Adults: Coping With Grief and Loss

Coping with grief and loss is different for every individual. Our podcasters interview social worker and thanatologist Amy Keiper-Shaw, founder and president of Hands Holding Hearts in Newtown, PA. This episode discusses the difficult topic of loss as an adult as well as how to see a child through their grief.

Hands Holding Hearts is a non-profit that supports all ages going through grief, with camps, therapy horses and dogs, therapy resources and other events. For more information, check out handsholdinghearts.org. 

Transcript

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Brianna
 Welcome to the Giving Youth A Voice Podcast where we share information to youth by youth. Stick around to hear what we've chosen to share with you in this episode. Check out more information and resources about the Neshaminy Coalition for Youth at our website, nc4youth. org. That's nc number4 youth. org. There you can find our program and resources and become a member for the betterment of our community. Also check out our Facebook page to see our news and events. Give us a like. I'm Brianna, the host of this episode, and please enjoy. 

So the topic of today's podcast is going to be grief, and today we're going to be asking Amy a few questions regarding different topics relating to grief and loss. So we want to thank you for coming onto our podcast today. 

Amy
 Thanks for having me. Hi, I'm Amy Keiper-Shaw, and I'm the founder and president of Hands Holding Hearts. I'm a clinical social worker, and I'm a clinical thanatologist, which is somebody who studies Death and Dying, and I'm a certified grief counselor. I started Hands Holding Hearts with two other like-minded individuals back in 2013, when my cousin and his wife lost their youngest child, and they came to me and said, "My other two children are suffering, and we want to get them support, and we're suffering, and we want to get support." So they came to me and said, "Can you look around and see what resources are available?" When I looked, I found that there was nothing in Bucks County at all. There were therapists, but there was nobody who specialized in grief and loss. So I started first by having a bereavement camp. I had been working at a hospice. They discontinued the bereavement camp, so I pulled over our volunteers. I rented space at my church, brought my kids' crayons and markers, and popsicles, and we had a camp. And so we'd been doing it every year since, and our camp is for 6 to 12-year-old who had a loss. And that is how Hands Holding Hearts started, so now we serve, I think, our youngest child is three, and I think our oldest client was 83. We really have expanded our services from just the bereavement camp. Now we do workshops. We do groups. We do individual counseling, family counseling. We have our bereavement camp, and then we have a couple workshops coming up. 

Brianna
 So one of the reasons why I wanted to do this topic of grief for our podcast was because it is something that I personally have experienced a lot of. I have lost one to two family members or, many pets or animals just about every year since 2016. I don't remember a year since then where I haven't lost somebody or some close family member or family friend or pet that I've had for years. And it's multiple every single year. And it's something that I've personally struggled a lot with, and I know that other people are also going through their own griefs, especially going through COVID, and just deaths within families or family friends or stuff like that. To start off, one of the questions that we have is, what would you say are some different ways or methods of coping with feelings of loss? 

Amy
 In your case you said that you experienced multiple losses. And so we call that compounded grief, and so it's when a lot of loss is coming a short amount of time. And you're not even able to kind of wrap your head around the initial loss. So that's particularly challenging because it's not just one loss that you're grieving. But I think there are many different ways that people can work through their loss. Sometimes people worry that if they enter in to those feelings of grief that they're going to fall in a hole they can't get out of. But I will tell you, I've been doing this work for 25 years. I've never seen somebody who's fallen in the hole of grief and not been able to get out either on their own or with some support. And there is always support available, as long as we give ourselves permission to receive that. So I think there are some other great outlets talking to people, finding a support group, listening to podcasts, creating a playlist of songs that make you feel happy, some songs that make you feel sad. There wasn't a trigger that made me feel my grief today, but I feel it. So it's acknowledging what you feel, naming it, identifying it, and saying I'm going to sit with it in that sitting with it. It might be listening to sad songs because you feel like I could just use a good to cry. So you get the tissues, and you put your sad playlist on or you watch a movie that always makes you cry. My favorite movie is Hachi. If you've never seen it, it's a great movie about this dog and his dedication to his owner and how love lives on even after death. So movies, music, art can be a great outlet. Painting, sculpture, exercise can be a great way to let some of those feelings out too, if someone's feeling angry, run up and down the bleachers. Do jumping jacks, go for a run. Allow yourself to feel what you feel without judging it and without putting expectations of how you should be grieving on it. Because in grief, there is no right way to do it. There are no steps, and grief is not linear from point A to point B. Grief is all over place, emotions all over the place, and that's normal. I was seeing a client, and she came to me because she said, "I think I'm losing my mind." And I said, "Why, what's going on?" and she said, "I was in the grocery store, and I picked up romaine lettuce, and I just lost it. And people were looking at me in the middle of the produce area, crying, holding a head of lettuce." And I said, "Tell me about that." And she said, "Well, my mom always liked iceberg lettuce and I like romaine, and we lived together. And so, I would always get her iceberg lettuce because I knew that's what she liked". And after her mom died, she didn't have to buy iceberg lettuce. She could take care of herself. It was doing some education with her that grief looks very different. 

