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Navigating the Tides of Grief: Unraveling the Journey of Loss with Dr. Brittany Oliver-Ciasnavaro

• Dr. Roldan • Season 3 • Episode 1

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Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the tides of grief, uncertain how to navigate the complex emotions that follow a loss? This episode promises a safe harbor as we journey through the often-misunderstood currents of mourning and mental health with Dr. Brittany Oliver-Ciasnavaro. She brings her profound expertise to light, revealing the intricacies of grief work and the dangers lurking when untrained individuals attempt to guide others through trauma. Together, we discuss the necessity of a varied support team and the inadequacy of the five stages of grief as a universal model. Dr. Oliver-Ciasnavaro provides insights from grief literature and media, enhancing our understanding of this universal yet unique experience. Join us for an enlightening discussion that offers support and hope to those navigating the turbulent waters of grief.
Disclaimer: It's essential to note that while I am a therapist, this podcast is not a substitute for therapy. The stories and discussions shared here are meant to inform and inspire but should not replace professional advice or support. If you or someone you know is struggling, please seek help from a professional therapist or contact a helpline.

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Speaker 1:

Hello beautiful souls and welcome to Oroasis Community Podcast. I am Dr Roldan, your host. I am a doctor in clinical psychology, a BIPOC therapist professor and a mindful somatic coach. While I am a therapist, remember I'm not your therapist. This podcast is not a substitute for professional mental health care, but we have resources in our website and Instagram to support you in that search. Join us for a cozy, felt conversation about mental health, personal growth and mindfulness. We explore tools to care for your mind, your body and your soul. Check the footnotes for disclaimer, trigger warnings and additional resources for each one of the episodes. So grab your favorite cup of tea, coffee or hot chocolate, wrap yourself in a warm blanket and find a coffee spot here with us to be kind to be brave, loud and strong in your search of mental health wellness. Welcome to your Oasis.

Speaker 2:

Hi, I'm Brittany Oliver-Ciasnavaro, or Dr Brittany Oliver-Ciasnavaro, and I specialize in grief and loss. I work with transitional age youth, so age 16 to 25. And I'm so happy to be on the pod and can't wait to talk about sad stuff I have.

Speaker 1:

I'm in the works of developing a program almost like an academy for the coaches to come to learn ethical barriers and also learn how to resource. I think there's a space for everybody. But at the same time I always think that we need a dream team a coach, a therapist, uh, nutritionist, and then an exercise coach. Sure, but you cannot live with one with another, you cannot skip steps. So the podcast is trying to bring that awareness. So, uh, if you can talk about that in the grief please, because this uh happened to me.

Speaker 1:

You know, like once upon a time when I was very, very young, I got to see tony robbins and I went to his one of my friends, environment stuff and I was in the vip and I saw uh, when he grabbed somebody, then you know, undo and rip apart his childhood trauma completely right In front of everybody, and I thought, oh, okay, that's a little extreme, but okay, I see the point.

Speaker 1:

But the guy undone. And then I was in the bar, you know, just doing my thing, and the guy was contemplating in his drink and I look at him like you know, I look at him, I was like you have been sober, right, and he was like, yeah, don't do it. He was like I just I don't know what to do with all these feels and stuff. That one was one of the few moments that I had to that drew me to be a psychologist or therapist, because I was like people get undone at work in these shows and they're trying to get help and these people, either because they're all up here or they just have one or two tools they think they're cookie cutter tools, which they're not. So that is an espilche. That's my mission in life now.

Speaker 2:

I would say I would say for me, um just and I've said this before on other podcasts and other panels like, grief is very precious to me.

Speaker 2:

I lost my brother when I was 10, my dad when I was 15 and my mom when I was 21. And so this idea of I can do trauma therapy and not having training is really dangerous because people don't actually know what it looks like. Because trauma work versus grief work is different. And when I I've presented around the world which is very fortunate, and I've presented around the country and every time I say raise your hand if you've taken a class on grief and loss, it's almost no one. Every time I say raise your hand if you've done any kind of assessment or understanding of how to do it, it's very few. And that's the really scary thing that I've seen in grief work in general, it's people assuming that, oh, I know grief work because I know the five stages of grief and I can just help you when you don't know what tenacity the clients have, you don't know what the resilience the clients have, you don't know the coping skills the clients have, you don't know the history of their grief and loss, you don't know what it looks like, and it's so important for individuals who actually have an understanding of what this looks like to be referred to someone who knows what it looks like, like I've. I've seen so many supervisors and clinicians of there under me even just saying, oh well, I'll just talk to them about it that are under me, even if just saying, oh well, I'll just talk to them about it. What does that look like, what does that mean? What pace are you at? Like?

