Exploring the Nuances of Grief with Ashley Olivia Nelson

In this episode of I'm Glad You're Here, I speak with Ashley, a certified grief specialist and founder of Learning About Grief, to discuss the multi-faceted nature of grief. The conversation delves into personal experiences, debunks the five stages of grief, and highlights the importance of understanding both death and non-death losses. Through the lens of identity shifts, relational dynamics, and societal expectations, Ashley sheds light on how grief manifests differently for everyone. The episode encourages listeners to embrace the complexity of grief and offers compassionate insights on supporting oneself and others through loss.

You can reach out to me with questions or therapy inquiries here.

Chapters

• 7:09 Defining Grief
• 15:35 Beyond A 5 Stage Model
• 25:53 Offering Self Compassion & Compassion for Others
• 30:40 Ashley's Personal Relationship with Grief
• 32:26 Listening As A Supportive Tool

Transcript

Molly: 0:00

Hello and welcome back to an episode of I'm Glad You're Here. Today I get to speak to Ashley who runs Learning About Grief. As I was editing this podcast, or truthfully sitting down to do it, I'm reflecting on how familiar I've made myself with grief since this conversation. Ashley and I met, To do this recording at the end of November, I'm releasing it now in March. And March is actually five years from when Ashley launched Learning About Grief. So 2025 marks the fifth year anniversary. I just thought that was a nice coincidence and wanted to share. So coming back to grief and how I've re conceptualized it for myself since this conversation, I'm taking away how nuanced the term grief is, how it shows up in so many avenues of our life and our day to days. For me personally, my fiancé's grandmother her birthday is at the end of March, so she's currently 92. And, I've been grieving the fact that I know he's gone. She won't be here forever. And I know in a lot of ways without knowing that she won't be here that long. Grieving while someone is alive is something I've never spoken to others about. And I've experienced it a lot in my life, if I'm being really honest. And that doesn't mean that people are necessarily dying for me to grieve them. In some cases, I grieve the relationship I once had with people. I grieve knowing that I can't have the relationship with someone that I want to have. In this case with my fiancé's grandmother, who I now also consider my grandmother. I grieve knowing that I have a deep, special bond with this individual and their human body will soon no longer be here and I'll have to find other ways to connect. I'll have to put in work in a different way. I grieve the ease of being human with her. I also wanted to normalize that She's my fiancé's grandmother, so I call her grandmother, but also I really, really Feel that relationship with her, the love of a grandmother. And if anyone listening can relate to that love, that feeling. It is so potent, so pure, this non judgmental ease. A grandmother doesn't need to know what you've done to be proud of you. They just are proud of you for you just being. That is enough. That is the love of a grandmother. I feel so fortunate that my grandmother has taught me that. I'm excited for people to listen to this episode with Ashley and explore your own relationship to grief. Ashley has been working in the health and death care industry for over a decade and is a certified grief specialist. And with that, let's just dive right in. Ashley, it's so good to finally meet you. I know we've been trying to coordinate this for a while and we have a big topic, before we dive in, just curious how you're arriving to this conversation today.

Ashley: 3:32

Thank you. I'm so excited that we finally get to meet and talk about one of my favorite things to chat about. I am arriving from very rainy New York, which is a good thing because we were not receiving so much rain in the past several weeks. And I feel pretty calm and at peace. And just excited to talk about grief.

Molly: 3:58

I have read some of your background. And would love to kick off on how, how you've spearheaded this project and this community your inspiration and some of your story here.

Ashley: 4:12

Thank you. So, learning about grief will be five come March 2025. Wow. So, that's kind of fun. But I've actually been in the grief space as of next year for 11 years. So, I'm no stranger to grief, no stranger to grief work. And the professional failed from doing grief and life insurance to funeral homes to mental health and medical care. I'm very well versed with the grief world. I was actually doing grief work prior to having any of my big losses. And the way that I went through my grief experience shifted what I was doing. So there, I guess that kind of puts a damper on the inspiration story there. It wasn't so much of being inspired to do this thing. It was more so of always already in the space, already really sensitive to the lost community and my experiences with people. And of course, my very hard hit life experience. It's really gave me a new insight on how I wanted to approach it.

