Navigating the Layers of Loss: With Teresa Quinn, LCSW

Summary

In this episode of the Growth from Grief podcast, host Susan Andersen speaks with Teresa Quinn, a licensed clinical social worker specializing in grief, trauma, and chronic illness. They explore the intersection of grief and spirituality, the nuances of trauma and grief, and the importance of body awareness through yoga and breathwork. Teresa shares insights on expressive arts as a therapeutic tool, discusses the creation of her grief journal, and emphasizes the non-linear nature of grief, including the concept of secondary losses. The conversation highlights the importance of self-compassion and the various modalities available for healing.

Takeaways

• Grief is a complex and messy process that varies for everyone.
• Spirituality can play a significant role in the grieving process.
• Trauma and grief are interconnected but not always the same.
• Yoga and body awareness can aid in processing grief.
• Breathwork techniques can help regulate emotions during grief.
• Expressive arts provide a creative outlet for grief expression.
• Creating a grief journal can facilitate reflection and healing.
• Secondary losses are often overlooked but are important to acknowledge.
• Grief does not follow a linear path; it changes over time.
• Self-compassion is crucial in navigating the grieving process.

Thank you for listening! Visit www.sueandersenyoga.com for Yoga for Grief classes and additional resources.

Transcript

Susan Andersen (00:04.066)

Hi and welcome everyone to the Growth from Grief podcast. My guest today is Teresa Quinn. Hi Teresa, nice to see you again.

Teresa Quinn: 

I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Susan Andersen:

Great, thanks. So Teresa and I actually met through email. She had inquired about my interest in this journal that she had put together. And I took a look at it and was really intrigued and thought, this is a great person to talk to. I have to reach out to her.

So I did that. had a quick kind of introductory conversation. And I think that you will enjoy hearing from Teresa and a little bit about her, a little bit more about her background and how she works with people that are grieving or have experienced, and or have experienced trauma. 

And then we'll talk a little bit more about the importance of writing and journaling and how that's helpful as a modality that I think you use in your practice, right? 

So, Teresa, tell us a little bit more about your background.

Teresa Quinn (01:32.558)
Like thanks again for having me. I'm so excited to get to talk about all the things that, you know, we share passions for and all the ways in which our work aligns. Cause you know, as we were chatting initially, we realized we have probably 15 different things that light both of us up related to the grief and loss work. 

So I'm excited to chat about it, but a little bit just about my background. So I'm a licensed clinical social worker. I wasn't expecting to be a social worker. was actually originally trained or in training as a master's in theology and ministry. And so I was really leaning more towards kind of spirituality and ministry work, was working with trauma survivors at the time and was lucky enough to be able to add on a clinical social work degree at the same time. So that was a little bit kind of backwards way to become a social worker, but I found...

For me that, you know, I love the trauma work, but really found that the grief work especially was a really beautiful intersection between holding mystery, which ministry work is so lovely at teaching you how to do, and holding grief and loss and the evidence-based clinical way that social work knows how to do. And so for me, that Venn diagram between the two, grief really fell beautifully between those. 

So I was doing a lot of sexual violence survivorship work previously and then moved towards working with bereaved kids, families, worked in hospice as well. And then when I moved to Chicago, ended up, that was all in Boston, I moved to Chicago and ended up working in a group private practice specializing in grief, loss, chronic illness, and terminal illness. So I now since have my own practice, but still have all of those specialties that have kind of lit my path along the way.

Susan Andersen (03:50.422):

That's wonderful. What a mix, as you said, like the intersection of all of those pieces. And I imagine that the spirituality piece, the theology piece, lends a bit of, you mentioned mystery, but I also think about calming. I think that sometimes you know, that it can become that prayer itself can be calming, just like meditation, if you prefer to actually be praying instead of sitting in silence. 

The other thing I think is interesting, and I don't know if this came up for you or has come up for you in your practice with any of your clients. But as you know, one of the things that could happen to a person who's experienced loss in his grieving is that they lose their faith, or they are mad at their God, you know that they believe in and sometimes it's challenging to move back into that space.