Speaker 2:

There are so many conversations and questions to ask when we're talking about grief work, regardless if it's young adults, if it's children, adolescents, or if it's older adults. It's all so different older adults, it's all so different culturally, sexually, in so many different ways. And so we have to have conversations about why is this? Something that is a universal experience that everybody has. Everyone's going to lose something. Everyone's going to lose a job, lose a friendship, lose a life, lose their own life, and they're all going to grieve differently.

Speaker 2:

And it is so unique and so beautiful and so special and I really wish that, especially in the education system, that we paid more attention to it, because it is something that's so profound profound, but it's. It's alarming how many individuals will champion themselves as, like clinicians or researchers or things of that nature, who don't actually have the training. And I do really want to say like for regardless, if you're a novice and you're just a person just walking in the world, or if you're actually a clinician or a trainee or someone else like, you need to get the experience of, like this specific field in order to provide services to this specific field, or else you're really doing a disservice to the clients and disservice to the people around you because you don't. You're not properly educated, you're not properly educated, you're not properly providing services that are actually good client care.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 1:

And what I love about your work, because I have followed for a while what I so the audience knows I'm a. I'm a geek nerd, okay, yay. And with Dr she has done chapters and collaborating books of, like the black pattern I'm a geek nerd cocaine, you know, yay. And with Dr she has done chapters and collaborating books of, like the Black Panther, which I have actually in my collection here. So you guys go get the book.

Speaker 1:

It's a beautiful I mean the second movie talking about grief, the five minutes that they go there, what it meant so much to me it was. So I'm an immigrant, right, I came here as an adult due to internal war in my country, so I lost my father in that internal war, the destruction of my family, etc. Etc. Etc. Yes, and that was such a grief because you not only lose family, you lose part of you, you lose your identity too, because you come to another country that doesn't have things. And I remember that we came as refugees and one of the counselors at the time said, oh, you're sad because it's sad coming to this country, and I was like like she just piled me with everybody else, right, and then it was like it's are you're sad because you don't speak the language. Um, which I was like, hmm, strike one in in grief, right. And then after that I did got, uh, unfortunately chronically ill in, you know, cancer and all that.

Speaker 1:

So we went to the counselor because they always send you to that one specifically, depending how you. The outcomes that you will have. Mine were not positive at all. Trigger warning for anybody that has gone through this. Obviously, the whole show will be trigger warning after one.

Speaker 1:

So this is your advertisement to let you know it's okay, take a break if you need to Grab a cup of tea, grab some warm a blanket to listen to this episode.

Speaker 1:

It's going to be fun, but at the same time, we're going to talk about very deep things and if you're not ready for that, there's resources in the notes of the podcast or you can go to the Instagram. We have resources there for grief and also for a specific um support groups for your community, because just because you have one grief doesn't mean applies to all the communities the same right. So, uh, that's it. Um, we went through that and I remember my counselor because I was so young. You know, I was in my early 20s, um, and my counselor because I was so young, I was in my early 20s, and my counselor started crying when I told him the story of how I came to this country and all this stuff and I was like I was giving support to the therapist at the time and what crossed my mind is like oh, my grief is not allowed to exist.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Because it's too much, it's too big for people to handle it, right? Yeah, and can you talk a little bit about that shame that people have? Because there is a different kind of grief, right, there's a grief of losing family, grief of losing your identity, your country, and sometimes losing your health, losing who you used to be, yeah, health, losing who you used to be. And when you go to get help, you know either pastors or mental health providers, or sometimes a friend. People don't get it in the same way and you then create a double degree for shame. Can you talk about that shame?

Speaker 2:

Sure, I think about personal experience. So, after my mom passed away, um my, I played volleyball in college and my coaches were like you have to see a counselor similar to your experience and my counselor the first day, we just her tire blew on the way to school and for college and she was just like, oh, let's like pick out tires. And she just handed me a grief book. And she was just like, oh, let's like pick out tires. And she just handed me a grief book. And I just sat in this like abyss of what, what am I doing? Like how do I do this? Like this is really hard. And then I went to a follow-up therapist who I thought was. I was like I'm so excited this is a person that looks like me, is ethnically and culturally, have my background, and all she said was like your story is sad and I don't know how to help you.