Molly: 5:18

And I'm curious what, what is that new insight or how did you shift how you approach grief?

Ashley: 5:25

So often we think we know a thing until we go through it. It's so much different having book knowledge or being told something or seen something vicariously through others. I think about when my first loss happened. I was working in the deaf care field and I was talking to grieving people, maybe 30 to, you know, 40 hours a week and you hear so many stories and you empathize and you're with people and you feel into those spaces. And then when you have your own lived experience, it's like, Oh, I'm not just holding their pain. I'm holding mine too and that feels heavy and being able to hold my own pain gave me a deeper insight of maybe I don't want to say this. Maybe I do want to say this. Maybe I was really on par when I held people this way. oh, the things I don't like people saying. Gosh, oh my gosh, I said those too. so all those different things come into play when we have our own lived experience because it's really hard to unsee what you've seen.

Molly: 6:29

What I'm hearing from that is there's this path of research and just learning and soaking in the knowledge and then applying tools. And then what you're saying is that shift of when you had your own experience, showing up in the room with others with that experience noting for yourself, like. What, what do I not want to hear? What is actually powerful to share in this moment? What can we bond over but really being more present with your own emotional experience too?

Ashley: 7:03

I agree. And I think a lot of it is validation. We don't have those outside experiences of what is grief or grief just really means that we had something we don't have it anymore. When I was a kid, we would do magic tricks and we would have this thing where we go abracadabra like, you know, now you see it now you don't that's kind of grief. Now you have it now you don't. And it doesn't matter whether it was a romantic relationship, a platonic friendship, whether you were married or financial or a home, or it can be even something like a hope or dream that you had. Once we have something and then we don't have it, grief can occur. So in that space between is where we feel different emotions and the thoughts and the physical body sensations that we often don't attribute to going through loss. And when you actually have that tension inside of you, you go, Oh, okay. I feel it, and so I'm going to approach it a whole lot differently than I used to.

Molly: 7:59

Mm. And I love that we're bringing in the definition here. I was mentioning before we recorded, I've been thinking so much this week, knowing we're going to talk about grief and was curious for myself, like where grief is showing up for me. And I even As someone who's studying therapy, right? And I've had a course on grief, just one, and I would love to debunk the stages of grief with you later on, but, I Google. And it's coping with a loss. And that is so vague and that is so open that to me, I was just considering what are some micro losses recently? What are some identity shifts that I've had that I'm coping with? What's my energy capacity lately that it wasn't maybe in the summer or earlier this year and I really started to notice grief is really present in a lot of of life. And we often, and maybe I'll make that a me statement, when I was thinking of grief initially, it was loss of someone. I think often maybe we associate grief with loss of a person and don't have that flexible thinking around grief being loss, just general loss.

Ashley: 9:17

I agree. I think one of the challenging things is that we don't really expose ourselves to the griefs that are non death. So about time someone does die, we have no insight. No tools, not only on how to support someone, but how to support ourselves and even talk about it. I really wish that we did speak about the non death losses, because I think that if we talked about that grief that comes there, we'll see how transferable it is to when we actually go through, wow, somebody that I knew or a pet that I had died. So when we talk about grief, like you said, the micro losses. It really can be anything. And one thing that's really important to me is when we talk about grief and loss, and it's even funny that we say grief and loss, because it really should be lost in grief. We have a loss and then because of the loss, we go through grief. So even that, makes it a little funny on my side, but when we do talk about grief and loss, we're often talking about external things, who died, the secondary losses that we don't have because of them, what died in our life, maybe it was a divorce or a relationship or a housing situation, or maybe it's a medical diagnosis, the loss of our health, right? What we often don't talk about is how loss impacts our relationship with ourselves. And that's where the identity loss comes in. It's loss an external thing, but how has this changed me? How do I look at me now? Who am I because of this? Who am I after this? Who am I through all of this? And it's nurturing that loss and being able to really grieve ourselves and the person that we were. So. It's quite interesting.

Molly: 11:01

And I wonder if that's what working with grief is, is connecting with that part of ourself that is no longer, and how we relate with ourselves and the world around us, the external and relationships and how we show up in different environments. But yeah, that identity piece, who am I now with this loss?

