Embrace Softness and Connection in Grief, Death and Dying with Dr. Mekel Harris

In this conversation, Dr. Mekel Harris shares her profound insights on grief and loss, drawing on both her personal experiences and professional expertise. She discusses the impact of her mother's death on her life, the importance of journaling as a tool for processing grief, and the non-linear nature of the grieving process. The conversation highlights the importance of witnessing grief and the cultural barriers that often hinder open discussions about loss. Dr. Harris encourages embracing softness in grief and highlights the importance of connection and support during challenging times. In this conversation, the speakers delve into the themes of compassion, grief, and the significance of emotional expression. They discuss how innate human compassion can be cultivated and the importance of creating safe spaces in the workplace for individuals who are grieving. The conversation emphasizes the significance of expressing feelings and the restorative power of connection and prayer. Ultimately, they reflect on the beauty of love that exists even in the face of grief.

Bloomwell Partners: www.growwithbloomwell.com
Instagram handle: @drmekel   
Write Where You Are: Mindful Journaling for Grief Guide - click here
A Gentle Guide for Grieving Hearts - click here
Purchase My Memoir, Relaxing Into the Pain - click here

Transcript

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Wakil David Matthews (00:03.774)
Okay, well, welcome everybody. On today's episode, we are so happy to meet Dr. Mikkel Harris. Dr. Harris is an associate professor and licensed psychologist who specializes in pediatric health, including grief and loss in the Los Angeles, California area. Dr. Harris is a speaker, author, and expert in grief and loss. She has more than 20 years of experience helping others navigate as well as thrive in the midst of life's imperfect moments.

Annalouiza (00:35.534)
She has published several guides that she offers for free on the topic of dealing with grief. We will link those in the podcast notes. And her new debut book, Relaxing Into Pain, looks amazing. And she'll be sharing some of the passages from it throughout our conversation today. Welcome, welcome, and so honored to have you with us.

Wakil David Matthews (00:59.73)
Yeah, it's so great.

Dr. Mekel Harris (00:59.739)
Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be here. And I was tickled inside, Waqeel, as you were talking, because I thought basically he just called me old with the 20.

Wakil David Matthews (01:10.046)
Well, probably much younger than me anyway.

Dr. Mekel Harris (01:17.088)
No, so grateful. Thank you all for the invitation to come and speak with your audience. Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (01:20.542)
Yeah, I'm so glad and I'm really impressed by the work you're doing. It's so important. So we'd like to begin by asking when you first became aware of death in your life. And I've read some of your stories, but I'd like you to share that with our audience. And as well, feel free to read from your book if you'd like, because that has some of that conversation in there.

Dr. Mekel Harris (01:26.329)
Thank you.

Dr. Mekel Harris (01:36.058)
Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (01:42.747)
So I just a little bit of background both of my parents were Air Force veterans and as part of that our family did a little bit of traveling but we were sort of trained like even though there was loss around us to sort of muscle our way through and not really emphasize that so growing up there was there was loss that I experienced in my family but I would say the first time I became just

very innately aware and just deeply aware of grief was when my mom was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. This was in the fall of 2012. And just the loss of a mom who I always viewed as a superhero and just the traditional sort of strong black woman that never say die, that always get up, do what it takes just to see her.

walk through that process was really the first time that I, you know, became aware of it and the impact, the significant impact that it was going to have on me. I didn't realize that it would be as fast as it was, but that's really when things in my life significantly changed. Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (02:58.973)
Yeah, yeah, I understand that. I read one of the things you said that I really related to from when my mom died was standing, I was standing at the airport. had to fly home quickly when she died. And I was standing at the airport weeping and looking around me and thinking, how can all these people just be going about their lives? And you said something similar. it just, it does. It just kind of shakes your foundation, right? And makes you, it makes you remember too.

Annalouiza (03:01.452)
Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (03:13.723)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (03:19.322)
Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (03:24.791)
Mm-hmm. Well, yes. Well, the irony of that moment, Waqeel, was that, and I described this in the book, I had literally left choir rehearsal. So I was singing as part of our church worship team and had practiced all of these worship songs and worship to God. And then to get the call in the car about 15, 20 minutes into that drive, pulled over to the side of the road and it was this juxtaposition of faith.

Wakil David Matthews (03:28.241)
Preciousness,

Wakil David Matthews (03:49.671)
Mm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (03:54.331)
Like I literally just sang these songs, yet here I am in the hardest moment of my life with my mom as she's sharing about the diagnosis.

Wakil David Matthews (04:02.823)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, people keep driving by. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (04:08.397)
Life was going forward.

Annalouiza (04:12.878)
So how does death impact your life story? Like, to the trajectory of all these wonderful gifts that you have given to the world, how has death played into this?