Speaker 2:

And I think the shame of it is existing in this space in which you are stuck. You're stuck in a place in which you know I'll say no, in quotation marks you know that it's going to hurt in some ways and it affects you differently for different people, based off your relationship, based off the type, or we call it the mode of death, so like if it's suicide or death by suicide, if it's, you know, a car accident, if it's a medical health, if it's Alzheimer's or something else. So all of these different types of modes can affect us. And so you have this belief that we should be better in a small amount of time and like, but publicly at least. In America we get three days bereavement, right. So you have three days to just pick up the pieces and figure it out and you can be sad for those three days, but on day four you better be ready to be a firefighter, be a police officer, be a hospital nurse, like, whatever your job or duties are.

Speaker 2:

The expectation is that in this society that we're fine and it's not like when research has continuously proved that. You know, they say grief and losses can be anywhere between one and five years and it shows up differently for everybody. And so there's this internalized shame of I should be better, I should be able to focus, I should be able to function, I should be able to provide for my family, I should be able to show up for my friends and family and my employer, and it's just not that way and it comes in waves. So maybe I'm pretty good in the summer and my the person that I lost, or the job that I lost, the friendship that I lost or the love that I lost, happened in November, and those holiday seasons are hard, and so there's this relentless I think, like you were saying shame about. Oh well, I have to get through it, because if I don't, I'm a weak or lesser person or I'm not strong enough because other people could.

Speaker 2:

And I think that we've done not we, but we've done twin studies about how things affect us differently in the same family. And so a loss for you might look so different than a loss from your sibling, might look so different than a loss from your parent, and I think we weigh ourselves, or weigh our resilience, based off of others. If mom or sister or somebody else is handling it better quote unquote then we assume that we're failing because we can't handle it the same way, even though we're all so different and we all grieve so different, based off of the relationships. And that's why I think grief work is hard, because every single loss, every single relationship, every single person is going to be so unique. You have to make sure that you come at it in a unique perspective for every single person, every single time and what do you think?

Speaker 1:

where are your thoughts regarding um, for example, right now, in the street media they were trauma-informed or child, a childhood trauma or child work comes out and I do the quotation mark marks. Yeah, right, don't get me wrong. I always say there's space for all of us in this world.

Speaker 1:

I specialize in severe trauma or CPTSD which includes trauma work in childhood, and I get a lot of clients sometimes that come from a place of like oh, I was doing trauma work in childhood, shadowing with X, y and Z person, which was not a clinician, and then they also told me I didn't remember my childhood and now I do, and it's horrible, right, because I and I told them well, there is this beautiful thing that your brain does that is called sometimes this association.

Speaker 1:

When we're little, because we can escape right, or body can escape things, so, or mind will do the thing for us. Uh, and I use examples of pop culture to exemplify for them, because I work with active duty first responders and law enforcement. So, talking about grief, um, can you let us know, like the red flags kind of thing you know like, okay, I know, uh, for whatever reason, I cannot go to a therapist at this moment or I don't feel called to go and I want to use a person that can guide me. What is the red flags? Like you know, they have good intentions, but good intentions can open wounds that we don't want, or what it will be like, the telling of like you know what? I need extra support, I need extra guidance in this path that I'm going to take.

Speaker 2:

Perfect question. So I think about when we talk about grief and loss, like my soapbox issue is so many people only understand it from like the five stages, yes, and they don't recognize that it's your own mortality, not someone else's. And so there's actually like 16 different types of grief that you can experience and then happy to talk about. Everybody. Differentiate between the two, right, all of them, because you can have some of them simultaneously, right? But I think the biggest red flags would be if it's compound loss, like if it is, I cannot function, I cannot get out of bed, I cannot see my way out of it, and it happens differently for different people. And it sounds silly in the sense of like, oh well, each culture is going to experience loss in a different way, right? Each person is going to experience loss in a different way, right? Each person is going to experience loss in a different way, and so we have to be very mindful of if we're going to seek services. Is this a service that's actually going to suit me? And I think that we sometimes get kind of pigeonholed in a belief system of this person is going to fix me, it's going to be fine, it's going to be great. It's not like sometimes you have to fire a therapist, sometimes you have to fire a spiritual counselor or somebody else to be able to receive the services that you need.