Teresa Quinn:

Absolutely. it's, I think it's also more common than people recognize, or I've had plenty of folks say, you know, am I allowed to say this here? Am I allowed to talk about this here in the therapy room? Yeah. Because oftentimes therapy gets, talked about or thought about as, okay, well, you should go to your religious leader for spiritual stuff, right? You should go to your therapist for clinical stuff. You should, know, and then kind of oftentimes people want to find that intersection. 

And there can be some oftentimes like shame or blame that folks put on themselves, they didn't believe hard enough or I'm not a faithful enough person to hold this and to reduce that amount of shame around that to say like, of course you have these questions. Of course you have these doubts. Of course the world just got ripped out from underneath you. How could you not be holding that now?

Susan Andersen (06:00.726):

Right, right. Right. You mentioned that you were working when you were working in Boston, you were working with survivors of sexual assault. I imagine that that was very challenging for you, but also maybe very rewarding. And, and also
I know at least and correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I've read that with trauma, there is grief, but there can be grief and no trauma.

Teresa Quinn:

Exactly. Yeah, that's a perfect way of putting it. I think they get sometimes conflated a little bit. There can often be this assumption of, you're grieving a death loss, for example, and just the circumstances around it. Other people will say, that must have been traumatic for you. Right?

In some ways, trauma just means wound, right? It comes from the Greek word meaning wound. So of course, a grief, an experience of bereavement, for example, there's deep wounding there. But we also don't want to assume that the way in which somebody's nervous system is holding that loss is the same as trauma. And so for folks that are bereaved, we want to get curious around how is it showing up for you? 

It's really normal to experience you know, longing and wanting the person there and mood swings and sleep issues and things like that. But when it reaches the level of trauma, looks a little bit more like flashbacks and nightmares and like a lot of nervous system activation. So there's not always trauma with grief, but with trauma itself, there's always a grief element because we grieve traumas before and after, right? 

We grieve the us that was before, right? We grieve the things that we lost as a result of that trauma, social connections and sense of safety in the world, along with all the kind of like physical, you know, changes that can come with experiencing the world as an unsafe place too. So absolutely, it's a perfect way of putting it.

Susan Andersen (07:53.134)

So...just want to stay on the subject for a minute. So does a person know that they are experiencing trauma versus experiencing grief?

Teresa Quinn:

That's a great question. I would say, you know, mental health in general is becoming less stigmatized in our world today, which is a lovely thing. There is often still significant stigma, especially around trauma and of course around grief. And so for folks, they may be able to identify, I just feel like I hear language a lot of, I just feel this like low level hum of anxiety at all times.

Or I just can't get through the night or I just see their face everywhere. Or I just assume that the world is kind of out to get me now. Right. There may be language around that and they may say, but I, I don't experience trauma. Right. When reality goes, all kind of like trauma responses. And so, a lot of times folks don't identify it as that, but they can identify almost like the symptoms.

But sometimes we're not as quick to put the label on it because of stigma or because of lack of education, not knowing what trauma is, for example. So that's a little bit more how it can show up for some people.

Susan Andersen:

Right. Okay. Okay. And, and so the, obviously, you're having a conversation, somebody's come to you because of a loss. And then during your conversations, you're uncovering a little bit more. And they end based on the language that they're using, and the discussion that you're having, you're kind of uncovering, maybe there's this other component. 

Susan Andersen  (09:50.486)
And you're going to work with that client a little bit differently, I would imagine.

Teresa Quinn:

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, the reality is trauma and grief, yeah, there is so much overlap, right? Not always, but often there is. And so there's also not really a pressure or rush to put particular labels on anything until the person is ready, right? And so, you know, we may say, do you identify that as traumatic? And they may say, absolutely not, not at all, right? Even though if you hear that kind of clinically as, okay, that's kind of textbook definition, it's not my job to say, no, that is traumatic. That person gets to define that for themselves. And there's no major rush on recognizing that in yourself. 

We know that people will come to their own experience of healing and treatment and what that looks like when they're ready to. And if they get pushed into it before they're ready, oftentimes, it's not going to be as beneficial.