Dr. Mekel Harris (04:26.243)
Death really opened up a portal for me. As someone who has grieved, is grieving, I think when you walk through that door and you're introduced to loss, and this is not just physical death, but the loss of ideals, identities, dreams, and hopes, it awakens you to all the death around you, right? So when my mom was diagnosed, that was the entry point.

And then I started to realize, gosh, the accumulation of losses that I'd actually experienced growing up. I looked around at my relationships and just personal dreams and hopes that I had and saw that a lot of those were unrealized. And it became this really painful realization, like, gosh, I've been surrounded by this the whole time. I didn't realize how much I had lived in that space of not knowing.

Wakil David Matthews (05:13.319)
Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (05:18.895)
which was really overwhelming to me. But I think as I shared earlier, I did what I knew to do at the time, which was to keep going. I call it like outpace grief, which is impossible, but that was my mindset at the time. Like I was gonna put on my best track shoes and outrun this thing and only to hit a wall. And that culminated with me literally weeping on the floor of a hotel room years after my mom died. But.

Wakil David Matthews (05:31.205)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (05:36.349)
You

Wakil David Matthews (05:45.053)
Wow.

Dr. Mekel Harris (05:47.097)
Yeah, it has absolutely shaped how I view life, but it's also made me appreciate the fact that everything is finite and all we have is the moment. And so I try to do my best to live with joy and experience connection with people and really tell people how I feel good or bad. Because I know this may actually be the last moment that we have an interaction. Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (05:56.722)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (06:05.821)
Thanks

Wakil David Matthews (06:10.523)
So true, yeah, very true. So tell us a little bit more about some of the work you're doing and the book especially, but also you published a couple of things that you offer for free, which I really appreciate, which is the journaling. That seems like a really important thing to mention and talk about, then grief during the holidays. So both of those treasures that you've offered, I really appreciate them. Tell us a little more about all that.

Dr. Mekel Harris (06:27.172)
Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (06:33.647)
Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (06:39.887)
Yeah, so I entered the authoring journey reluctantly. What happened was my mom died. I was meeting with a psychologist at the time who really helped to walk alongside me during that season. And she's the one, the title of the book, Relaxing Into the Pain was actually sparked from a conversation with me sitting across the room with my therapist. What she noticed was that I was avoiding grief.

Wakil David Matthews (06:43.197)
Thanks.

Wakil David Matthews (07:02.877)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (07:06.521)
that I was working myself to death, over-exercising, feeling all the symptoms but not acknowledging what they really were. And so she gently but directly looked across the room and said, Mikkel, what would it look like if you relaxed into the pain of your mom's death? Now, at the time, I didn't realize that was gonna be a book, but I felt just the prompting of the Holy Spirit to say, okay, you need to tell the story and this could actually bless someone.

Wakil David Matthews (07:14.279)
Right.

Wakil David Matthews (07:23.645)
Well, let's see.

you

Dr. Mekel Harris (07:36.091)
So I reluctantly wrote that. And since then, I have provided some other things. So you mentioned the mindful journaling for grief guide. Journaling, if you've read my book, you know that the whole book is based around my real journal entries, starting on the day that my mom was diagnosed, all the way through about a year and a half after her death. And so I have found writing to be really powerful. And what I discovered was when you can put something on paper,

Wakil David Matthews (07:36.189)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (07:52.134)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (08:05.307)
which is one of the reasons I think people avoid journaling, it makes it real. It's not something that's sort of in your mind, but you're actually seeing it with your eyeballs on paper. And then you're reliving that because you're going back and looking at it. But I have found that to be such an incredibly transformative process that I thought, let's make this available and really talk about the science behind it. There's a reason why therapists say,

Wakil David Matthews (08:10.311)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (08:29.49)
Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (08:31.973)
Hey, have you thought about journaling? Because it's a very powerful tool to connect what's happening emotionally to our neurobiology in terms of expressing grief. But yeah, that's one offering. I also have written the grieving hearts sort of opportunity for people to learn about what it means to process through grief and really normalize the grief process, especially around the holidays, which is, as you know,

Wakil David Matthews (08:34.013)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (08:56.732)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (08:59.086)
Okay.

Dr. Mekel Harris (08:59.927)
a time when lot of emotions might arise because of traditions and so forth in our society.

Wakil David Matthews (09:04.219)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I really love that the idea of journaling with presence was a big part of that, you know, to really be present with yourself, be gentle and calm and like meditative and then do your journaling because you do get so much better connected to what's really going on in your heart, in your head. So thank you. Those are...

Dr. Mekel Harris (09:12.091)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (09:21.529)
You do.

I've often, yeah, I've often been honestly surprised when that pin hits the paper and I'm really writing out how I feel. So I have felt shocked at times thinking I didn't realize it was that much of an emotion for me or that much of a pain point for me. So again, I see why people wanna skirt around that, but if you can lean into it a little bit more, can really be really

Wakil David Matthews (09:30.96)
Hehe.