Speaker 2:

I think, as much as there's been a plume of like, just an explosion of like interest in the mental health field, of people wanting to seek services and wanting to seek mental health recovery, there are, like anybody not great greatly trained clinicians and people who can keep you safe. And so, really, looking for what do I want? What do I need? What kind of background is going to be important to me, regardless if it's gender, sex, if it's ethnicity, socioeconomic, like anything like what are all the things that are going to be important? How do I want this person to see me right, because people are going to see you differently?

Speaker 2:

Um, I've had so many horror stories of so many clients, especially young people. Um, just having a really mismatched person, yeah, and so these red flags that are just kind of everywhere is who is going to actually keep me safe? And I don't mean safe like physically, I don't mean safe in the sense of, like your actual bodily autonomy. I really do mean safe as in like emotionally, spiritually, like anything safe like who's this person I can trust, and Brene Brown is a lovely person who talks a lot about vulnerability, and I always tell my clients I was like you're.

Speaker 2:

You know you are entitled to your vulnerability and it is protected for you, like I am only here for that Right and so, and not everybody's responsible for it or is attuned to it, and so I really think that finding someone that's good for you is essential in your development and care. When we talk about especially grief and loss, because a lot of people again will say I like to do it, I like talking about it, but they are not trained to make sure that they can protect you right right and I think that's a really big differentiation right and I always explain my clients and that is you know.

Speaker 1:

I was told him give it three chances. If by the third chance you don't feel the click, it's not gonna happen, like, just just don't force anything. I love that you know, like it's three times, you know, uh, because this is gonna be a reflection of the most vulnerable times of you and I I love that you uh mentioned renee brown because, some of my clients.

Speaker 1:

They have a in-love relationship with her and I told them well, she speaks to a specific population too. You know like, yeah, and she speaks from. I told him layers, right, it's like a tree or like an onion. It has layers. Every layer is different, so for some this layer is enough, but the kind of work that I do with you is like all in the middle of the onion, so. So of course it's going to not feel good about this Kind of like.

Speaker 1:

I am unworthy, I'm healed, I am. You know the statements that I say in the mornings. I always told them it feels insulting when you cannot make it. You know when you don't feel worthy, when you don't feel this because the grief right. And I told them. But it's easier when you say we, so that's a tip for everybody, like when you find that person that gives you that safety. A lot of my clients said you know, when I cannot do something, I would say we can do it because I know you hold this space for me. So it's not just you. It's like we have grief the same or we have gone through this together and I love that. You say it was 16, because some other people say I'm super educated about grief. It's seven stages and I was like actually it's not, but you know like I miss you, you have moved from the five.

Speaker 1:

You know at least you have moved from the five, you have half of them. So can you talk like a little bit about those 16 stages and I know that will be a whole lecture but mostly the ones that you see in young people, because that is your speciality and I know for a lot of parents that are listening right now, they're teenagers or young adults feel kind of like aliens because they live in another. Uh, you know way to communicate because they get technology. They're so connected and disconnected at the same time. Yeah, and their parents are like uh, I just know how to connect like this. I don't know the whole like phone thing, uh, gaming and all, why not? So can you talk about that Because I think it will be very helpful in them transfer to what is very popular now. But I don't think it's popular. It's just it's more open now, when we have no contact with parents or no contact with certain people, that we have grief and we grief or parents alive.

Speaker 2:

Sure life, sure Um, I, um, I coach, um eight-year-old volleyball girls and I tell my, my kids and parents, I was like twelves, Cause that's when you really start playing. And eighteens is the hardest to coach because that's the first time that you give your kids away and it's the last time that you give your kids away and the loss I see, and it's not, you know, a death by any means, but it is a loss. It's a transition to a new age and transition to a new experience. And so there is this idea of like normal grief, right, like, so somebody passes away, and then you're sad, or something passes away, let's say, if you have an animal or something else. Um, that is stereotypical feelings of sadness, feelings of loss, um, and the reactions to behaviors that um follow that and that can look different for different people. Um, for example, um, statistics show that African-American men who lost, who lose their parent or specifically their mother, are more likely to utilize substances in the event of a crisis. Um, not saying good, bad or neutral, just this is statistic. Um, but there's all these different levels Like.

