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Awakening Souls
Step into a world where magic meets meaning, and awakenings come alive. Join three professional intuitives as they weave their wisdom, insights, and guidance into conversations that will stir your soul and ignite your spirit. Together, they explore spirituality, intuitive gifts, personal growth, and the profound journey of self-discovery.
Each episode invites you to unlock your inner magic, embrace your authentic self, and step boldly onto your unique path. With heartfelt stories, transformational tools, and a sprinkle of the unexpected, there's no telling where these empowering and magical conversations might take you.
Are you ready to awaken to the extraordinary life you were meant to live? Your journey starts here. 🌟
Awakening Souls
Episode 88: Resilience and Legacy: Navigating Grief with Dr. Kimberly Harms
Imagine a life shaped by adversity and resilience, where love and loss coexist in a journey that inspires others to face their own challenges with courage. Dr. Kimberly Harms, our remarkable guest, shares her deeply personal experiences, from being born affected by Thalidomide to enduring the unimaginable grief of losing her son, Eric, to suicide. Her insights reveal how she has turned her life's hardships into a mission to help others navigate the inevitable realities of death with dignity and compassion.
We explore the intricate paths of grief and legacy with Dr. Harms, touching on how acceptance can ignite healing even amidst enduring scars. Discover how simple acts and everyday interactions contribute to the legacy we leave behind, as Dr. Harms shares touching anecdotes from her life and experiences in Rwanda. Her reflections highlight the enduring impact of love and resilience in shaping not just personal legacies, but also those of entire communities.
The conversation broadens to discuss the power of open dialogues about death, especially with future generations, to cultivate resilience and understanding. Dr. Harms' experiences in her dental practice illustrate how supportive communities can foster healing and empathy, transforming workplaces and communities alike. Through her book, "Are You Ready: How to Build a Legacy to Die For," Dr. Harms extends a compassionate guide for navigating grief and building meaningful legacies, affirming that joy has a place even in the shadow of loss. Join us for this heartfelt conversation where the deeply personal meets the universally profound.
Dr. Kimberly Harm's website:
https://www.drkimberlyharms.com/
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https://www.patreon.com/c/AwakeningSoulsPodcast
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Welcome to Awakening Souls, a spiritual podcast for the mystics, magical thinkers, sensitives and spiritual seekers. We are here to explore all things spiritual, from navigating your awakening, developing your psychic gifts and so much more. Together with our combined experiences, we hope to help guide you on your path to reconnecting with your soul and the beautiful life that comes after. So come join us on the magical journey of exploring your Awakening Souls.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Awakening Souls podcast. Today we are shining a spotlight on Dr Kimberly Harms, a person whose journey has been shaped by personal challenges that have led to a profound understanding of the human experience. Dr Harms has faced her own trials that sparked a transformative process that created a passion for helping others navigate one of life's most difficult topics death. Through her experiences, she discovered the importance of planning for death, but maybe not in the way that you think. Join us as we dive in to Dr Harms' remarkable story, exploring how her challenges fueled her mission to ensure that everyone has the tools they need to approach life and death with dignity, clarity and love. So welcome, dr Kimberly Harms. We are so glad to have you here. Thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you for having me All right, so let's jump in. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to your current mission to help people to prepare for death in a unique way?
Speaker 3:Well, I'm 68 years old, so I've had a nice long journey so far, and when you get to be my age, a lot of stuff happens to you, right, just because you've been there long enough. I was born. I was missing some fingers due to thalidomide. My mother had taken some thalidomide and I lost my most wonderful mother unbelievable, kind, caring, compassionate mother. My parents were divorced. My mother ended up finding out from my father that thalidomide was likely the cause of my missing fingers, and so when she found out, she went into an institution where she stayed the rest of her life. And when I was 17, we then moved to my father and stepmother, who really wasn't expecting us, so that did not work out well. But at 17 this when I was 17 this amazing woman took her own life. She was bipolar, so that was my first big brush with with death went on, I ended up going to dental school. Believe it or not, it was this really cute guy named Jim Harms who I met my first week at school. So I ended up going to dental school and marrying him, which was the whole point of my going to dental school at the time. Please don't use my example as an example. In 1974, this is what you did. But anyway, my husband and I, we graduated, turned out. I loved dentistry and we started a little practice in Farmington, minnesota. We were in the commissioned officers in the public health service for a while before that and everything was going well until 2007,. You know, until it does it, everything's going well. Until it stops going well, right. And so in 2007, my brother passed away at 56 from a sudden heart attack. A week later, my husband was diagnosed with liver cancer and not expected to live for very long. Six months later he ended up getting a miracle a liver transplant. So yay, this new life. But then our whole entire world just fell apart completely on January 31st of 2009, when my beautiful, wonderful of 2009, when my beautiful, wonderful, loving son, eric, our youngest child of three, took his own life 45 minutes after a breakup with his girlfriend.
