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®
Navigating Grief in the Queer Community
What happens when grief intersects with identity? In this powerful episode, memoir writer Kelly Wilk takes us deep into her experience as a queer widow, revealing layers of complexity that many grievers never have to face. After losing her wife Kara when she was just 34, Kelly found herself navigating not only overwhelming grief but also shifting social dynamics and questions about who she was without her partner. She shares candidly about how being part of the queer community adds unique dimensions to grief.
Through her writing, Kelly created "Captain Grief" – a character who embodied her anger and gave her someone to blame when there was no one to blame. This creative approach to processing loss eventually led to a profound transformation she compares to a butterfly in a cocoon: "She dissolves, she unforms, she breaks down in the most complete sense of the word... And when she steps out into the world once again, she is new."
Whether you're part of the LGBTQ+ community or simply seeking to better support grieving loved ones, Kelly's insights offer a compassionate window into the complex interaction between identity and loss. Her story reminds us that while grief itself may be universal, our paths through it are shaped by who we are and the communities to which we belong.
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To contact Kelly:
Website: The High-Flying Adventures of Captain Grief - Grief is messy...own it!
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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, not professionals, not licensed therapists.
Speaker 2:We are you. Hi everyone, welcome back again to another episode of as I Live in Grief. I tell you probably every single time, so I'm sorry if I'm saying the same thing over and over and over again, but I mean it from the bottom of my heart. I so appreciate y'all listening. We have a joke about y'all because I lived in the South for 10 years so I can claim y'all, even though I'm a Yankee now. But I'm just so grateful for it.
Speaker 2:And I know you're scattered around the world. And the other thing I do kind of teasingly is saying to everybody if you know anybody traveling to the North or South Pole, tell them to get on Wi-Fi and download an episode of my podcast, because I look at all the different countries that are represented and I don't have either of those continents yet. I have every other continent except those two. So just help me out that way if you would show a little support, show a little love with me. Today is yet another great guest. You know Our paths keep crossing and I just love it because I learn as much from our guests as I think they get out of the podcast and maybe, as your listeners do too, it's helped me heal immensely Today. Here is Kelly Wilk. Hi, kelly, thanks for joining me, thank you so much for having me back.
Speaker 3:I was overjoyed when I saw you at Camp Widow last November. I know, wasn't that fun, wasn't?
Speaker 2:that fun, it was such a great reconnection and I love when that happens and it really reinforces for me the whole concept of networking. You know, because sometimes you just don't know when you're going to run across somebody a second time and when you do it it's such a treat.
Speaker 3:Maybe we shouldn't have been surprised. I mean the way that the life was. I mean you know, the way that life was going at that point for me, I was like god, someone just give me a tea I know, but I knew you lived in that city yep, yeah, and the grief people, the widows and widowers are our people. So really you know our cause and anybody who knows grief. I've told them about Camp Widow and they've known about it as well, and I am hoping to present next uh, next widow, camp Widow.
Speaker 2:Oh, that would be super. That would be super if you did. That would be super. More time, um, I know, I know, to get us started. Uh, would you first remind our listeners who is Kelly?
Speaker 3:Will? Oh my gosh, what an interesting question. Sometimes I don't know.
Speaker 3:It changes day to day, that's fair I mean, I became a widow when I was 34, which sucked. I lost my dad when I was 19, and that wasn't so great. I lost my dad when I was 19, and that wasn't so great. But I'm also a memoir writer and I have used memoir writing my whole life. To process those kind of things I need creativity. I kind of live and breathe in it and it comes out of my pores. So it's just natural when I run into a crisis, like being diagnosed with fibro when I was 12., I write my way. I psychologically am able to write my way through it, to process it, and that has just naturally led me into memoir and into poetry and personal essays. And when my wife died, her adage was you always have the choice to laugh. So of course I did a blog called the High Flying Adventures of Captain Grief, because I was pissed and I needed someone to yell at.
Speaker 3:And I needed somebody to be the bad guy and she was the best thing that came into my life out of grief and out of losing my wife, because she stepped in and just took pot shots at me for a year until I stood up and realized that I was her.
Speaker 2:And she had all the things that.
Speaker 3:I was needing to say how do I survive this?