Susan Andersen:

Sure, yeah, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Also, when we were having this, our first conversation, we were talking about yoga and you're also a yoga teacher. So how did that come about with all the other trainings that you did, the clinical training?

Teresa Quinn:

Yeah, yeah, I think so for me, I started doing yoga primarily because you know, when you're in graduate school, you're kind of all just wrapped up in your own niche topic and interests and so cerebral.

Teresa Quinn (11:24.3)
And I knew for me, Boston is such a great yoga city. But for me, was thinking, I got to get out of my head and into my body in some way. I just knew that that was kind of, I was being called in that way. So I ended up, got trained initially in power yoga, which is a much faster and more intense, usually heated kind of a flow. Listening to my own nervous system, knew that was lovely. Didn't really jive with my own nervous system I'm a little bit more of a slow paced gal.

So I ended up getting additional training in lots of different modalities, but ended up finding a lot of beauty and restorative yoga. And so when I was initially trained in how to teach that, I then taught it for a little bit before the pandemic hit. Restorative is a real challenge to teach online. So I think of everybody that does it because it's very challenging online. It's doable.


Teresa Quinn (12:16.022)
I found that for me that's what I wanted to offer folks and what mostly probably because it's what my nervous system needed as well was slowing down. Was an invitation just to be without the pressure to move and be toned and fit and wear certain things. And I wanted people just to be able to show up. And so that was what the beauty that I found in restorative yoga. And then obviously that aligns. So while I didn't know it at the time, but aligns with the trauma and grief work.


Teresa Quinn (12:44.45)
That's what we're inviting people to do, to check in with themselves. The word that I use most frequently in my practice with individual clients is notice. What are you noticing in your own body? What are you noticing arise for you as we talk about this? What are you noticing that you're holding in your body? And just that gentle invitation to notice is, I think, one tool that yoga really has given me and to be able to support folks.

Susan Andersen:

Do you use any - so obviously, you're doing a lot of talking and having a conversation - do you use any kind of any other modalities like do you use yoga in your sessions?

Teresa Quinn: 

Yes. Yeah. I'll do a lot with folks and what that can look like is.... So a lot of yoga; breath work. I also do a type of therapy called EMDR therapy, which is a body based trauma therapy that is bilateral stimulation. So left to right stimulation in order to clear traumatic memories for people. I love it so much. It's something I use all the time in my practice and kind of all of those get integrated together in a way.

Teresa Quinn (14:01.538)

So I would say oftentimes I'll be ending session with folks or we'll kind of integrate it in of what are you going to do to take care of yourself? And if they say, I don't know, I have so many things to do in my own head, right? We'll do some breath work before the session closes, right? I'll say, can we do some box breathing together just to kind of regulate and reduce the amount of anxiety in your body, right? Or for folks that find themselves kind of moving all the time, we'll do a balancing exercise to show them.

Not that is it like not to be successful at it by any means, but to say, what is it like to stand still for a second? Can you notice that? What's it like to be off balance? Are you finding yourself getting frustrated with yourself? What's your self talk look like when you fall over? So that kind of can be the way in which we utilize yoga as well. Again, it's the postures in some ways matter. And they're also kind of just vehicles for that internal knowing.

Susan Andersen (15:02.828)

Right. Yeah, you're right. I mean, when I'm doing a yoga for grief class, I'm asking a lot of those kinds of questions about what are you noticing, and we'll do something, we'll do a posture, or we'll do a breath work. And then I, I stop and just say, Okay, how does this feel for you? What what is showing up? You know, what, what's showing up in your body? And just notice that because I think a lot of people are disconnected from their body. And in the sense that they don't really know what they're feeling.

I had a woman in one of my classes, where one of the things that I do, I start with is encouraging everybody just to, you know, take a moment and notice where they might be feeling discomfort. And then rub their hands together, create heat and then put their hands to that spot. And one woman after the class said to me, I don't, I don't notice anything in my body. I thought, okay, well, just that's okay. 