Speaker 3:And Eric was this just amazing kid? He was brilliant. He was a National Merit Scholar. He was recruited by Columbia University. He was at Columbia for his first semester. He was on top of the world. He was recruited by Columbia University. He was at Columbia for his first semester. He was on top of the world. He'd been elected to student government there Like, who does that? It's just Columbia, right? Who gets elected to student government? And he participated in the plays because he loved plays and he was in the jazz program and that's why he loved Columbia, because you could be in the jazz program and study engineering at the same time. Where else can you do that? Right? But again, 45 minutes after a breakup with his girlfriend, he took his life.
Speaker 3:Two weeks into his second semester and we were completely blindsided. When he had just been home for Christmas, he was on top of the world. He'd even made the Dean's List in engineering. He was so excited, so happy, everything was wonderful. And then two weeks later he was gone.
Speaker 3:So we had to just figure out what the world was about, because our whole impression, anyone that goes through a loss like that understands that. You know, you can't eat, you can't sleep, you can hardly walk, you're in that zombie phase. You're in the bottom of the pit of despair, with maybe a little, you know, bit of, maybe a nostril kind of breathing in the mud, you know trying to get out. I mean, that's how it is when you have a catastrophic loss. And oh boy, you know, I didn't think I was, I was just going to stay in the grief pit because I thought I might as well just live here because I keep getting thrown back down. Right, you know, you try to get out. It was just a horrible time, but I had something happen to me there that was such a gift.
Speaker 3:It was a few weeks after Eric died and I was still in that zombie phase. You know that zombie phase of grief when you're like dead on the inside, just you know, trying to smile on the outside and get through life. And I was coming out of my dental office and I saw my husband talking with his cousin and they were engaged in a really serious discussion. So I was kind of walking out in my zombie state and all of a sudden he came towards me very quickly, wagging his finger in my face I'm a grieving mother, right, this is unusual. Wagging his finger in my face and he said to me don't you ever let your remaining children feel that they are not enough. Don't do that to them. And it struck me like a lightning bolt because he had lost his brother at about the same age as Eric and he felt he lost his parents too. He felt that they could not attend to their living children because they were focused on mourning the loss of their dead one.
Speaker 3:And that changed my life, because I was ready to. You know, I was ready to give up and live in that pit. You know, that's where I was headed, and had he not said that, I might have suffered the same fate. That's where I was headed, and had he not said that, I might have suffered the same fate. And so I became determined at that moment to kick and fight and scream and claw my way out of that grief pit. And it took a long time. It's not an easy thing to do. It took a long time, but I can breathe the fresh air again. Eventually I got to breathe the fresh air again. I got to live in joy. I got to find a place for my son in my heart. You know where he's there, but the shroud of grief is no longer affecting me. And the reason I'm doing podcasts is because I want people to know it is so worth it to fight your way out. You're going to fight your way out. You might go up and then you're going to come down. You're going to go up and you can come down, but it's so important to fight. It's a battle. It doesn't happen by itself.
Speaker 3:And then, a few years later, my husband, who was basically suffering a broken heart now, after Eric, died he passed away four years ago. And then, as a widow, I had to learn to re-identify myself and figure out okay, who am I now? What do I do now? I'm not a daughter, I'm not a mother of a son, I'm not a wife anymore. What the heck? What do I do now between menopause and death? And so what do I do now? Right, I had many, many little angels, just wonderful, wonderful human angels around me that supported me and took care of me, attended to me, helped me, and I ended up you know, I'm retired from dentistry but I started writing.
Speaker 3:So I wrote two widow's books they're devotionals for women and then, after my husband died, I thought, oh, my goodness, I'm looking at the grief around me, the grief that people are suffering around me, and I realized that we don't get trained for grief. We don't get trained emotionally for what to do after people die. Nobody talks to us about that. And I realized that we don't get trained for grief. We don't get trained emotionally for what to do after people die. Nobody talks to us about that. And that's kind of ridiculous. What the heck. Everyone goes through it, right.
Speaker 3:So I wrote a book. I just started researching, researching, researching. I became a death doula on the way and I wrote a book called Are you Ready how to Build a Legacy to Die For, and the focus of that book is to leave a legacy. Of course, you can leave some financial legacy we all do that, right but the legacy I focus on is the emotional legacy. I'm encouraging people to do what they can now to build resilience and to build strong bonds between their family members and prepare their legacy in a way that their family is stronger after they die and doesn't fall into conflict, because over half of families report a conflict around a death because the person who died didn't really prepare. So that's my story, wow.
Speaker 2:I can't even imagine going through all of that. And you've come out the other side and you're standing strong and now you are really working to help others find that same inner strength. And I did read your book and I found it fascinating. And one thing I did notice, which you just touched on, is that some people do seem to be very resilient and can work through the grief, and other people not so much. So what makes the difference?
