As I Live and Grieve®
It’s time for grief to come out of the basement, or wherever we have stuffed it to avoid talking about it. When you suffer a loss you need support, comfort, and a safe place to heal. What you are experiencing is painful but normal, unique but similar, surreal but very, very real. As grief advocates we understand and want to provide support, knowledge and comfort as you continue to live and grieve. Host, Kathy Gleason; Producer, Kelly Keck. www.asiliveandgrieve.com
As I Live and Grieve®
Neurodiverse Grief: Humor, Support, & Healing
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How do neurodiverse individuals manage the intricate journey of grief? Carolyn Jenkins returns to shed light on this profound question, drawing from her rich expertise in special education and personal experience as a widowed mom. She shares touching anecdotes and practical advice on how neurodiverse people uniquely adapt to everyday challenges while carrying the weight of loss. Carolyn introduces us to her new virtual group aimed at supporting neurodiverse widows, emphasizing the vital role of humor and support systems in navigating these emotional waters.
Navigating conversations about death with neurodiverse children presents its own set of challenges. Together, we explore effective strategies to broach this sensitive topic, ensuring children are prepared for experiences of loss. Carolyn and I also discuss the importance of respecting individual choices in remembering loved ones and the pressures that sometimes accompany those choices.
Contact:
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To Reach Carolyn:
Email: info@asiliveandgrieve.com
Soaring Spirits International:
Website: https://soaringspirits.org/
Camp Widow: https://campwidow.org/
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.
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 2Hi everybody, Welcome back again to another episode of as I Live in Grief. Well, up here where I live in Rochester, New York, it's cold. But you know what? I also understand that where Kelly lives it's cold, Isn't?
Speaker 3it Kelly.
Speaker 2Very cold, very cold. Okay, and how about where Carolyn lives? Is it cold?
Speaker 4It's cold enough to really enjoy my hot tub, but not really cold.
Speaker 2Okay, well, we have snow on the ground. We have about three inches of snow on the ground. We actually are blessed because other places near us have a foot on the ground or more. And even though there's three inches of snow on the ground, my son-in-law, neil, still uses the hot tub every day usually in the evening every day, puts his little woolen cap on his head and goes.
Speaker 2Okay, maybe I've spoiled the surprise. I said Carolyn is here. Carolyn Jenkins is back as our guest again and I'm showing signs of being neurodiverse, although I have not been diagnosed yet. We had a conversation a while ago, carolyn and Kelly and I, about neurodiversity and grief and you know, a half hour isn't really very long and I really felt by the end of the episode, which went longer than 30 minutes, I really felt we really hadn't talked enough about it. So I asked Carolyn to come back and she very kindly and graciously said yes, so welcome back again, carolyn.
Speaker 4Thanks, I'm thrilled to be back. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2We have so much fun, don't we? Absolutely. We actually met not too long ago, just in November, in Toronto, Canada, at the Camp Widow workshop that's presented by Soaring Spirits Canada, and their next workshop is in June. So reach out to me if you want to know more about it. So, carolyn, would you start us off again by just giving a little bit of your background, please, just to remind people who you are.
Speaker 4Absolutely so. I am a special education teacher with a master's degree in developmental disabilities. I've worked with people who are neurodiverse for about 40 years specializing in autism, but in the last few years have really expanded my extended study into other neurodiversities. I am also a widowed mom of two young adults. They're young adults now and I am the regional group leader, coordinator west for Soaring Spirits International. So I help support the regional group leaders all over the United States and around the world and I run a group for the Eugene Springfield area here in Oregon and just Wednesday I started a regional group, a virtual regional group for people who are widowed and neurodiverse.
Speaker 2That is really exciting and I remember your comment that you posted after the group was over and you said it was magic.
Speaker 3I think that was your word.
Speaker 2You said it was magic, so kudos to you for starting that. Thank you. Now. We chatted briefly before we started recording today and you know we all agreed we laugh and we joke about neurodiversity, but when it actually comes to performing your daily functions, your daily tasks and everything, it can be quite a challenge, correct?
Speaker 4Absolutely yes.
Speaker 2And actually Kelly brought with her a little quote today that I want to share, keeping it a lighthearted conversation. But, you know, with that foundation of seriousness, kelly, would you share what you just shared with Carolyn and I a while ago?
Speaker 3Of course, okay, it says I came, I saw, I forgot what I was doing, went back, got distracted and have no idea what's going on. Is this my cup? I have to pee.