Speaker 2:Right, that's succinct, and look at you now. Okay. So the focus today are some of the differences in grief for various people, and this podcast has established numerous times that grief is different for everyone and each incident of grief for that same person is also different. Of the four major losses I have, every one was different. Everyone was different. The hardest, the most difficult was the most recent the loss of my husband, tom, and next month will be seven years Long time. I still grieve him. I still think about him just about every day, just about every day. The big difference is that now, when I think about them, I don't start crying. Now, when I think about them, I usually will smile, usually.
Speaker 1:There are exceptions to every rule.
Speaker 2:So one of my questions for you and you've been kind enough to offer to come on and be very candid, and I know that you can only speak how it has affected you, impacted you, but you lost your wife. So you were in a same-sex marriage. How, or if, do you feel I'm trying to get the right words for the question here Do you feel that who you are as a person, your gender identification, sexual orientation, whichever spin you want to put on it do you feel that that made a difference for grief in that particular instance?
Speaker 3:I think it made a difference in how life rearranged itself around that grief, because I was a queer widow as opposed to just your run-of-the-mill widow, I guess um yeah I mean, you know, you said you have a joke about y'all. Well, I have relatives in West Virginia and I mean, for instance, my aunt and my uncle will probably never listen to this. They went to my sister's wedding. They would not come to mine.
Speaker 3:And my mother was so angry because she said this is your niece, your son or your brother is dead and, yeah, I'm not even sure what their religious affiliation is, but it hurt my mom. It hurt my mom because she lost her husband when when she was 50.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, you know, and it's just, there's insensitivities, all sorts of insensitivities around, uh, people when they're and you know, I've been guilty of it too because it's not comfortable, griefing and guilt is not comfortable and you deal with it however you can in the moment. But not coming to someone's wedding because they are marrying a woman is the decision. That's not an off-the-cuff remark, oh, definitely.
Speaker 2:Definitely yeah.
Speaker 3:And you know they didn't come to her funeral either. Yeah, I mean, that day was such a haze.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I know they are. Yeah, mostly the memories I have of Tom's celebration of life, if you will, are just the ones that were really, really notable, that either made me cry or made me just have my mouth open, gaping in awe or something funny.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no one it's.
Speaker 2:So there may be some distinctions there. But to expand it more, on the topic of grief, defining grief very simply as a response to a loss, finding grief very simply as a response to a loss, I would have to guess if you will or say my perception would be that if someone is in the LBGTQ plus community I hope I say that right because that's a lot of letters- In the queer community. Well, all right in the queer community. If someone is in there, they suffer grief.
Speaker 3:Already.
Speaker 2:Oh, their life Around so many different issues, particularly if you're trans. Before they even get to that major event of a death of someone you love. They have gone through so much grief, so what type of issues might someone in the queer community face that would cause them grief?
Speaker 3:Well, I think just because, for instance, the risk of suicide is higher amongst queer kids. To begin with, if you've already got someone who is dealing with depression, who is dealing with this or that or the other thing, and they lose, it doesn't even have to be their spouse. If somebody they love, if a partner or a friend is gay, bashed and they die. It's only if somebody who respects your orientation and your gender expression will they express you. So there's just more chances for people to say you don't matter or why would I be interested you?
Speaker 3:know and I'm lucky I am, with the exception of the one part of my family that was not there for me. I've been very lucky with my family, but my challenge is that I grew up, went to an all-girls school for 13 years and for 13 years looked in the mirror and saw a straight woman, so I kind of had to exfoliate a lot of things.
Speaker 2:Was it a case of you didn't know what you didn't know? I think I knew.
Speaker 3:You think?
Speaker 2:I knew.
Speaker 3:But it was interesting because I didn't really know until after my dad died and suddenly it became much more important to come out and to deal with that rather than to deal with the death of my father. So I just kind of put a cap on that and worried about trying to come out and it did not work and it just blew up in my face and I told I did tell my mom and, to be fair, she was grieving and she couldn't handle anything and she gave me the whole it's a phase.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what? Well, you know, I, again, again, I can only imagine, because I've not gone through that experience. Well, I can't say that completely, because my younger daughter, kelly, is in a same sex relationship With her. It was never a. She never came out to me. Because I, because they have made a conscious decision and I'm looking for you to say, yeah, kathy, that's spot on. Or, kathy, you're fully cracked. They had a life they thought they were going to live and maybe it's one kind of centered around things that they had been told by their parents or things they had experienced. Like maybe for a young girl, you know, they would be bought dresses all the time when you went to the store, when what they really wanted to wear was pants and a tailored shirt.