And yes, grief comes in waves. And if you think of being out at the beach and you're walking into the water, you know, you first start walking in and the waves are pretty low. But as you get out deeper, further in your grief, the waves get stronger. And if you try to dig your feet into the sand and say, "I am not going anywhere. It's not going to knock me over." What happens? You get knocked over because you're fighting it so much and you're using all your energy and your muscle strength to not fall. Whereas if you stepped out another step and you dove under the wave and let it go over you and just took it. And then you pop your head on the other side and you're like, "I got through that." And I think another myth that we hear in grief and loss is, you know, to be strong, have an upper lip, you know, or people sometimes will say, you know, "It's been six weeks since your grandfather died. It wasn't your dad." You know, and they try to like minimize our grief, but they don't know what our relationship is with a person who died. And so I think that we internalize these things, and then we put these expectations on ourself of like, "I should be over my grief by this time," or, "I shouldn't be expressing my grief this way." And I think it's important for us to say it takes as long as it takes. And the latest research about grief and loss is that, as long as we miss the person, we're going to be grieving them because they're, they mattered, and they're not physically here. And so we'll always miss them. Hopefully the intensity of that loss dissipates a little bit, but that as long as they're not here, we're going to miss them. 

Brianna 
 Yeah. 

Amy
 Yeah. And so just giving ourselves permission to express however, and however long it takes. 

Patrick 
 I was trying to think of a response, but I didn't know what else to say. 

Amy 
 Grief is a hard topic. 

Patrick 
 It is a hard topic. 

Amy 
 You are not alone. I mean, adults struggle. Older adults struggle. You know, I think sometimes the mistake that people make in grief is that they don't say anything rather than what you just did really, really well, saying, "Gosh, I don't know what to say." And I think if we can be real with people who are grieving and say, "Gosh, I can see you're hurting." Or, "Wow, it sounds like you're hurting." I don't even know what to say to make it better, but I'll sit here with you. Here's the tissue. That can be so powerful and healing to someone who's grieving. So, and so there really isn't a comparison in grief. They used to have this list of the most stressful or the worst losses. And the first was like loss of child, the loss of spouse or parent, and it rated it and they've done away with that scale because every loss is so individual. Your relationship with your grandparent or your great-grandparent could be just as significant as somebody who lost a dog. And it sounds strange, but it's all about the relationships and how important that person was in our life. 

Brianna
 It's, I don't want to say funny, but ironic that you brought that up because that is something I went through, because I had four dogs. I got four dogs when I was in kindergarten, and they all passed within two to three years of each other. And I remember I actually was about to leave to go to Core Creek Park for a podcast session. And I couldn't make it because as soon as I was about to leave, one of my dogs passed away. And it's just, grief is just such a big topic for me because of how much I've experienced it firsthand. But I know that I'm not the only one. I can't be the only one going through all this grief in such a short amount of time. And so talking about this topic is extremely important because sometimes you might not know what to do. And in those like really lost moments of it all coming down on you in such a short period of time, or you don't know how to handle all of it, it's why like being able to talk about it because then it can help other people feeling the same way. 

Amy 
 It's that validation that, oh, this is okay that I feel this way, or it is okay that I'm still grieving eight months later. 

Patrick 
 In terms of feelings of loss, how do you cope with that? How do you cope with feelings of loss? 

Amy 
 So again, everyone copes very differently. It depends on the type of relationship you had with the individual. And it depends on your own like internal resources. So do you have supports? Do you have a history of mental health challenges? Do you have a history of substance use? So there's a lot of factors that depend on how to determine how you cope. But I think the first most important thing is to talk to somebody, to let them know that you're grieving that you're hurting. It is challenging sometimes because when we're hurting, it's hard for us to reach out. On the flip side if you're someone who cares about someone who's grieving, it's important that you check on them. You know, whether it's a text like, "Hey, I'm thinking about you," or, "I'm home tonight if you want to talk." And we can sit and hang out. Coping is you have to let people know that you're hurting and that you've had this experience. And that takes a lot of energy. I think the person who's grieving, the hope is that people will see, that you're hurting and they'll reach out. But sometimes people disappoint us. And sometimes people aren't there in the way for us that we hope and need them to be. 