Speaker 3:How can a person fight?
Speaker 3:through that grief what's really important to know when it comes to grief, we need to accept that there are so many differences. When my son died, I could not go into my son's room for three years. I couldn't. I just every time I went past his room my heart stopped. I just couldn't even go there. My husband would go there every night and sit on his bed, I mean, and he would like to listen to recordings of him, and I couldn't hear his voice.
Speaker 3:So I had to learn, first of all, to respect the fact that we all grieve differently. It's an individual thing and just like anything else. My job, I think, is just to encourage people to keep fighting, and some people can never get out. But I hope that I just want to encourage them to keep fighting, because living in joy is so much worth it. It's much better addressed than down in that grief pit. It's so much better, is so much worth it. It's much better addressed than down in that grief pit. It's so much better.
Speaker 3:And so you do it, not just for yourself, but you do it for everybody around you, because everybody around you is affected by your grief. But then again, don't judge, and you can't put a time limit on it, and I was doing that myself before I went through it and I sure learned my lesson. So we just have to accept that everyone's around. Everyone around us is going to be different, but I hope that we can all do what so many people did for me and what I hope to do for others is to just give that hand at the top of that pit to just help them get up. And the more we, the more people we can get out of that pit.
Speaker 2:Oh, excellent. The other thing that I really noticed is in your book you talk about mourning versus grief, and can you speak to that a little bit?
Speaker 3:Yes, yes. Well, a year after Eric passed away, I developed nerve damage in my hand and I went to the Mayo Clinic thinking, oh, you know, they're going to fix this. And they said, oh, you're done, you can no longer practice dentistry. So then my identity as a professional and I was the primary breadwinner because my husband was sick that just went up in smoke. So I had some time on my hands and I became a grief counselor and I worked at that for a few years and during that time the most important thing I learned because we all know about the phases of grief, the stages of grief, kuba Ross.
Speaker 3:But I had never before heard about the tasks of mourning, and I like the idea of tasks because it gives you a feeling that you have some control and you can work at it right. So the tasks of mourning, called warden Warden's task of mourning. The first one is acceptance, which is interesting because Kula Rasa ends at acceptance, so the mourning begins at acceptance. So you have to accept that it happened, you have to accept. I have to accept I'm a widow, I'm alone now. I have to accept it. Sometimes it's hard to accept things. Sometimes you wake up in the morning and you still have to be reminded that you know the nightmare is living. You know not when you're sleeping. So it takes time to accept that the second stage is a really tough one. It's the grief processing and that is really hard and I always kind of thought I would like to just go to sleep, you know, during the grief process and just wake up in 20 years and I'd be all better right.
Speaker 3:But you wouldn't be better. You have to work through it. That's the pits I don't like that part, but that's a part of the acceptance is you have to work through the grief and that's where you have to fight. Once that's done, then you need to adapt to your new surroundings. You know, I adapt to my life without my son and then, as a widow, adapt to my life without my husband. That's a lot of adaptation when you are living alone for the first time in your life.
Speaker 3:And then the final one, and this is kind of the goal. And I think I like to have goals Like what is that point where I know I kind of have arrived? And that is when you can take that child and that husband and that mother who you love so much and put them in your heart, in a place where you can talk about them and be grateful that they lived and be grateful of the contribution to your life and where that shroud is not affecting you anymore. You can live your life with joy out there and then have that special place in your heart for your loved one. And that's the goal. And I love the warden's task of mourning. I latched onto that because it gave me something to work for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm the same way. Give me a list that I can work myself through and check those things off. And I mean, I know, when it doesn't work that way it's not always linear, but I like that too. So I totally, I really enjoyed that part of your book. That was fascinating for me.
Speaker 3:So does anybody ever fully heal from grief? Ooh, that is a tough, it is a tough answer. I don't know. I think we can move forward.
Speaker 3:There are times I will have to tell you that I now have six grandchildren and when I'm with them, when I think of them, you know, when I'm hugging them, I'm and I feel completely free and joyful and as if there's I couldn't have any more joy in my heart. So at that moment I feel so is that healing? I don't know. You know that I can actually have those experiences. But I think you, I think you're just kind of battle scarred. I think it's a scar. And so can a scar heal? Yeah, it can heal, but it's still there, right. And I think that's how I feel, because certainly there are moments or triggers that bring me back. But 95 percent of my life I can live with joy in the moment, without feeling that shroud, you know, and anyone that's been through it knows how you feel that big shroud that just kind of holds you down. So so I don't know, I don't know if that's technically, if there's a scar there, is that completely healed? I don't know, it's not like it's disappeared, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:No, that's, and we have been on this podcast actually talking about grief and death recently. We've done two episodes within the last month about that. So the timing for you to come on has just been perfect, because we are trying to grapple with these really difficult questions and it's there is no one right answer, but it's it's good to have discussion about them. Let's move on and talk about building a legacy, because when I saw the title of your book, my first, you know, impression was oh gosh, we're going to talk about wills and insurance, powers of attorney and blah, blah, blah and you know, not that that stuff isn't important, because it completely is.