Speaker 3:So that's why I could hide more, because I had my femininity.
Speaker 1:I was a very feminine.
Speaker 3:I've always been this biggest unicorn swirly glitter girl. So it kind of made me visible to myself, and it was only when I started to register the homophobic comments around me that I realized I had a reaction to it and I felt uncomfortable, right, and this happened in high school.
Speaker 2:And do those comments kind of sorta equate with those inane comments we get after losing?
Speaker 3:someone like they're in a better place.
Speaker 2:Not really is it the same type or?
Speaker 3:not. I was terrified because I felt like. I was standing in the kitchen and it was a friend's parent that made this comment. So all of a sudden I was like deer in a headlight. I'm not safe Right now. I'm fearing for my life. And I wasn't literally fearing for my life, but all of a sudden it was. When you go to, I'm fine to get out, All right. So you felt threatened.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely so. The difference, then, might be fear, absolute fear, or hate, yeah, hate.
Speaker 3:Because whenever you come out, it's a risk. I mean whenever you tell. If you tell someone like me if you have a disability, if you're ADHD, if you have fibro, if you're grieving grief is an invisible disability I can tell you that so you risk telling someone that because they will perhaps change their opinion of you.
Speaker 3:However, if you come out and someone has an absolute problem with your orientation, you will know and and that bridge will be burned and you don't know when that's going to happen. So I have not been attacked, but I've had friends that have been my girl friends, butch friends, that have been punched in the face on the streetcar on the day of kara's funeral. Oh yeah, it's just that funeral, it's just that extra layer of shit that you have to deal with on top, and they didn't tell me that this happened because they didn't want to upset me. But she was attacked and it's like you don't. If you are visibly queer, that makes you more of a target. I am less of a target. I can pass, but with Visibly queer Okay.
Speaker 2:I like that phrase because that really signifies and I can relate to that. You know I can think of people I know that I would say are visibly queer and others that just you know you wouldn't know unless you knew. But it just seems to me that the word hate keeps coming back to me, that the things that are said in those instances are from the basis of hate, you know, as well as from the basis of ignorance. Yeah, you know both. And those two together are. Are they're lethal?
Speaker 3:Yeah, if someone feels threatened if they feel backed into a corner, as, as you know, um, even if they're not being provoked, if just if, just the fact of me or the fact of my partner, like um, there's a part in this book where I talk about care, called it the look. She called it the. What is that look? And? And one day we were going outside of Toronto to get camping gear at like a at a camping store warehouse, and we were late. So we walked down a line of people that were all lined up to get their camping gear and we got the what does that look about? A hundred times in a row, because we were outside the city. I was absolutely livid and Kara, who had been living in the body that she was living in you know, for 32 years at that point just went Right.
Speaker 3:I'm like no, you should be mad at this. She's like what am I going to do? This is me, and before I was not me, I was punching walls. It is better if I am me. But the other thing is, with me holding her hand, not only is she visibly queer, I'm visibly clear, you are also sure you know so that and when you come out just to come back to when you're grieving, or when you're, when you're accepting a physical disability or something like that, it's it's about you changing your idyllic image of yourself. And I was counseled in this like we got grief material. I think I told you when I want, when I went into the Fibromyalgia Day program about grief, because you grieve the ideal image of yourself.
Speaker 2:You are not who you used to be.
Speaker 3:So you do that. When it's grief, grief as well. And when I grieved Kara, it's like who am I? Oh God. I am now a single mom, I am now a widow and I am surrounded by a whole bunch of women who have all risen up to help me. But the dynamic is different, because all the people in my group who are single are now potential partners. Because I'm same-sex and I've just lost my wife. That was confusing, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, confusing for you or confusing for them.
Speaker 3:I think everybody was pretty much up the shit because they had lost Gara. Honestly, yeah. But, my walls were down, I was hurting and I had people that really helped and I had people that made it complicated, which was another layer that I had to deal with. And then I was. I was young and I suddenly had all of these parents telling me you should do this, you should do that, so all of a sudden.
Speaker 2:Were they? Were they basing it on the fact that you were queer or not? Was it just general advice that you would have gotten regardless?
Speaker 3:General advice, but not only with the parents, but also now with my social circle. I was not very good at putting down boundaries and suddenly I had to learn that I needed to put down boundaries to keep myself safe. And I never expected that I would have to do that with my friends, Like that was totally out of the blue can you clarify that a little bit more?