Ashley: 11:23

Absolutely. And sometimes people will say, well, I've never had a major loss or I've had someone die and I pretty much feel the same. Maybe the person wasn't super close to you or maybe they were and you just haven't recognized it. But sometimes it's something such as childhood trauma or different experiences or PTSD. Who did you have to become in order to survive that you didn't get to be? If you were thriving, maybe you're going through something where you identify yourself as a chameleon, or I can blend into any environment, or I'm a people pleaser, or I'm aggressive person, or I shrink myself to make myself small, because that feels safe. Where did you learn that? Because generally we don't take on those characteristics unless we feel that it's more protective to do so. So sometimes learning the loss of our identity is who did I have to become in order to survive? But in becoming that person to survive, who didn't I get to be? And sometimes the journey through healing and mending and carrying and going through loss is really being able to come back home to that person.

Molly: 12:38

I love that. And immediately I'm thinking of how, in recent years, I feel like there's been such a shift in talking about trauma. And there's been this openness. Childhood trauma events. we use being activated or triggered often in our language, and as I'm hearing you speak about grief, I'm just so excited for this space to open up in a similar way of who did I have to become? And there's that trauma of exploring the parts of ourselves that were hidden or cast away. And then now we can open up to the grief of recognizing that loss. Maybe re identifying or re exploring. And so I'm curious. It feels like another space that we can start to demystify and really, I love that feeling of getting comfortable being uncomfortable, right? Like it's a Big experience and it's somatic, it's emotional. There's so many layers to it. And I'm really hopeful that people like you leading these conversations, this will be a whole other space that we're opening up to.

Ashley: 13:51

Thank you. And I love what you said about getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. And so oftentimes the things that we are uncomfortable with is not necessarily bad. Sometimes it's the things that we're comfortable with that we're like, that should necessarily be it. I think about, for example, I am a person who loves heat. I love warmth. I'd rather be in a hundred degree day. Then a 50 degree day, and some people even listening, they're like, Oh, good luck with that. And I don't live in a 100 degree type of climate. So I can get really comfortable with 50. I can't really be comfortable with 30. I know people who live in even colder environments are like, Oh, 30? Try like below zero. Even if they don't like it, they're comfortable with it to some extent because they're used to it. And then I think about, being a New Yorker. And then when I moved down South where it's a lot warmer, I go, Oh, this feels like heaven. It's so warm. It's so great. Sure. I could do it with the snow and the hill and all of that, but I don't want to. And so it shows that we can be really comfortable with something that we don't like. And part of that is how comfortable have I gotten with the identity that's not truly me, it's just the versions of me that I had to be in order to survive life, or to survive grief, or get up and go to work every day, or to have the friends I have, or to fit into my family systems, and it's an interesting thought when we get to challenge these ideas.

Molly: 15:28

Wow, I love that. I got so excited by that thought of, yeah, how comfortable we've gotten in these roles. I'm curious if we can come back to this, the stages of grief, and I'm curious your perspective on it,

Ashley: 15:42

the Five Stages of Grief is quite interesting. I remember learning about it when I was doing deaf care because I was a deaf care professional and I got, Oh, okay. You know, that's what you're taught in the beginning. I didn't have any major loss. I had nothing to compare or contrast it against. I noticed that the people I was working with didn't seem to fit into those stages and I'm all about self agency. So, hey, if it doesn't fit you. That's okay. I say, if it doesn't apply, let it fly. When I went through my own thing, I hated it. Because what are these five stages of grief that don't align with who I am and where I am in life? many people don't know that Keebler Ross, who came up with the five stages of grief, she actually did a lot of the research on people who had a terminal diagnosis and knew they were dying. So the five stages of grief were never intended. To be applied for people who are surviving a loss. They were going for people who were actually going through the loss of their health of their life. And so it makes a lot of sense to me why people look at them and they go, I'm grieving, but this doesn't fit me. This doesn't make sense. And from the outside, people go, you're in the angry stage. I remember after my fiancee died, one lady was like, it seems like you're in the angry stage of grief. So I think you need to see what you can do to move to the next section. And I thought, well, good luck with that because apparently you don't know how grief works. So when we can more humanize it as a collective experience, I get to be angry or sad or confused or brain fogged. I go to work and I'm really excited and it's a healthy distraction or sometimes I throw myself into work too much and I'm not sitting enough with the grief or maybe I want to sit with the grief. I just don't have the tools and know how to process it. So it's a lot less linear and neatly packaged than we like it to be. And I think that's also a good thing because life isn't neatly packaged and grief just mirrors back. Our humanity and who we are and different aspects of everyday, realistic day to day life.