Speaker 2:But you know, I just like oh. But then when I got into it and I started reading it, I'm like oh, this is a whole different take on how to prepare for death. So can you talk about how to build a legacy, maybe in a different way?
Speaker 3:Yes, we build a legacy with every interaction we have, with every person that we have. That's our legacy and I thought of writing the book originally thinking about the legacy my mother left me. I only had her for six years. Originally thinking about the legacy my mother left me. I only had her for six years and yet I think everything that's resilient to me and that's good in me came from those six years of love that she gave me. And there's some research that shows an attachment theory, which is that when you're young, those first formative years are so critical and you're being able to form attachments and healthy relationships with people later on. So she left with me an amazing legacy of love that's going to stay with me throughout my life and which is the most important legacy and I talk about other legacies and if you think about it, I think all of you, if you think back on, all the amazing people you've met in your life. They might be simple people, but they're pretty amazing, and I started looking at the amazing people I've met in my life and I started writing about them.
Speaker 3:I've spent some time in Rwanda. I have 65 libraries. Eric Harn's Memorial Library is in Rwanda, so I talk about the Rwandans who overcame genocide and they were my grief counselors. They were my best grief counselors because I thought I live in a very wealthy country, a decent life, I have all my needs met. I lost one son, I still have two, I have a husband. Yet here I was with these women who had lost everything, lost their families, their homes were burned down, everything was destroyed. And here are these women who not only lost everything and are ministering to me because when I told them I lost my son, I was in like Flint. They were just, you know, they were hugging me. They dance. I'm not a good dancer because I grew up, you know. So we don't dance, but I'm not a good dancer. They were dancing. I mean, I had to dance with them. It was very hard, but they dance together, they love each other and they form cooperatives.
Speaker 3:Now, the cooperatives are very interesting. The cooperatives are Tutsi women the ones that were targeted and Hutu women. Husbands typically had done the killing and they realized that they were both widows to some degree, because the Tutsi women had lost their husbands to death. The Hutu women had lost their husbands to jail because they were in jail. If you were a killer, you went to jail, which I think was part of their recovery. Yet they worked together and they formed cooperatives and depended on each other to help each other live. And I looked at that example of forgiveness, that example of finding joy in life no matter what horrific things happen to you. And they gave me, they were my role models to try to emulate as I tried to move forward in my grief journey.
Speaker 1:Wow. I think that speaks volumes to also the idea of having community around you for healing and how important it is to have community, and I know I've been through grief, not quite like yourself, but I just recently lost my dad just a few months ago. Jennifer and I have both been. We're a family, so we both lost quite a few family members in the last year and a half, and the one thing that we have is each other. We keep coming back to each other, sharing memories with each other, and we've got a great group of friends, and I would definitely say that without the group of friends that I have and without the family that I have left, I would not be able to get through the amount of grief that I have felt in losing my family members, and I also know how much I wanted to isolate myself and be completely alone in times of grief, and so I think community is a huge part of healing for anything.
Speaker 3:And one of the big points of my book, one of the main reasons I wrote about the legacy and the last third of the book is just a workbook to get all your stuff done, your will and all these things, because you have to get that done.
Speaker 3:To get all your stuff done, your will and all these things, because you have to get that done is to encourage people to get their affairs in order and leave strong emotional bonds with their families, because so many families are torn apart because their mother, their father, didn't plan properly and everything is controlled now by the state and who gets what. And then you see so many times these relationships. The most important thing you have is your family and these relationships are torn apart because of poor legacy planning. So another goal behind this book is to help people understand that you need to do this to keep your family together and to pass that legacy of strong family bonds which, by the way, multiple studies have shown is the best predictor of happiness or strong relationships. So if you want your family happy, building strong relationships is more important than leaving a money.
Speaker 1:Y'all. I have to applaud that one. Yes, yes, yes, I'm a psychic medium and I do so much work with people. One of the things that one of the questions that comes up quite often is what is my purpose? What am I here to do? How can I make the best of this life? And it's always, it always comes back to the relationships you have right now and those being the most important things, and those are where you have the most impact on other people, and then that ripple effect you have because of the impact you've had in those relationships carries on into other relationships. So I just had to applaud that. What you said is beautiful.