Speaker 2:why would your friends your social support?
Speaker 3:because they could also have been their women. They were also women, single women were they coming on to you? No, but I think everybody has they just felt uncomfortable because that this dynamic exactly Okay, the dynamic of who I was changed because I did not have a partner anymore.
Speaker 3:So, I was now suddenly a single lesbian widow with a whole bunch of people around me, and I'm thinking I'm 34. I have a huge life ahead of me. How do I I don't know how to belong to somebody else. Yet I want to only be with the people that I'm already comfortable with, because that's all I can handle right now. But those relationships can get complicated because they're trying to comfort me, they're trying to spend time with me.
Speaker 3:They trying, you know, and I just was just a big endless hole of I need right now and okay, you have to stand up and and not do that and put boundaries on relationship yeah, I would say that's something that is really unique.
Speaker 2:Then, about grieving if you are in the queer community, that that certainly is easier to say than LBGT Totally and I mean no disrespect at all, of course, but but that sounds like it is something that's totally unique that all of a sudden, to give someone a hug might feel awkward.
Speaker 3:For example, what do you want from me? What do I want from you? Why is this different?
Speaker 2:yeah, oh, it's different because my, my wife, died, like it just nobody, and, whether or not that was the intention, there still could be some of those exactly. So, yeah, I understand now. That would be very very difficult, exactly. Very difficult. Now, do you think that happens for males that are part of the queer community? I don't know. Or do you think that's unique to females? I don't know. I think generally women.
Speaker 3:I would suspect that it would happen more for women, because women in a group are different than men in a group. Women are already all over each other, like other like you know we just are physical with each other without a thought right. Well, right right that physicality suddenly meant very different things because, Kara left a hole in everybody's world and everybody was spinning out and just the fact that nobody knew how she died, you know, and everybody was just in shock and just did the best that we could.
Speaker 2:But honestly it was awful, you know, and Was there a point that things started to get better in that regard, that you could be with your, your social group and everything, and felt more relaxed, didn't feel that kind of unease it it felt?
Speaker 3:it actually felt a little bit better once it took me about. I guess I was six months and I started to date again and I felt like everybody did a oh, she's taken care of you know, like there's, there's no more ambiguity she's dating someone Now.
Speaker 2:the intentions are clear.
Speaker 3:Exactly. There's not that awkward question that people are saying, and it's not like starting to date again after you've lost your partner at a young age. It's not hard enough to tell someone, like I told Kara's best gay male friend. He was the first one I told that I was dating and he says of course you are. I'm like thank you for not having a problem with this of course you did he lost his partner as well, you know he figured he knew.
Speaker 3:You know, and this is why being with your people is so much easier because sometimes there has to be so much explanation as to why you're feeling the way you're feeling and how the situation is different for you just because it is.
Speaker 2:And do you feel at this point in your grief journey and we all know that we'll probably grieve for the rest of our lives for that very special someone Do you feel that there are any issues related to your grieving now because you're in the queer community?
Speaker 3:There were. Yeah, because I mean when you said, when did things kind of clear up and those kind of things. Well, it was when a friend of mine who was my first-year university roommate was single too and was getting was getting out of a of a long-term relationship and it was kind of in the same place. I was Cause I look at death as the same way as losing a partner to divorce, except it's more complicated. It's awful.
Speaker 2:Well, you still, you still grieve it. It's still a loss, exactly, but you still get.
Speaker 3:You still have to contend with them not choosing you not being with you but also having you know, especially if you have kids. Um so my house was falling down, my, my house was literally falling down and this friend said come and buy a house with me. I want to have a baby by myself. We will co -parent. So we did. We bought a house together. You know, my son and I lived on the top floor of the triplex. She lived in the middle and had a baby. It was like what she, what she decided was going to happen, happened. She's amazing, you know, just determined.
Speaker 3:She's very specific, she's like the manifesting master, Um, and we've we've lived together now for like seven years. But it was interesting because and I didn't notice this myself, but I realized and I had to explain to her look, I'm having, I'm emo, I am having feelings, I'm having, and I think it's because you don't realize that me living with another woman is completely different than you living with a woman, Because to you I have always been and still am your roommate, but to me this is a queer marriage without sex. This is what it is, and I am going to have to take a step back sometime because I'm still grieving. I will always be grieving. Yet I am doing the exact same things with my roommate, raising my children with my roommate. Right Again, complication just kind of follows me, especially when the pandemic hit and we were both working from home.
