Embracing Gratitude in Grief

Emily Thiroux Threatt's journey through loss and love offers an intense tale of resilience and renewal. From her cherished days with her first husband, Jacques Thoreau, a passionate bioethicist, to the unexpected path that led her to her second husband, whom she met through an online encounter, Emily's story is rich with life lessons.Our conversation with Emily is a heartfelt exploration of how life’s challenges can be met with grace and ingenuity.

Emily also reveals how gratitude became her guiding light amidst sorrow, thanks to a simple yet powerful practice inspired by "The Secret." You'll discover how keeping a gratitude journal helped her find joy, even during the toughest times. This episode uncovers her creative endeavors, such as the Grief and Happiness cards, designed to offer peace and reflection. Additionally, Emily shares her inspiring initiatives like the free Grief and Happiness Gathering and her role in the global summit, From Morning to Light, highlighting that joy and personal growth are indeed possible even in life's darkest moments. Whether you're seeking solace or inspiration, Emily's insights offer hope and a pathway to happiness.

Contact:
www.asiliveandgrieve.com
info@asiliveandgrieve.com
Facebook:  As I Live and Grieve
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To Reach Emily:
Website:  https://lovingandlivingyourwaythroughgrief.com/
E-mail : emily@lovingandlivingyourwaythroughgrief.com

 
Credits: 
Music by Kevin MacLeod 

Copyright 2020, by As I Live and Grieve

The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. 

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:01

Welcome to as I Live and Grieve, a podcast that tells the truth about how hard this is. We're glad you joined us today. We know how hard it is to lose someone you love and how well-intentioned friends and family try so hard to comfort us. We created this podcast to provide you with comfort, knowledge and support. We are grief advocates, not professionals, not licensed therapists. We are you.

Speaker 2 0:28

Hi everyone, welcome back again to another episode of as I Live and Grieve. We keep ticking off the episodes, don't we? Every week, and y'all keep coming back and listening, and I treasure that a whole lot. I really do. I value each of you deep in my heart and cannot express to you how you also help me. I realize you may be signing on listening to the podcast looking for some help, some inspiration, some support yourself, but you're also helping me because I know you're there listening and that has helped me heal and makes my journey through grief much, much easier. So thank you for that. I'm muted if you want to watch the show Along with Kelly. Hi Kelly, hello everyone. And it makes my journey through grief much, much easier. So thank you for that. I'm muted if you want to watch the show Along with Kelly. Hi Kelly, hello everyone.

Speaker 2 1:12

We have Emily Thoreau Threat. Hi Emily, thanks for joining us. Aloha, thank you so much for the invitation. No, absolutely, and I love the sound of aloha. Emily does live in Hawaii and now I have this picture in my mind of the beaches and the balmy breezes and the palm trees.

Speaker 1 1:31

And well, okay, we've got a podcast.

Speaker 2 1:32

So before we get started and dig into questions, emily, would you please kind of let our listeners know who is Emily.

Speaker 3 1:42

Well, emily is a person who has an incredibly varied life leading me up to this point and two I think are the most interesting things were the two husbands that I had and the relationships that I had with them. They were both wonderful people and as opposite as they possibly could be. I was married to Jacques Thoreau and, yes, his mother was or his father was French, his mother was from Sicily, so he had wonderful cooking in that family and Jacques was a bioethicist at the college and he was in kind of on when the beginning of doing things with hospice care for people and it hadn't really talked about that much before. So he took a sabbatical over to England and worked with Dame Cecily Saunders and really had a wonderful opportunity to bring home the story of hospice and they ultimately created a hospice in our community and so he was doing a lot of that kind of work. He facilitated a grief and bereavement group once a week with a marriage family child counselor who was a friend, because there was nothing in town at that time for that kind of bereavement or for bereavement at all, and that was all. Before I met him he was a lot older than I am, so we got together and we fell in love right away. It was just marvelous and we had a great relationship. And I found out that he'd done a lot of theater while he was in college. He graduated from college the month before I was born, so I didn't get to participate with him in the theater that he did in college. Right, I was a theater major at that time in college and I needed help and he stepped in and got full into theater again and it was so thrilling. After all those years he hadn't done any. So we did lots of theater together, had lots of happiness with that Nice.