Speaker 2:

Another example would be like anticipatory or anticipatory grief, like anticipatory or anticipatory grief. So this is mom has an Alzheimer's diagnosis and I'm following her through that diagnosis. I'm seeing her decompensate. I'm seeing this like really sad experience of I know there's going to be an end of this, but I'm having to have all the feelings up too, and so that's going to be very different than normal grief because there's a time setting. There are things that have been added to the DSM, which is I'm so glad, but it took until almost 2020s for it to be even included as something that's actually like a mental health disorder, for like persistent bereavement disorder, any kind of complex bereavement it's. It's taken a while to really solidify the importance of how much grief affects somebody. I think for me, working with young people, I see a lot of disenfranchised grief and it's loss that you can't really explain or quantify, and it's usually surrounded around friends, relationships, parents, splitting even something as what seems trivial when you're older, but like puberty, like you're different now, yeah, You're a child, yeah, like you're just another person.

Speaker 2:

And the young people that I don't, that I see don't really necessarily have complex bereavement because it's not as solidified, but we do also have some collective or communicative grief. So collective grief an example would be COVID COVID, right. So all of these young people who lost all of this time with their friends, with their teachers, with their coaches, like I remember sending emails saying we're not going to have practice this month, we're not going to have practice this month, we're not going to have practice this month and experiencing it with them of the sadness of losing parts of their life. Colleges have extended some practices and stuff and seasons to make up for COVID, but that collective grief is going to be with so many young people. I have a young person at home. My child is three. He is a true COVID baby and I think about like the 10 months of his life that he was just here in this house, like it's not, it's never going to come back and I don't know how that will transition to him in the future.

Speaker 2:

Right, there are so many levels of the grief experience that show up not only in childhood but also show up throughout your life, um, that I really want to point out that it's very crucial and important to talk about. There are times in which you're going to be able to manage. There are times in which you're going to be able to manage. There are times in which it's going to be easy and hard and difficult and challenging and relatively novice. But it just means that you're human and all of your relationships are going to challenge you in a different way, and then it's okay that they challenge you in a different way. I know that with my losses in my life, I know that in the losses of my clients' lives, my friends' lives, my family's lives lives, we see the world so different and so, regardless if it's exaggerated grief or secondary loss, like, let's say, um, your, your spouse loses their partner, um, regardless if it's traumatic grief, like you witness a death by suicide or witness a murder, regardless if it's I don't know abbreviated grief, all of these terms can really facilitate a different response from every single person and it has so much to do with, like, your previous experiences and how you see the world after.

Speaker 2:

Because if I've known loss, if I had a goldfish that died when I was five, if I've lost a job or something else, I'm differently prepared and wired If my whole world comes crumbling if I'm 36 and lose my first relationship, right I, for example, we have a wall on my in my house and it's all the people that I've lost, so it's multiple people on the wall and my son says good night to them every night and my husband just lost the first one he's ever had, um, his grandpa.

Speaker 2:

So we have all these magnitude of people like with my wall and then this one with him and him understanding grief and loss so differently, so vividly, differently than me, because I've had so many. It just shifts and so when we're thinking about all the different types of losses, we can think that you can have them simultaneously and you can have them independently and you can also have them in a way that only shows up once in a while. I think that's the biggest takeaway for me is it doesn't have to look like sadness every day, absolutely not. It can completely look like I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. It's December 3rd and boom, and I'm just sad, I just miss them, and I get a Facebook reminder of a time we've had and that's okay, that's completely normal, even though normal is a setting on a laundry detergent or a laundry machine. Not necessarily a thing, but it's baseline. That is what grief looks like. It can hit you whenever it, whatever it chooses and for our audience.

Speaker 1:

I love that ritual that you say, because we all have rituals and, depending on our backgrounds, we have rituals to uh, say goodbye. We have rituals to stay contact like, like, for example, in Latino culture. We have the Day of the Dead. Yeah, it's a celebration right, Right yeah.

Speaker 1:

It's a whole thing, right. In my specific country I'm from Guatemala we have something called Fiambre, which, if you translate it, it means dead meat, and it's that thing that we eat only in November, november, in october, right, we celebrate. It's a big celebration. You get all the family together and every piece of meat and every piece of vegetable that we put. We talk about the stories of our ancestors making it right, and it's tears and it's anger and it's all the things, right, but it's allowed. It's that day that you're allowed to have all the emotions and nobody's gonna criticize you, nobody's gonna say, don't feel this way, and you get support from the community and stuff. Um, and here we have different times. Right in in america, we we grieve very differently.

