Ep 169: Grief Is Not Just Death with Jillian Oetting

Grief can feel like a private storm, but it’s also one of the most universal experiences we share and it doesn’t only arrive after a death. I sit down with licensed professional counselor and advanced grief counseling specialist Jillian Oetting to name the kinds of loss that often get ignored: anticipatory grief with dementia or terminal illness, disenfranchised grief after pregnancy loss or infertility, ambiguous loss in estrangement or addiction, and the identity grief that can follow career shifts or postpartum change.

We also challenge the idea that grief has a clean finish line. Jillian shares a powerful “rock in your pocket” metaphor: the rock doesn’t shrink, but you grow around it, and grief bursts can still surprise you years later. From there, we dig into grief counseling frameworks that feel realistic, including the dual process model of moving between loss-oriented coping and restoration-oriented coping, plus the tasks of mourning that focus on accepting reality, processing pain, adjusting to a changed world, and finding an enduring connection through meaning making.

Then we make it practical for real relationships. We talk about what to say when you’re afraid of saying the wrong thing, why platitudes like “everything happens for a reason” can land as dismissal, and why “let me know what you need” often adds pressure. Jillian offers concrete, caring alternatives: bring food, handle a small household task, keep showing up months later, and keep saying the person’s name so love and memory can keep breathing.

If someone you love is grieving or you are carrying your own rock, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review. What’s one supportive sentence you wish people would say more often?

Transcript

Welcome And Why Grief Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:12

All right, hello listener, welcome back. I'm your host, Dr. Beth Tremel, and this is Things You Learn Therapy, and I am excited about this topic, even though a lot of folks may not agree that it is the most exciting topic. And mostly I'm excited because I think just the more we can talk about this, the more we can bring light to the things that may be most challenging around this topic. And so I have invited Gillian to come back on the show to talk about this. This is something that Gillian, you've been specializing in, researching or spending time kind of becoming well-versed in this topic. And so I'm excited about what you're going to share with us today. So, Gillian, thank you for saying yes to being here today. Can you introduce

Meet Jillian And The Oracle Card

SPEAKER_01 1:05

yourself to folks and tell us something fun about you?

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Yeah, so my name is Jillian Edding and I'm a licensed professional counselor. I'm based out of Madison, Wisconsin. I am also an advanced grief counseling specialist. So what that means is I have done the work and the clinical hours to really get that advanced certification to support and witness people's grief. I also am a somatic foundations practitioner. So I integrate both of those into my work, both with grief counseling and with counseling in general. Grief shows up in a lot of different ways, even if people aren't coming here specifically for grief. A fun fact, I, and we'll talk about how this has come about in my study of grief, but I have gotten really into like oracle cards recently. And my oracle card for today was the cauldron. Um, so that means creation, opportunity, and caring. Um, and so really kind of like honing in on the opportunity and the caring aspect of this card, you know, what what is our opportunity today? Well, I think the opportunity is to talk about grief in a way that softens it for people that allows us to get a little bit closer to this topic that feels very much like we want to avoid it. Um, and then caring, like, I mean, that's a central part of grief counseling, is how do we care for the people who we are supporting? Um, but also caring for people in your life. If you're not a counselor, caring for people in your life who are experiencing grief. If you are experiencing grief, how can you care for yourself?

SPEAKER_01 2:54

I mean, it's part of why I'm really excited about this conversation because I think, I mean, I think really forever, right? Grief is this is not new. I definitely think that since the pandemic, I just think grief is showing up kind of constantly in a variety of different ways. And so I, like you, have kind of spent a lot of time in the last several years

Grief Beyond Death Loss

SPEAKER_01 3:20

really educating people on what grief is and how it isn't just um if someone dies, right? And so I think sometimes people are surprised to hear or learn that grief responses show up in a variety of situations. And so can you kind of start by helping folks who maybe don't know or haven't heard um about how grief shows up in other circumstances outside of um, you know, like a physical loss of a loved one?