Speaker 3 3:40

At that time I was a writing teacher at the university. I taught there for most of my career and I'd written a couple of college textbooks. And when my husband Shaw got very ill, I knew I wanted to stay home with him and by that time I owned a theater and school of arts and cafe and catering business and lots of all in the same old old building. It was wonderful. He enjoyed performing there a lot, but he got to the point where he couldn't and I couldn't really leave him. So I was able to donate the whole thing to a non-profit organization and got lots of information, learning about doing things with non-profits. So we stayed home together for two years before he transitioned and then I was kind of stuck. I'd left the theater, I'd left my writing job and it was like, okay, now what do I do? And the university came to me and said we want you back. So they said, phew, okay, and I went back and I loved that.

Speaker 3 4:49

And one of the teachers there kept encouraging me to date. I didn't want to and she said, oh, you just got to do it. And she bugged me and bugged me and bugged me about it and finally she told me to go on Matchcom. So I thought I would do that and I went on Matchcom. But before I did it, I wrote a list of everything the person had to be for me to even consider a date with them. Well, probably the first 30 people. I just checked them off as I went by, not interested at all, and then was the person who had every single thing that was on my list and more. That's unusual, it's very unusual.

Speaker 3 5:30

And he turned out to be my next husband, nice, and it was really great. And what was really interesting about it was my friend had no idea that she would know who. It was no idea that that person would be in town. But they went to college together at UCLA years before, and when she, he wanted to say thank you to her after we got together. So we went to see her and they kept working at each other and I thought, oh shoot, did they date before or what's going on here? They realized that they had been working in the same organization at UCLA when they were students there. Oh, my goodness, that's interesting. Yeah, small world.

Speaker 3 6:11

So we went on to be able to be together for 10 years and long before I knew him, he worked for the World Health Organization setting up the medical system on Micronesia, and so he went down there and on his way back after his contract was over, he stopped in Maui and said you know, I don't really want to go back to the mainland yet. So he stayed here for a while. It was long before I knew him, but he really fell in love with Maui. So we got together, we came here and ended up meeting people just walking down the street that he knew from like 30. Wow, and they all welcomed him with open arms and had us over to eat and had us over to visit, and it was amazing and we both were so comfortable with it that when he got to the point where he knew that he was getting close to not a lot more years, he decided, said he really wanted to move to Maui. So that's why we ended up in Maui and we were here for two years before he transitioned and all that I learned and all of that had a very special experience I had after he died. Led me to the work I'm doing today, which is, oh, okay. Led me to the work I'm doing today, which is, oh, okay, there's lots of it, that's okay, it happened.

Speaker 3 7:28

A special experience was one of his good friends. We lived in Ventura, california, right A mile from the beach. Our house was a mile from the beach and we had a couple of good friends that were like family friends. We had game nights and dinner together and that sort of thing and hung out. And they lived a couple of blocks away and they were a lot younger than we were and one night after we had moved to Maui, the husband just dropped dead no, warning, wasn't sick anything, wow.

Speaker 3 7:57

And I was so worried about his wife because she was so much younger and, having been through it twice already, I knew how strong and big it was to go through this. And I wasn't with her. So I thought what could I do? And I decided I would write her a note every week for a year. It's a wonderful gift, oh, she loved it.

Speaker 3 8:18

And once I decided to do that, I thought I better make sure I've got 52 things to write about. So I made a list and it was longer than 52. And so it turned into two books. And then the last publisher I had said you've got to publish these cards. And I said I'd love to, but I haven't been able to find anybody who could do it the way I wanted. She said I'll do it. So now the cards are published too.

Speaker 3 8:42

And in the meantime I discovered that I didn't want to just work in grief, because I wanted people to know that they could be happy even though somebody died. And I found Marcy Shymoff's Happy for no Reason certified trainer program and took that. I had read her book after Jacques died and so it seemed natural for me to take this program, fell in love with Marcy and her work, and her work is so wonderful because you can use anything that you learn in there about teaching happiness to people and bringing happiness to the world. You can use it however you want to. So I created Grief and Happiness podcast and so that's my podcast, and my second book is the Grief and happiness sandbook and the grief and happiness cards. And then we have every Saturday we have a group meeting called Grief and Happiness Alliance Gathering, where we get together and we write and we talk about what we wrote to each other and then we learn a happiness practice and it's free to come because our nonprofit organization pays for it.

