Episode 03 - Grief Therapy: The Extra Support I Didn't Know I Needed

In this episode of Hey Pops, I opened up about my personal journey with grief therapy and how it guided me through the overwhelming emotions after my dad’s passing. I share how my regular therapy wasn’t enough to process such a profound loss and how joining a grief support group with other women who had also lost their parents created the space I needed to heal. From the transformative 12-week program to the invaluable strength of these women, this episode highlights the importance of finding the right support when navigating grief.

I want to give a special shoutout to Flora Baker, author of The Adult Orphan Club, and my incredible grief counselor, Tara Nash, who both played key roles in helping me through this process. I wouldn’t be where I am today without their guidance. You can learn more about their work in the show notes.

Tune in next week for a special ‘missed calls’ episode, and stay tuned the following week for episode 4 of ‘Hey Pops,’ where I deep-dive into my dad, Dan, ’s professional life and share some of my favorite clips from his speaking career. 

Key Takeaways - 

• Grief therapy offers a unique space for healing
• The power of a shared experience 
• Multiple forms of support are key 
• Community matters
• Grief doesn’t follow a timeline

Links & Resources:

• Learn more about the podcast - https://coriorak.com/hey-pops-podcast
• Submit your own voicemail or story about Dan - https://www.speakpipe.com/HeyPops
• Get involved and learn more about the Dan Culhane Memorial Fund - https://www.danculhanememorialfund.org/

Resources Mentioned:

• Flora Baker’s The Adult Orphan Club https://linktr.ee/florabaker
• Tara Nash’s Conscious Grief Book  https://linktr.ee/tara_nash_seeker

Subscribe & Review: If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your feedback helps others find the show and supports me in continuing to share these stories.

Transcript

Cori: [00:00:00] Hello, all my lovely listeners out there. Um, thank you for coming back for more. As I say every week, I am so grateful and so impressed by how many people are listening and sharing the love. I think I've gotten into the flow of this. I really like on these days to just sit down and. Have a topic in mind and then just let it rip.

And I've been thinking a lot about grief therapy the last few weeks. So this week's episode, I explore my experience with grief therapy in addition to my regular talk therapy. And in the episode, I mentioned to people And at the end of the episode, I will share their names, more about them, and then add how you can learn more about them in the show notes.

But yeah, I just had an incredible experience with grief therapy and I, I don't know that I'd be here today if I [00:01:00] hadn't taken that leap in joining us. So sit back, relax, and get a little insight into how I got the additional support I needed through grief therapy. Take care. Hey, I'm Corey, and this is Hey Pops.

I've been thinking a lot about therapy lately, and I had started like normal therapy, um, a regular weekly therapy process in, I want to say 2018. And I was very, not was, I am and have been very diligent with it. I do weekly therapy calls. There are times where financial strains had Lowered it to like stop a few months or now I'm at a point where I'm every other week, but therapy I never realized how powerful and important it was to have a non biased third party to Explore [00:02:00] things with and in addition to that I spent years in group coaching programs and different communities in which I could explore all the different things that were happening in my life.

And there was a lot. There's always been a lot. I've always been a very emotional person, a very sensitive person. I have, uh, social struggles. I am late in life diagnosed with ADHD and autism, which make a whole lot of sense and have allowed me The ability to reflect on my whole life up to this point, but also start to adapt and continue making my life work for me with the unique, uh, circumstances that I need to thrive.

So when my dad got sick, I was already in weekly therapy and through that process and through moving home and all these different things, it wasn't enough. And I was in therapy and in a group coaching program [00:03:00] after my dad passed away. And what I found I needed In addition to the weekly comings and goings of my life, the weekly scenarios that I needed help with, the reflection I needed, I needed a additional line of support for grief, specifically.

I was experiencing and finding that I could talk in therapy about the loss and the grief. But while I was managing that, I was managing a whole lot of other challenges in my life and needed to use that time to help keep my head above the water. And in the group programs, it was a lot of the community support I needed and a lot of exploration through different parts of myself professionally and personally.

And with It turned out to be a pretty difficult situation in which I didn't have as many people to speak with as I thought I would. And another thing I was finding was that even [00:04:00] with my husband at the time and my stepmom and even with people very close to me, I knew and understood that they were also grieving in their own unique way.

And so I needed to find a way to find support, to understand and explore what I was feeling completely detached from those who were also grieving the same person. Things that I was experiencing was very different than things that, you know, a spouse is experiencing with the loss of a spouse or a friend losing a friend and I'm a child.

losing a parent. And that's a whole different scenario. And I had met this woman through ethnotech, uh, my family business years and years and years ago, she had written a travel blog talking about one of our products. And I just thought she was super cool, connected with her for a long time and stayed in [00:05:00] touch.

I got to meet her in person when she came traveling in Bali and she, uh, lost both of her parents. In a relatively short amount of time, and I had been following this journey on Instagram. She wrote a book about being an adult orphan, which I think is an incredibly interesting aspect of life to look into because it doesn't matter how old you are when you lose your parents.