Just keep trying it, you know, just keep trying practicing that little, you know, that that little bit of breath work and then, you know, just settling in and notice what's going on. It might not happen right away, but the more you pay attention, the more you'll notice.

Teresa Quinn:

Exactly. Right. Like the invitation is always there. And sometimes you see the opposite too.  Folks, especially grieving people will say, I'm, I just feel like there's a weighted blanket on me at all times, or I'm just in so much physical pain. And people who maybe aren't bereaved, but they're grieving like a new diagnosis, for example, if you're going through chemotherapy, your body is going to have all sorts of changes that go along with that. And you're going to be grieving oftentimes loss of ability, change in identity, all of these pieces.

Teresa Quinn (17:10.544)

So for folks that will say the opposite, like I feel like I'm just on fire at all times or I'm in pain at all times. We'll actually do the opposite. We'll say, okay, let's do a little body scan together. Can you tell me a part of your body that actually feels neutral? Maybe it's the tip of your nose or your elbow or your big toe on your right foot. And when you start calling out like the minutia of it, and be like, okay, yeah, I guess the tip of my nose doesn't feel anything, right?

You'd say like, okay, can you just place your fingers there? Can you just hold that part of your body and just notice that there's one part of your body that doesn't feel like it's holding pain? And can you just thank that part of your body? It's, know, people can be on totally different ends of the spectrum, but that's exactly what you're doing. You're inviting them to like get into the nuance of it.

Teresa Quinn (18:02.284)
So that way they can understand that it's not all or nothing.

Susan Andersen:

Great. That's really a good point. I really didn't think about that. But I also know people that their grief has manifested in their body. And they have different physical ailments now that they didn't have before. So they're always feeling that pain in that area, as opposed to, you know, I described early after my son died that I had a cloud in my chest. Yeah, you know, but that was a different feeling than what other people might describe as, you know, something that's going on because with their hip or their, you know, their stuff, their stomach issues or something that happened as a result of their loss, you know, and that all of that grief and that emotion kind of manifested.

Teresa Quinn(19:02.274)

Right. And in some ways that can be its own kind of interesting, like self-assessment tool for people, right? So like, I'll have folks say like, yeah, my anxiety, you know, for after grief, it's like a red spiky ball that lives in my chest. And you get to invite, okay, where does the ball end? Right? How big is it? It's like, okay, it ends, it, you know, gets up to my collarbone. And then it goes out to my you know, this shoulder, but then it's kind of bigger. It's more on the this side than that side. And then it ends right at, you know, like my, the, top of my belly button, right? It's really big, but it's all skewed left. Like, okay, notice the boundary of it. Where does it end and what's on the other side of it? Right. And then each day it's how big is the ball today? Is it in the center? Is it the left? Is it the right?

It can become this way to check in with yourself. If in particular is that anchoring tool, you don't have to get rid of the cloud. You don't have to get rid of the ball. We're just noticing how big is it, how heavy is it over time.

Susan Andersen:

Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's I really like that. I like that a lot. What other types of modalities do you use with your clients? We talked a little bit about a little bit about breath work. You mentioned box breath. Are there kinds of breathing techniques that you might be doing?

Teresa Quinn (20:42.954)

Yeah, we'll do a lot of... I try to teach clients a couple of different kinds of breath like snake breathing is one of my favorite ones or you're breathing in a short breath and then like a long hiss out.

Susan Andersen:

I've never heard of that.

Teresa Quinn:

Oh really? It's one of my favorites because it feels, a, feels a little bit silly. And I work with adults. I mean, kids like eat it up. You know I mean? Like that is the easiest thing to do. Adults usually are like, you want me to do what? Like, excuse me. So it makes them like, it already gets them out of their comfort zone a little bit. And then we, you know, we talk about, you know, that a longer exhale, that parasympathetic, that rest and digest state. Not just with one breath, obviously with multiple over time, but the hissing. And if you don't want to be silly and make it like a snake, you can imagine. I always tell people if you have a coffee stir straw, you're going to imagine blowing out through something that's small, like a And so it forces a really long exhale for them. 