Wakil David Matthews (09:41.564)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (09:50.107)
Yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (09:51.31)
It really makes me think too. My sister passed away about five years ago and you know, I had this, my head understood the whole what happened and my heart was breaking and then I was sitting with a spiritual director and I was telling her how like these two little toes hurt. And I don't know where she said, have you actually talked to your body about the loss of your sister? And I thought that was like very, right. It was very different, right? Because she's like, you understand it through your mind.

Dr. Mekel Harris (10:00.655)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (10:08.175)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (10:08.253)
Thank

Wakil David Matthews (10:13.297)
Hmm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (10:13.465)
Hmm, what a great question. Wow.

Annalouiza (10:20.418)
Your heart hurts, but your actual body has not been told. And it makes me think that journaling is a way for that somatic information to be like, like regulated through these other two systems, right? Like your mind will have the technology, the words to write down in your heart will have that pain that's being poured out through the words. And then your body can actually write it and say, this is me. So I do shape that as a connection for.

Dr. Mekel Harris (10:24.475)
Mmm.

Wakil David Matthews (10:24.604)
well.

Dr. Mekel Harris (10:33.733)
That's right.

Dr. Mekel Harris (10:39.803)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (10:45.507)
Yes. Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (10:45.691)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (10:50.592)
now working working with alongside grief in a myriad of ways that we need to

Dr. Mekel Harris (10:50.639)
Well, and.

Wakil David Matthews (10:55.109)
Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Mekel Harris (10:55.163)
Absolutely. What was happening at the time, probably about a year and a half after my mom died was my body was literally shutting down. I recall a moment where I was driving from San Diego to LA and the entire left side of my body went numb. I literally had to lift my leg into the car. Thankfully I'm right-handed so I was driving with my right foot, but it was a really...

Wakil David Matthews (11:17.693)
Thanks

Dr. Mekel Harris (11:21.037)
Well, you would have thought it would have been an eye-awakening experience. However, I'm stubborn and resistant at the time. And so I thought, that's just, you know, whatever. It happened again. I ended up at my doctor's office who said, Mikael, look, all your labs are fine. What else is going on? And in the moment, I thought, well, I can't think of anything because I hadn't connected that interconnectedness between the body and grief. But that's exactly what it was. My body was holding.

Wakil David Matthews (11:24.509)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Wakil David Matthews (11:38.653)
Thank

Dr. Mekel Harris (11:49.98)
all of the love, the loss, the pain, the anguish in my body, the confusion.

Annalouiza (11:54.136)
confusion, right? It's confusion. what is going on? Why is there such a loss? I don't understand this. Part of me that is no longer here. Where, where did it go?

Wakil David Matthews (11:56.284)
Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (12:00.527)
That's right. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Well, and to have experienced that with her from within 30 days. I mean, my brother and I literally went from getting a diagnosis to me flying to Texas to thinking, okay, we have options to realizing according to my mom's, know, heartfelt desire was she didn't want to pursue anything heroic. And so we honored that.

Wakil David Matthews (12:00.571)
Yeah, exactly.

Annalouiza (12:07.95)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (12:10.397)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (12:27.525)
But we thought, okay, we're gonna enter hospice, we're gonna enter palliative care and be here for a while. And instead it was foot on the gas, roller coaster going down a steep hill. And before you knew it, we were calling the palliative care company back to say, the equipment that just arrived a week earlier, you can come pick it up because she had passed away. And so my body was just completely dysregulated. Yeah.

Annalouiza (12:31.822)
Right.

Wakil David Matthews (12:33.244)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (12:48.071)
Wow. Wow.

Annalouiza (12:51.832)
We have.

Wakil David Matthews (12:53.767)
Sure, sure. Yeah. And you spoke to, and I forget which one I was reading, but one of the things was about the phases of death that they speak of and how it's not linear at all. And you discovered that and you talk about that. And we had a guest on Mirabai. Wouldn't that be easier? And you go, I'm done with that part. Yeah. We had a guest on Mirabai Star who's done a whole series now of, I think she calls them 16.

Dr. Mekel Harris (13:04.059)
Mm.

Yeah.

Boy do I wish it were.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Exactly.

Dr. Mekel Harris (13:21.979)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (13:23.549)
thresholds that are not linear either, but are things that we go through in grief. And she also is a great fan and author herself, but also a big fan of journaling and has many classes on writing, writing classes. So yeah, this is something that I really think is so important. And I'm so glad that you are emphasizing that in your work too. So thank you.

Dr. Mekel Harris (13:24.591)
Hmm. Hmm.

Mm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (13:37.689)
Mmm, love that.

Dr. Mekel Harris (13:44.697)
Yeah, I've also, so again, my mindset historically has been go gung-ho, go hard. But of course, this has shifted a lot of things. And I think now really appreciating that grief is not static. And honestly, when we try to take a sort of a forceful approach to grieving, whether that's just, I'm gonna go back to work and go all in, or I'm gonna dishonor what my body's saying and forge ahead anyway.