I think the first part of coping is acknowledging that you had the loss and feeling that. And I spoke a little earlier about different ways that you can cope. You know, for some people it's using arts or physical exercise, joining a support group. For some people it might be, "My loved one died of lung cancer. So I'm going to do a 5K to raise money for lung cancer." I know that my uncle loved to go to the park. So I'm going to buy a bench and have his name on it. And he'll always be part of the park. You can get really creative in your coping. And the hard thing about grief is that you've never had this particular loss before. So you don't know what's going to help you feel better. And how you feel Monday might be very different than you feel on Tuesday. So if you do something on Monday, Monday you go for a walk and say, "Wow, that really helped." Tuesday, maybe it's raining. You can't go for a walk. Or you go for a walk and you're like, "Wow, that didn't really help. I'm still sad." You have to go into your toolbox of coping and say, "What else do I have in here that might fit? That might help." I think a big part of coping with loss is, like I said, acknowledging it, naming it. There's a phrase, name it to tame it. So name what you're feeling. I'm feeling anxious. I'm feeling depressed. I'm feeling desperate. I'm feeling jealous. And then giving yourself permission to feel that. And then say, "Hmm, what might help from my toolbox to help me feel better? It's not going to change that this person died. It's not going to change that I'm going to be sad. And that my life looks different. But what might help in this moment, so it doesn't feel so all-consuming.” And it takes some time to, you know, what tool works with how you're feeling. 

Patrick 
 I do like how you phrased how you do cope with feelings and how you do need to like search into the toolbox sometimes and to see what helps you. Because as helpful as one thing it could be, it might not be able to be used like every single day to help you. So I do like that to almost use multiple like outlets or just multiple activities just to help. 

Brianna
 What would be like the top piece of advice you'd have for somebody who is struggling with that guilt part? 

Amy 
 So I think, you know, learning about grief and loss, there are so many great resources. There's online support groups. There's books. There's support groups. And support groups could be at funeral homes, at hospices, at churches, or, you know, just in your local community. I think learning about the grief process and knowing that guilt is part of it, and knowing that guilt is really us trying to manipulate a situation that we didn't have control over. And so what I see sometimes is that people are replaying things again and again and again in their head. And so I ask them to break that down, you know, it's a little bit of like cognitive behavioral therapy. Like so if I have guilt about this, what do you have guilt about that situation? Why I've guilt that if I gone to see them before I went to work in the morning. All right, so that's what your guilt's about. So if you had gone to see them and they died, would you still be beating yourself up about it? No. Might you be still beating yourself up about something else in there? I stepped out of the room. I was there, but I stepped out of the room to go to the bathroom. Might you still be beating yourself up about something else? Oh, true. Possibly. Or might you be saying I should have said this or I shouldn't have said this. We are really good at just being hard on ourselves. And we don't look to all the things that we did right and all the times that we did say we love them and all the times that we did hold their hand. We look to that one time that we could ever feel like we should have done something different. So know, I think learning about the grief process and knowing that guilt is just part of it and kind of playing out that guilt. All right. So if I feel guilty about this, if I had done things different, what would have been the outcome? What's the evidence that what I did was directly related to their death? Well, I mean, I have control over that. I don't control if somebody has cancer or their lungs stop working. And oftentimes, most of the times, we realize that we couldn't have done anything different. And even if we had the outcome would still have been the same and we'd still be grieving and possibly beating ourselves up about something else

You know, something else I wanted to talk about. And this might not be kind of a popular topic of related to grief, but sometimes death can also be a welcome friend. And so sometimes I see guilt with that as well. And particularly I work with older adults. And so somebody maybe was diagnosed with a type of dementia. Maybe they have Alzheimer's and they've been sick for 20 years. And all along those 20 years, you know, the individual maybe couldn't work. And then they couldn't drive, and then they couldn't care for themselves. And then they got to the point where they couldn't swallow. And finally, at the end, the individual is so different from the individual that you once knew and loved that sometimes the death can actually be a release. And so, and a lot of the work that I do with adults and older adults, it's giving them, again, that permission to say it's okay to feel relieved that that person isn't here and suffering. It's okay to say, well, I don't have to rush to the nursing home after work. I can actually go home and have dinner with my family. And it's okay, again, to feel however we feel about it. And part of that might be relief. And so sometimes we beat ourselves up about that and say, you know, they were suffering. My dog was suffering for so long with seizures or with diabetes that, gosh, I've really missed them. And I see that empty dog bowl. And I see that empty dog bed. And I'm so sad. But I'm also really glad that they don't have to suffer anymore. And that's valid, and that's okay too. 