Speaker 2 9:43

Wow, you have your fingers in lots of different things than both of you. Yes, phew, great job. Great job letting everybody know who is Emily. One of the things I love about your story is the signs that just plopped in front of you and you were able to recognize them. I mean, you made it sound seamless. But there are many of us that kind of close our minds off and aren't looking, aren't ready for those signs when they happen. So I love that in your story that it was just oh yeah, okay, all right, good, I need to know what I'm doing. I'm happy to go back to the university and I just love that part of the story. But one of the questions that jumped to my mind you've lost two husbands, so that's two similar situations Person that you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with suddenly gone. Was the grief experience the same each time? No, not at all. How was it different then?

Speaker 3 10:49

Well, the first time, I was pretty much alone but I had one person supporting me, which was absolutely amazing. Right after eighth grade I met my friend, Yvonne, and she lived in the same little town that we lived in but she went to a boarding school and was only home on weekends and vacations and that sort of thing. But we got to spend a lot of time together that summer and we just knew that we were best friends for life and stayed that way and she ended up. That was during the Vietnam War and right when she graduated from high school, her boyfriend, who was the first guy I ever dated. He got drafted.

Speaker 2 11:31

Wait, her boyfriend was the first guy you ever dated. Okay, that was a long time ago. No, that's okay.

Speaker 3 11:42

He ended up getting drafted and he was a photographer, and so they put him as a photographer in the military, which meant that he was on the front line taking pictures of things nobody ever wanted to see. Yes, and he came back different I'm sure, but before he went, when he got drafted, they decided they would get married. Because that's what we did back then during Vietnam. If your boyfriend got drafted and her mother kicked her out of the house because she thought that that was wrong, for her to throw her life away and everything. So she went over to my house I was away at college and she went to my house and asked my parents if she could stay in my room and they said absolutely, because every time she'd come visit my house with me there's a house she just loved to clean. She wanted to know how much she needed to pay and they said nothing because they didn't know I was going to have that house cleaned the whole time. Sure, and we always said her mom liked me best and my mom liked her best because I loved to cook and her mother was a fabulous cook and taught me everything I knew about cooking and Yvonne wasn't interested in cooking.

Speaker 3 12:48

Anyway, with that real marriage. After he got home, they had a couple of babies and they thought things were OK. But then he started having flashbacks and getting sicker and sicker and sicker and started getting physical and one night she really feared for her life and the life of her children. She was in the kitchen and she reached behind her and picked up a cast iron skillet and hit him over the head with it, yeah yeah and knocked him out. So she packed everything up, put it in the car, called the police and said he's here, he probably needs an ambulance. And I did do it, but it was because he was trying to kill us. Bye.

Speaker 2 13:25

He's all yours.

Speaker 3 13:27

And she left. But I didn't know where she was either, and she was gone for years. Oh, my goodness. She was a brilliant, brilliant person with internet and technology. We didn't even know what internet was back then, but she worked in Silicon Valley. She knew all the guys and called them by their first names. She isolated herself up in Alaska for safety. Oh, wow.

Finding Happiness Through Gratitude and Joy

Speaker 3 13:51

And fast forward to when Jacques got really sick and I stopped working at the theater. I donated it all to the nonprofit and I was able to be home with him or at the hospital. And I was at the hospital a lot with him because of all this. Sure, I think so. And he had this one time where he suffered a nasty fall and when he fell it was these hot days like you're experiencing now. Only in Bakersfield that would get even hotter than that. It was maybe 110 that day and we were getting a new car because he wouldn't stop driving and he would say he wouldn't drive and then he'd forget and get in the car and he had an accident. And I said no more. So I said wouldn't you like to have'd forget and get in the car? And he had an accident. I said no more. So I said wouldn't you like to have a new car? And he always liked to have a new car. So we went to trade in both of our cars so that we could get a new car, and I was always going to have to drive it. And so he. It took him a while to figure out what we'd done, but but he allowed and we went to the dealership to pick him up and he fell in the parking lot, landed on his back and burned second-degree burns all down his back from the asphalt, oh, oh. And I screamed and screamed and nobody came because everybody was inside with the air conditioning and not listening. It took quite a while to get him help and then get him to the ambulance. So he was in the hospital a long time that time. It also affected his heart. When all that happened, sure he was sent. We weren't sure he was going to come home.