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Yeah, so we we obviously experience grief around a death loss. Um uh, but we also can experience anticipatory grief. Um, so I think about anticipatory grief when maybe you have a loved one who is terminally ill, or um, we see this sometimes in individuals whose loved one is ex is diagnosed with Alzheimer's or dementia. There's anticipatory grief there. Um that's a little bit more complicated because it changes so much. There's disenfranchised grief, which is loss that's not openly acknowledged. Um, this could be something like the death of a pet, pregnancy loss, infertility, loss of a job, or the death of someone who maybe has been stigmatized. So it's not openly acknowledged grief, but it's still there. Um, ambiguous grief is grief around a loss that lacks clear definition. Um, so maybe the person is physically present but gone in a sense. Uh sometimes this shows up with like substance use. Um, your loved one, that relationship has changed. Um, or if you're estranged from family members, that that relationship has changed and there's still grief around that. Um, it doesn't have a traditional ending though, or like I think about divorce, sometimes this can show up in divorce. So, you know, there's a lot of places that we can experience grief, and maybe we don't know that it's grief until somebody names it as grief, and we're like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. Then I had uh a really profound change in my career last year. Um, and there was grief over that. And, you know, this goes into a lot of these uh some of the grief processing models that we'll talk about, but there is an identity change. Who am I if I'm not this? Um, and you know, that that's a huge part of the scariness of grief is the identity, uh, how your identity changes, routines change, uh, what do you call yourself? That and that was just around the change of a job. I think about postpartum, the griever in postpartum. I remember being postpartum and thinking, like, what's wrong with me? Um, I don't feel like myself. And I had a therapist say to me, like, well, you're not yourself anymore. You're a new version of you. And we named this as like, yeah, I'm grieving that version of me that I was before I had a child. I I wanted this pregnancy. I am so glad to be a mother, but grief is still present because things have changed. I'm a new version of myself. And that isn't that just so like, I think that that's one of the things that makes grief so beautiful is how dynamic it is, um, how misunderstood it can be. So that misunderstanding of grief is present across all of these types of grief, death loss, um, ambiguous grief, disenfranchised grief is how can we work to understand it? How can we work to integrate it into our life?

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Yeah, I love um kind of putting some names to things. I think it's always helpful for folks to have a name to describe a process that they are experiencing. And so thanks for um, thank you for sharing those. And if there's one message that I think I want to kind of reflect and reiterate based on what you're saying, is that I'm hoping that this is a hopeful statement to make, but I think grief is all around us all the time. It's not just, oh, I I had this one single incident that I'm grieving. It's like because our lives are are changing and because we are experiencing various things, like we're grieving more than I think we probably realized, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's like it's it's if you are listening, you are experiencing grief or have in a past of some kind, right? Would you say that's fair? Because as we're describing this, I'm like, yeah, I'm anticipatory grieving, you know, my daughter leaving for college this summer. And I am grieving the loss of my grandmother who passed away, you know, last month. And I am, you know, grieving changes that are happening in my job or my life, right? It's like, this isn't just you are, you aren't. It's like a level of, I don't know, is it like a level of degree of impact of the grief? Or how do you describe that?

SPEAKER_00 8:34

It's an incredibly human experience. Um, and we don't always see it that way. We see it as a unique experience because we only see it around death loss. And, you know, realistically, even with death law, death loss, well, the the death rate is 100%. So we're all going to experience it at some point or another. Um, and uh with these other types of grief, yes, it is incredibly present and it's a it's a very human experience. I don't like to use the word normal because I think that normal kind of takes people's minds to this place of then it should feel okay. No, yeah, yeah. Normal does not mean okay. Normal just means it's what I would expect. It's what I would expect if you changed a job, it's what I would expect if you experienced divorce or um or if something more profound, like a death loss happened. You know, it we would expect this. And grief is a normal part of the human experience. Grief has a way of expanding our ability to feel. Um, so you know, we we feel profound emotions uh with loss. We also then open up our capability to feel profound love, profound gratitude. Um, and so I really think one of the benefits of grief, processing grief counseling, grief therapy is we expand our ability to feel on both sides of this spectrum. Um, I think it's important to distinguish too, like what is the purpose of grief counseling? Why do people, what will be a healthy reason for someone to come to grief counseling? And I come up against this a lot as clients come in. I always ask, what is your goal here uh for grief therapy, for processing grief? And a lot of times people are like, Well, I just want to feel better. Um, I want this to kind of go away. And we have to gently correct that or gently redirect that into a place that says, grief is not going to go away. And I speak in a lot of metaphors when I