Speaker 3:I had the kids and she was working online and we had to become a family.
Speaker 3:We had you know, that was even more difficult for me. It made her push back and it made me go okay, I'm not going to touch you, I'm just going to draw a line. Very uncomfortable. In the process of the pandemic and me doing a lot of introspection, I dealt with a lot of fear that I had around men and I got time to look at that and I realized it wasn't that I was opposed to dating men, it was that I actually needed to clear a lot of stuff and, being in isolation from everyone, I've been dating men for the past couple of years, like you know.
Speaker 3:I've realized that I am fluid and again my identity changed and again I was worried about telling people. Oh, guess what? You know me, the lesbian writer needs a new label. Well, why do I need a new label? Kelly hasn't changed. That's the thing about labels.
Speaker 2:I don't like labels. You know number one, it's just not fair, but other people like labels because they like to determine who you are.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but that doesn't allow you to change, but when you are first thinking about it, the fear is there Again. The fear is because you're doing it in reverse, right. Yeah, how will?
Speaker 3:my friends react? How will my family, how will Kara's family react? Well, in the end you have to come down to who the fuck cares. But you have to get there. It's, it's a, it's a hurdle that you have to go over and it sucks that we have to go to this degree of explanation when we're just trying to beat right. You know, it just adds that layer of complexity and complication, especially when other people are like I don't get it. I'm like you think I do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it just is, it just is. So I want you to open your book. I think you had something in your book you wanted to share. I do.
Speaker 3:Well it's. It's special to me because you did and I didn't get to see the presentation, but you talked about butterflies and whoops and transformation and I have something that I wrote that was really important to me about that journal journal entry. Okay, okay, there is more joy than there was. When I look at myself, clearly I see the me that belongs to myself, as well as the me that belonged to you. When I look at myself, I see the life that is mine and the life that I had with you, but at a distance which is getting wider every day that you are not here. Sometimes I think it's a miracle that I can recognize myself outside of a relationship not anymore.
Speaker 3:Because for many years I developed a sense of identity and dependence on my partner. For this reason the isolation has been very healing, in that painful, growing kind of way. The only noise and turmoil I have to confront is my own. Turning inwards has turned the noise into music. The singular melody has encased me, clearing my space of emotional debris so that I can witness the change and transformation in my life, still sliding around under the surface of my cocoon. In here, my attention has been drawn to a number of things, external things I had no idea about or didn't fully appreciate, that were a reflection of the internal changes happening in me and have yet to happen.
Speaker 3:When I was young, my father bought me a butterfly net so we could go down to the creek among the reeds and catch a monarch. We had discussed the marvelous migration patterns of this butterfly and I was eager to be a part of their story, if only as a momentary witness to their long journey south to Mexico. My thoughts are caught up in these splendidly orange-winged beauties, the once threatened species that was starting to recover but is now back on the endangered species list. Theirs is a lengthy process of transformation. The emergent miracle of their lives has been a through-line in my thoughts. How do they do it? How do they change from an unassuming life camouflaged in the leaves to an enchanting creature that can take to the skies?
Speaker 3:All of the answers lay in the mystery of the cocoon. When a baby begins to form, it is one cell the size of a poppy seed, but when the yellow and white striped caterpillar forms a shell around herself, she is already something. Where does she go Now? I know she dissolves, she unforms, she breaks down in the most complete sense of the word. She is no more and the magic of time and life recreates her as a miracle. And when she steps out into the world once again, she is new.
Speaker 3:This is the combination of biology, instinct and faith that creates and completes this mystery. Once she shuts herself in, her body slowly breaks down, bit by bit, body part by body part, cell by cell and perhaps memory by memory, to the state of primordial ooze. It is the only way she can rebuild herself to commit to this isolation and surrender everything to the universe. I've been asked to commit a similar act of faith to spend a year doing nothing but let everything change, to release everything I knew, knew everything, I was sure about, everything I was afraid of and everything I was afraid would never happen, in order to transform this life into a beautiful new reincarnation of itself. And once I finally understood the importance, the urgency of this process, I looked in the mirror and said okay, I understand, I'm ready to break down, that's great.