Speaker 2:

Here it's almost like in secret, yeah, like the western world is very like um death phobic. Yes, that's how I, how I see it is. It's very um, we're wanting to push this thing away. We're very scared of what happens, not only to the people that we love, but the but ourselves. Yeah, um, like it just recently got kind of popularized to have like death doulas, so someone who can walk you through the experience, regardless if you're um ending your life by choice or if you're actually, you know, going through the Alzheimer's experience.

Speaker 2:

Um, I, I worked at a place, um, that was just taking care of individuals who are in the stage life, and so I think that the world, especially in the Western world, there's this idea of forever, and forever doesn't happen for anyone.

Speaker 2:

But I like the idea or the conversation that you're bringing up about culture, because everybody's going to decide what happens with their culture. And when we say culture, it's not just about ethnicity, it's about geographical location. Yes, because, like for some African-Americans, like we do, like a home going service or you know, celebration of life, yeah, like we do like a home going service or you know celebration of life, yeah, and for, let's say, jewish communities have Shiva and where they are sitting and actually grieving. It's different, with a lot of different populations. But I think that, for the most part, the scary thing for Western world is what happens after you die, and not just what happens after you die, but like what does my life look like without you? And um, there are so many people who rely so deeply on their spouses, on their partners, on their friends, on their family, and that loss is so, so profound that it really does damage their ability to function in the world, because they rely on them, they need them.

Speaker 1:

Yes, because they rely on them. They need them, yes, and, and it's almost like when we are kids that we need that. That's when we have losses, when we're kids or pets or friends or or parents. It's so dramatic, if I way, if you will, because we do need them. Yeah, we cannot survive without them.

Speaker 1:

Hello, right, and we can talk about grief over and over in different things, but can we give some I don't know starting points for our audience, like a book, a movie, for example? In my case, I love this video game called Grease that teach you different stages of grief in it, basically, tools. It teaches you tools of how, um, for example, um, the, the, the anxiety provoking of like you don't know what is going to happen, like, kind of, you say, you know the character is not gonna make it, but they make you stay in that and they teach you tools and stuff. So I highly recommend that. One agrees, it's a great, uh, to connect with the kids too, because you play with the kids too, because you play with the kid and you say, okay, so what are you feeling right now?

Speaker 1:

Like, I'm feeling like this way, it's a great, great tool to start a conversation and of course, we have books, or like my favorite, like I say with my first responders, is this one. I use this one like a Bible. And what is the other one, the spider one? I don't have it here. I mean, yeah, and the stranger things, oh my god, for my horror people.

Speaker 1:

That one, they love it but, um, for the parents, for the more extreme people you know what kind of book, uh, they can get or just to educate a little bit themselves more. Or they know that because, like you say, we all are going to grieve in one point or another. That's something that can guarantee you. We all are going to experience, all of us, all of us. So can you give us some tools to prepare?

Speaker 2:

so I would say the biggest thing for me is for parents watching people who have small children is it's never so early to introduce the idea of loss. By age five, kiddos have object permanence. They understand that something goes away and won't come back. And so when I think the biggest thing that I've seen in therapy is parents saying, oh, timmy went to the farm as a dog, or grandma's in heaven, this is a place where kids think they can go. So it's really important to change the language and saying grandma died, timmy died, like this is a finite situation in which they're not coming back. So then then we can have more conversations about bringing them into the conversation of oh, what does it mean when grandma doesn't get to see me anymore? They're not going to have some dynamic conversation about it. It's just like they can exist in their sadness, they can exist in a space in which man that sucks we get to talk about man that sucks.

Speaker 2:

I think, for people who are looking for books, especially like individuals who are, like more scholarly, like I would say, definitely lean towards more research books, um, because they span, um, the amount of research has been from the early fifties to now, um, but individuals who just want like self-help, like just making sure that you're really looking for somebody who understands the experience or some a similar experience to you, right, um, one thing that I've worked with, for example, is um loss of a child. It's so different, like my pretty much expertise, my focus, all the things I've been working with, is death of a child. It's so different, like my pretty much expertise, my focus, all the things I've been working with is death of a parent. Death of a child is very different.

Speaker 1:

Very different.

Speaker 2:

And so making sure that you understand that you're differentiating between oh, am I doing this like self-help thing because of some general loss? Am I doing a self-help thing because I just want to learn about grief, because this is specifically catered towards me, or something else. So, really being specific in how you're identifying, like, how these books will help you, because most of the books that I have are scholarly and research-based, but for novice and I say novice in the sense of just general population it's just finding things that are specific to you that you can get something out of. Because if you're picking up a book about sibling loss and you're grieving with the death of a parent, those are two very different things. They don't match um, especially with um, adolescents and children.