Speaker 3 15:17

During this time I got an email from Yvonne of all things. I said how in the world did you find me? It's okay, don't think I'm not wanting you to, but how did you get me? She was, as I told you, a whiz with all the technology stuff Because I'd written a couple of textbooks. She was able to trace what university I went to and started asking Nice. I found out where I was. Yeah, found out that my husband, because I had told her to come to my house when we first were in contact, but we hadn't granted. So she went to the hospital where somebody told him that he was. But we had just left the hospital because he'd finally been discharged.

Speaker 3 15:54

But on the way home I had to get dressings for all the dressings that I had to keep and I said please stay in the car. And he was perfectly lucid. There was nothing wrong with his head. He'd been in the hospital so long he wanted to be out. So bad that by the time I got to the back of the car he had opened the car door, tripped on the curb and broke his hip. Oh no, so the ambulance. There was a different hospital across the street and the ambulance came and drove him across the street and not long after that, yvonne walks in.

Speaker 3 16:27

I said how in the world did you get here? And she said well, I went to the other hospital because I was able to figure out that that's where you were. And the people there were all students of Jacques. And they said oh, professor Thoreau, he had this terrible thing happen and he's in this other hospital. Well, you know, with HIPAA nowadays you're not supposed to say anything like that. That's right. But thank you, how bad she wanted to see him and I'm so glad that they told her where he was.

Speaker 3 16:58

And she ended up staying with me for six months because she had brought her daughter down to the graduate program at Cal Berkeley and she wanted to be someplace where she wasn't too far. She didn't want to be a last mile away from her while she was there for just a year. So I said stay with me, I'm here by myself. After the hospital a year, so I said, stay with me, I'm here by myself. After the hospital, I ended up going to rehab because of the broken hip and everything. It was marvelous, so I did have one person to help me, but she worked. She wasn't always home.

Speaker 3 17:24

And I read a lot. And I read a book called all right, not read a book, saw a movie called the Secret that somebody said I just happened to be and they talked about gratitude in there and I had such a chip on my shoulder I said I don't have anything to be grateful for with all that's been happening to me. And after the movie was over I thought, well, it's not going to hurt to try to write a little list. And I got hooked on writing gratitude lists and that's what changed my life. That was everything Doing. All the things that I've created came from that habit and journaling.

Speaker 2 18:02

Yeah, yeah, you just very efficiently answered. My next question was that, for all the traumatic episodes you experienced with your spouses, how can you say you found joy, or joy can accompany grief? Kelly, did you have a question? No, I was just centering myself or trying to. Oh OK, all right, not a problem, but how? How is it then that you can attach gratitude and joy to grief?

Speaker 3 18:32

Well, what I discovered and I was kind of surprised by it that I was happy when I was doing all this stuff. So I really looked at that to figure out how I could possibly be happy through all of that and I realized, like, with the gratitude I had so many lists. I started off with a little journal that I would leave at home, which didn't work because I always wanted to write something in it when I wasn't home. So I was writing things on the back of receipts, in my purse and wherever I could find a scrap of paper, and had piles of gratitude all over the place and I'd laugh at that because it's like this is really silly to have all this shit all over the place. But it also made me smile and so I ended up committing to journaling every day and including that happiness in my journal every day and including one thing that brought me joy the day before in my journal every day. And I still do that every single day.

Speaker 3 19:22

I do a lot of other stuff in my journal, but those are the essentials and that's like my rock when I do those things and I don't really get grumpy or sideways or something about something. I just say look at all I've got. Look at the beautiful place I live. I get to have my son live with me, which I'm thrilled about. People love to come visit me and it's all the work that I've been I hate to call it work all that I've been doing with the Grief and Happiness Alliance and all that goes along with that just brings me so much joy. I'm smiling all the time and I'm not a smiler. When I first got together with Ronnie he kept saying you know you really need to smile, marnie. Oh yeah, forget that, but I really. I learned how and I love to smile now and it feels really good now and it's because I have learned that I can focus on the positive, that I can be happy and that it feels really good when I do, and it's worth it.