Speaker 2:Thank, you All right. So building strong family relationships before you leave and having your affairs in order is kind of like the best combination to leave your family standing strong, correct.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, I go even further because I want to do this. Well, this is like my last big job here, and so I think it's important to talk to your family about grief and about death and what's going to happen, including the children, because I had these six precious little grandchildren that I love with my whole heart and I talked to them about Pop-Pop and his death, because that was hard on them, it was very difficult for them and we talk about them all the time.
Speaker 3:And then I talk about the fact that you know, at some point I'm going to be gone and I just kind of talk, but I want you just to go and have a happy life, and I know that I made an impression on them. I have had success at this because I was talking to my little redheaded little granddaughter, heidi, at the table. She was about seven at the time and she looked up with me and she said oh, nana, if what happened to Pop-Pop happened to you, and I say oh, heidi, what do you mean? Do you mean if I were to die? She said, yeah, if you were to die, and I said okay, go ahead.
Speaker 3:What question do you have? She goes well, nana, if you were to die, can we still go to Disney World? I said, yes, you can go to Disney World, you can have a happy time. I want you to thrive, I want you to flourish, I want you to have a good life. That's how you honor me. And so this is working, this plan is working, so I think we need to talk about that and just let them know they're going to have a life after us, so that they're not in such shock Because we are kind of a death denying culture and we kind of act sometimes like we're just going to go on forever. If we eat right and we do all the right things, we'll just live forever, and then we get shocked when somebody dies. So I think we need to talk to our children and our grandchildren about that.
Speaker 3:And that's how we keep that resilient generations, you know, in the future to come, just keep them resilient so they're ready to face these things.
Speaker 2:And then the hope is, as they grow and raise their own families, that pattern is already established, so that generations down the line begin to accept and be prepared for death. More and more it becomes normal to talk about it, rather than normal to just be all hush hush.
Speaker 1:I wonder if also having those conversations, if, if it would lessen the intensity of grief when somebody does pass. Or maybe the shock, or the shock yeah.
Speaker 3:That's kind of my purpose in talking with them. I want them to know that death is part of life. Grandmas and grandpas typically die. I kind of want to go first. I don't want to go through being out of line again. That's much better for me to go. Grandmas and grandpas typically die. That's part of life and you need to be able to have the strength to love them and honor them but then thrive and live your life.
Speaker 3:There's so much grief and there's so much guilt involved sometimes with living a life with joy after you've had a catastrophic loss. I mean, and I felt it too Like how could I, how could I? The first time I laughed after Eric died? How can I laugh? My son's dead, right, you know, how could I? And we need to get over that. That's not healthy. We need to understand that we love them, we honor them. We're going to be sad for a while, but then we are going to move forward with our lives, that the best way they can honor us is to do that, because that's what we want. We want to see them thrive and flourish and I think they need to realize that we don't want them sad.
Speaker 1:And your loved ones on the other side. I mean, being a medium, I know that they're still watching their star, still participating in your lives, especially in those happy moments, so they're not missing a single second. So they want to see us happy too and living our lives to the absolute fullest and smiling and having joy. That's part of their mission on the other side is to make sure that we keep living, and that's been the premise of your message throughout this entire podcast interview so far.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So in your book you talked about lots of different kinds of legacies. Oh my goodness, there were so many different kinds of legacies and of course you know I think the family and the community is definitely one of the most important ones. But what other types of legacies can we focus on and leave for our families?
Speaker 3:types of legacies can we focus on and leave for our families? Well, my husband grew up in a family of 14, 14 children on a farm, and their family left a legacy of appreciating hard work and working together. They had to work together to keep their family going, to keep the farm going. So hard work is definitely one. Resilience is one Laughing at yourself. Now you know, as a speaker, you have to learn how to laugh at yourself, because you know you'd be dead if you got too many mistakes right. So laughing at yourself is a very important thing and learning to be happy and to laugh is a great gift. So laughter is one of the legacies you can leave. Faith is a legacy Friendship.
Speaker 3:I've been blessed with wonderful friends who've helped me through so many things in my life. Art is one I do porcelain painting. After I had to stop practicing dentistry, we had taken a trip to Pompeii. We realized that those tiles in Pompeii that were covered up by volcanic ash and all these horrible things were just as colorful and brilliant as they were thousands of years ago. And you just wonder wow, that was great. So I, I'm doing porcelain painting. So if, if my, if my now, of course, porcelain's not quite as popular as it was a few years ago, but but anything that I've done now will last forever. Breaks, you know so, so that. So that's my little artistic thing that I've done now will last forever. So that's my little artistic thing.
Speaker 3:I paint little things for my kids, I paint China, I paint their dinnerware, I do all kinds of things and again I'm hoping someone said it's coming back, but right now the baby boomers as baby boomers, we are mourning the loss of the value of personal dinnerware, but anyway, so I'm doing that. That's, that's one of my legacies. So they'll have. They'll have something that I've. Art itself, uh, leonardo da Vinci he's got some amazing art that he did thousands of years ago that we are still enjoying today, uh, and are moving us today. So art is is certainly one. My son, eric, was in theater. So I think theater, learning to do theater, is a great artistic legacy you can pass on that helps people in the future. So anything that you do, any interaction that you have, can turn out to be a legacy. I put Rwanda in as a legacy of peace. If you're a peacemaker, that's a big legacy.
