barista at Starbucks, or we're going to, you know, snap at our kids or snap at our significant other or friend. And in my case, I wanted to take all that pain and anger and I wanted to throw it at the medical team. I wanted to throw it at them. But what does that accomplish? So first thing that I did was I look at what can I control and what can I control? Now, this actually relates very much to a podcast episode I did recently called Dealing with Disappointment. How not to feel disappointed again. Right? Or how to avoid these intense feelings of disappointment. And the first thing is looking at, you know, what was the expectation and what can I control and what can I control? So for me, I couldn't control what had been done in the past. I could only control how we moved forward. I couldn't control what was done in the past. I could only control how we move forward. So I did request meetings with the medical team to sit down. Some members wouldn't meet with me. That was painful, that was infuriating. But I could only control what I could control. So I asked difficult questions. I asked questions about my own contributions to Layden's case. I asked about their contributions. I asked about, you know, I asked the questions that I didn't want to ask, but that needed to be asked. And it was helpful. It was part of the process. But it still was pretty ambiguous because, of course, of course it's. The hospital has their own policies and practices, and my expectation going to be for them to abandon all those, to assuage my grief, right? I had to take responsibility for this awful, heavy, painful grief. And that was angering. So I'm like, why do I have to take responsibility for this? I'm already in enough pain. But the reality is no one else's job was to take responsibility, right? It was mine. So looking at what I can control and what I can't control, so how do I move forward? The next thing is, did people have the tools they needed to do job I needed them to do, right? The people have the tools, so they have all the information. And, you know, that's where I struggled because I felt like myself and Layden's dad gave, gave the tools. We had Google Docs of observations. We had signs. I'll never forget on, you know, it was the Sunday before Laden's surgery, reporting to the nurse practitioner that I was concerned about Layden because her belly was so swollen and she was so sweaty and she was so fatigued. And that nurse practitioner's words to me were, you don't want to go looking for trouble. It's almost time to go home. And after losing Leiden, all I could think about was, like, it was actually your job to go looking for trouble. And maybe if we had, we would have gone home, right? So that was a difficult conversation that I had with the people I needed to have it with, right? What can I control and what can I control? Now, I do not want to misrepresent that. I was completely calm, cool, and collected during these processings, right? This is. I'm years out. I did process the anger with my grief coach. I also processed a lot of it with my reverend in safe places that could really hold and carry this. Now, this would have been harder to process with my friends or my family because they would have wanted to take my pain away. They would have told me to either, you know, just go, go off on the hospital or to, you know, lose my shit, right? Or they would have told me, like, well, maybe you're remembering it incorrectly, because what I was carrying was like this massively hot, hot potato of discomfort, right? I always say, like, when things come up and we're not comfortable with them, it's like a hot potato, and we just want to throw it somewhere else. And I was literally holding, like, this lava mountain potato, whatever it might be, like, hot potato, like, burning. And that was hard. So for me, it was talking about it and processing my anger in a safe place. And for me, that was my grief coach, and that was my reverend. The next thing is really looking at, okay, if I've been hurt, if there's been this level of betrayal, how do I move forward? What boundary do I have to put in place, right? Or how do I want to end this relationship or maintain this relationship? And so that was really hard for me because, you know, I ended up running the Boston Marathon for Boston Children's Hospital five years in a row. I was actually an ambassador for them. But the decision that I made was not running was only going to hurt me. Carrying that spite was only going to hurt me. How could I move forward? And I could move forward by being an advocate, by having the difficult conversations of, this could have been better. A catastrophe is not okay. And I believe in it so much that I'm contributing to the solution, right? To your message, to your slogan of until every child is well, because we're not there yet, right? We are not there. Yet we are clearly not there yet. My daughter died in a case termed a catastrophe. Now, I had promised Layden I would run the marathon for her in April of 2014. We were at Children's Hospital during the marathon, and we were going to go home. We were supposed to go home. And I said, layden, we'll cross the finish line next year. So I had to really reevaluate and untangle