Wakil David Matthews (13:52.541)
Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (14:13.155)
we really exacerbate the suffering. We really do, as opposed to leaning into it. And so these days, I've started to frame this up as sort of softer, like softness. How can we embrace softness as a way to allow grief to do what it's going to do, whether we like it or not. But we're not grieving with resistance, right? We're grieving alongside these things in our world.

Annalouiza (14:15.852)
Yes.

Wakil David Matthews (14:16.007)
Yes. Yeah.

Annalouiza (14:19.032)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (14:30.909)
Right.

Wakil David Matthews (14:35.345)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (14:39.344)
Yeah, beautiful.

Annalouiza (14:39.502)
Well, and culturally, we don't talk about it that way, right? Like we're still grieving so much of the losses we've experienced in the last five years, the losses that are currently happening to us. And yet people don't want to relate to what's happening in the external world as something that could deeply affect our internal cells, our physical cells, right? And so, you know, I had also a health thing last week and a friend of mine last night said, well,

Dr. Mekel Harris (14:42.308)
No.

Dr. Mekel Harris (14:46.447)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (14:56.441)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep.

Annalouiza (15:06.958)
You know, I don't understand why you just didn't stop and call somebody and like, you know, do the hospital visitors and they look like, well, it's not that I was resistant to that idea. It's that it doesn't feel safe to just assume the worst and then go talk about it because our culture is like, you know, you only do these things if it's really bad. And if it's not like stop being such a whiner, like, right. So we do that around, around people who are, who have just experienced a loss of a loved one and.

Dr. Mekel Harris (15:15.993)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (15:25.03)
Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (15:25.209)
Mmm.

Wakil David Matthews (15:28.025)
Hahaha

Dr. Mekel Harris (15:28.217)
Right. Yeah, it's so true.

Annalouiza (15:36.066)
We generally don't allow them to break down and just gnash their teeth for a few weeks. Because that's totally normal and it's totally healthy. And yet it looked as like a little bit of a mental crisis rather than grief.

Dr. Mekel Harris (15:41.915)
That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (15:48.715)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Absolutely. No, this reminds me of a moment that I had. This was, I want to say, eight years into my mom's after her death. I'm 12 and a half years beyond her death now. But I was in Costco, walking down the aisle, normal routine, stumbled down the laundry detergent aisle, and got a flash of a brand that my mom used to buy.

Wakil David Matthews (15:50.449)
Yeah, even when it takes years.

Annalouiza (15:52.748)
Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (16:18.331)
and completely fell apart. Thank God for strangers who have compassion because someone literally came and sat on the floor with me and held me on the floor in Costco. Can you imagine that? But it was really beautiful. Yes. Yeah, it was very sacred. And, I don't know what your thoughts are about angels or whatever, but after that moment, it was so cocooned that when I came back to myself and looked around,

Annalouiza (16:23.916)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (16:30.011)
Yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (16:30.06)
Yes, I can. I would love that. I'm grateful they did.

Yes.

Dr. Mekel Harris (16:48.409)
there was nobody on that aisle. And I thought, I don't even care who it was. All I know is I needed the safety of their touch in that moment. Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (16:53.302)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (16:54.988)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. people fear tears. People fear connection and especially with strangers. mean, this is why Wachula and I are so committed to this podcast because we really do want to talk about these things so that when, you know, somebody who randomly hears us sees somebody on the Costco floor, like we'll say, this is totally, I know to do. I just need to sit here and with it. Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (16:58.141)
Wow, beautiful.

Dr. Mekel Harris (17:02.171)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (17:12.463)
or here.

Wakil David Matthews (17:18.065)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (17:18.831)
They'll step in. Yes. Yes. That's it. Yeah. Well, and that's something I also support is I actually did have a free webinar called How to Support Someone Who's Grieving. And one of the most powerful elements of that is just, as you mentioned, the power of witnessing. It's just witnessing. I think that we're so programmed to think, I've got to do all these things. I've got to fix it. But we know that there's no fixing, but.

Annalouiza (17:38.338)
Yes.

Dr. Mekel Harris (17:48.015)
To sit with someone in the depth of their pain and say, man, I see it too, is incredibly, it's such a bomb to the soul. It really is. And that's what that person did.

Wakil David Matthews (17:53.884)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (17:53.911)
Right.

Annalouiza (17:58.36)
Yeah. For both of you, right? The person who is grieving is feeling, is sensing the witnessing. And the person who witnesses, this is like a muscle that you like, you know, it's like, yeah, this is what it's needed in this moment. And I can flex it. And I can do this. you know, in the last year, every time I see a dead animal on the road, I always, you know, I say a prayer for them.