Speaker 2:I love that. I would have read that at the beginning of my workshop. Yes, it was, it was. You know, that's fascinating and you do have a way with words. Thank you, you're quite eloquent. I was glancing at the clock while you were reading and, sadly, our time is coming to an end. But before I actually wrap up, I want to turn the microphone over to you, kelly, and let you speak directly to the listeners. Tell them again about your book, where they can get it, tell them anything you'd like to about if you have any events coming up, workshops, whatever, how they can get in contact with you, whatever you'd like to share, and keep in mind that your contact information and the name of the book will also be in the podcast notes, so people don't have to run for a pencil. Okay, good, so the floor is yours.
Speaker 3:Okay, so you do not need a pencil, you do not need a pen. My website, which is going through some changes right now it's in a cocoon, it is wwwcaptangriefcom. And, yes, captain Grief is still alive and kicking and we have current content there and that is where I will put all of my events that are coming up. And if you're in Ontario, in the GTA, I'm going to be having a book launch, where it'll be the same kind of format in terms of reading books and selling books. But if you don't live nearby, you can just Google up amazonca and look up the High Flying Adventures of Captain Grief, and the memoir is there in hardcover and paperback and Kindle.
Speaker 3:And I also have a Facebook group called the High Flying Adventures of Captain Grief, and that is actually the original space that I opened my blog on and there I put stupid stuff, I put memes, I put resources, I chat with people about loss. So if you're looking for a kind of community, I highly encourage you. Please find us on Facebook and join us and join the conversation, because everybody needs a space to grieve the way that they need to grieve. And thinking about book launches, I perhaps will do an online book launch because I do. What I want to do is to try and be accessible to people as possible. You know what, particularly if they're queer, widow and widowers. You know because it's hard thing to find a space to grieve, but when you're queer you want to know that you're safe. So mine is an absolutely safe, lgbtq, trans, positive, black positive, latino positive, neurodivergent positive, everything community, because everybody is going through the shit. You know Everybody and needs support.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, grief sucks and grief is ugly. There's no way around it, it just is. It just is. We can continue forward on our grief journey, redefine ourselves, be somebody completely different than the person we were before and in my calendar there's really only before and after yeah, that's it, you know before time before mom, after mom.
Speaker 2:You know that's that's how my calendar goes, but you know we have to get through it. And again, like I say many times times, we like to mention self-care, and one of the best ways of taking care of yourself is to surround yourself with like-minded people, because they will get you and especially if you're having a bad day, these people will get you and they will give you the space you need. They will give you the support you need because they understand, and that's why this is so important to me.
Speaker 3:My friends, like I need, I know that I can say Kathy, I'm having a really shit day and I won't have to do the precursor of anything. You, you know. No, you get it, you're in my shoes.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it just, it just is yeah, even though you know I haven't walked your exact path, but we still have that understanding that you go through stuff. You need support. So sometimes the best gift you can give someone is just to listen, because maybe all they need to do is verbalize it so it's no longer spinning around in the brain. Just, you know, get it out in the air and release it. It's a processing.
Speaker 3:It's the same for writing. I have to write it, to process it, but I have to speak it, even if it's just to myself, before I write it, just to hear it to know that it's real to construct it again before I put it and I commit it to you know, to paper, um.
Speaker 3:But that's the other thing that I would like to start doing. I'd like to do them in person, but I can also. I'm also considering doing my narrative healing workshop for your journey of grief, because the first time I did it, um, my participant had actually lost his whole family in house fire, his whole family in house fire. So we did, I know, so we did six weeks of him writing and creating a comic book to encapsulate that six-week journey of using creativity to process his loss. And I can do. I'm hoping to do this at camp widow, um, yeah. And then I'm hoping to do this at Camp Widow, nice, yeah. And then I'm hoping to open, like physical classes, but just like I'm hoping to reach a wider community online with my book at some point I would love to have a wider community for online narrative healing for your journey of loss.
Speaker 3:So you know it will be on my website. So just you know, check in. Lost. So you know it'll all it will be on my website. So just you know, check in. Um, I'm hoping to grow that because this is what I have done to be okay, you know, and if other people have.
Speaker 2:I like that. This is what I've done to be okay. Yeah, Yep.
Speaker 1:That's kind of how it works.
Speaker 2:It really does. So I really have to wrap it up at this point and tell everyone take care of yourselves. Thanks again for dialing us up, downloading us and listening and catch us again next week as we all continue to live and grieve.
Speaker 1:Thanks again, you're welcome, thank you thank 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.