this. And what was I proving? And I'll never forget somebody said to me, like, how could you ever run the marathon for them? You know, Laden's case was a catastrophe. I thought, well, that's exactly why I'm running the marathon for them. Right? Attached to process, not to outcome. That is a hard one to swallow. I never understood it to the depth that I understood it until it came to my daughter, Laden. Right? And that outcome is not okay. Right. And the process needs to be improved 100%. But my options were to keep my promise to my daughter, Laden, to do something that was going to allow me to feel like I was mothering her in a positive way, to shape her legacy and her impact by having these difficult conversations, or to carry and hold my anger. Right? To hold on to that and just let it kind of consume me by not running, by not talking about it, by not processing. I think it's really powerful when we're able to attach to things beyond outcome. Meaning, like, this was not okay, and I am still showing up. Now. There are going to be times and relationships in your lives and jobs in your life where you do need to walk away. You do need to draw a boundary. You do need to let it go. But what I'm saying is when we just take this energy of pain and anger and sorrow, this real energy, and we just hold it tightly and hide in our rooms, which, believe me, I've done. I have absolutely done that. When we hide in our rooms, we're actually only hurting ourselves, right? So I always say, what are my options now? And how is this processing, the energy that I'm feeling now? Everybody's different. There are so many different ways you can do it. Right. For me, it began by reading Leiden's medical record. So every Friday night, I would read her medical record. It was my way of spending time with her. And, man, was that painful. The next step is I did bring her case. I brought her case to get reviewed by legal, to have it reviewed by Legal. I was advised to do this in a few instances. And I said, I'm going to attach to the process, not the outcome. And without getting too far into that, I will say that two different attorney's offices, top offices, reviewed her case. One of them, for over a year going into that level of depth, both came to the same conclusion on the same painful conclusion that they believed it was medical malpractice, but that it was not a winnable case, meaning that there was too much gray and too much murkiness and too much to have a winnable case. And for that reason, you know, a firm really can't take on a case that they don't feel strongly that they can win, that they have the ability to make that case. One of the partners in the law firm was actually crying because his daughter was Leighton's age. And this was actually when Layden would have been about two years old. It was about that long after her death before I made the decision and for them to review it. And for me, it was hard to hear because it confirmed that Leiden could be alive or should be alive. And I felt powerless again. Like, I felt powerless. But, you know, I attached to the process. I detached from the outcome. And I felt really good about going through and doing what I believe Layden deserved, right. To have me see that through. And in truth, I do believe in my heart that it was a beautiful thing in a way, in a weird way that that didn't go through because I don't think I'd be doing the work that I'm doing now, right? Because I still had this anger and I still had this pain to process. And, like, how was I going to transform this? And if it wasn't going to be transformed in the legal realm or they weren't going to, like, essentially, like, carry my pain for me, how was I going to do it? And so I began studying more and talking more and became more committed to shaping Leiden's legacy. Right. And what it meant. So I don't believe that I would be here doing what I. What I am doing had the outcome gone differently. You know, I think very likely I might have actually adopted by now or done infertility. That was kind of my thought at that time, if this went through, that I was going to, you know, apply any of the outcome of any legal matter to, you know, fertility or to adopting. And so I just believe that's not what was meant for me at that time. Now, as I got further out in my grief journey, I then joined the Neck Society, which is a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness and funds for nec. Now, that has been the most painful part of my journey because I'm actually sitting in the what ifs and the shoulds. And I'm learning more and more and more about how Laden could be alive. I'm learning more and more about how this could have been avoided. So for me, I've actually taken my pain and transformed it into these ways of mothering and of serving and of really just constantly asking myself, what can I control? What can I control? How does carrying my anger and my pain in this way serve me? And how does carrying my anger and my pain in this way serve Laden? And as much as I want to avoid neck and hate neck and have nothing to do with it, that actually doesn't serve me because I feel as though by being on the nexus society, I'm an advocate for Laden, and I'm getting to, quote, unquote, mother her