The Rock In Your Pocket

SPEAKER_00 10:45

talk about grief because I think it paints a really nice picture for the experience. So let's imagine that on the day that you lose something or someone, somebody, grief hands you a rock. Um, and it's a pretty big, solid, jagged edge rock. And grief says, you have to put this in your pocket and you have to carry it for the rest of your life. So you put it in your pocket, you're a little bit like, why? Why do I have to? This is uncomfortable. Like my it doesn't fit in my pocket. It's heavy. Um, I can't put my hand in my pocket anymore. And maybe sometimes you do put your hand in your pocket and it cuts your hand, it hurts, it's sharp, uh, it's uncomfortable to carry. Your legs may not have the strength yet to carry that large of a rock. It might bump into things as you are getting used to it being in your pocket. But over time, you learn how to put your hand in your pocket at certain angles to soften the touch of the rock. Or maybe your hand develops calluses and it doesn't hurt as much. It's still there, but it doesn't hurt. Maybe your legs get stronger and learn how to carry the weight of that rock. Your jeans or your pocket kind of stretch around that rock. The rock never changes size, the rock never changes shape. It's always there in your pocket with the same weight, but you grow around it, you adapt. And then there are those moments where you get so used to the rock that you put your hand in your pocket quickly and you do cut your hand again years later. And that's called a grief burst. You know, it's it's not going to go away. We just, it's sometimes we get so used to it and then it shows up and we think, oh yeah, there it is again. But you know, if we think of this grief as this rock in your pocket, we're not making the rocket smaller. We're integrating it into our life. We're learning to carry it and and continue to keep walking, continue to keep living and loving.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

I love this metaphor of um the kind of rock in your pocket. And I think when we come to talking about how we can love people and support people who are grieving, I'm um I'm probably gonna come back to this metaphor because I think it's really good. What I'm curious about though now, as we're sort of leaning into you know, grief

Grief Models That Actually Help

SPEAKER_01 13:05

counseling and grief support, there are a lot of models out there. There are a lot of models out there around uh kind of the grieving process. And I think obviously created by really smart people. And so I don't want to take anything away from models, but I think sometimes models can give folks who don't really understand the model kind of this false sense of I am not doing grief right. I'm supposed to be out of the anger stage and into the you know acceptance stage or or whatever. And so I'm curious if you have found some models of grief that are helpful for folks that you might be able to share.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Yeah, and and so let's touch on this first one that I heard you mention, like the the first two stages of grief. Elizabeth Kugler-Ross, she developed the stages of grief, right? And actually, that is not a model that I use. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, while it is a brilliant processing model for grief, it's a great way to explain the kind of the stages that we go through. She actually developed that in response to people experiencing terminal illness. Um, so she and she has said this. So she has come out and said, I didn't intend this to be used for after a loss. I was doing the research on people who were terminally ill and their experience with their mortality. Um, and so it's still applicable in certain places, absolutely. But the pro the the grief processing models that I have found that hit home and kind of like helped grief find a home a little bit more is there's a couple. So one of them being um the dual processing model. So uh this was developed by Stroby and Shoot. Um so the dual processing model it really just says that grief involves moving between two types of coping, loss-oriented and restoration-oriented, and we oscillate between both of these, and that that is normal and expected. You know, I don't like that word normal, but it is expected to oscillate between these two. And so if you find yourself oscillating, moving between, I'm in a loss-oriented coping um mechanism, which is the those those loss-oriented are uh concerned with coping with the loss. So these could be things like looking at photos, crying, expressing our anger or sorrow. We oscillate between that and then restoration. So these are behaviors of continued life and continued love, how we adapt to our new life. It is uh normal and expected to move between both of those coping mechanisms. So that's the dual processing model. Um, the other one that I really like, there's two, they're very similar though. One is the