Speaker 2So how accurate is that? Carolyn Pretty, darn, pretty, darn, pretty darn.
Speaker 4Yeah, like I was sharing with you earlier before we started recording, it's been kind of a week for me of heightened struggle, for some reason. And I don't know why, but absolutely some days are not like that, for sure. But, some days are absolutely like that and while you know once or twice can be kind of funny, can get very frustrating when that happens over and over and you can see it impacting your productivity or your professionalism or your parenting or things like that. But yeah, yep.
Speaker 2Yeah, and then you also worry about what other people might think that are seeing you go through this. Yeah, even if they know that you're neurodiverse. Yeah, and going back to our first episode together, when we chatted about neurodiversity, you were kind enough to clarify the definition. For me and I think about it often that really neurodiversity is merely that you think differently than I do. My brain functions a certain way, but people who are neurodiverse, depending on their actual diagnosis, think differently. Their brain works differently, so they are challenged with many things that seem routine and ordinary to me neurodiverse folks are challenged with.
Speaker 2We focused in on grief, and we all know that when we lose someone we love, I mean, the ground drops right out from under us. And even if you don't have any challenges in your thinking, your function, you are just that brain fog. We talk about it all the time, that grief fog, that widow fog, whatever it is, whatever your loss and the easiest things you can't do because your brain doesn't work. So multiply that exponentially. If you're neurodiverse and you really, really are challenged, you may have figured out ways to get your bills paid, maybe use auto pay, so you don't have to have that problem with neurodiversity, but when you lose someone you love. There are so many tasks to be done that you have never before done in your life, and it's entirely possible also that no one around you has done them either. So how was it for you, carolyn? What challenges specifically did you have in your grief?
Speaker 4Yeah, that's a big question. One thing that I'll mention is that I did not have my diagnosis by the time that Gary died, so I didn't know why things were so hard for me. Because I knew about widow brain. People told me about that, people reassured me that I was, you know, quote, normal or that the things that I was going through were typical, but I think what really started to concern me was that they didn't start getting better, right.
Speaker 4So the things that were really difficult for me were, like you were saying, the routine kinds of things like planning a menu, going grocery shopping and making dinner. I mean, we couldn't do that effectively for like two years. I even tried ordering a subscription food box to see if that would help, and it did. It did, but then we started throwing those away too, because we didn't get to them or we would get home and be exhausted or whatever. So that was really difficult. I found probably the most I don't want to use the word embarrassing because I have no reason to be embarrassed by it, but the most. But I was. I was horribly embarrassed. I felt like such a failure. I would double book things because I didn't remember my schedule Right. So this was like eight and a half years ago, so we weren't quite as reliant on our phones as we are now.
Speaker 4Now I don't do anything without putting it on my phone.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 4But I remember one of the most impactful double bookings that I accidentally did was scheduled my daughter's last driver's ed drive, the one that makes it so that she'll get her license the test that at the same time as her final band concert. Oh Well, obviously you can't move either of those things right, Because she was in a driver's ed class. That was the last night.
Speaker 2Band happens.
Speaker 4And I had to call the band teacher and say, look, we know that she might fail band because she's not coming tonight, but she really is going to do her driver's ed thing and, like my bad, please don't take it personally and please know that it's not because she doesn't care or whatever. It was horrible.
Speaker 2I felt.
Speaker 4I felt horrible, but that stuff happened all the time, that I would double book or forget appointments or things like that.
Speaker 2Yeah, so in some way, for you, your neurodiversity didn't really complicate your grief, because that's what you go through every day. Every day, yeah. Is that a fair statement or not?
Speaker 4I think probably that's pretty fair. I will add, though, that before Gary died so I don't remember if we talked about external scaffolding last time, but that's a phrase that I learned from the PhD psychologist that did my evaluation, and I talked about how, before Gary died, these things worked, and then, after Gary died, I couldn't pull it together and he said oh, that's because your external scaffolding went away, and so, grief, the impacts of widow brain or trauma brain, all of those things that impact your executive function, all of that stuff. My executive functioning was already impacted, but I had somebody there that was helping support me.
Speaker 4And then he was gone right. So all of the difficulties, plus widow brain, plus no external scaffolding, and I really was lost.
Speaker 2I think that's a. I think that's a key point, because you not only lost your partner, but you lost your external scaffolding, your anchor, so to speak, the person that you relied on, the item you relied on to help you when you needed it most. Yep.