Patrick 
 What differences can be found in experiencing or grieving at different ages? 

Amy 
 That's a great question. Children have different developmental levels. And so small children, infants, you know, zero to two, they obviously don't have the verbal skills to say I'm grieving. But Alan Wolfelt is a famous theorist. But he believes that as long as you're old enough to love, you're old enough to grieve. While we don't see children that young, because they don't have the verbal skills to interact with us, we do see, you know, infants and toddlers grieving. And it presents as increased irritability or like fussiness. It can come out in fear of strangers. You know, that this individual took care of them and now this individual died. And so we see that maybe not wanting to eat as well, or their sleep schedule might be off. As kids get a little older, the ages, you know, up to maybe five, six, they still don't understand that death means the person is permanently gone. So that young age, they again, might not have the verbal skills to say I'm feeling this way, but you might see them starting to suck their thumb again if they are potty trained all of a sudden they're wetting their bed. It's at the age of about eight that we are talking to children and they're able to understand the idea of permanence. You're able to understand that death is something unpredictable. Everyone's going to go through it, that it's irreversible. But they understand that dead means that the body is not working and that the person is not going to come back. They're able at that age to start naming some of the emotions, but after the age of eight, then they're more able to understand and ask questions about the death. And that can be really hard for parents sometimes or caregivers because they're like, oh, they're asking again, I have to tell the story again. But there is a lot of value in telling the death story and being able to kind of wrap their head around it

The age of like 12 and up, they're relating almost as though an adult would relate to loss. They understand that the person is dead. They understand what dead means that the body stopped working and that there are going to be significant points in their life that this love one's not going to be there for. Mom isn't going to be there to help me pick out my prom dress. Dad isn't going to be there to show me how to change a tire. And they're able to understand not only the person not being in their life now, but also the person not being in their life in the future. And what we see too in our practice is sometimes we'll see a child at three or four, we work with a movement therapist so the kids who don't have the verbal skills to say I'm feeling anxious and this is what anxious feels like in my body and it's directly related to my loss. We might see kids acting out in school. We might see kids conversely getting all straight A's and overachieving because that's how they're coping with it. But we have the movement therapist work with the younger kiddos to get their bodies moving and express themselves that way. The younger kids, they talk through their behaviors. older kids, they talk through the words

So one of the things that we see a lot in children is magical thinking. An example is if a child usually gives their mom a kiss before a mom goes to work and they forget and mom gets into car accident on the way to work. Sometimes the child will say, "well, mom died because of what I did. I didn't give her a kiss." And so she was upset that she didn't get a kiss, wasn't paying attention to gotten a car accident. So ultimately, I caused her death and so it's talking to the child to dispel their thinking about their power or their control over the outcome

If there is somebody that's sick for a while, you can do some of that legacy work that I was talking about before someone dies. One of the questions she had here was, "How do I help a friend or someone close who's under hospice care?" Part of my role is a social worker when I was working in hospice was to do some of that anticipatory grief work or some legacy work while the individual was still there. So if you knew that somebody was dying, it gives you an opportunity to say things that people want and need to hear before they die. One of the things is, “you mattered”, “you're going to be missed”, “I forgive you”, “I hope you can forgive me”, and “you're going to be remembered”. If you know someone's dying, you have opportunities to have those conversations, they are not easy conversations to have. But you're afforded that gift of time. If some death is sudden, sometimes there is some regret about "I wish I had time to say goodbye” or “I wish I knew” that's differences that I see between those different types of loss. 

Brianna 
 What can we say to people who are grieving? 

Amy
 I think that's a really good question. What do you say to somebody who's had a loss? I think we spoke earlier about, it takes a lot of courage to put yourself out there. You're putting yourself at risk if the person could get upset with us if we ask how they're doing. But it's really important that somebody, when they're grieving, that someone asks, "How are you?" One thing that I learned is to leave off instead of, "How are you doing?" to say, "How are you?" Because the doing sometimes can imply that they should be doing something. And grief is all encompassing. Grief is emotionally how you're feeling. Grief might be spiritual. Do I believe in a heaven? Grief is intellectual. All right, let me wrap my head around, so what is death truly mean? It's social. You know what? I might not want to spend time with my friends because they don't get what it's like to lose a parent. And now I'm not Amy, I'm that girl that lost her dad. Grief affects us on every level. But what we need is grievers is someone to let us know that they care. You're comment earlier, if you know, like, I don't always know what to say. That is perfect, to say, "You know what? I don't know what to say. But I'm here for you." 

Patrick 
 Exactly. And I always say that because as someone too young to understand, like loss is simply because I can't know what, like the other person is going through, because I'm not them. 