Speaker 2:

Um, that's what I was first trained with. Um, there's lots of books about like grandma passed away, our grandma died, or my animal passed away, or that like. So really allowing them to identify what's important. Um, something else, like some of like the self-care things that I would say is make sure that you express your feelings, articulate them when you can, if you can, and even if you say I don't know how I feel right now, I just have a feeling that's safe and that's okay. I know I tell my partner when he's around, like if I'm having a, really I'm like I'm having a sad day, I can't explain it, I'm just having a sad day I really also really focus on like the should of feels, so like I should be, I should have, I should like um, the expression in therapy is like you're shooting all over yourself yes, I used to have a like you, you can it

Speaker 2:

doesn't necessarily mean that you should right um, having some patience, kind and compassionate, of course, um addressing triggers um, and I think the psychological and impersonal part is so essential. Having, like statistics show, having a social community that feels like they understand you, um is going to be as huge in your ability to cope so with grief research. Um, the number one thing that they have taught us to do is number one find a community, do grief resources and things of that nature, for example, like a support group. The number one thing that they have taught us to do is number one find a community, do great resources and things of that nature, for example, like a support group. But at some point people dip down in their success because it just seems like commiserating.

Speaker 2:

So at some point, support groups are great because we all have this like crystallized knowledge that grief sucks and it's awful. Then it doesn't work anymore. So that's when you have to shift to individual therapy to support yourself, and again, this can be a one to five year process. It does not have to take two to three months. And so support groups a finding people that are like you have experienced what you've experienced is essential in the beginning, and then working on yourself is really important. So just find, find people that are like you, who need, need like you, who hurt like you, like that's going to be helpful, because even in a marriage, even in a relationship, even in friendships, they might not get what you get. Like you were saying before, like oh, I'm gonna go talk to my friend about how sad I am because my grandma died.

Speaker 1:

They might not have lost anyone right and it's it's sad, but it's not that sad right, it's like when I remember that when, because, being a young adult with a chronic illness, you told somebody and say, oh, my dog has died and die, and you're like, hey, but yes, we have to also understand that people can only reach out to us and help us to the extent that they can understand it.

Speaker 2:

Well, and that's the important part or piece of that is, one of my favorite quotes from my sister is people are going to people, yes, and they're not going to be able or competent or capable, and not in a mean way, but like they're just not going to be able to know unless they know, right, um, I, we were talking about like something stupid like daylight saving times, like how it affects our lives, and I was like, yeah, it affects, like especially parents, because we're changing time zones and stuff, and my co-worker was like yeah, oh, yeah, my cat. And I was like, yeah, oh, yeah, my cat and.

Speaker 1:

I was like that's different, but for them that's their kid right.

Speaker 2:

So it's. You don't have the same just worldview, like, even like I've had clients. I have one client currently who is from Ukraine. His grief looks different right now than a lot of people, right, it's something that he's still holding on to. This collective grief is going to look different than somebody who's you know right, a ethnic american who has their own struggles and difficulties. Then that looks different too, and all of it should be acknowledged. All of it should be okay and it is. There's space for all of it.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you so much for opening this conversation for us in the community and once again I will put some resources for different types of grief support groups in general. I'm located in California, so a lot of them they're going to be kind of centered in there, but just know that pretty much every single chapter has chapters everywhere, for the most part, hopefully.

Speaker 2:

Can I make one point about the resources? Hopefully, I make one point about the resources. Yes, ma'am, so I'm out of San Diego and the resource guide is from 2007 for grief and loss support, and a lot of them don't exist anymore. Ok, and so when you're looking for things to support you, there's a lot of support in hospice care and there's a lot of support in children. There's not much in the middle. So please make sure that if you're looking for something, when you're looking for something that you actually find something, that one is present.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Two is actually available in your community, right, regardless if it's here or somewhere else.

Speaker 1:

Right and to the public also. I always tell them remember, go check it out, go scout it out and say this is not for me or this is for me, and always leave a review. Reviews are helpful for everybody else. That exists for a reason I love that three method.