Speaker 4And luckily. I will say that there are surprising things. That can be your external scaffolding, as I'm learning right about myself especially, but things like when my kids were little, I was on it, I knew when their appointments were. We went every time. We did all of that stuff because I had to. There was no, somebody else was depending on me, which what we know about ADHD. Motivation for us is a little different than motivation for people who don't have ADHD, and not letting somebody down is a really big one. Some of us are prone to what they call rejection, sensitive dysmorphia and dysphoria. Oh, I always mix that up, I think it's dysphoria. Oh, I always mix that up, I think it's dysphoria, anyway. So I had to do right by them, right? And then when Gary died, we floundered for a little bit, but boy, howdy did I throw myself into parenting them right so they became my external scaffolding.
Speaker 4again, they are both athletes. We had games and practices and travel and all of the things, and we did it. Now, granted, I have to throw a shout out to the other water polo and swim moms that helped me get there. So I didn't do it alone, but it did give me some place to anchor. I liked that word to anchor to that and focus on those things. Well, now they're both moving out. One's gone, one's moving out next month.
Speaker 2You're losing your scaffolding again.
Speaker 4Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's okay. Well, I'll figure it out. You're resilient, you'll pull it together.
Speaker 4That I am. Thank you yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, let's switch now for a moment, because one thing we started to talk about last time as well was the subject of children and grief, and you know, I Fortunately some guests I get are specialized in children's behaviors and everything like that, and we talk about how to talk to your children about grief. When do you broach the subject, what tips can you use and all of that other stuff. But what we don't talk about is what if your child is neurodiverse, because it's more difficult probably for them to comprehend, or more difficult for you to explain.
Speaker 2Is that right or not?
Discussing Death With Neurodiverse Children
Speaker 4I mean, obviously it depends on the child and whatever's going on for them, but I think in general yeah, that's safe to say, and I think that there are some added tweaks that come along with neurodiversity as well. Around all of the new things, right, lots of kids haven't ever been to a funeral or a celebration of life or a memorial right.
Speaker 4So of kids haven't ever been to a funeral or a celebration of life or a memorial right. So what is that going to look like? What are appropriate behaviors there? How do you act? Do you cry? Do you not cry those kinds of things? How do you handle somebody saying to you your dad died right, like lots of? We don't get lots of practice with that in the world.
Speaker 4So there's lots of new experiences for our kids, who sometimes struggle with new experiences. So finding ways to help prepare them for those gives some hints about what might be expected or what they might expect from the situation, helping work through misunderstandings, trying to figure out if they're, I mean it's important, I think, to track and make sure that they're. I can only come up with the word grok, which you only would know if you've read stranger in a strange land, but it means to like fully, oh, it's so good, fully own something to have it be part of you, right, right.
Speaker 4So like I grok, addition, pretty darn, it's part of me. I don't have to think about it as part of what I do, okay, just in the world, as a human right, but so so making sure that kids are groking are fully understanding what it means that somebody is dead, right, and of course, like we talked about last time, that's going to depend on their age and their developmental level as well as any disabilities they might have, but making sure that you're addressing that in a way that's appropriate for your child's understanding is really important.
Speaker 2All right, and if you as a parent know that you have a neurodiverse child and I know it's different depending on diagnosis and on you know how they function themselves and everything like that but is there an age that you can start broaching that subject? I remember one guest I had said that, for example, you can start talking about and using the word death when your child is really very young. If you go for a walk in the park or a walk and you're walking down the sidewalk after a rain, there could be some earthworms that have died on the sidewalk. We're all very, very familiar with that scenario that that might be a good opportunity to kind of talk about what happened, that, the fact that the earthworms died and start to introduce the concept of death very young. Would that work for a neurodiverse child as well?
Speaker 4I think so. Yes, and again, you know, I think that we don't have to keep quantifying, but I will and just say, of course it depends on the child but you know, think about another way that kids learn about death is pets right Goldfish from the fair or your first dog or whatever. And those are hard lessons when you're little.
Speaker 4Yeah, it's very big and very permanent and very there's no really clear answer to what happens next. There's a lot of, there's a lot of unknowns, even as adults. Yeah, right, so that can be really tricky for kids, but I think that what I wish for our culture is that death and grieving become concepts that are not so taboo. Right, because everybody experiences those, everybody. If you haven't, you will. Right, and I think if we set up a culture that has an awareness and a what's the word I'm looking for like comfort level of talking about hard things, that's going to benefit everybody unfortunately depends upon us, the parents.