Wakil David Matthews (17:59.262)
a real gift.

Dr. Mekel Harris (18:02.843)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (18:03.291)
Yeah, for both Pea Parties, yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (18:11.812)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (18:11.869)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (18:18.149)
That's right.

Wakil David Matthews (18:23.869)
See

Dr. Mekel Harris (18:27.609)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (18:28.032)
And I'm always shocked because I'll say, my gosh, you we just actually drove to Arkansas and my daughter and I were like, God, there's so many dead possums. And she's like, I haven't seen any, right? So part of it is that we become jaded to the death that's around us. So we get jaded to the pain that people are like, we see it in their eyes, but we don't see it anymore. We can notice it in their bodies, but we can't notice anymore. But just the bare minimum of just witnessing the death of a beloved animal for me.

Dr. Mekel Harris (18:36.987)
Mm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (18:46.319)
Yep. Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (18:55.887)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (18:56.445)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (18:56.738)
know to me I'm like I see you and I'm really sorry that it was the end here. I love you right you know I'll see you later.

Dr. Mekel Harris (19:00.123)
Yeah, yeah. That's right, yeah. It's no longer riding up on the elevator where everyone's eyes are glued ahead and you're like, how was your weekend? Great, but no one really is picking up on tears that may be falling or affect that's completely discombobulated. So yeah, it is turning face to face and really connecting human to human. And hopefully.

Wakil David Matthews (19:01.329)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Annalouiza (19:09.762)
Yes, exactly.

Wakil David Matthews (19:12.591)
Right.

Annalouiza (19:15.608)
for next.

Right.

Beautiful. We need it.

Dr. Mekel Harris (19:27.259)
as we learn to be able to develop that and cultivate those skills, we can offer that sort of compassion so needed.

Wakil David Matthews (19:34.247)
Yeah, yeah, we can all be angels.

Annalouiza (19:35.456)
know, I think about small children who, you know, who always come up to the person who's crying, you know, and like, like, very quiet about it. They're just like, curious, but, you know, unsure what to do. But it's a very childlike, like sentiment to come up and like, I care about your tears. I care about them. That's all.

Dr. Mekel Harris (19:37.125)
We can all be angels, that's right.

Dr. Mekel Harris (19:45.497)
Yes! Yes! That's right!

Dr. Mekel Harris (19:56.631)
Yes. Well, what's interesting is, so this is ironic that you brought this up on Alouisa. I was watching a social media video and babies, babies know how to attune to that very young. So this was a mom who was crying and her baby turned. Now, of course, the baby wasn't able to communicate with words, but it was just a look like.

Annalouiza (20:11.384)
Yeah. Yeah.

Annalouiza (20:20.727)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (20:25.037)
Is everything okay? Are you okay? And it was so, they notice. And you're right. It's like as we live life, as we experience bumps and obstacles and hurdles, we become more jaded. And it's almost as if our vision is clouded. We no longer are able to see it. Yeah. But clearly it's innate. It's innate for us to be able to do that. Yeah.

Annalouiza (20:26.542)
I noticed.

Wakil David Matthews (20:26.791)
You

Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (20:42.865)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Annalouiza (20:45.728)
It is. It is.

Wakil David Matthews (20:47.921)
Yeah, yeah, and it's a practice to remember to do that, to be in that place. So yeah, great. Wonderful.

Dr. Mekel Harris (20:51.299)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Annalouiza (20:55.854)
So, yes, we asked you about your current role in your writing and sharing your wisdom. And what do you find are the biggest challenges in the work that you do?

Dr. Mekel Harris (20:59.942)
huh.

Dr. Mekel Harris (21:05.659)
Yeah, so right now I'm actually working. have a business partner and my dear friend Janet Willem Wright. She and I decided we connected on Instagram in 2023 in the summer of 2023 and she was sharing her story of loss. She's also experienced the death of her mom. So we connected on that, but we realized, gosh, we had so many overlaps with our experiences in the workplace. And so one of the things we thought was, huh,

She has organizational expertise. I have the mental health background. Why don't we join forces? And we created an entirely new company called Bloomwell Partners. And our whole focus these days is offering organizational training, helping leaders and organizations understand what it means to actually show up in a forward-facing empathic way with employees who are grieving because we spend so many hours at work. We spend more time at work than with our family.

Wakil David Matthews (21:46.237)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (21:57.4)
Wow.

Wakil David Matthews (21:59.387)
Mmm, wow.

Annalouiza (22:02.029)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (22:02.268)
Yeah.

That's true.

Dr. Mekel Harris (22:05.371)
And why shouldn't the workplace be a safe space for employees to be able to realize their grief without shame or judgment or stigma? yeah, that's a large part of what I do these days. It's been wonderful work.

Wakil David Matthews (22:13.756)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (22:15.608)
Right. Wow. That's powerful.