Speaker 2 20:30

So let me clarify for the listeners. And then I want to tell a story that you and I experienced when we first connected and we were doing an episode for your podcast just a week and a half ago. About that In your grief. Either time did you ever say to yourself what can I do to be happy? I need to be happy. Did you ever have that focus?

Speaker 3 20:53

Not really because I was both times. It was like I'm doing the best that I can to get from day to day and I'll continue to do the best I can, and that was about as hard as I could focus on anything. It was tough.

Grief and Happiness Alliance Collaboration

Speaker 2 21:10

Yeah. And then, just kind of, at the moment when it was kind of provoking your thoughts about gratitude and everything and you started thinking more about it, you realized, wow, I am happy. Yeah, does that kind of sum it up? Yeah, it does, and it was a shock. It was a shock and that kind of was my experience as well. So, listeners, here's the story.

Speaker 2 21:35

When I was talking with Emily about a week and a half ago or so and we were taping an episode for her podcast, we were talking back and forth and she said, as we went to close I've never been as happy as I am right now Word, something like that I'm more, I'm happier now than I ever have been. How many times, listeners, have I made that exact statement? And it was just. It blew my mind that here was someone else who'd had a very, very similar parallel experience. You know, different situation, different husbands, different causes of death, etc. Etc. Etc. Just all of a sudden, at a point in my journey in grieving, I realized that things had kind of moved around enough. I had redefined myself, I had found myself, I was doing things in my life that gave me value, and all of a sudden I realized that I was happier, and today I am happier today than I ever have been in all of my life. So it was just amazing to me that Emily voiced those words and we share that experience.

Speaker 2 22:47

So you have taken your belief and your conviction that joy and happiness have a place with grief. They have a home, they can all reside together and you have done many. A place with grief. They have a home, they can all reside together and you have done many, many things with them. And now you mentioned cards. You mentioned your books and everything. I want to know more about these cards. Are they like flash cards, sort of they're?

Speaker 3 23:10

kind of like tarot cards not tarot cards, oracle cards. I think, okay, all right, sort of a thing. They're in a box and there Like tarot cards not tarot cards, oracle cards. I think, okay, all right, sort of a thing. They're in a box and there's 52 of them and they're kind of heavy. They're not loose like your shuffle cards. Okay, yeah, all right. I just, I am in love with the cards here.

Speaker 2 23:29

Do you have a routine that you do or suggest Anything you want to?

Speaker 3 23:32

with them. There are 52 of them, so if you choose, you could take out a card a day and read it and concentrate on whatever it was that it said. Or you could pick out a few. I know some people that like them so much that they get their friends together and they do a card reading where they go through and pick out like three cards and talk to them about how that relates to them and I think that's really fun. Or if you're by yourself and you just feel like you need some comfort, you can just pull out a card and each card has essentially the same design on the front. I know your readers can't see this, but for you.

Speaker 2 24:11

I can, and I can tell the listeners that it's beautiful.

Speaker 3 24:15

It's beautiful. There's a message in the middle of each of them. I used Plumeria's Hawaiian card on everything. Then on the other side of the card, there's a picture that I took someplace on Maui. It was my fault and they turn out so beautiful. Fallen pictures anymore are just amazing, but each one of them is different. Phone pictures anymore are just amazing, but each one of them is different and it really gives you a feeling of the peace and beauty of nature that I encourage people to enjoy. So they're all different colors, all different flowers. They're beautiful. They're beautiful, really, really amazing. I really love the pictures.

Speaker 2 24:55

I think I just found the next gift for myself. Yes, it is a set of cards. You know that would make a great weekly calendar too.

Speaker 3 25:03

Yeah, it would, it really would. It's a great bereavement gift, a really great gift, absolutely.

Speaker 2 25:09

Those people have been absolutely worth. And when our listeners are hearing this, it's going to be just a little bit before Christmas Still time for shopping. So very quickly, tell our listeners the name of the cards and where they can get them.

Speaker 3 25:24

The cards are the Grief and Happiness cards and you can get them on Amazon. And you can also get my two books on Amazon the Grief and Happiness Handbook and Loving and Living your Way Through Grief. All of those are available on Amazon. The Grief and Happiness Handbook and Loving and Living your Way Through Grief All of those are available on Amazon and we would love for you to get them.