Four Tasks Of Mourning

SPEAKER_00 16:00

four tasks of mourning, and the other is the six needs of mourning. So the four tasks of mourning is uh William, J. William Warden, uh, and the six needs of mourning is uh Alan Wolfett. Um they're very similar. Basically, what they say is the first kind of task or need in mourning is to accept the reality of loss. So this would kind of be like, okay, the reality of loss is what are things that have changed? This could be you've lost your spouse, uh, or how do I re-identify myself? Am I a widow? Am I a wife? Do I take off my ring? Do I change my name? What do I do? All of these like realities of loss. Those are more of the like kind of obvious ones. But then there's some other, more daily realities of loss. And I have an example. I was supporting somebody in my personal life through grief, and uh her husband had died, her spouse had died, and we were kind of gathering at her house, and it was morning time, and she said to us, I'm sorry, you guys, like we can't have coffee. I don't know how to change the filter on the Keurig. That was my husband's job, and I don't know how to do it. And we were like, wow, like oh, you know, these things that we didn't know. And it it kind of put into perspective for me, like, would I know how to do that? The the water filter, the air filter thing on our fridge is blinking right now. I have no idea how to change that. I don't even know where they are, I don't know what they look like, don't know how to change it. That's that's my partner's job. Um, and so that's a reality of loss is we can't have coffee. I don't know how to change the filter. Maybe maybe we need to get a new coffee maker, maybe we need to learn how to do it, but that is one of those realities that kind of like hits you in the face. Um, so that being recognizing those realities of loss, that being one of the first tasks or needs of mourning. The second being processing the pain. Now, this is the one that people really avoid, I think, because the this need or this task asks you to sit in it, to experience it, um, to talk about the pain. And I think something I really want to highlight here is why grief feels so far away, why we keep it at a distance. What is it? And so, like I said, I'm a somatic therapy uh practitioner as well. And so I think about my body when I think about grief. I think about how my body is responding. And the somatic response that I get when I think about grief is this turning in my stomach. It's almost like a nervousness, uh scared. Um, and I'm I have to think to myself, like, why do I feel nervous and scared when I think about grief? While one of my biggest fears is thinking about the deep ocean, like the the ocean, how deep the ocean is. Like it's one of those fears I have that I'm like, I don't know what's down there. It's deep, it's dark, there's undone creatures, it goes on forever. And it's a little scary, you know. That's grief. It's deep, it's dark, it goes on forever. And doesn't that kind of elicit the same response of fear and nervousness? Um, that yeah, it feels endless, it feels vast, and it can be contained. We can learn how to experience grief in a way that doesn't feel so deep and dark. Um, and so that's part of processing the pain. How do we make it a little bit less deep and dark, a little bit less endless, but we do have to go through the pain of it. The third task being adjusting to a world without what was lost. How do we make those changes? How do we learn how to change the coffee filter? How do we uh learn how to change the light bulb that we can't reach? Um, so how do we adapt to this world without what we lost? And then the the fourth one is finding an enduring connection while continuing life, or Wolfett um describes it as meaning making. How do we integrate? And so this isn't like, oh, I'm going to make, you know, it's not one of those like platitudes of like everything happens for a reason. This is the meaning of my loss. No, it's how are we going to integrate this loss into our life, like with the rock in your pocket? How are we going to learn to integrate this rock into our pocket to strengthen our muscles, to accept our new identity? Um, and that really is like the those are the grief processing models that I use most often because we're not going to make it go away. We're going to make it a little less sharp over time, but we're also going to learn to carry it.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

I I love kind of your breakdown of each of these four tasks of mourning. And I want to come back to the one that I think is probably

Processing Pain Without A Finish Line

SPEAKER_01 21:00

stickiest for folks, which for me would be sort of processing the pain. It's like, uh, well, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna process through this. The only way to get our side is to go through it, you know. And I think sometimes it's hard for people to wrap their heads around what that actually means, right? So, like, you know, I think I've had I've had folks that are like, uh, okay, well, Beth, like, what do you mean? Like, do I have to like sit in the closet and just cry about things? Is that what you're telling me I'm supposed to do? Um and I think uh it can be really scary because it feels uh very uh like how do I do this? And yeah, you know, I I I wonder if uh you would also say, because this is how I've sometimes uh shared with folks that it's like oh, we're uncomfortable with the lack of end, right? That it's like uh Processing might suggest to somebody that there is an end that I'm going to process through and eventually there'll be some sort of outcome that feels better, like to your point of people saying like my goal is to feel better. So how do you describe this process to people and you know maybe even its purpose within this set of tasks?