Wakil David Matthews (22:19.313)
That's great. Yeah. We will definitely have links to all that in the podcast notes. And if you have upcoming seminars, we're doing a newsletter now once a month. So we'd be glad to put that in the newsletter. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (22:25.157)
Thank you.

Dr. Mekel Harris (22:29.859)
Okay, I love that. will do a little shameless plug. I don't know if it'll make the newsletter. However, this Thursday, this Thursday, two days from now, we're actually hosting a workshop and we're gonna lean into this idea of the fact that spiritually, grief is an interconnected communal experience. However, we live in a disconnected world. So how do we sort of overcome

Wakil David Matthews (22:35.129)
Absolutely.

Heh.

Annalouiza (22:53.102)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (22:55.772)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (22:55.981)
Right.

Dr. Mekel Harris (22:58.937)
that tension and so that's going to be what our workshop is on. But I'm sure Wackia will be hosting many other things in the future. I will. Thank you.

Annalouiza (23:02.83)
beautiful.

Wakil David Matthews (23:05.991)
Good. Yeah, yeah, definitely let us know. Great. And we really appreciate that. Do you have things that you... Well, I guess we'll ask this next question too. Maybe it'll lead into that. But is there anything that frightened you about the end of life?

Dr. Mekel Harris (23:25.889)
not saying all the things that I desire to say. And I don't mean in the sense of regret, like saying the wrong thing. I think that my biggest fear is not having said those heartfelt things, Those experiences that you have with people and you leave the moment you're like, God, they're an amazing person, but you don't say that, right? You let them leave and you think, well, I'll see them in a couple of weeks or...

Wakil David Matthews (23:30.994)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (23:42.178)
Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (23:48.952)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (23:49.137)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (23:51.406)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (23:55.021)
Right.

Dr. Mekel Harris (23:55.419)
The moments where you're deeply impacted that you don't share with the other person in the space But yeah, my biggest fear is not having said all the things because we're so relational You never know the impact of what you're gonna say and how it's gonna affect the other person Just to give an example literally today. I was sitting in the room with someone and he said something that was so profound

Wakil David Matthews (23:58.685)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (24:02.594)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (24:06.533)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (24:13.346)
Right.

Dr. Mekel Harris (24:23.663)
that it actually gave me pause. And I'm not one who's the person who doesn't have words. But I was so taken aback in the best way by what he said that I didn't have any words. And I thought, here's an opportunity to tell him how impactful and how profound of a statement he just made. I did. When I told him that, he started weeping. Now I didn't know this was a stranger. This was a stranger.

Wakil David Matthews (24:28.295)
Thank

Wakil David Matthews (24:36.177)
Hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (24:47.663)
Hmm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (24:52.845)
And so when he started weeping, he said, I needed to hear that. And it was this, yes, it was this incredible moment. So yeah, I want to live a life where I actually share those types of things because clearly we're all connected and you have something that I need and vice versa.

Wakil David Matthews (24:53.159)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (24:59.271)
Ugh.

Annalouiza (25:10.082)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (25:10.183)
Yes.

Annalouiza (25:12.654)
Right. It's so fun, by the way, when you do that. Like my kids, oh, well, my son's like, you always talk to strangers, He's always going up to them. Like, you know, even if it's like a woman who's got something really cute, I'm like, oh, that's so cute or whatever. And I would say nine out of 10 times, people were like, thank you so much for saying that. And it does lift them up, right? Like something is like, like we're just so barricaded behind our walls because it's dangerous and hard and scary.

Wakil David Matthews (25:12.861)
Beautiful. Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (25:15.691)
It is.

Dr. Mekel Harris (25:26.797)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (25:32.303)
Yes.

Dr. Mekel Harris (25:40.763)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Annalouiza (25:42.632)
And you just kind of flippantly even sometimes be like, hey, cutie. You know, chuckle and like, you were noticing me, right? Like, it was my dearest pleasure to do that. So I'm so glad that's on your wishlist for yourself. It was so fun.

Dr. Mekel Harris (25:47.515)
Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (25:59.259)
It is, it is, yeah. Basically, I wanna die and at my memorial service or funeral for people to say she didn't leave anything unsaid. Like I have no doubt how Mikhail felt about me, right? So yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (25:59.363)
Yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (26:11.586)
Yeah, love it. Love it.

Wakil David Matthews (26:14.331)
Yeah, yeah. Wow, that's great. And just setting that intention just keeps that awareness in your heart during the day and then these things come through you. Yeah, I find that part of my prayers in the morning is to guide me to where I can be of most service and that works. I I've told people when I do I counsel that don't say that prayer unless you mean it because

Annalouiza (26:19.288)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (26:25.412)
Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (26:30.683)
Mmm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (26:41.389)
you will be attracting, yes, he is, he is. He's gonna be, yeah, she's on assignment. Yes, there's a lot to do. Yeah. And so even to this idea of people being strangers, if you think about it from that perspective, we're not. We may not know all the intimate details of each other's lives, but we know each other and we know what each other needs, right? So it's really beautiful.

