What Makes You The Expert On Grief

On this episode of the Pillars of Grief Podcast, Jock Brocas shares his grief journey and how it led to his expertise on the topic. Jock offers valuable insights and advice on how to navigate through the grieving process. Tune in for a heartfelt discussion on what makes him uniquely qualified to help others cope with grief. Jock offers valuable insights and advice on how to navigate through the grieving process. Tune in for a heartfelt discussion on what makes him uniquely qualified to help others cope with grief.

Transcript

Jock Brocas [00:00:00]:

Hi. Many years ago I was asked what makes you the expert in grief? How can you possibly understand our grief? Hi, my name is Jock Brocas. I am an evidential spirit medium. But most of all, I am an author. And I am a researcher who's been researching grief and studying grief for many, many, many years. And this is the podcast, The Pillars of Grief. I'm inviting you to come on a journey with me. A journey into grief and understanding grief.

Jock Brocas [00:00:36]:

When we come right back, we're going to get right in to the first episode of The Pillars of Grief. God bless my friends. This is Jock here and this is the Pillows of Grief. And I want to thank you for joining me on my new podcast. And this is a podcast that's very different from anything else that you've probably heard out there. This is not a podcast for mediums. It's not a podcast that is going to promote mediumship or promote the new age philosophies or anything like this. This is a journey, if you like.

Jock Brocas [00:01:25]:

This is a journey that I want to take you on. And in this podcast, you're going to hear from not only me, but from many different researchers, experiences of people who have gone through grief, people who have experienced it. And it's a nice segue into that question that I got asked what made me an expert? Or how can I consider myself to an expert? How can I possibly talk about grief from a person who understands it, intricately understands it, and spiritually understands it well? There's a lot of mediums out there. Anybody can learn to connect, use their intuition. And many people will go on courses and they'll learn to be mediums. And they become experts within a week or two after being on a course. And all of a sudden they're out there helping people through their grieving process. And that is so wrong.

Jock Brocas [00:02:27]:

It's so wrong in so many levels because a lot of mediums themselves at that level have never really experienced deep grief, deep loss. And grief comes in many forms. Grief comes in many shapes and sizes. And you're going to learn through this journey the things that you didn't know. And your concepts are going to be challenged, your perceptions are going to be challenged, and your expectations. But what makes me the expert? I don't see myself as an expert, but like you, I have experienced grief at a tremendous level. When I was, when I was very young, actually, I think this is probably I don't know if this is the first time I experienced grief, it was the second. So many people that maybe know me from my work as a medium or know me and other side of things.

Jock Brocas [00:03:23]:

Some of you will know that I can sing and I have singing qualifications and I've done it in the past. And one of the things, when I was younger, I was well into music and singing. And I was asked to sing at a concert for her school and I was going to be doing a duet with this girl. And just before we were meant to go on, a couple of days before we meant to go on the stage, I do the song, she Sniffed Glue. Her name is Amanda. She sniff glue and she died. And that was hard for me to take on board because I was always being very spiritual as a young boy and my uncle was a monk in a monastery, as many people have heard me on different shows and different radio shows. And when she died, that was a loss because that was going to be my partner.

Jock Brocas [00:04:21]:

And some of you might think out there, well, that's really nothing because you haven't lost anybody really close to you, but hold on a little minute. That's just the start of it. That's just the start of it. Because it wasn't long after that that I watched my grandmother, my mother look after my grandmother when I was very young. And I watched her go for my granny that I loved, that was brilliant and funny and just a bundle of joy to wither away. And I watched every single day as my mother, my mother was enough, my mother NUST her to her death and I watched that. And I used to go in and sing for my grandmother when she was dying, I would go in and sing. She would want me to come in and sing for her.

Jock Brocas [00:05:06]:

And that was just after I'd lost Amanda. And then so that was watching my grandmother die as a young child was very hard for me. And it got me thinking even way back then. And then not long after that, my mother then took on the role of looking after my Uncle Tom in the monastery, who was starting to get ill. And at this time I was a lot older and I was looking to be a priest then. I wanted to go in and I wanted to take holy orders. I wanted to go in and devote my life to the priesthood and I wasn't allowed to do that because my uncle died. And then I watched my mother nurse him and then go up to Perth all the time and I would spend all my time there.

Jock Brocas [00:05:53]:

And I watched my uncle with cirrhosis of the liver, I watched him wither away in hospital and then go back to the monastery and die. And that was really hard for me because I was really close to him. And it wasn't long after that, then I got my next loss. I have uncles that I'd lost and then it wasn't as I was growing up. I lost I went to the army and then I lost friends in the army, friends that committed suicide and friends that were killed. And that was a lot of loss in my life as well. And then I had more loss in the family. And then as I came out and I went and did my experience in life as you did you go out? I watched other members of my family wither away and die and I was connected to every one of them.