Oftentimes, we make eye contact as we're practicing it which then can lead to that kind of regulation because eye contact with other people, right? Somebody that you feel comfortable enough and safe enough with can oftentimes also offer that kind of grounding as well. it's like a little bit of silliness, right? Which kind of that creative playfulness, a little bit of that rest and digest as well. It's really hard to be in kind of that fight or flight or that trauma state as you're also being silly, right? Those don't kind of compute together.

Susan Andersen (22:18.946)

Right, right.

Teresa Quinn:

So we do we do that kind of snake breath together and then we do I do actually a fair amount of expressive arts with my clients as well Sometimes that looks like collage. Sometimes that looks like creating a playlist together that you know reflects the person that that died sometimes it looks like, just literally like doodling. Yeah, no pressure. No stakes. I will totally throw it out the second you leave here. You can leave it here and I'll throw it out for you

So that way to do something that doesn't have any stakes I think is oftentimes something that we're missing a lot in grief. Everything feels very high stakes.

Susan Andersen (23:01.43)

Yeah, yeah. And how about, so you created this journal. So let's talk about that a little bit.

Teresa Quinn:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so I created the journal and published it last fall. I created it initially, because I got a call from a dear friend of mine who I used to work for. And she was calling me to tell me that a friend of ours, another friend of ours lost a parent. And I happened to work with this friend, Katie, who was calling me while her dad was dying. And so we worked together for very intense summer just the two of us as this was happening for her and she had a third kid, right? Like it was just a very intense time for her. 

And so she called me, was telling me about another friend who lost a parent and said, you know, my biggest fear is that my kids are gonna forget my dad. And so I keep a blank notebook in my car and anytime I have a memory of my dad or something that comes up, I write it down so I can give my kids this notebook and they can have all of these memories. Because they were so little at the time that, you know, we don't wanna forget him. 

And she said, I really wanted to find something like that for this other friend of ours. And I've been looking for years for something like this. And it doesn't really exist. Like a guided grief journal that offers a lot more space and prompts, but isn't just memory based. So if you could create that, that would be awesome. 

That's such a testament to female friendship. I'm going call you and like, here's this huge project, you would be amazing at it. If you could do that right now, that would be great. So very lucky to have these people in my life who really encouraged this. These are the same friends that actually encouraged me to become a social worker. 

It has worked out well, but created, ended up creating this journal mostly as a reflection of the grief and loss work that I've done with clients over the years. So a lot of the questions, there's a couple of different sections to the journal. The first is tools and education. 

Teresa Quinn (25:02.382)

A lot of things that are out there right now are very useful and helpful, obviously. Journals that already exist out in the world, too. They're content heavy. I don't know about you, but I've not met a lot of grieving people that want a lot of content or want to read a lot. So I wanted to create some tools that offer some grounding, but not so overwhelming that it feels like you've now got homework while you're grieving.

Susan Andersen:

Right.

Teresa Quinn (25:28.942)

And then the majority of the journal is there's 52 pages worth of check-ins that really are more based in the body. So it's not just a like What's going on today? Right. It's today. need more of this today. I need less of that Here's what's happening in my body right now. So it actually invites, you know, you mentioned that client That's like, I don't know anything about my body right and invite that top-down kind of check in

A sense of, not just what you're thinking, but also how are you, what's going on, what's happening semantically for you.  And then there's journaling prompts as well that aren't just memory based, but are really inviting you to process grief a little bit deeper. And then some poetry and resources. Not my poetry, but poetry by others that I've found really useful with clients over the years, incorporated as well. So those are kind of like the big sections.

Susan Andersen:

Yeah, one of the things that I really like about the journal is that it's not set up that you have to go through it step by step. Like you can just flip through it and then something appeals to you that particular prompt or reflection or poetry or something and you can kind of just go to that page. It's not this linear kind of a thing and which is just like grief is not linear. Kind of allows you to just do what you feel like doing without the heaviness of having to start from zero. And that was, you know, something I'm sure everyone has had the opportunity to, you know, somebody has given them a journal and..