Speaker 3:Learn to be a peacemaker. So almost every great skill you have you can turn into a legacy if you teach the next generation.
Speaker 2:I love that. It's all about living life to the fullest and leaving the world a better place than you found it, and helping future generations on down the line. So it's taking the focus off of just you as a person, and now it's you as influencing your community in such a beautiful way.
Speaker 3:And, interestingly enough, you know we have a society that tends to focus on what the world can give you. You know you want to aspire to be rich and have boats and do all these crazy things and, of course, the studies keep saying well, that's not happiness. Happiness is a relationship, and when you live instead of living with, what's the world going to give me? If you change it around and you live with your legacy in mind, what can I give the world? It's pretty amazing, because now you're developing relationships with other people, so your joy and happiness level goes up when you stop focusing on yourself and you start focusing on other people. It's crazy how that works, but it does work.
Speaker 1:My whole body just lit up with goosebumps. Yes, you know, I had done a channel at one point where I was sitting on mother earth. I was sitting on the ground and I was feeling stressed out about what I was doing with my life, where my career was going, and I kept hearing this question pop up in my mind of what am I going to give the world? Not what can the world give me, but what can I give the world, how can I serve the world? And the minute I asked that question out loud, I felt this just flood of good emotion come to me, because you're right, it's not about what we're taking from the world, but what we can give, and that's giving in relationships to other people, what we're giving in our legacy, as you've spoke of, what we're leaving behind in our careers and what we're leaving behind with our children and our family.
Speaker 1:And I think we take for granted a little bit about what that really means If we focus on some of the smaller aspects of what we're leaving behind, starting with those things that we feel are not as I'm going to say, quote important, but those relationships we have that we're fostering. Right, because I feel like sometimes, when we're thinking about what we're leaving behind and what's our legacy. It's usually like what's this big, grand thing that I'm going to leave behind, that the world is going to know me for? And it's not about that. It's about what am I going to leave behind with the people right here, right now, in front of me, because those are the things that matter the most, good Lord.
Speaker 3:I hope I made sense through that. Absolutely, absolutely. We're kind of mixed up. We need to change our focus to just that and with the again the understanding that that not only brings other people joy, brings you joy, win win situation.
Speaker 2:So the other thing that I noticed as I was looking through your website is that you work with other dental practices to help them work through grief or prepare for grief. Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 3:Yes, especially before I wrote the book. I'm kind of focusing on legacy now, but before I wrote the book and now I still do a few of those. So what happens in a dental office? You know we my husband and I went through that. We were in our dental office and we had this catastrophic loss and now you have to go back to your office. And Eric was very much loved in our community. People knew who he was, he was very much loved, and so we would go there and we were in a small town so we knew everybody. So as we were practicing we would have our, you know, seven, eight, nine patients a day that would come to get the treatment done and at the beginning of the first six months, of course they would be talking about I'm so sorry for your loss, I'm so sorry about Eric, and of course that was wonderful because they really were showing their love for us.
Speaker 3:But it was a trigger. And then we would go do the hygiene checks and we would have the same thing happen and so we would have 30, 40 times a day. We had to cope with the first meeting with somebody, which was hard. So I kind of worked with my team and we had some other issues in our office. As you do when you have 12 people, people have things come up and we learned to kind of come up with a system to help each other. First thing we had to do as a team decide that we are here as a group and we're going to help this person. This person is injured for a while. You know it's injured for a bit and so what can we do to help them? And so I helped teams develop programs where the injured person is kind of watched over by the rest of the team and sometimes you might have an event after catastrophic loss where you just have to go up to the crying room. We had a crying room upstairs which was a bathroom with Visine and you know, and makeup remover.
Speaker 2:I love that. Everybody needs a crying room.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah right. So if someone needed to go upstairs they'd be covered. So we're out, we're covering them. So I just came up with some comforting things you can do to help people that are going through tough times.
Speaker 3:And one of the things in the dental office that's kind of hard sometimes is if one of your patients has a traumatic loss and then they're coming back to the office and maybe they lost their husband that you also treated and this is your first encounter, and so we were training people to. First thing to say to them is I am so glad you're here, to just acknowledge that they're here, because when you're in that zombie stage you kind of feel like you're not there, you know. And so to recognize I'm so glad you're here and then address the loss but let them know we are so glad you're here. So a lot of things like that, just little tips to help them get through tough times when people in their offices suffer a loss or when their patients suffer a loss because you become a community, especially those small town practices, that's really important.