Molly: 17:59

I love that. It coincides with everything we're saying. When I was talking about trauma too, there's not one. way to approach trauma or someone's memories or sense of self. And so when it is so helpful to know that model was created considering terminal illness, immediately I'm thinking, okay, that's already a shift in like people accepting something before it's happened. There's an awareness that it's. impending, which is kind of the opposite of a lot of these cases where we don't know, we can't predict, and then all of a sudden we're left with a loss.

Ashley: 18:36

Oh gosh, there's like no predictability, no predictability at all. I tell clients all the time and say, well, I should have known because this person had a diagnosis and the doctor said that they had six months to live and they actually went to six months because not everybody does. And. When you've had someone for however long you have had them, it's always shocking. I, to me, yes, I understand. the practical sense of sudden loss versus not sudden loss. But in actuality, all losses are sudden. It's not like I know that on this day, at 5. 03 p. m., on a Tuesday, that my grandma's gonna die. I don't. Even if the doctor says she has 48 hours, it could be two hours into those 48 hours. It could be 47 hours. It could be exactly 48. Maybe she surpassed that. All loss can feel shocking for many of us. Because what is the death of this person? We've never had this experience before as who we are presently in life under the circumstances under which we lost them in. So there's so many different aspects of predictability and unpredictability and to just give yourself a lot more grace than you're giving it.

Molly: 19:50

I love that. And, and to something else I heard when you were talking about the stages of grief that I super, super agree on. I'm on that train of non pathologizing and not putting people in boxes. And I can see that being really harmful is labeling someone. You're in the stage of denial. That's just where you are. And you need to advance to the next stage. So I can see that being really harmful. And I guess part of this conversation, what I'm really picking up on is like, it's okay that it's really personal to you. And it's okay if work feels like a really good distraction or finding the balance of distraction is challenging or whatever you're experiencing, like there will be a high level of uniqueness for you.

Ashley: 20:38

Oh, it's super okay. More than enough. Okay. I like to say, if we're going to look at the stages of grief, which we can keep them or throw them out or say, nice suggestion doesn't work for me, what if instead, we looked them at looked at them as protective resources. So we have a stage of denial. It can be really protective to see the loss as Okay. This really didn't happen when we think about all the paperwork, and I have experience working on a funeral home and sitting in the different arrangement rooms and looking at all the paperwork and processing the behind the scenes of it. When we look at all the paperwork that we're forced to sign and read and go through and the preparation of putting our person to rest. It's a lot. It's really hard to process the weight of their death or their impending death. While going through all of that paperwork, so it's really protective if we're saying this can't happen, even as I'm signing off for them to be cremated or picking out a casket or bringing photos to the chapel and can be really protective to have that sense of anger or protest. This is not fair. I didn't deserve this. Why did this happen to them? Why did this happen to me? Or to get really angry when people don't say great things. That's our sense of agency because it protects something within us. It makes a lot of sense to be sad for all the reasons that it makes sense to be sad. And even acceptance or going in and out of acceptance that can feel like resolve or it can not feel like resolve. It can feel protective to say, I accept this loss. And that allows me to carry them on forward while still figuring out how to live my life, or I'm don't want to accept this thing because it doesn't feel safe enough to hold it all. So what if we look at the stages that there are. And say, maybe these are things that we do to protect ourselves throughout our journey rather than locking it in, and this is what we need to go through, or this is what we have to go through, or this is the exact process of how it should be done.

Molly: 22:49

Just hearing that is so humanizing. It's, wow. I love that language around, it can be protective. Because how jarring of an experience. We're talking about human connection, which is so foundational for us as beings, so assessing how you're feeling after a loss can feel so overwhelming too.