Susan Andersen (27:20.28)

...they've had the opportunity to use it. I'm not, for me personally, like I'm not a person that writes every day in a journal. I will write in a journal when I can't find any other way to release what I need to release. And the writing is really helpful to me. and a lot of times that would happen for me after I you know talk to my therapist or i was in a group or something and then i would say okay i need to process this thing a little bit more and i would write about it but then i might not do anything for six months you know?  

But i would go to other resources you know i'd look at other resources it might be poetry or something like that so it's nice that you have this mix of of you know little opportunities, I guess, for people to connect with something different. It's not just a blank page, although there are blank pages.

Teresa Quinn:

Yes, there are plenty of blank pages, mostly because I'm not really a journal journaler either, I will say. But I my first thing I always do when I'm creating something new for therapy clients, or like, you know, in a therapeutic way, is I send it out to people in my personal life who are not therapists, who like I always send it to my sister, who, for example, who's a lawyer, because the girl's not a feelings gal. And so she'll get back to me with very blunt feedback around like, I don't like this, this makes no sense to me. What do you mean by this? Right? To take all the clinical jargon out of things. And she is a journaler. And so she's like, you don't have enough space. She's like, I have too many thoughts. wouldn't use this because I need more blank space. 

Susan Andersen: 

That's great. The journal's blank on the outside, right? Because it's a linen cover.

Teresa Quinn (29:12.974)
And that was, again, a prompt from her. She was like, I'm a private person. I don't want to take a journal that says grief on it to a coffee shop and write in it. I don't want to invite people to talk to me about that. And so it's kind of meant to be a reflection of wherever you're at. If you are very private, if you need a lot of space, if you need a guide or need prompts, or you want to just pick it up and flip to a page, all of it's possible because that's also how grief works.

And we're all so different within that. But I will say the other thing that was really intentional within that too is it doesn't assume a positive relationship. And so I try never to use the language of loved one. I think it's a fair assumption of if you're grieving that there was love there for this person. But I think for a lot of people, sometimes they're grieving really complicated relationships. And so it's always referred to as the person who died. It doesn't assume...

Teresa Quinn (30:12.172)
...you have all these warm, fuzzy feelings about the person, maybe you do, so there's space for that. But if you are really struggling with that part of it, I think that's kind of a disenfranchised grief that we oftentimes overlook, and I wanted to make sure to carve out some space for in the journal.

Susan Andersen:

Yeah, that's, that's really, I think that's really important and and wise to do it that way. Because I've had I've learned myself in just my own language when I'm teaching a class that I can't assume that everybody's there because a person died.

And also it could be, you know, like you said, that there might be challenges with that relationship. It could be, you know, the breakup of a relationship. And that person is grieving that it could be anything your your home, your pet, whatever. And you've you're looking for resources to help you that are making assumptions.

Yeah, about why you're, while you're there. And I think that's important. Although there are certainly reasons to have groups, for example, that are specific to, you know, a particular kind of loss, I think, from standpoint of something that's just, you're offering it out there as something as a like, for me, like as a service, then you have to, yeah, use the languaging has to be, has to be appropriate, for people are grieving, I guess, yeah.

Teresa Quinn (31:53.666)

You know, I love the term secondary losses. It doesn't mean to like add a, you know, a tier system to loss, but just to be able to say almost like thinking about it, like a ripple in a pond, right? Like the loss, you know, the, death loss, for example, is like the, the stone in the pond. What are all the ripples that come out from that? And so those secondary losses being, yeah, loss of identity, like who am I? If I'm not this person's fill in the blank here, right? Or, you know, oftentimes loss prompts, okay, well now I can't afford the rent on my own. So now I need to leave my home and I need to move. And what does that look like and feel like, right? I to change jobs or I need to go back to work or I'm a single parent now. What does that mean? Right? And so all of these losses that result as part of that, I think are also just as important to hold, but we oftentimes don't give them as much like weight or credit.