Speaker 2Yeah, you know we have to be willing to kind of step out there and talk about some of those uncomfortable issues. You know we all joke about the sex talk that you have with your teenagers. Well, you know, the death talk really isn't any different in that way, and then it's just darned uncomfortable to talk about. But again, if you start when your child is really really small and start introducing the word death, it may be a little easier to have those conversations.
Speaker 2I know another guest who happened to be a. She had funeral homes specifically for pets, yeah, and she talked about some of the things she used to do and I, you know certain things will just stick in your mind and this one scenario stuck in mind where people after they would lose a dog. You know, certain things will just stick in your mind and this one scenario stuck in mind where people after they would lose a dog, for example, and that those were the stories she told more frequently dogs and cats but she always encouraged the family to take the dog's body back home so that the other animals in the house could pay their respects, because other animals can get separation anxiety. And then in another point. She talked about how, when they would have the animal, the pet, back in the funeral home proper and this was a funeral home that only served people with pets that she, when children would come in, she had a basket for them and instead of having candy in it, it had, you know, the little Avon samples of lipstick.
Speaker 2Those little tubes of lipstick it was a basket full of those and she told each child to pick one, pick a color and pick one, and then they would go to the little area where there was actually a casket the animal was in it and she would have the child paint their lips and then kiss the belly of the animal so that the dog or cat could be buried permanently with their kiss. That reduced me to tears, and I see you're both both Carolyn and Kelly. You're tearing up, but it's some of those things that you hear that are so creative.
Speaker 2There's such creative ways to talk about it without talking about it you know, just to have that moment and if that memory sticks with me just hearing the story, can you imagine how powerful it might be to a child.
Speaker 4Well, I will share my version of that story that happened with Gary right, Because Gary died of a heart attack in our yard while he and my son were working on some bushes.
Speaker 3Okay.
Speaker 4My son had come inside to get a glass of water and when he went back outside my husband has had collapsed. So it was a very you know. He came and got me I tried to do CPR.
Speaker 4It was a very traumatic very big and I remember my son talking about this. Might be a little triggering, so just a little heads up, but my son talking about how his dad's face was the wrong color and that stuck with him. Meanwhile my daughter was at a slumber party so she wasn't even here and didn't get to see him and I thought I can't leave it like that. I can't leave it like that and Gary had really not wanted a viewing.
Speaker 1You know he wanted a party.
Speaker 4He wanted to be cremated, and he wanted there to be a party and he wanted people to tell stories and laugh and drink beer, which we did. That was great. It was great. But I had to do something for the kids, where Claire got to see him one time and Sky got to get a different vision of him before and I'm really grateful the way that they prepared him was beautiful and he looked just like him and it was fabulous. And I mean, you know, except for that he was dead.
Speaker 4That part's not so fabulous For the kids. I'm still crying about that story For the kids. I'm still crying about that story, the kids. I think it. It really is the way we interact with our children and it doesn't have to be.
Navigating Grief and Neurodiversity Support
Speaker 2You don't have to worry about sitting down and be an encyclopedia of information. All you need to do is introduce the topic and try to get your child to talk as well. The questions will come very naturally, and if you, as a parent, don't have an answer, you can be very honest and say I don't have that answer, but let's find out. I mean, we all know that you have this wonderful resource called the internet, and if you want to get very specific and very graphic, you can use AI, and I'm sure it will answer your question as well. Just, you can't predict exactly the words that it will use, so you have to be careful with that and, again, depending on the age of the child, but you have no idea the impact that a memory can have on a child, and I know I've told the story. Go ahead, kelly.
Speaker 3I just wanted to piggyback on the whole visual memory thing. When my father passed away, I hadn't seen him in several months and apparently he had lost about 150 pounds. Oh my gosh, and I actually didn't see him one last time because I didn't want that visual someone that didn't look like my dad to be the last thing that I saw and I kind of got judged a little bit by my stepmother for it, but I was like I'm not living with that memory for the rest of my life. I'm sorry, yeah.
Speaker 3I'm not doing that, I'm going to keep who I know he was and leave it at that, yeah.
Speaker 2I don't know that I didn't see him. Did you have any guilt because of that? Yes, was it guilt brought on by your stepmom, or was it internal or both?
Speaker 3I had already started to have some of my own, yeah, and then I feel like she complicated it, and then I started to second guess myself. But it was too late, because he was cremated.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3And you know that whole situation was just a mess anyways. But yeah, I still sometimes think was that the right decision? Of course it was Kelly.