Speaker 1:

I love it yeah, just go scout it out, experience it and review it, because the stage that you are in right now, somebody else is gonna be there and I will go and find it. And it's so true when I was going through my own griefs and stuff, it was so hard to find it in the middle, you know, because a 20 something wasn't supposed to deal with this major transition, right, because life, you got your three days right, and so a lot of the support groups I have to go. I was the only 20 something. It was like 60s, 50 people there and it was, um, you know, uh, part of like, how do I explain then I will never be a mother when they're grandparents or great-great-grandparents, right, I was like, uh, I don't think they get it. Or like, how am I gonna date? Right, how do it this little thing?

Speaker 1:

Uh, so it, when you are in that middle part of the sandwich, when you're not the sad or the happy, you're just the meat of it. I always said, please, please, please, don't, don't, don't. I know it's daunting, but don't give up. There is a group for you out there and if it's not one, create one. Create one so where we can find you, because you're just amazing. As you can tell, I totally fumble on her Because I mean but yes, where we can find you?

Speaker 2:

So I am on Instagram at be therapeutic like Bumblebee, um, so I am on Instagram at be therapeutic like bumblebee. And then another resource is really great, as I'm a part of adult orphans on social media, and so I think that there are, like you were saying, like there's somewhere for you, there's always going to be somewhere for you, um, especially child loss, um orphans, loss of a sibling, death by suicide. There are so many programs in social media that you can at least, even if you don't have something to say, somewhere to be Um, and so please find these resources Like. It's so helpful, it's so cathartic, it's going to be great.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. Thank you so much and once again, we are going to put resources in. Also, I will try to find the resource that you mentioned of the 16 stages of grief. Don't worry for my scholarly people that listens to this. We're going to put some scholar research in there for you guys.

Speaker 2:

I'll email it to you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, my love and for everybody else again. I only have one of the books because, like I said, I give it to my clients and they just take them. If you haven't read these books, where the beautiful doctor has been there putting all her heart and love in there, can you tell us what books have you co-create or help, other than black panther, spider-man and, uh, stranger things?

Speaker 2:

so I did black panther, specifically on um killmonger and black panther's like path, um with losing a father, um stranger things is on ambiguous loss with children who are disappearing. Um spider-man is young adults, um to our transitional age youth and their experience of grief and loss. And then we just wrapped up handmaid's tale and that was the first one that I went different and did uh, it's called handmaid's away. Yeah, so it's a cultural thing about handmade style. But we'll be putting out, like my dissertations on grief and loss and the intersectionality between sex and loss, and then some other things I'm trying to think off the top of my head there's just a couple.

Speaker 2:

I'm literally leaving here to go to another, another podcast about Superman and Superfriend. I'm on tons and tons of podcasts. For the most part I am the grief girl for Comic Con and Wonder Con and most of the cons, because most supers lose something almost all um. The only one I can think of um and please correct me in the comics um is um dr strange and he loses his ability to function. But he doesn't lose someone. Everybody else loses parents, family, siblings, something else well, he loves that love you.

Speaker 2:

You know for his love, but yes, Most of the supers experience some sort of death in their family, and so I'm the resident sad person.

Speaker 1:

Yes, if you go to WonderCon or Comic-Con, please come and see us. We normally are in one or two of a lot of panels, and this year will not be different, so hope to see you everybody there. I know Comic-Con is like super hard to get in, but if not, don't worry, we have YouTube channels. A lot of us were in YouTube channels that you can see a lot of the panels there too. I will put some links of the ones I know you have been in and that they are in YouTube. That way, people can just continue loving and learning from you. And once again, thank you so much for being with us. I'm so grateful for you and for the work that you do. Until next time.

Speaker 1:

Good for you. Please, yes, let me pause it. Please, yes, let me pause it. As we conclude today's episode, take a moment to reflect. Be proud of the journey, for every step that brings you closer to who you truly are. Embrace the kindness towards yourself as you did to each one of our guests. Honor the bravery in your actions and celebrate the importance of mental wellness with us. And remember it's an exercise that we practice daily. Continue to grow and flourish, knowing that we are in this training for our mental wellness together. We are so proud to have you as part of our community, so join us on Instagram at Oasis Community Podcast for more inspiring conversations, valuable resources and supported content, including journals, worksheets and content in Spanish.

Speaker 1:

Exciting things are in the horizon. Our Oasis community break rooms are coming soon to grab tools and take a break for your mental health. Also, we are featuring our six-month training ethical mental health coaching program, designed for new and experienced coaches, as well as holistic and healing professionals. Enroll to create a safe and transformative experience to your clients. Links in the bio. Until next time, take care, stay connected and welcome to our Oasis community.