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Yeah. So I worked with a client who came in, she had lost her spouse. Um, they had been married for you know over 30 years. Um, her her spouse died rather unexpectedly. Uh, and she asked the same question. When does it end? When does when does this pain end? And I asked her, when did you, thinking about your your husband, you and your husband, your relationship, when did you get over your wedding day? The excitement of your wedding day, the love of your wedding day, when did you get over that? Is that an experience that still lives with you? She said, Yeah. Well, that's grief. The same way that the beginning of your relationship brought these beautifully deep emotions. The changing and the end of this relationship, the grief is going to bring the same thing. These are both experiences. The day you got married, you became his wife. The day he died, you became his widow. You're a different version of yourself, and it's not going to end the same way that your excitement and joy when you think about your wedding day doesn't end. Grief doesn't end either. And when we can accept that, I think that it becomes a little bit less scary when we can accept, like, okay, and that's one of those realities of loss is it's not going to end. And that's okay. Um, I can be okay with the discomfort of knowing it's not gonna end. Our our culture is fixers. Uh, I mean, look at our, you know, look at our profession. People come to therapy thinking we're gonna fix problems, but we know we're not here to fix problems, we're here to process problems. But we are such a society and a culture of fixing, fixing, fixing. There is no fixing grief because nothing is wrong. Fixing grief would suggest that something is wrong with it, and there is nothing wrong. It's a natural human experience, and we're all going to experience. There's nothing to fix, there's only something to experience. And truly experiencing pain is the way that you heal. Um, Gabor Mate, he relayed a quote from one of his friends, and I can't remember the friend that he named, but um, and so this is not a Gabor Mate quote, but he says it, and I I just love it. He says, We shall be saved in an ocean of our tears. And I think, goodness, you know, and that the visual that I get is somebody kind of like they've they've expressed this profound sadness, they've cried, they've processed the pain, they've released that emotional pain. And their tears have healed them because they've processed it. They've um for that moment that they they may build up again and then come back, but for that moment, they've processed it, they've experienced it, and that is going to heal when we feel it. Um and well, people don't like that. Nobody wants to feel sad, nobody wants to feel sorrow. It does soften, though. It does.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

You know, one of the um sayings that I talk about a lot when I talk about grief is you know, pain plus resistance equals suffering. And so, you know, I think about that metaphor you had of the rock and how I think sometimes our resistance to the rock in our pocket is what creates the most suffering, right? Where you're just like, I hate this rock in my pocket. I wish that this rock didn't exist. I wish I never had to pick up this rock. I don't want to carry this rock anymore, right? Where it's like, if we're spending a lot of our time and energy. And listen, I'm not saying that's easy, right? Like I've had plenty of moments of resistance in my life that has led to my own suffering. But I think that that's part of what you're kind of talking about here, right? Is that acceptance of the rock in your pocket is it is such a critical step toward.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

Right. Well, and when we say acceptance of the rock in your pocket, again, we're not saying that you're okay with it. We're not saying that you like it. We are saying that the reality is the rock is in your pocket. Right, right. That's that's the reality, it's the facts. And that's one of those first tasks of mourning, or the six, the one of the six first needs of mourning is accepting that, not being okay with it, but just stating