Wakil David Matthews (26:41.565)
God's going to give you something to do. There's a lot to do. Yeah, exactly.

Annalouiza (26:58.071)
Right, right.

Wakil David Matthews (26:58.087)
That's

Annalouiza (27:02.018)
Right.

Wakil David Matthews (27:04.945)
Yep. Yes, exactly.

Annalouiza (27:06.358)
Yeah, it's so fun. It's kind of what makes it magical to live honestly, just like to strangers and be like.

Wakil David Matthews (27:11.261)
You

Dr. Mekel Harris (27:11.265)
It does. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I'm gonna steal that prayer wakil. Yeah, wake up. Yes, it's beautiful.

Annalouiza (27:15.788)
Woo!

Wakil David Matthews (27:18.502)
yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (27:21.719)
Yeah.

Okay, so how do you keep yourself resourced? What makes you fill your cup on some of the harder times?

Dr. Mekel Harris (27:33.433)
I'm gonna lean on, I'm gonna follow what feels like and mine is prayer, prayer. I spend a lot of time in prayer and honestly this morning, I was convicted in where I'm putting, I'm placing my attention. Or sometimes in the throes of life, we get overwhelmed and we just wanna check out. we're doom scrolling on social media or for me it's podcast. I love podcast.

Wakil David Matthews (27:37.053)
Hmm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (27:59.855)
But almost to the point, almost to the point where I can't sometimes hear the voice of God because I have too many voices in my ear. And so this morning I was praying and I felt like a conviction to turn that off and just go for a walk with God, right? Just turn up the volume there and like, yes, that pastor, that minister is saying something great, that reverend. But at the same time, don't you think that what I have to share is even greater than that? So.

Wakil David Matthews (28:15.73)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (28:28.334)
Right. Good source.

Wakil David Matthews (28:28.402)
Wow.

Dr. Mekel Harris (28:28.975)
That's where I am. Yeah, yeah, that's where I am.

Wakil David Matthews (28:31.441)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. That just reminded me of a song that keeps coming up as an old hymn from my days in the church. And it was, a closer walk with thee. You know that? I've been hearing that over and over lately. And it just really rings true no matter, you know, what you call the divine. It's just that presence, like you're saying, just acknowledging, intending to be in the presence of the divine.

Annalouiza (28:34.926)
Yes.

Annalouiza (28:43.928)
Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (28:45.485)
I do, yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (28:51.436)
It does.

Dr. Mekel Harris (28:59.609)
Yeah, yeah, I'll share I'll share a fun example. So I'm traveling this week and I was on a walk last night with my beagle So this this was the conviction it started actually it started a couple weeks ago, but I had listened to a podcast and One of the women that was on the podcast was sharing how she loved the word restore and When she thought of the word it was God restoring

Wakil David Matthews (29:00.913)
is such a beautiful practice.

Dr. Mekel Harris (29:28.261)
her life, giving her a new story from which to live. And I thought, God, I love that. How many times do we ask, like, gosh, I hate this story, right? I've said that as a grieving heart. Like, I didn't think this was going to be my story. Like, three significant deaths in 12 years. Just when I think I'm getting to a level ground, I experience another loss. Just when I think I'm coming up for air for that second loss and the cumulative loss, here comes a third. So,

Wakil David Matthews (29:29.495)
nice.

Annalouiza (29:34.88)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right.

Wakil David Matthews (29:37.519)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (29:46.205)
you

Dr. Mekel Harris (29:58.223)
Definitely lots of prayers about restoring things while I'm on this walk and I'm talking to God and I look up and I see this storage facility called Restoring. It was restoring something and I thought, my God, this is great. This is great. And it was just a reminder. Yes, it's like just to hear that confirmation like, yes, I'm listening to you, Mikkel. Here it is, restore. But it all started with a walk.

Wakil David Matthews (30:10.0)
Hahaha.

Wakil David Matthews (30:14.213)
Hahaha.

Annalouiza (30:16.001)
Rinse out of the pool.

Wakil David Matthews (30:17.917)
Right?

Wakil David Matthews (30:24.093)
You

Dr. Mekel Harris (30:27.931)
So yeah, it was good. Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (30:28.967)
Yeah, that's so great. So great. Love that. That's really nice. Well, great. Yeah. So is there anything that you wish we'd had asked you about? you know, and in that process, the last thing we usually do is a reading of some sort. So maybe you have something you'd like to share with us. But first of all, just, yeah, is there anything you wish we'd have talked about that we didn't get a chance to say? and by the way, if you're going to stop listening to podcasts,

Dr. Mekel Harris (30:49.627)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (30:55.971)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (30:58.897)
Don't stop listening to ours. Just a note for our audience.