Ashley: 23:13

Super overwhelming. I'm a double widow for those, who don't know double meeting. Yes. I've lost two partners. And I think about when my second soulmate died, there was a part of me that says, you've been through this before, buckle up buttercup, you can do this. And there's another part of me that says, wow, this happened again. And there's something really, really sacred about that again space. I think of people who've gone through multiple losses. And they're like, here I am again, like just the weight of again, or you go through the first year loss of the first couple of weeks and or even days. Right? You wake up the next day after they die and you go, I have to do this again without them. What's the weight of that? And so it really makes sense why we armor ourselves up against the heaviness. And I think that as a society, we aren't given the grace to be understood in that way. I think that oftentimes, when we look at people, we Judge them because we misunderstanding or to me, all judgments really mean that we misunderstand something because when you really truly see and understand something, it's really hard to judge it. And so when we look at what somebody initially goes through, yeah, it is as hard as it feels. Would make sense why they would put on all this armor to protect them after they've had so much taken away from them and been wounded so deeply.

Molly: 24:48

And I think too, what you're saying is, we're always looking for, the black and white in a situation, and so much of this is so gray, and we're still like, is this person grieving, am I grieving, is it yes or no, what is the answer, and are we okay in the gray? Can we be in the gray?

Ashley: 25:09

Yeah. But there's a lot of other colors in the crayon box. I am a person who loves color. One of my best friends says it's so much color. Actually, you're giving me a headache. We joke because it's everything is just so colorful over here. But what you said is it's not just black and white. It can be gray. And then for some people, they're like, I'm going to have magenta, or I'm going to have lilac, or I'm going to have lavender. If you get really crazy and you look at a Crayola box, how many shades of red are there? How many different shades of blue, how many shades of, pink or green or anything they're like, is it sky blue or is it, sea blue, or is it eye color blue, what type of blue is it? And I think that we need to give people more grace to say that your experience is unique based upon who you are, where you are, and the nature of the relationship. With that person, whether you had a great relationship with them, because that can be hard, and even if you had a terrible relationship with your favorite person, because we paint people beautiful, but sometimes those relationships weren't beautiful. Sometimes they were really hard, and the thing that we grieve is that while they were living, I had to accept that the version of the mom that I wanted would never be. The version of my dad would never be, I didn't even get to know a parent, or the siblings versions that I wanted to have are not present, or there was a huge age gap between my sibling and I, and I just got to the age where I could really get to know them, because the gap didn't seem so wide, and now they've died, and so allow all those different things to come onto the canvas of our lives and realize that, some of us were given different colors, and even if we're given the same colors, we all paint it differently.

Molly: 27:00

I love that, and you're reminding me that there's a book that I think speaks to this pretty well. It's Jeanette McCurdy's I'm Glad My Mom Died. Yeah, I'm Glad My Mom Died is the name of the book. Correct. And I read it and it really is that, it's her kind of coming to terms with what was her real relationship with her mom, what was that impact, and is it okay that she's okay that her mom died and how she's processed that. So I think that's actually like a really great example of this whole canvas and this whole mess that we can all play with and choose the colors that resonate in the moment and help us make sense of ourselves.

Ashley: 27:39

I'm glad you brought that book uh, I remember when the book came out, there were people in the space that said, Oh my gosh, what type of person is she that said, I'm glad that my mom died. And my initial reaction is, what type of mother does she have that would lead her to say that? Again, it's not so much the situation, but what happened to her. And sometimes it's the hope, the impending hope of maybe one day mom or dad are filling your person here will be a version of something that feels easy to my heart, that feels safe for me to be held in. And then the person dies and you never got that. Oftentimes I see what people who have estranged relationships with family members and even sometimes friends. Is that you grieve what you've never had. Sometimes the grief is not just of what I did possess, but what I never had the experience to hold. And so when we look at that, it goes, well, maybe I grieve the mom that I never had when she was here and now I have to grieve her absence or grieve the, the fact that I'm never going to have that. And then you go to a grief group and you hear about people talking about these wonderful relationships with people and you read books and you go, there was so much love and your person would be so. Proud of you and all these wonderful things. And you look back at your childhood and it's like, no, I actually don't think my mom would be proud of me. In fact, she told me that she never would. Where's the space for that grief. And,

Molly: 29:10

and what I hear that too is grief can exist when someone is still alive.