Anger, Injustice, And Being Robbed

SPEAKER_00 27:00

this is the reality. I think this is where Elizabeth Cooler-Ross's stages of grief does come into play because there is anger around that. Yeah, it's not fair. And and I think of grief, you know, there is anger and grief, and and anger is a response to what? Anger is a response to an injustice, an unfairness, something that we think shouldn't have happened. The word bereavement and bereavement comes up a lot when we're talking about grief. But bere the word bereavement, if you look up the roots of that word, the roots of that word actually come from an old English word that means to rob or to um to take something of profound meaning. To rob. And I I talk about that with clients a lot. If you were walking down the street and somebody walked up to you, took your wallet, robbed you, you'd be angry. There's an injustice. Hopefully, that person would be caught, they might be brought to justice, and there would be an ending to that. Um, you would have an answer. Grief, when we're robbed of all of these things, when we're robbed of the person that we love, when we're robbed of the life we expected, when we're robbed of the future that we envisioned, there is nobody to blame. So sometimes in traumatic grief, there is. Um, but we our anger doesn't always have anywhere to go. And so that's also a big thing in grief, in grief processing is the anger. You know, how do we can how do we contain or hold this anger when it has nowhere to go? So really highlighting that, yes, anger is an expected emotion in grief because you were robbed of so many things. And that's not fair. You're right. It shouldn't be like this. They're supposed to be here.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

So we've been kind of talking about grief as an intrapersonal process

Why Grief Feels So Isolating

SPEAKER_01 28:55

so far, that this is what happens within within me. I'm curious if we take grief to a relational process. Oh, yeah. So I think that for the person who's grieving, it can feel like I don't have anyone to talk to, or I don't, I don't know how much I should or could be talking to people. People are tired of me talking about how sad I am, people are tired of me carrying this rock, right? But I think the other thing that happens for folks who are trying to love someone who's grieving is what am I supposed to say? And what am I supposed to do? And so can we unpack kind of those things from both sides of the grieving process?

SPEAKER_00 29:41

Yeah, absolutely. So some of the things that you just said there about if you are the person experiencing grief and you're yes, it feels very isolating because you are the only person experiencing your type of grief. You are the only person having this experience in your body, in your brain. Even if you know, let's say a family member dies, there's a death loss in the family. That person played a different role uniquely in everybody's life. But also think about what you said after the isolation part. I what I heard is basically I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable. I don't know how other people will be able to witness my grief.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:29

And that is the reason that I came to want to study grief more, is because I've witnessed people's grief, seen how other people have been uncomfortable around it, and that just perpetuates the isolation that people experience in grief. And we just we have to learn how to be uncomfortable. Yeah. There is nothing comfortable about grief. So be uncomfortable with it and and tolerate the fact that it's not pleasant. But that is the simplest way to support someone is to tolerate what's uncomfortable. And then from the perspective of somebody who's trying to support someone in grief, and I heard you ask this question that I hear so often what should I say? What if I say the wrong thing? I'll say this plainly. There is nothing

What To Say And Skip

SPEAKER_00 31:20

that you could say that's gonna make it worse. It's already really bad. Yeah, yeah. And so you could say, I don't know what to say, and that would even hit home with someone who's grieving. Don't overthink what you're gonna say. It's already really bad. It's already pretty painful. So don't think about that. Think about saying something, witnessing it, platitudes, but stay away from those.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

Can we just not? I mean, and I think to what you said earlier, it's like I think people say platitudes, like everything happens for a reason, they're in a better place now. You know, I think people say those things because they think it's gonna make somebody feel better, but it actually often does the opposite.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

Oh, it's totally dismissing. Yeah, um, you're you're putting an end to the conversation, they're in a better place now. Well, that sends the message like you should be okay. It should be okay. It's not. And really, we say those things because we are uncomfortable witnessing the other person's grief and we want it to end. So again, start to be able to tolerate the discomfort of witnessing grief. Here's some things you can say that are helpful. Here's some things that you can say that are helpful. Ask somebody to tell you about their loved one. Tell me about your mom. Tell me about your spouse, tell me about your child. People want to talk about the people that they've lost. And yes, it may be sad, but that's okay. We heal in the sadness, and so tell me about that and witness their grief. Stay steady in witnessing their grief. Manage your own discomfort through that. Um, letting them know like this makes sense. It makes sense that you feel that way. It makes sense that you're angry. Like I said, saying something along the lines of, I don't have the right words, I don't know what to say because there is nothing that I can say that will make this better. Sometimes that's the best thing you can say. Because it recognizes, like, yeah, there's nothing to do here except let it suck.