Dr. Mekel Harris (31:00.859)
I know I'm telling you I think what I'm gonna do it I think what I'm gonna do because I'm sort of like all all in or all out is Schedule time for podcast listening so that it doesn't just flood my entire downtime But I will not forget about this podcast at all I think what I'd love people to sort of remember is

Annalouiza (31:11.246)
you

Wakil David Matthews (31:11.576)
Hahaha

That's a good way,

Annalouiza (31:18.574)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (31:20.157)
That's really a good idea.

Dr. Mekel Harris (31:27.707)
You know, we talked about grief witnessing, and when we think about that, we often think of it from the outside in. Like other people witnessing our grief, I would encourage people to not forget to witness your own self-reflective grief witnessing, right? It's okay to say, today is the day where I feel X, and even if that's pain, right?

When I work with clients, we'll talk about scheduling time degrees and they'll look at me like, what are you talking about Dr. Harris? What's that? And it really is like putting time in the calendar to intentionally focus on the loss. Now, some days when I do this, I may be laughing hysterically at the memories with my dad, with me on the back of his motorcycle and him gunning the gas and me screaming daddy.

Wakil David Matthews (32:01.711)
You

Wakil David Matthews (32:15.837)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (32:21.373)
You

Dr. Mekel Harris (32:22.875)
Other times I'm weeping and gnashing teeth, right? It just depends on the day. But yeah, just not forgetting the power of witnessing your own pain, knowing that it's so profound and that you have within you a lot of power to shift the trajectory of your world in and of yourself, right? In my opinion, with God's help to be able to do that. But yeah, personal witnessing.

Wakil David Matthews (32:27.453)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (32:32.334)
Huh.

Wakil David Matthews (32:48.111)
Yeah, that's so true. So real. My spiritual director in a session a little while back, I was describing, it was a day when I was just feeling against the wall, know, I just, everything was coming down around us and I just told him that and I said, my heart's just so heavy. He said, well, you know, you do a good job of getting your work done, of doing prayer and doing your meditations and taking care of people. But do you ever just sit back and just cry?

Dr. Mekel Harris (33:06.224)
Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (33:12.207)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (33:18.201)
And it just was such a profound, and then he asked, then he gave me 10 minutes at the end of our session to just do that. And I don't know that I've ever dedicated a period of time just to that, you know, to just let it all go. And it was, you know, I was glad I was by myself because I was yelling and screaming, you know, but it was, was really, and it also was really important to have him there as a, you know, as a guide or as a support to.

Dr. Mekel Harris (33:23.803)
That's right.

Dr. Mekel Harris (33:27.863)
Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (33:33.604)
now.

Dr. Mekel Harris (33:36.973)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mekel Harris (33:42.554)
Okay.

Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (33:45.575)
I think I've gone to grief workshops where I felt like it wasn't very well facilitated. And I think it can be, you you can also get lost in that if you don't have somebody holding you. So, yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (33:50.317)
Yes, that's true. For sure. Yeah, that containment is so important. right. We don't want this flooding and bleeding into everything. But at the same time, yeah, to be able to have a container of time where you're able to let that go and set the confines around it is really important. Yeah, that's good. That's good. Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (34:02.299)
Right.

Wakil David Matthews (34:07.281)
Yeah, yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (34:13.819)
Yeah, yeah, thank you. Well, it's been such a great time. Is there anything you would like to read from your books or from a poetry or anything you'd like to share?

Dr. Mekel Harris (34:24.883)
I want to share something. It's not my own words. You would have thought that the first thing I would have reflected on were my own words, but no. I would love to share. It's actually a quote from someone else that I really love. And it's by Lexi Bernard. Okay, Lexi Bernard. I think she is the author of a book called Scribbles and Crumbs. So I want to read this. Okay, it's a short quote. So let me pull it up here. Okay, here's what it says.

Wakil David Matthews (34:32.216)
Yeah.

Dr. Mekel Harris (34:54.937)
I could only be grateful when I realized that I would rather have known you for a moment than ever at all. I would rather endure this inexplicable pain of outliving you than to have never seen your face, spoken your name, and experienced all of who you are. I would rather be yours than you be mine regardless. Regardless of the sorrow, the sleepless nights,

in the years I walk this earth carrying you in my heart. And I just love that.

Wakil David Matthews (35:30.933)
beautiful. Yeah, really beautiful. Yeah. Thank you.

Dr. Mekel Harris (35:32.695)
Yeah, it's just a reminder to me of the love. Yes, there's the pain and the cost associated with loss, but man, the beauty of having love.

Wakil David Matthews (35:46.322)
Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Holding both at the same time. That's the work we're doing all the time. Well, thank you again so much. It's been a real pleasure. And I'm going to turn off this recording now.

Dr. Mekel Harris (35:52.751)
That's right. Yeah.

Yes.