Speaker 2And.
Speaker 3I talked to myself about it a lot.
Speaker 2Yeah yeah, and of course, you were an adult, so that was your decision to make. We all know sometimes how cruel, whether intentional or not, some other people can be, but it does definitely leave a very strong, lasting impression. I'd like to see you get rid of that guilt, though, because I think you made the right decision.
Speaker 3I just feel like the whole situation. Grief is so traumatic. Anyway, the situation that someone has passed away is so traumatic, yeah, and then the way that people act it just adds to that trauma and it just it's a lot to unpack at the end of the day.
Speaker 4Um absolutely, you just hope we're going through this supportive family yeah we're going through this a little bit. Right now we have a dear friend. We call them framily.
Speaker 4They're the family that we choice right that we chose and he is on hospice, has been in memory care for a few years and my kids haven't seen him for a while, and the way that we've chosen to present that to the kids is if you'd like to see him, I will take you, I will go with you here. What you might expect, here's how he's been acting, here's how he's been, whatever. And then we're leaving it up to them If they want to remember the last time that we hung out at his house and played games, or if they'd like to go and say goodbye At this point.
Speaker 4They're both choosing to remember playful friend, but it's, it is a and there's not a right or wrong. There isn't Right. It's whatever is right for you, and I think the better we get as a culture at talking about and recognizing and accepting and and living with and embracing death as part of the experience, there will hopefully be less judgment around how we handle it. Right, but guilt I had no idea what a bedfellow guilt was. To grief Absolutely. It touches everything too.
Speaker 4So I'm sorry that you're feeling that, Kelly, but it I mean it's profoundly wound up, it is yeah.
Speaker 2Someone asked me the other day to clarify the difference between guilt and regret. There's a discussion point for our grief support group and what we came up with is that regret is Grief without the guilt or guilt without the blame. Regret is guilt without the blame. That's what we came up with.
Speaker 4But, yeah.
Speaker 2So, in kind of circling back to the original topic of neurodiversity and kids that we were talking about, I'm going to kind of summarize it and say that you, as a parent, know your child better than anyone else?
Speaker 2And whether neurodiversity is a factor or not.
Speaker 2You're the only one that can decide how you are going to open the topic and teach them the word death and what it means, what comes after things like that. I would just strongly encourage parents to be careful of what they say and how they say it, because children will remember that and they will very quickly, for example, associate the fact that grandma went to the hospital and never came back, and they could associate the fact that if they have to go to the hospital to have their tonsils out, they might be fearful that they're never going to come back, that they're going to die. So you have to be careful, and we have had guests as well talk about religion, toxicity, that if it's your belief system that when you die you go to heaven, that is fine. But at some point, be prepared for your child to ask you that question when is heaven? What's it like?
Speaker 2Why do you believe in heaven? Because, trust me, when they start to mature and start to get their scientific background along with it, they're going to start to ask questions. So be careful of some things like that. Just be honest, and I would suggest not creating any stories that later could come back to you to explain, because you're the one that's going to have to dig deep and justify that. Do you have something else to offer, kelly?
Speaker 4Just absorbing.
Speaker 2Just absorbing, just absorbing.
Speaker 4I mean I'll add to what you said.
Speaker 2Sure.
Speaker 4And I think that really just be honest and vulnerable. If you don't know or you feel this but couldn't prove it, that's okay. Kids don't expect us to have all the answers, right. But if you can be approachable and open and vulnerable to the questions that they ask and can have those conversations however they go, even if they don't go well because if you have a conversation with your kiddo that doesn't go well, you can come back and fix that. Sure, you have to be willing to do that, you have to be vulnerable.
Speaker 4You have to be open.
Speaker 2You have to be honest, yeah, and there are a lot of great books out there now that can help with that discussion. For the very young children, there aren't so many of them. For the tweens to teens, there aren't so many. I know of a few. So if any of you listening are looking for a book for a child, just send me a note, give me an age range or a grade level and I can recommend some for you.
Speaker 2We've had some of the authors on our show that have done a really good job with things like that that tell stories and you don't even realize when you're reading it necessarily that it might be really about death. But it's great to have a discussion with so and gosh. When you look at that clock I'm going to, you know we need to get some super glue out and break the clock or something, because time has run out again so fast. But I feel a little bit more comfortable now about the topic of neurodiversity in general, as it relates to grief and just as it relates to your daily life, and I feel so much more clear and so much more comfortable with what I might myself do to be more supportive of people that I know are neurodiverse or people that could be neurodiverse. On that note, thanks for the link.