in my own way. I feel that it's honoring Laden because that girl fought. She fought through more than any baby should ever have to fight through. She had four surgeries in a short period of time. She had a heart surgery and two abdominal surgeries within a week. Right? She was on life support and then off of it. If you saw the wires and the tubes hooked up to her body and how she willed her body to be stronger than morphine, God would come in and she was on max dosages of morphine, and she would open her eyes and she would wiggle her fingers and wiggle her feet, right? And try and scooch her face and engage with me. She fought. And so now I believe it honors her for me to fight and sit in my pain and. And my discomfort. Right. This big hot potato ball. So the advice that I have for anybody wondering how do I move forward, whether this is something where somebody made you angry because they didn't pay you back, you know, a hundred dollars that they owed you. Right. Or something much more intense that's involved in the loss of your child. And as the woman who very recently wrote to me said, child loss and medical malpractice is more common than people talk about. And I'm going to say I agree. I strongly agree, and I think we need to start talking about it more. We have to have these difficult conversations. We have to choose to learn. Now, if you want to break down the actual process for whatever it is that you're managing, it's one looking at, what can I control and what can't control, I control. Did the people have the tools they needed to do the job I needed them to do, or do I need to take some personal responsibility for the tools that they needed? Now in grief and in child loss. Please do not blame yourself. That's what I sought to do. Do not blame yourself. I'm speaking way beyond, right? Like, it could be that $100 you never got back, or it could have been your employee who didn't do the job that you wanted them to do and you're angry or frustrated about it, right? So what can I control? What can I control? Did I give them the tools that I needed them to do? If I did, and I did the very best I could, what boundary did I need to establish? What new expectation do I need to establish? What direction does this relationship need to go? How do I need to take care of myself and be sure that this doesn't happen again? What are my options now? And as I make space for this energy, and this is the most important part, as I make space for this energy that is coming up, that is surfacing this hot potato, this lava, whatever it might be, as I move forward with it, how can I carry in a way that doesn't cause me more pain? And that is the place where I believe the magic lies. The work, right? The magic, the growth, the discomfort, the releasing. Because I chose, for me, everyone's going to choose differently. You don't have to go run a marathon. You don't have to join the next society. You don't have to, you know, speak to attorneys. But we do have to process this energy. So how can you process it in a way that's not going to hurt you anymore? Because you're already in so much pain. You are already in so much pain. And I understand that and I see that and I feel that. And of course, there are times where I was reading her medical record and just sitting, sitting in my pain and crying and cursing. Of course there are times, right? I've gone to batting cages to work some of this out. I've done boxing lessons, I've done a lot of yoga. How can we take this very real energy, this emotional energy, and move it physically? Maybe it's breath work, maybe it's exercise, maybe it's writing, maybe it's speaking. We've got to choose to move it. The only way to let go of the anger is to make the decision that carrying it hurts us more than choosing to slowly chisel away and release it. I hope it is helpful for all of you. My heart is with you. This is not an easy process, a welcomed process, or a quote unquote, fair process, but it is our process. I'm sending you so much love. Please let me know what's been most helpful. If you have further questions on this, we'll continue to dive in, to go deeper. I will continue to show up and hold space for these uncomfortable, yucky conversations because I believe in my heart they are necessary right attaching to the process, detaching from the outcome. I'm cheering you guys on. Congratulations on showing up and doing this work. It is the hardest part. We'll talk soon. Thank you all so much for being here at Grief and Guts as Layden's mom. Being able to spread the stories, the strategies, the lessons I have learned through Layden and from Layden is the thing that means the most to me in this world and allowing my daughter's short life to have long and lasting impact by shining her light. Truly, truly, nothing means more if you align with and believe in the work that we're doing here in these messages. The best way to give back and to spread this out into the world is to rate and review on Spotify and on itunes. Thank you for taking just a moment to do that. Feel free to shoot me a message. Let me know what you want to hear more of, what you want to see more of. I am here to serve. I'm grateful to do so, and I'm cheering you on in your journey. As always.