Ashley: 29:17

eulogizing a dead person is hard. How much harder is it to eulogize a person who's still living? And there's just a lot, the grief is just so nuanced. So when we talk about loss and when we talk about grief, as you said so beautifully in the beginning of the conversation, it extends far beyond death. We talk about death the most because you're gonna be able to talk about grief. It is when somebody dies because you are 16 years old and you're having your first breakup. They go, Oh, there's something on the fish in the sea and you'll be okay. And you know, he or she, they're one of many and it'll be all right. But when you're 16 and you have your first breakup, that's hard and you get to grieve that and you get to sit in that. I know when I was grieving, I hated when people said, I can't imagine what that's like. I'm like, well, actually, you probably can imagine what it's like. Just sit here for a moment. And you're married, or you're engaged, or you're dating, and just imagine if your person just died today. I remember, it was so spooky, it was about a month before my first experience of being widowed. And the space that I was in, some, one of the clients had told me that their wife had died, and they had been together for 40, 50 years. And I was listening to them, and the weight of the love and the grief was so heavy, I remember I came home with it.

Molly: 30:40

And

Ashley: 30:40

I didn't always come home with it, but I came home with it. And I remember talking to my partner at the time and I said, I'm having a hard day. And he goes, what happened? And I told him it was like, I have this client and I want to work with free full of time, but the wife died and it's so heavy. And he goes, Whoa. And the whole conversation stopped and got really quiet and really still. And I said, can you imagine? And he said, I'm trying to, and I can't get out the words, I don't know what I would do if I lost you. And I remember just sitting on the edge of the bed and there were just no words and feeling this heaviness. And I remember, tears started coming to my eyes because I was thinking about what it would be like to lose Jason. Lo and behold, a few weeks later, I would actually come to know what that lived experience would be. For some grievers, they actually hate when people say, I can't imagine, they're like, no, you can't, you're not in my shoes, you don't want to know what it's like to lose a child, all your children are still here, or I've lost all of my children, or my partner's not here, they were my everything, or my mom was my best friend, or, everybody has their siblings, you don't expect to, like, it goes on and on and on and on. And if that feels right for them, that's okay, too. So, there's no one size fits all, fortunately and unfortunately. Everybody has a different preference.

Molly: 32:10

Yeah, and I'm curious in terms of support groups or tools for those, well, I have two questions. Um, the tools and support for those that are grieving and then the tools and support for those that are supporting others that are grieving.

Ashley: 32:26

My favorite tool of support is listening. And sometimes as a listener on the podcast or wherever you might find yourself. You might say, well, that sounds simple. Listening is actually not that easy all the time, especially when what you're listening to is hard. Listening is really important because going back to what I said earlier, we judge what we don't understand. And we often abuse and misuse what we don't know the proper use for. So when we listen to people's stories, when we listen to their pain, when we understand the perspective of how they are feeling it, not how we want them to perceive it. Not what we would do if we think we were in a position because we're often looking at everything that we have and how we would face that situation. We're often not literally saying, okay, if I lost my fiance when I was 24 years old and going back to get my master's degree and when I didn't have a lot of support systems and when I was financially stable, we're saying, okay, at 24, when I had my. career because I started early and when I found my forever person and when my mom and dad were really supportive and when I was living at my parents house and whatever it might be, we're putting their situation on us. So when we really listen to how they are holding it, the way that they are holding it without adding more colors by singing it up, we can actually understand, okay, that's why it's hard. And then when you learn that's why it's hard. We generally respond differently to the person. And so if you are the person who is grieving, just take an account of the things that you're going through, and know that whatever you're feeling is normal. Oftentimes, especially in early grief, When somebody encounters me and they'll go, is this normal? And I'll go, yes. And then later on, is this normal? Dot, dot, dot. Yes. On Instagram. Is this normal? Dot, dot, dot. Yes. We saw this a lot in the media during COVID. And I remember speaking to different, therapists and psychologists. And I remember when the media was reaching out to me and my team to get therapists and psychologists to talk about these things I generally say if you say, is this normal? Whatever follows it is yes. Is it healthy, supportive, beneficial? That's another conversation, but is it normal? Yes. And so just being able to be your biggest validator, like, even if people don't get it, I get it. And even if I don't get it, I'm going through it. So that makes it normal for me.