Jock Brocas [00:06:48]:

And the thing was, I was watching the process. I was really hard, I was watching them and I couldn't equate it to what it meant and there was that fear and watching them, thinking of them when they were brilliant. I've lost people really close to me. And then when I was working as a bouncer on nightclub doors and I witnessed people get ill or people get injured and almost die. But then one of my good friends that I was working with on the door, he was in my house one night. We were sitting, we were having a drink and we were arranging to go to the gym the next day and he left my house that time at night and boom, stevie died. Stevie took an injection and we were training the gym at the time. He was taking steroids, I wasn't taking in the gap and he died and I had to deal with his death.

Jock Brocas [00:07:50]:

So all through my life there have been various levels of loss, from close family members to miscarriages in my family, to my friends dying and through my colleagues loss of colleagues. So wherever I have gone, there has been loss. Then as my work as a medium, obviously I was connecting people with other sides. I was working with people who were who were in great grief and who'd lost loved ones. But then something was really unusual in the path that I was taking because then I would be asked because my wife and I used to run our own church, her own center. And I was very kind of spiritually oriented, almost priest like, certainly being a minister in our own church. I probably got my vacation that way. And then I was asked to go to people's bedsides as they were dying and to pray with them.

Jock Brocas [00:09:05]:

And that's what we used to do. And my wife and I used to travel in America. In fact, I used to travel from one place to another when people were dying and we would go and be with them and we would pray with them and we would teach them and we would give them comfort and we would talk about the other side. So here's the thing. Death and dying or grief and loss has been an intricate part of my life ever since I was a young boy from losing my friend that I was going to sing with from and even my brother. I was coming home from the army and my brother's friend unfortunately took with sniff and glue and I was minutes away. And if I had been earlier and I dealt with that, I that kind of hurt me a little bit, because if I'd have been earlier, I could have probably saved his life because I was a paramedic in the army and I was only minutes late and he passed, he died. And so I've witnessed it from every age, from I was young to losing family members, my granny, my uncle, my uncle.

Jock Brocas [00:10:16]:

No, monish is probably the hardest one for me because I was so connected to that life and then through later on life, people that I was connected to and because my mother was nursing them, I would see the deterioration. I would see everything. And losing people through suicide, losing people through illness. And I've been intricately connected to death and grieving in some way. And the biggest thing is when my father passed, my father passed when he was really young, passed when he was 52. And I never had a great relationship with my dad. And so we fell out literally just before he passed. I remember my last words to him were not kind and were not friendly.

Jock Brocas [00:11:04]:

We had fallen out and it was bad. I remember driving from north of Scotland down to the hospital in Glasgow to see my father because I was told he was suffering and he had stomach viruses, he had Esophageal viruses, and I remember having it out with him. He was in Edinburgh and he got moved and met to Glasgow. I went down to see him in Wish Hospital. And taking into consideration I'd lost so many, so many people in my life, tons of people. I never expected I was going to lose my dad. Now I lost my dad not long after I fall out with him. I never got to say goodbye to my father.

Jock Brocas [00:11:48]:

And the last words that I had with my father were, negative, were bad, and it cut me, but it didn't cut me straight away. You see, even at my dad's funeral, I never shed a tear when I put him into the ground. I was numb, really, and grief hadn't hit me until much later on. I think it was about six months down the line. Six, seven months down the line, I got drunk and I was really stupid. Eventually, I was so caught up with guilt and shame that I wanted to take my own life because I felt I had done something so bad and so wrong and really suffered from that grief, from that guilt and that shame. And it never hit me until really long after my father had passed. Like, six months down the line is when it really hit me beforehand.

Jock Brocas [00:12:42]:

I was numb, if you like, and distant, and I could only just remember that, wow. The last words I said to my father weren't kind. And even to this day, I mean, I'm lucky. As a medium and who's had over two decades of experience, I'm lucky. I have a really good connection with my father now. And obviously I understand the mechanics of the afterlife and things. But all of this loss has been the catalyst to me really studying and researching and I'm on an academic path at the moment, on the way to a PhD. And this is what I'm going to be studying through my next four or five years, is deeper aspects of understanding grief and the issues with grief in people's lives and the world in general through different cultures.

Jock Brocas [00:13:38]:

So that loss and that guilt and that shame. My grief had been exacerbated to such a level that it really hit me. And as like I said, I considered ending things because I was so steeped in that grief and that shame and that guilt and that shame. Sorry. So, like I said, I really have experienced it from all angles. All angles. And I know it's the worst kind of suffering. Loneliness is another kind of suffering.