Susan Andersen (32:52.428)

Right. And when you're working with a client, I'm sure those kinds of things come up. And then do you ask the person, like, do you want to talk about this? Like, do you segue into that thing? like, I guess what I'm getting at is I remember for me, I recognize on my own something that was, that was the secondary loss. And I thought, I can't move forward until I deal with this thing. But I recognized that in myself. So I felt like, OK, I have to release this and come to terms with this thing, which involved a lot of different, whether it was just thinking, journaling, walking, whatever I had to do to make sense of it. And then I could go back to the main grief.

Teresa Quinn:

Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like, think Jan Richardson has a beautiful poem that talks about like grief being like different rooms in a house. So I had a client that I really loved that image and that metaphor. And so we talk about like, what room are you in today? Right? Which of these layers of this loss are you grieving? And just using that as like a tool essentially to identify themselves for themselves. Like,

Yeah, like I'm actually in the room about like, wow, I had to give up my job after that loss. And I loved that job, right? That job was so great. And at the time, we're not usually addressing this right from the get-go, because you can recognize all those losses or it can become really overwhelming. But even just to name, like, yeah, what would it be like to grieve that, to give it some weight? Oftentimes, with enough time past, people are ready to say like, yeah, that was a loss. Whereas at the time, maybe it feels like that's just what I had to do to get through it. And you know, I can't focus on it right now.

Susan Andersen (34:59.158)

Right, right, right, right, which makes sense. Which yeah, which makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that, you know, and that kind of brought up another thought for me about our initial conversation when we talked about the path of grief, and there's a lot of different words to describe, right, you know, it's a journey, it's a path. And that... 

Susan Andersen (35:29.054)

...you know, it's not linear. And a misconception that somehow is just in our, our society is that, you know, there's five stages of grief, you're to go through these stages, and then people get upset because they think they're at this stage, and they didn't do this or do you find that? Do people have that sort of I don't know, thoughts or when you're talking to them, do they think about it that way?

Teresa Quinn:

Everything's in its own time.  Absolutely. So poor Elizabeth Kubler-Ross who just put out this and it just totally co-opted it. It was not what she was saying at all that these five stages, right? She was talking about terminally ill people and we just kind of...We just meaning like, especially US society, we're kind of like, yup, this is ours now and now we can use it to shame people who don't fit into this completely unrealistic narrative. But I think a lot of people, it's interesting, a lot of people will say, I know there's no five stages, but- Right? So it's like consciously we're aware this model doesn't exist. It's not that it doesn't work. It's that it doesn't exist. But then unconsciously we'll still shame ourselves or blame ourselves for, I know there's no five stages, but I just felt like I was doing so well and now I'm not. And what does that mean? Right?

Susan Andersen

Right. Right.

Teresa Quinn (36:55.021)

People still put themselves in a box, still put themselves feeling like this is a board game. I don't know why, like the game of life or like Candyland or something comes to mind of just like a winding path, but then still penalizing themselves if they fall back on the path. And the reason is like the path never existed in the first place. The path is wherever you're at. And I remember when I worked for a nonprofit in Massachusetts for bereaved kids and families, then we did this activity with...

Teresa Quinn (37:24.654)
...I say like the six to eight year old, six to nine year old group that I was with. We had a big whiteboard and the prompt was, we're gonna write out all of the feelings that come along with grief. And I remember when I was told this, because this is an activity they'd been doing for years at this organization, I being like, the kids are gonna yell out like mad and sad, and then they're just gonna be like crickets. And of course they proved me wrong immediately.

Kids just started, and you know, the volunteer and I were writing on this whiteboard and we couldn't write fast enough. These had so fast. And so, and the board ended up becoming this like messy and sloppy and disjointed and there were double words places and there were words the kids made up, right? And they were all over and we kind of stepped back and somebody, you know, of course, one of these like very wise kids said something like, that's what grief feels like.

Ah, that's messiness. Right. So it was a great lesson for me. Yeah. It's a Adults put it on themselves and we just keep continuing to return to the fact of like, yeah, this is going to be messy.

Susan Andersen:

Yeah. Yeah. And you and because society also says like, well, that happened three months ago, aren't you over it? Don't you want to go to this party? You're like, what?