Molly: 35:17

I think that's a really helpful rule of thumb. Generally, if you're asking if it's normal, yes, it's normal. As you're sharing the challenges of listening and putting aside your own judgment or your own perspective, bringing back that metaphor of the canvas. And what I was thinking is, it's really looking at someone's painting. It's not taking your own crayons and getting ready to paint all over and change the image, but really putting down your crayons and really looking at what the image is. And just sitting with them, looking at that painting. That's what came to mind and I thought that was another way of saying the same thing.

Ashley: 35:57

Absolutely. And everybody starts differently. I have some clients, they say, everybody says I'm so lucky because I have life insurance after, my husband died and then other people say, I don't have any life insurance and people say, that's unfortunate. And I get more grace or you should have prepared more. Who's right or wrong in this situation? I think sometimes And listening, we so desperately want to be right because it makes us feel good. So, one of the challenges of listening to ourselves and listening to others is that we go in with agendas. I want to make them feel better. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, or I just want to get this conversation over with, or I'm just going to check in with them for five minutes, and then when it gets heavy, I'm going to tell them that I have to hang up, whatever it is, but what would it be like to just go in open, to not have an agenda, to just say I'm just going to show up and whatever comes up, face, As a supporter, if it's too heavy, I get to allow it to be heavy for me, too. I get to grieve for the friendships that are not there because of the loss. I get to grieve that my best friend is no longer the spunky and outgoing person that, he or she was after the loss. All those things. So, sitting with somebody and listening to their pain doesn't diminish yours. It just allows theirs to be on the spotlight on the stage and then eventually because you're an actor on the stage, the light will shift and you'll get your turn too.

Molly: 37:37

I love that. It's really allowing for vulnerability this unplanned raw sense of connecting with someone's experience. And allowing for your own experience to come through, too.

Ashley: 37:50

Absolutely. And then sometimes, grievers, they'll say, Well, all my friends left me every time that I talk about my pain or my grief or I share about the loss. People, they get really quiet and then they leave and I don't hear from them. And it can feel like such a huge rejection, especially if we have more of a history of being rejected. In psychology, we say rejection sensitivity. I say that those who are sensitive to rejection often did go through a lot of rejection. And so they find all these different pieces of armor that protect them from going through it again. And sometimes we'll say, well, I feel really abandoned by my friends and family in grief. And sometimes in psychology, we like to be really clinical and say, well adults get left and children get abandoned. But oftentimes when you were abandoned as a child, being left mirrors it, and so it's hard to make a distinction between the two. So it gets to feel that way, and we can deal with it accordingly. But when we really look at it, if your friends and your family, and they don't get it, and then they leave when it gets really heavy. Sometimes it's because they don't have the tools to deal with the overwhelm that they're feeling on the inside. It's not that you're too much of anything, or you're not enough of something. It's just that they don't have the ability to hold that. And also, to come into terms that sometimes it's not rejection, it's reflection. That sometimes, that we are a mirror to people, so when I talk about me and my pain, Sometimes it reflects in others the pain in their own heart that makes them feel uncomfortable to sit with and it's like every time I'm with her, she's a Debbie Downer and it just reminds me of things and it puts me in a bad mood and I don't want to feel these things. Ah, so it's not me that you're running from. It's the feelings inside of you that you're running from and running often feels really safe for those people. So I can hold compassion for that too, but notice that things are a lot less personal. then we often make them. Oftentimes it's not rejection, it's reflection. And however the person wants to handle that reflection of themselves will determine whether they stay or they don't stay or they hold space or they don't hold space.

Molly: 40:11

Wow. I, I keep coming back to this thought of how, how incredible it is that That you're really like owning this space of grief and inviting all these kinds of conversations and inquiries and, There's so much exploration here. What someone else is being reflected back in them and, and how they go and process that or don't process that. And what someone who's grieving is left with and how they see that. Reflection. There's just so much here. And, I'm curious about learning about grief and how you see it taking shape if you do beyond, the loss of someone passing or how we can continue to evolve with these conversations.