Jock Brocas [00:14:11]:

But in grief, there's so much loneliness and grief, it's unreal. That's actually going to be probably one of the next articles that I'm writing, because I write a lot on grief as well. So why did I want to start this podcast? Well, this is a passion for me to be able to share some wisdom and some knowledge that I've gained over the years as well, but blending the knowledge and taking it to the next level, using divine wisdom through the many, many years and many experiences that I've had. And what I want to do is to share not only my experiences and I want to share what I have learned, not only academically or not only from my own research, but learned from the world of spirit as well, and to blend that and bring that together. And so as we go through this journey, all of you that are going to go through this journey with me, I'm going to be bringing in experts and researchers and I'm going to be bringing in people that I'm going to challenge as well and debate with. And not only will you hear from me giving you lessons on grief and what I want to share and what I want to know, you're going to learn a lot more about my own journey, but we're going to hear from other experiences. I've got a great friend of mine, Jill, who's going to come on and talk. She lost her husband through COVID.

Jock Brocas [00:15:36]:

I helped her through her grief and she will come and tell her story. Excuse me. And I will have other people that will come. And this is not going to be a show where you'll just hear from loads of mediums telling you how great they are, but you're going to hear some real stories and you're going to hear about people who have managed to grow through their journey on grief. We're going to talk about post traumatic growth, we're going to talk about how grief affects you in your physical world, how grief affects you in your mental health. We're going to unpack everything and we're going to bust myths and we're going to destroy illusions. So that as you go through this journey with me, you're going to learn the knowledge and the wisdom that I have and you're going to be able to apply that in your life and you're also going to be able to help other people, right? Because the thing is, in this world as well is especially we are too frightened to talk about grief. We think about grief, we think about the loss of a loved one.

Jock Brocas [00:16:49]:

And grief is so much more. I've got another friend who has lost her son, but her son's alive and well, but she's grieving. She's grieving so bad. I see the pain in her eyes when she talks about her son. So grief doesn't always mean that you've lost someone to death and dying or you've lost someone who's crossed over to the spirit world, to the other side of life. And I'm going to teach you some things about the other side that's going to make you light up with joy, that will make you happy. I have women in a support group that I help. I have a community that you'll get invited to as well.

Jock Brocas [00:17:34]:

I have a community that I run and I give lessons to them and I help them as well. So there's a lot more to this. And I want to bring in this psychologist and the psychiatrist. We're going to talk to them, we're going to learn about them. Because a lot of people think that they understand grief through theory. And that's not necessarily this. The theory is what they learn in a book. The theory is what they get from the DSM.

Jock Brocas [00:18:00]:

The theory is what they get DSM Five, which is the Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, they get it from that or what the psychosis and grief. And there's so much more to this that I've learned over the years that I want to share that knowledge and I want to bring in those experts so that you can learn from them and challenge their system. Because many of them haven't experienced grief because they're learning it through a journal or they're learning it through a book, or they're not learning it through experience in this world is about experience. We come in from the spirit world and we come in to experience life. It's an experiential place, but once grief has really touched you, you never get and here's the thing I want you to think about. You will never heal from grief, but it's a journey that you have to go on. But it's up to you. You can learn from that journey.

Jock Brocas [00:19:02]:

It can become your greatest teacher. You can allow it to help you to grow so spiritually that it will take you to new levels in your spiritual development, your growth. Grief is not religious. Grief is something that exists in all belief systems, in all of all spiritual writings. Grief exists at the corporate level, in the boardroom. It exists in universities. It exists for children. And we're going to unpack all of that, even for kids.

Jock Brocas [00:19:43]:

Whether you're a lawyer, whether you're a leader, a lot of companies can fail because of grief. A lot of people end up homeless because of grief. A lot of people commit suicide because of grief. A lot of marriages fail because of grief. But imagine the transformation that we could experience if we could go on the journey of grief and understand it at its root, at its seed. I hope that one day you look upon grief as a blessing. I hope that my friend Tara will look upon her loss as the greatest teacher she has. And I hope that one day, that loss that she experiences is brought to bear with her son coming back to her.

Jock Brocas [00:20:46]:

And for all of you people out there who have not lost a loved one but you've lost a relationship, that's what it's like if your son or your daughter has left home and doesn't speak to you anymore, or you don't speak to your child, or you don't speak to your relative. Because if something has happened, you could be suffering through grief. Grief, ladies and gentlemen, is not just about death and dying. Grief is about life. And hopefully, on this journey, we will unpack that. We will look at it, we will learn from it. And we will transform the trauma into triumph. Join me on this journey.

Jock Brocas [00:21:30]:

Discovery on the pillars of grief. You'll be more than welcome. And I send my loving blessings out to you all. This is Jock. This is pillars of Grief. God bless.