Something monumental shifts in your life and your mind and in your perspective of everything. And as she was sharing, she shared about a interview she was giving or a talk she was giving with a grief counselor. And I took that name and quickly explored her. And, uh, sign up for a call, I believe it was shortly after moving back to America.

Uh, a like discovery call for you discovery call to see if I could join an upcoming it was an 8 or 12 week, uh, weekly grief [00:06:00] support program. One thing about me is that if I can find any type of course you a new skill to learn, any avenue in which I can learn and explore myself, my personality, my feelings, my skill sets.

I'm going to jump on it. I'm going to make the cost work. I'm going to find the money to join the programs. So in addition to a group coaching program I was in, in addition to my weekly therapy, I joined this 12 week program and everything about it was so meant to be. I was put into a group of all women.

It was five women and the grief counselor was a woman and all of us were women who had lost a parent, even the grief counselor, she had lost both of her parents. And so the setting of the program was absolutely perfect and safe and incredible because we were all women. We were all [00:07:00] experiencing the same form of loss.

We weren't exploring loss of a child, loss of a spouse, loss of a sibling. It was all a parental loss. In addition to that, It was every Sunday with last call or second to last call being on the actual day of my dad's celebration of life, which it was actually, it was at the same time as the celebration of life.

It was crazy. I, I initially tried to change my group so that I could be in an earlier call of the day, but that group was just so meant to be. And through that experience. Exploration, I had a self contained place to talk specifically about this form of grief and to hold space for others to hear stories, to hear pain, to hear celebrations, to hear how much these people meant to these women.

Uh, what the impact of that loss was on them and their lives, what it was like to explore, um, a recent [00:08:00] loss versus, uh, decades old loss. All of these people were still in the thick of grief. And it was incredible because it was guided each call. We had a specific thing to look at and we each had time to share.

So everyone had a time to be able to have space held for them. And I thought it was so beautiful. And when it came to it and it was the day of my dad's celebration of life, I knew I wasn't going to be able to join because it was at the same time as the ceremony. But when I arrived at the location and I saw the blown up picture of my dad, I couldn't even say hi to the people that were there.

I went straight back outside to the car. I was able to sit in the car and message these women and get that specific support and camaraderie that I needed to be able to have the courage to go back into that building. Anyone who's listening to this that might have been at the [00:09:00] Celebration of Life, Uh, it wasn't easy for me to say the least, I was able to get up and speak through my tears.

Um, I barely remember what I said. I was off script. I didn't pre write anything. Um, because the more I do that, the more nervous I get. So I just spoke from the heart. But by the end of the ceremony, after hearing everybody and all these stories, And it being so fucking real, so real. I had one of the worst meltdowns, um, I've had in a long time where I just huddled at the table for the end of the ceremony and while everyone was hugging and saying their goodbyes, I just couldn't, I couldn't face anyone, I couldn't talk to anyone, I couldn't breathe.

And even that, I'm still proud that I went, I made it through it, and I couldn't have done it without these women in the support group. And I think it's such an incredible thing to look back on, and to [00:10:00] have such love and gratitude for this group and the women. I just, I guess I wanted to share that you can never have too much support, and everyone gets their support in different ways.

And for me, it was weekly, hour long calls. There's the most incredible butterfly that just came by that I have never seen before. Ugh, just when I needed it. Well, I don't even know what I was saying. Oh, I couldn't have done it without this group of six incredible women. being strong enough to share their stories with me and holding me while I shared my stories and creating a space of unity and celebration.

And I'm just grateful now when I have my therapy calls. I have a lot more wins than I have had in the past seven, eight years, and I never want to be without it. And I'm, I'm [00:11:00] glad I now know that with different circumstances and different occasions that arise that there's power in supplementing. my support.

So that's what I wanted to share today. I originally thought that grief support groups were what I saw in movies, which would be like 15, 20 people sitting in a circle, maybe hearing one or two people talk and that's it. And this was so intimate and so personal and so incredibly powerful that I don't think I could have got through that year without it.

Yeah, I don't know how to end this, but I wouldn't be here without that group. And those women and them celebrating my dad with me.

Thank you all for listening. As mentioned, I wanted to share the names of the women who helped me through this all Flora Baker is my friend who has been a travel writer and author and is an incredible public speaker about [00:12:00] grief and exploring life with loss. She wrote a book called the adult orphan club.

Which I will link in the show notes. And she is just a lovely and wonderful woman and human being. And she guided me to my grief counselor, who is Tara Nash. And she also just launched a book, which is called Conscious Grief Book, which I will also link, obviously. Both of them are British and amazing. And Like I said in the episode, I wouldn't be here without those two people guiding me to the support I needed.

And I'm excited for next episode because I am wanting to listen to my dad and share my dad. And so next Hey Pops episode, which will be out in two weeks, I will be, um, sharing a lot of clips. Of his professional speaking voice and some of my favorite clips. So stay tuned. I hope you join next week for my missed calls, [00:13:00] voicemail, direct line to my pops.

And then the following week will be a really cool deep dive into the man that was Dan. So thank you all. Thank you for your support. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing it. And I hope you learned something.