Amy 
 Yeah, perfect. 

Patrick
 That's why I always, like, if you need me to do anything, like, please let me know. If you need space, if you need me to, like, maybe help you with a few things, maybe do something for you, just please let me know. Because you're showing, you're doing your best to, like, help and care. And it's really just up to the person who's grieving to, like, either, like, accept the help or just say, like, "Hey, no, I just need space". And if that's the case, then that's completely fine too. 

Brianna 
 Yeah. There's a lot of ways to help with that. Somebody that I used to know, I remember, she lost her mom and I ended up going with her to the funeral. And it was just the matter of having somebody there, who you could lean on, per se, having somebody in a crowd full of family members, a friend to just take a little bit of that stress away. And, like Patrick said, there's so many different ways people can go about helping others and even you had said it about just giving them space, hanging out with them, bringing them food, taking them out, just being someone that they can talk to. And there's never going to be a right way per se to do that. It's what that person needs in that moment. And what we can do is just try our best to fit what they need in that moment and communicate and see what you can do to help. 

Amy 
 But I think, you know, the mistake that people make sometimes is avoiding the person or not seeing the individual's name who died. And it's so important to say her name was Ann, and her legacy is that her name is going to live on. We're going to use her name. It's not the person who died, it's Ann, and this is what Ann meant. So giving that person a safe space, naming the person and helping them identify the feelings that they're feeling. Maybe go for a walk with them and risking yourself to say, they might, they might snap back at me. They might say that that's not helpful, but I care about this person enough to try. So if you do make a comment to somebody and they shoot back at you, it could be that things are just so raw right now, or it could be that they were really offended. But that doesn't mean that you can't ever have a conversation again. If you say something, they have a really strong reaction. You could always go back and say, I'm sorry if what I said upset you and I was trying to convey this. And that can actually lead to a richer relationship and conversation, because it shows that you're human and they're human and that you're being human together. So just being genuine and even saying, like, I can't even imagine what this must be like. Would you like to tell me a little bit about your loved one? Or here's a memory I have of the person who died. Just giving them that safe place to express whatever they want to express without judgment is huge

I see it work too, when somebody's lost a parent or a child or somebody's significant. I try to have the conversation with them before they come back of how do you want people to know about your loss? So in a work or a school setting, that could be a really important question too. And at work, do we want to send out an email? Do we want to let the employee that's coming back say I lost this person. Do we want to send flowers? Do we want to make a donation? And to have that conversation. That can be really helpful prior to the person coming back so that people who are in school with a person or working with a person can have some time to wrap their head around like what might I say when I see them. 

So our organization, Hands Holding Hearts, is based in Newtown, we're on State Street and we offer counseling both in our office in Newtown as well as virtually. And then we also have a partnership with special equestrians. So, they have therapy horses and quarterly our organization partners with special equestrians to have an event around loss, and then you have an opportunity to groom and ride the horses if you want, and then Saturday and Sunday it's for three hours. We have therapy dogs from angels on a leash, they come Friday. 

Brianna 
 I love therapy dogs. 

Amy 
 Yep, they'll be there Friday and Saturday. We have miniature horses that come on Sunday. And then in the summer we have our annual Children's bereavement camp for 6- to 12-year-olds and that's based in Newtown. Those are some resources that we offer. Some other great online resources are the Dougy Center and What's your Grief? We can help to support you. Please give us a call or shoot us an email. 

We're always looking for volunteers, especially for camp, if you think that you're going into the helping field or teaching or something like that, it could be a really good experience. Loss doesn't have to just be a sad topic, in the spring of 2026. We have a concert, it's a Phil Collins tribute band, it's a lot of fun. So we do fun things too and we're always looking for people to help support that too. 

Patrick 
 Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast today. This was an amazing podcast to be a part of and I think it's gonna be a really helpful podcast for those out there who might be struggling with grief and loss, and we really appreciate you going on today to shine a light on those topics. 

Brianna 
 We definitely really appreciate it and like I said at the beginning this is a very important topic to me. So I'm glad that we were able to talk about it and dig into it a little deeper. 

Amy
 Okay, well thanks for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity and it's been a pleasure to meet both of you. 

Brianna 
 It's been a pleasure to meet you, thank you. 

That's it for this episode. Thank you for listening to Giving Youth of Voice. Any questions about this podcast or coalition can be emailed to podcast@nc4youth. org. That's podcast@nc #4 youth. org. Make sure to follow us on your favorite podcasting app and sign up to our email list on nc4youth. org so you don't miss our next episode. This project is made possible by funding from the Drug Free Communities grant. I'm Brianna, wishing you a happy and healthy future. See you next episode.