Speaker 1:I'm just feeling very touched by everything that you're talking about. That really is leaving a legacy. That is absolutely leaving a legacy and all. And also teaching people how to deal with grief, how to do it in in these settings, especially the workplace yeah, Cause we don't know how to do it in the workplace.
Speaker 3:It's the workplace as we just ignore it, or we, you know, we, just we don't know. We don't know what to do, we don't know what to say, so we don't do or say anything, and sometimes that makes it worse. So I think that you you're in and you talked about community. I think one of the issues that, although we have online communities, in the past I think we were more focused, we had more community events, people were in groups, a little bit more people that were going through similar things, and now we tend to be a little more isolated, especially after COVID. And that's really difficult when you're trying to work out grief, because there's something about being with people, laughing, with people going out and doing regular things, because as soon as you have that loss, you kind of walk outside and you're like how could the whole world not stop right now and suffer with me? They're all having a great time and I'm all by myself. So I think we're losing some of that community, and the more we can bring community back into helping with grief, the better. And so a dental office is a small community.
Speaker 3:Your workplace is a community If we can learn to adjust our community to compensate and help someone that's going through grief, and understand what they're going through and give them a little break like a crying room when they need it, I think the better. We're going to be able to not only help that person, but then what you do. We're living in times where it's hard to keep employees right. One of the best things you can do as a business is to foster that environment where you're taking care of people, and I think that's one of the best ways you can increase loyalty in your office. So again, it's a win, win, win, win situation. It's a win for the person suffering, it's a win for the office, it's a win for the employer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's huge. I love the thought of let's teach people how to handle grief, let's teach people how to interact with one another, to support each other, because, yeah, I can think of so many times I've gone to a funeral or a wake and I just feel uncomfortable because I don't know what to say and I don't want to say the wrong thing that's going to trigger somebody and make them feel worse. You know. So, sometimes I don't say anything at all, but then that comes off as cold.
Speaker 3:So having the language, having the tools, having the knowledge how best to support people as they're going through these kinds of things is so powerful best to support people as they're going through these kinds of things is so powerful, and one of the best things is just to come alongside them, because I mean, I tended to be in the past I tried to fix it like you can't fix any of this stuff, right, you can't fix it, but I would try to fix it, and that would that just get you in big trouble because you can't fix it. It's one of the most important things. Just come alongside them. If you can give them a hug, give them a hug.
Speaker 3:I had a dear friend who lost her husband. He was also a dentist. We were very good friends for years and he died two weeks after my husband died, and so I went to her house I'm just in the throes of grief myself and I realized that in my situation I had lots and lots of food but nothing for breakfast because people were already coming over. So I just got her some breakfast stuff, got her some coffee, went to her door the day after her husband passed away, not knowing what shape she was in. So I just put the items on her door and I sent her a text. I said I just put some items on your door just down the street. If you'd like me to stop by, I can, but you know, you just need your time. You're okay. And she just wrote please come in. She had been there by herself overnight and was in just shape, and so what we did is I just sat next to her and we just kind of cried for about three hours and had coffee, and it was one of the best bonding experiences. You know, it was one of the richest times I think I've had in my life is to just sit there and cry with somebody else, and I think that sometimes that's just what you need to do Just sit with them and cry.
Speaker 3:One thing that people also don't realize is that one of the things that's helpful when you've lost someone at the right time is to talk about some of the good things you remember. I mean, I loved it at Eric's funeral when and there were thousands and thousands and thousands of people at his funeral it was huge, his funeral people would come and say, oh, you know, and we were in quiz bowl. He made the rest of us feel like we knew what we were talking about. Or when he did this, he made us feel good. So people would come and tell stories about him and that just made me feel better. Sometimes people are afraid to talk about the one that died. And one other thing I think I'd like to mention right now too is so important Because I'm talking suicide. Right, this is a time when my mother died. The churches at the time would not give her a funeral and she was the most godly woman I've ever known and we had her awake, I guess, in a funeral home, just dripping with shame. I mean, it was just a horrible experience.
Speaker 3:When my son died, and we were Baptists, he went to a Catholic school and he wasn't even at the Catholic school anymore. He was at Columbia University. He had left University. He had left, you know, the state.
Speaker 3:At his funeral, the entire band showed up from his school that it was a Catholic all-boys school. They bused kids into this Baptist church for a funeral on a school day. Who does that? They were there in force. They took up like a whole section and we were able to talk to them. Because these young boys, you know suicide, these young boys, we had to talk to them about suicide. Don't do this, look at the ramifications.