SPEAKER_01 33:24

Yeah, I love kind of these suggestions. I think people often appreciate, you know, an expert who says, yeah, this is an okay thing to say. And I think one thing that I want to lay out here, and I'm curious how you encourage people with this. You know, one thing that I discourage people from saying is, you know, let me know what you need, or let me know how I can support you. And so you're making all the faces right now, Jillian. So I think your reaction is similar to mine when um and and listen, again, like I have said things, I have said these things. And I know that I've said these things because I am more like, I need an end to this conversation. I need like a I need to feel good that I showed my support. I need to do the right thing. Right, exactly. And so I just wonder if you offer folks an alternative to that.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

Yeah,

Practical Help That Lands

SPEAKER_00 34:30

some of the most beneficial ways that I have seen like people take charge in these uh profound grief experiences is well, first of all, not asking the person who's grieving those questions because they don't know what they need. If they knew, they would do it. Um, what they need is their person back. So you can't make that happen. So, what are the other ways that you can alleviate stress or uh other like daily tasks? Bring food. Um, eliminate the need to, you know, I think that that's like a very traditional thing that we do is we bring food over, but also casserole, right, Jillian? Right. A good casserole, a good meal train. But also going and and this mirrors kind of what what I would tell somebody who's trying to support somebody who's just had a baby too. How can you go over to their house and I don't know, clean the bathroom or do a load of laundry without being asked? Just look around, see what needs to be done that they so that they can just be in their grief. Um, can you come over and see if their fridge needs cleaned out, if they need any groceries? If you're if you go to the grocery store, can you pick up some extra eggs and milk and just say, hey, I picked some up. Here it is for you. Here's some essentials. Um something that allows that person just to grieve instead of doing all of these other tasks that they also have to do on a daily basis, that feels supportive. Um, also just sitting and listening, you know, being that person who just witnesses. So there's very concrete things you can do by alleviating stress and just think like, what would I need done around my home if I did it feel good, if I wasn't feeling in 100% shape, what would I need done around my home? And then also just witnessing it, you know, sitting in your discomfort with the person. I've seen those things be very beneficial. I've I had a friend who traumatically lost her husband and she has three children, three very young children. I remember going to her house one day to help, and on the front door, somebody had put a sign that said, sign up, basically. Like it's if it's Thursday, you go in and you check the laundry. If today is Wednesday, you go in and take out the trash and take it to the curb. If it's Tuesday, you clean out the fridge. And it was like before you even enter, you have a job to do. Because this woman, this mother, this widow, all that she needs to do is grieve, support her children, and all these other things. Like, don't even ask. She doesn't need to tell you. Here's what you do. And somebody had thought to make that for her front door. She didn't do it. Somebody else had had made that for her front door. And it was, I mean, it was, it was like this is so organized and so helpful.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

I I mean, I love these kind of tangible suggestions for folks. You know, I um I've talked with folks about you know different ideas for these alleviation of the stress of daily tasks. Like you said, meal trains, um, gift cards, pizza, ordering pizza, grocery delivery, uh offering to basic for folks to be able to get out of the house, maybe a cleaning service, oh yeah, just to offer to pay for cleaning service. And then I think it's fair to kind of remind folks to kind of fix or solve or some bad save, but more to walk alongside the person who can then. I mean, the goal is to alleviate the stress of those daily tasks. And so I think about someone who might find it more stressful if a cleaning service came in, right? Like the goal is not, well, this is how I want to help. It's more like, okay, here are three things that I want to do for you, which would feel like it would take some stress off of you right now.

SPEAKER_00 38:40

Right, right. And the other thing that I want to make sure to mention is it's great

Support After The First Month

SPEAKER_00 38:45

and helpful and supportive if you do these things in the immediate aftermath of the loss. Also, also do it six months. Yeah. Um, maybe it's not like the same, but you're still showing up six months after the loss, a year after the loss. There's acute grief, early acute grief is what is the is the grief experienced immediately after the loss. There's early grief, which research shows lasts for about two years. And then there's um the long-term grief, the the experience of grief that's integrated into your life, which just goes on. But two years, that is an adjustment period. And and like people still need support, but people usually drop off after a couple of weeks. We see the funeral as a bookend to like, okay, and it's over. It's not like the movies. Someone doesn't die, you don't play in the funeral, everybody goes home, and then we move on. It's not like that. So check on your people six months after the loss, a year after the loss, continue to show up in those same ways because their life has changed forever. And so, how can you integrate yourself into their changed life forever?