Speaker 2Carolyn is talking about. When I sent her the link for this episode, I had written another email and I didn't include the link in that email. Instead, I wrote a completely separate email and in the subject line I put link to episode so that she would be able to find it, because I know myself I get very frustrated trying to find something when it's buried in an email thread and I have no idea which message it was in.
Speaker 2So, and then I said I told her I was bragging and I said, please know how I was supporting neurodiversity by making it easy for you to find.
Speaker 4So it mattered just for what that was worth. It really helped. I'm glad.
Speaker 2So I probably should do that with other guests as well, because I don't know if they're neurodiverse or not, and even myself, for people out there that might send me email. If you want me to pay attention to something, put it in a separate email, just so I can find it. So I'm going to turn the microphone over to you, carolyn. I don't know if you have anything special you want to tell our listeners, but I do want to give you that opportunity, so the floor is yours.
Speaker 4Super. Thank you. I think I guess what I want to say is just remember that who you are is just fine, and it's okay to have struggles, it's okay to ask for help, it's okay to not be perfect at things, it's okay to be bad at something now and try to get better at it. All of those things are okay, because everybody has something to learn and a way to grow. Keep, just keep. Keep it on, you know. The other thing that I wanted to say was that last time we talked about Camp Widow and Soaring Spirits and I wanted to let people know about our regional groups. We talked about those a little bit at the beginning. If people are interested in regional groups, we have some that happen in person in local areas. We have some that happen virtually all over. We have some community-specific regional groups. We have a neurodiverse group that I just started. We have a widowed and black group, we have a men's widowed group, and so there are all of these different options for finding your posse right.
Speaker 4So I would love to send people to widowedvillageorg where you'll have to join, but it's free. They do that to vet people and keep our widowed friends safe. So if you join Widowed Village, inside Widowed Village you can find the regional groups and I will invite you to join any of the ones that have a computer next to them, other than the community specific if you're not part of that community. But if there's, you know, a virtual group in Eugene, oregon, for example, because we do one every month, if there's a computer next to it it's going to be a virtual group and you are welcome to join any of those virtual groups from wherever you are, and there might even be one in person in your local area. So I would love to send people to Widowed Village to find our regional groups.
Speaker 2Yeah, I couldn't agree more, and one of the things that I really appreciate about the organization is that they do vet people and they don't make it tough. You know they just ask you for the link to the obituary for crying out loud.
Speaker 2It's not hard to do, but it does make you feel a lot better, because if you join random groups on social media, I can't tell you how many emails I get or posts I get about. Oh, I'm fascinated by what you posted and everything and I'd really like to be your friend. Well, fine, but I'm sorry. It just kind of turns my stomach. And then, when you check their profile, you find out that they just joined Facebook or they've got all these phony pictures or something like that going on. There are people out there that will prey on the vulnerable, and I don't care if you're male or female, widow or widower. There are people that still want to prey on you, just like there are people that want to prey on anyone that shows a vulnerability anywhere.
Speaker 2So Soaring Spirits, the organization that sponsors WidowedVillageorg, does vet people, but it's, as Carolyn says, to keep us all safe and I appreciate that very, very much. That contact information website and everything will be in the podcast notes. If you can't find it or have any other questions, all you have to do is just send me a note. If you want to reach Carolyn, send me a note and I'll put you in touch with her. And other than that, Kelly, do you want to say anything before I wrap up?
Speaker 3I just want to say that I'm always blessed to be a part of all of our guests' podcasts because I learned so much and it makes me do my own little soul searching at the end of it. I learned about myself, I learned about other people, and it's just really nice to continue learning about how to be a better person, because there needs to be more of that in the communities.
Building Supportive Community for Grief
Speaker 2Well said. I'm so proud you're my daughter I really am, and I appreciate everything you do to help me with the podcast. It's a lot to manage on your own, but I appreciate your help very much. Okay, in summary, I always say, take care of yourself, but I want to add today that part of that self-care is finding your community and surrounding yourself with people that are supportive and welcoming and might even be your external scaffolding. So take care of yourselves, please, and join us again next time as we all continue to live and grieve. Thanks, carolyn, love you.
Speaker 1Thank you so much for listening with us today. 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 grieve dot com 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.