Teresa Quinn (38:51.438)

Yeah, like, oh, you're still sad about that thing that was literally one year ago. Like, yeah, I always think I'm like, want to just say in those moments of like, I hope that nothing like this ever happens to you. God forbid it did. I will show up for you in a different way.

Teresa Quinn (39:14.734)

Yeah, it's just, it's funny, I think. that's, it's a shock to a lot of people that have had the loss that, you know, all the changes that really happen in terms of, you know, it could be your own family. Because everybody, it's individual, so everybody has their own reaction and how they're gonna deal with it. And some people wanna talk and some people don't wanna talk and some people wanna ignore everything and say, I'm perfectly fine, I can do this and that. And then you have all of those ripple effects of you no longer have these friends or people that you didn't really think of as friends just sort of show up.

Susan Andersen:

Yeah, so it's definitely messy.

Teresa Quinn:

It is. Yeah, there's that saying, I can't even quote it to anybody. I don't know who said it, but the sense of grief rearranges your address book. And, you know, not many of us keep address books anymore, but I think it's a fitting visualization of like, who comes to the forefront for you, who shows up in the ways that you really didn't expect. And I think, yeah, it is really surprising to a lot of people and that it's surprising to them, the people, like they really thought their best friend would be able to be there.

Susan Andersen:

Right.

Teresa Quinn (40:42.062)
And I think that can hold a particular pain for people when they say, well, and I know she has her own stuff going on, and they'll be so empathetic and so lovely about it. And then if we kind of dig underneath it a little bit and say, yeah, can we hold that she has a lot going on, and this is really hard for her because she is in the middle of grief and X, Y, or Z reasons, and also you really wish that she could show up for you. And that kind of invites a little bit more of that. Two things can be true at same time. 

Susan Andersen:

Right, right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Teresa, is there anything that we haven't talked about that you want to share with our audience any other? I don't know tools or anything you think would be helpful.

Teresa Quinn:

Now, I mean, we covered so many different pieces. I mean, I think you and I are just so aligned in like this, the somatic, the body based response to grief, the ways in which we can support people through it. When I worked in, I'll just say share like the best piece of grief advice I've ever gotten. I worked in hospice right out of grad school and I was a bereavement counselor and I loved it. was beautiful organization. And there was the social work supervisor, you know, so there's a whole social work department. She was the director. She'd been there for like 20 years. And so she'd seen lots of different, you know, experiences of grief over that time. And was just very wise and shared two pieces of advice. One is, you know, really the only thing that we can tell people about grief is that it changes. Right. And people say, is it going to get better? Is it going to get worse? What's this anniversary going to be like? What's six months going to be like?

The only truth we can tell people is that it's going to change and then it's going to change again and then it's going to change again, which I loved. And then she said, and the only good advice for grief is drink water. Anybody trying to tell you any other advice about this is how you grieve, she's like, don't trust them. It's drink water. Which I just love, just this sense of, yeah, the gentlest option is oftentimes...

Susan Andersen (42:37.528)
Yeah.

Teresa Quinn (42:54.527)
...the path and the option that we need in that moment because everything else is just messy.

Susan Andersen:

Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Now one thing, people that want to work with you have to be in Illinois, correct?

Teresa Quinn:

Yes, from an individual therapy perspective, I'm licensed. So social workers are bound by certain state regulations. And so I'm licensed in Illinois and Missouri, actually. And so those are the two places that if folks are interested in individual therapy, they can get connected to me. But of course, I always love being a resource for folks, especially if they feel like they don't know where to start to find good therapists in their own area. I always encourage folks to reach out to me because then I have networks in pretty much every state and so I'm able to get them connected to somebody that can support them in the ways that they need.

Susan Andersen:

That's great. That's great. So I'll have that information, your website and also the link for the journal in the show notes.  Here's the link for the journal

Teresa Quinn:

Thank you so much for having me. This was so delightful to get to chat again.

Susan Andersen:

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for being here. And listeners, we will see you in the next episode. Thanks for joining.