Speaker 2 25:42

Wonderful. And now that I've done that, I've kind of jumped ahead because our time is winding down and I usually, with our guests, will turn the microphone over to them, so this seems like the perfect time to do that, emily. So continue on about your books, your cards and anything else you might have going on, and it's your turn to speak directly to our listeners, without me interrupting with comments and questions. Thank you, the floor is yours.

Speaker 3 26:09

Thanks for your opportunity here. The first big thing I would like to offer you and it's free it's on every Sunday. We get together and do a Zoom meeting where people come together and write together. Then we talk about what we wrote and we learn a happiness practice and we call it the grief and happiness gathering and you can make a reservation for that on griefandhappinesscom. I generally facilitate it every week. Some weeks I have other training facilitators do it, but I really like to do it, so I'm there most of the time and that's a wonderful thing to help any kind of grief and we have people literally from all over the world.

Speaker 3 26:50

And speaking of all over the world, I also co-facilitate a summit called From Morning to Light and it starts at the end of October and into the beginning of November. It has 20 different speakers about grief and all different kinds of things and it's free and you go to frommorningtolightcom and you can sign up for it there, and our Grief and Happiness Alliance Foundation sponsors that also and we always love people to come and help us on the foundation. If you're looking for some way to spend your time, that would really serve people who are grieving. We would love to have you talk to us. So there's lots of ways to get involved, to read, to help yourself, to help others. Anything you want is right here, oh, that sounds wonderful.

Speaker 2 27:39

I was scribbling. The listeners couldn't see what I was doing, but, as you were talking, I was scribbling because I want to check out that event coming up at the end of October. That sounds fascinating, it's really good.

Speaker 3 27:52

This is their fifth year. In the second year I was invited to be a speaker and then in the fourth year I had kind of made friends with the person who did it. She's in Italy and I contacted her about something and I said I can't wait for it this year and she goes. Well, I don't know if I'm going to do it. It's so much work to do by myself and that led to our partnership and been doing it together. So we've done. I did one as a guest, I've done one as a co-host and this is my second time as a co-host with them.

Speaker 2 28:22

Very nice, very nice. I look forward to that. Well, Emily, you know I hate when time winds down. We always, always this is the second time, but we have great conversations and we actually do have a lot of parallels in our lives, which makes it especially interesting, and you and I are going to collaborate together in the future and work on some things, and that sounds fascinating and I look forward to all of that. So for today, listeners, I hope you will consider a number of things. You will consider a number of things. I hope, first of all, that you'll consider going to Emily's website and remember that that contact information will be in the episode notes. So if you didn't get a chance to scribble it down, like I did and of course, probably three days from now I won't be able to read my writing anyway, but it will be in the episode notes so please go to her website, check it out. Consider also getting her books and or her cards.

Speaker 2 29:19

Think again that Christmas is coming, or perhaps birthdays, or just you know, it's nice to have a gift on hand. So when something happens like a sudden loss and you want to do something for someone, we always kind of stumble around not knowing what to do, but wouldn't it be nice to get maybe a deck of the cards, even if, instead of giving them the entire deck, you maybe sent them one once a week? What a wonderful way to reach out. And I know I had a cousin, one of my husband's cousins, that for several months after he died, every week in my mailbox would be a card with just a little note thinking of you today Hope you're okay, kathy, let's get together sometime. Thinking of you.

Speaker 2 30:06

And it just really lifted my heart to know that somebody was still thinking of me, because you know how it goes. We think everybody forgets about us and forgets about what we went through. So, again, time runs out and I really hate it because I enjoy spending time with you. So I do hope that you will consider coming back again next time for our next episode. You know we'll have another great guest, great conversation, and you know, know we just keep on keeping on. So come back again, take care of yourselves and talk to you next time, as we all continue to live and grieve thank you so much for listening with us today.

Speaker 1 30:48

do you have a topic that you'd like us to cover or do you have a question from one of our episodes? Please email us at info at as I live and grievecom, and let us know. We hope you will find a moment to leave a review, send an email and share with others. Join us next time as we continue to live and grieve together.