Speaker 3:And then the Baptist church was there. All the pastors were there, so they were just all surrounding us and giving us love and talking about Eric. And then the best gift I ever had was when we were taking his casket down the aisle of the church. Those boys it was an all boys military camp they stood up in their dress uniforms, lined the rows, saluted his casket and I still get goosebumps when I talk about that, tears running down their eyes saluting the casket of my son. And he didn't even go to their school anymore. He was out in college and they saluted his casket. They went down. Now that was so impactful for me and it was so good to see the change in our systems, in our community. My community is a church community the changes in the Catholic church, the Baptist church, they were coming together. Everybody was there. We were supported in Eric's death. So the changing views on suicide was so helpful for me in helping me to move forward in my grief.
Speaker 2:That's really good to hear, because we were talking about that just an episode ago, as somebody had. That question is you know?
Speaker 3:Where does it go? And can I tell one more little story? Yeah, yeah, I don't know where it goes, so I Linda. Tony Dungy is an award winning. He was a big football coach, won a Super Bowl and is is now does a lot of talking, christian talking around the country, and his brother just happened to be a dentist down the street from us, lyndon Dudgee. Tony lost his son to suicide right before he won the Super Bowl and so when we lost Eric, lyndon started writing us letters about you know, about how to, how, what happened to Tony and what know his relationship with his son and his, his nephew, and, and he would mail them to us once a week. It was, it was really helpful.
Speaker 3:But one day I was having a meltdown. I was having a big meltdown. You know how that. You know I'm crying.
Speaker 3:I was in the hallway of our office. We had two of our staff members with us. One had lost a loss her son to suicide after the breakup with a girlfriend when he was 17,. Very different experience than ours. And we're crying and crying and crying.
Speaker 3:And all of a sudden, in the middle of that, my office manager ran in and said Lyndon, just drop this off. He said he just felt he just it was an emergency and he had to drop this off. He dropped off this letter and I opened it up and it was a quote from the Bible that basically said not angels or demons or anything else can separate you from the love of God, and it was to me like a direct message Okay, he's up here with me, knock it off. You know, just stop. He's up here.
Speaker 3:But things like that, when things like that happen, you know, because when you lose someone to suicide, that's where are they Right? Where are they Right? Where are they? Yeah, mother, I would say okay, god, if he's in the wrong spot, let me take his place, cause you know you had that. You had that deal, you made that deal with your son, so let me make the deal with my son. You know, put me in a bad place, put them in a good place, and it's so much part of your grieving that you need to know. You know, depending on what you believe, because there's lots of different belief systems out there, but you need to know that they aren't doomed forever because of the way they died.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so good to know and to understand and and important especially for the survivors to to know that. Yeah, that's amazing. What a gift that was to you and your family to have that kind of a response from all the different communities that he was part of. What a blessing. Is there anything else that you would really like to share with our listeners today?
Speaker 3:I think the main point I would like to make is there's two of them. First one is get your stuff together so that your family will stay together and build those relationships over time. So focus on your family and keeping them strong after you go. That's such a big legacy. And the second thing is if you fall into that grief pit, just fight, fight, fight your way out. I just can't say that enough. It's so worth it to be out and to breathe the fresh air and to be able to be joyful with the people that you have left in your life, the living people in your life. It's very, very important.
Speaker 2:All right. Thank you so much, dr Kim, for being here with us. If anybody's interested in learning more about her information, her book is wonderful. It's called Are you Ready how to Build a Legacy to Die For, and if anybody wants to reach out to you or contact you, how can they reach you, dr Kim?
Speaker 3:They'll write to my website, drkimberlyharmscom.
Speaker 2:All right. Thank you so much. This has just been a beautiful conversation and I love the work you do. I love how you are taking death out of the closet and bringing it into the sunshine so we can all look at it and get comfortable with it and have wonderful community together, even when we go through these challenging times. So thank you so much.
Speaker 3:And thank you so much for all the work you do for the same reasons.
Speaker 1:Wow, really, thank you. Thank you. I've got goosebumps, goosebumps. I've been on like on the verge of tears the entire time listening to you talk, so I'm so sorry that I haven't been me too. We're both going through a brief yeah, so I feel like a vegetable over here.
Speaker 3:But yes, thank you so much for everything I just want to hug all yes, yes, air hug, because we're all. We're all in this together.
Speaker 1:We're in, you know, we're in this life together and we just have to help each other get through it, right yeah, your messages are just so beautiful and I found to be so true about community and, you know, taking death out of the closet and it just seems like it's such a shameful thing to talk about when we're grieving or we got to stuff down our emotions because it's too much for other people. But, yeah, really getting out there in the open and building community around it and a supportive community that helps you through it, it's just I've been blessed to have that. So I don't know, I'm just so emotional about it. I love your work. Thank you so much for doing what you do and thank you for being a part of this podcast with us today.
Speaker 3:It was absolutely my pleasure. This has just been delightful this morning. Thank you so much and again. I just want to hug all of you we accept Right back at you. Take care now. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 1:Bye.
Speaker 3:Bye.
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