Ashley: 41:04

That's a great question. I appreciate that. So learning about grief is true to its name. That is not just the grief of a death loss. I would say that most of the people that come across me and that I work with are going through a death loss because that is the grief that we associate with loss. but I do have clients in my caseload where they're anticipating somebody dying or they're going through a breakup. Or they were recently divorced or they're going through a financial collapse. So it's not just stuff loss that I deal with. Learning about griefs, what makes us unique and special is that we deal with the complex layers of loss. So think about, unfortunate childhood experiences, and also the griefs that are not seen, such as sibling loss, being an unmarried widow, which means that you were dating or engaged or in the field of it's complicated when your significant other died, you weren't yet legally married or not legally married by choice, going through the breakups and the health challenges. So what we specialize is in the complex layers of grief and also the griefs that are often not seen, not acknowledged and not spoken about. So that's what we really specialize in, and it's just an honor to hold space for these people. I really love the work that I do. I've been here for 11 years, so that should say something. And it is multi layered, and sometimes the things that we've gone through in the past, Or what make the death loss is harder, so I understand that as well.

Molly: 42:48

Yeah, I love that. And thank you for that clarification and that mission. What are the different ways that people can connect with you or engage with learning about grief?

Ashley: 42:59

So learning about Griefs Home is learning about grief.com on Instagram. It seems to be pretty popular these days. I'm at learning about grief. I'm on Twitter'cause our name is a little long. It's learn about grief. but ultimately the best space is learning about grief. com because it has information about me and my personal story. So both professional and personal has a different breakdown of various types of losses. And we also have brief notes, which is my promise to be accessible. It's free and always will be free. You can join law specific information. And it comes out roughly two to three times per month Whether you are new to me or not new to me, you will likely hear this from me again. My wisdom to you is that give yourself grace and kindness. Allow yourself to receive a smile, a handshake, a note of understanding, a word of comfort, validation from yourself or someone else. Know that you have never been this version of yourself before. Experiencing what you are experiencing and experiencing what you experience when the loss occurred, whether it be a deaf or non deaf loss. You have never done this before and you're navigating it for the first time. Whether it's a repeated type of loss, a double sibling, a double widow, a double of anything, you have never been this version of yourself before. And so with that, give yourself a lot of grace and compassion. You're often doing the best, you know, how sometimes people say you're not doing the best you can. Well, I don't know what I can do, but I know what I am doing. Oftentimes, what you're doing is the best that you know how and it feels really safe and protective. And again, just be kind to yourself, give yourself a lot of grace and kindness for all that you've been through for all that you counted. And for still being here. I

Molly: 45:01

love that. That self compassion, truly. and I love that essence that we're always changing. Day to day. New information, new relationships. And so if you've encountered a loss before, and you're at a similar place, it's still different.

Ashley: 45:20

Yep, even for me, like I said, even with all the training and all the losses that I have, sometimes, almost 10 years out, I go, I still can't believe they're not here, still can't believe that thing happened, and I'm far from the thing, and I'm doing maybe better than in that moment, so none of us are exempt. There's very little difference between you and I, it's just that I'm further up the mountain.

Molly: 45:46

Ashley, thank you so much for this conversation and for the work that you're doing and just being this open, inviting space to have these conversations. Thank you so much.

Ashley: 45:58

Thank you so much for the work that you do, Molly. And for talking about grief and no pun intended, helping others to learn about grief. And I am so excited to see your therapy journey. I can foretell that you will be a very supportive person, especially in the realms of loss.

Molly: 46:16

Thank

Ashley: 46:16

you.

Molly: 46:17

Thank you. You're

Ashley: 46:17

welcome.

Molly: 46:20

And that concludes our episode on grief. I'm really grateful for the time that Ashley took to share personal stories and also really help break down our preconceived notions around grief. This was such an impactful conversation for me. I walked away realizing I get to explore with so much more color and so much more nuance and I hope that we can have more of these conversations. All right, I'll talk to you soon and for now, I'm glad you're here.