SPEAKER_01 39:57

I mean, I think this might be a good place to sort of round out for today. I think this is one of the myths around loving someone who's experienced grief, right? That, well, I don't want to bring it up because I don't want to make them sad. I don't want to make them cry. So people tend not to talk about the rock in the person's pocket anymore, right? And so I love that you bring this up around, you know, hey, it's great to love and support and show up and witness in that first month, but that rock doesn't change, it doesn't shift. It does and even adapting to it doesn't make it easier necessarily to carry, or there are moments where it just is so overwhelming. And so, you know, one of the things I was thinking as we were talking about that metaphor is like, if you encounter a friend, right? Like if you and I were gonna go have lunch together and you had this giant rock in your pocket, I would see the rock in your pocket.

SPEAKER_02 40:58

It would be exactly.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

But I think I think there is this discomfort in us saying, hey, how's that rock going? You know, how's the rock in your pocket going? And so I think I think there are two messages that I want to share, and then I want to hear you're kind of like rounding out about this kind of long-term support of people. Um that for me, there's two things. One, don't be afraid to continue to ask people to share the stories about their grief and their loved one. Um, I think, like you said, people are constantly thinking, constantly adapting, constantly experiencing um this loss, especially if it was a profound loss that impacted their life greatly. We can continue to do that and ask those things. And then the the flip side of that, though, is also don't let it be the only thing that is a part of your relationship with that person. And so I think there's a balance of saying, hey, I care about you and this grief, but I also care about the the million other things that are going on in your life, also. And I think finding a balance for folks really takes intentionality and awareness of how that person is doing. And so those are kind of two rounding out thoughts that I have around this idea.

SPEAKER_00 42:24

What other rounding out thoughts do you have? Coming back to this idea that when when you said um, I don't want to say the wrong thing, I don't want to make them sad, I don't want to make them cry. Yeah, let them decide if it's gonna make them sad, let them decide if it's gonna make them cry. Maybe they want that. Maybe they want to talk about their person and feel those like dual emotions of remembering and sadness. Like those can exist. And maybe they want to feel that, maybe that feels good. They need that release. So let them decide. Don't make that decision for them and then withhold. Say the person's name, you know, continue to say the person's name. Don't avoid bringing up the person's name because you're afraid it might trigger something. Say the person's name. Um, and ask, just ask questions about the person so that they're so that their memory can live on. That's part of like this continuing bond that we create with people that we've lost. And there's a lot of like, it's a lot of traditions around continuing bonds that we have, but allow that to happen because that's another way to integrate grief into your life. Continue the bond, continue the relationship with a person even after love and even after loss in a way that allows you to keep living and loving.

SPEAKER_01 43:44

I

Finding Jillian And Closing

SPEAKER_01 43:45

love that. Okay, Jillian, tell people how they can find you and follow you in the work you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 43:51

Yeah, I own a private practice called True Growth Counseling and Consulting. Again, I'm based out of Madison, Wisconsin. I do have a website. It's actually under New Growth Consulting. But my counseling name is True Growth Counseling and Consulting. You can find me on Instagram. It's True Growth Counseling WI. So sometimes I post about grief. Sometimes they post about other ways that some of these more complex emotions show up in our life. But feel free to look me up, reach out. Grief is a topic that absolutely needs to be witnessed and talked about more.

SPEAKER_01 44:33

I um couldn't agree more. And I'm just so grateful to have had this conversation with you because kind of our way to come back to your um kind of creation, opportunity, and caring card for the day. I think, I think you did that today. And I am grateful that you shared uh those things with us today because, like you, I just think the more we talk about things, the more we bring light to things, the less shame and stigma that exists around it. And that's always good.

SPEAKER_00 45:06

Yeah, and we're caring for grief. We're putting our hand in the pocket, we're touching that rock with care and a gentleness. So I hope that it feels a little bit softer today.

SPEAKER_01 45:17

I love that. Listener, thank you for being here. Thank you for tuning in. And as always, stay safe and stay well. Ciao.