Aging with Purpose and Passion

Rebuilding After Loss: Dr. Kimberly Harm's Journey From Survival to Purpose

• Beverley Glazer • Episode 121

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What does it take to rebuild your life after unimaginable tragedy? Dr. Kimberly Harms knows this journey intimately. Born as a thalidomide baby with seven fingers, she defied an advisor who told her dental school was impossible, going on to become the first female president of the Minnesota Dental Association. But her greatest challenges came later – losing her mother to suicide, then facing her son Eric's suicide at just 19 years old.

The moment that transformed her grief journey came unexpectedly in a parking lot, when someone confronted her about how her suffering was affecting her remaining children. This wake-up call sparked her determination to "kick and scream and fight" her way out of the grief pit – not just for herself, but for everyone who loved her.

Dr. Harms shares practical wisdom from managing her dental practice through tragedy, including creating "crying rooms" and systems to help team members support each other through crisis. But perhaps most profound were the lessons she learned while establishing 65 libraries across Rwanda in her son's memory. There, genocide survivors who had lost everything taught her about true forgiveness – not forgetting, but choosing to build something new from devastation.

This conversation offers rare insight into how someone moves forward when life divides into "before" and "after." Dr. Harms doesn't sugarcoat the difficulty of this journey, emphasizing that finding joy again requires active fighting against negative self-talk and shame. Yet her message radiates hope: no matter what tragedy has occurred, love and joy remain possible if we're willing to fight for them.

Ready to transform your own challenges into purpose? Connect with host Beverley Glazer at reinventimpossible.com and discover how to move from stuck to unstoppable with her free checklist, available through the link in our show notes.

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Resources:

Dr. Kimberly Harms

drkim@pinelakelawfirm.com

Author, Death Doula, Civil Mediator, Podcaster

http://drkimberlyharms.com

Beverley Glazer:

Website: https://reinventimpossible.com

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion, the podcast designed to inspire your greatness and thrive through life. Get ready to conquer your fears. Here's your host psychotherapist, coach and empowerment expert, Beverley Glazer.

Beverley Glazer:

Are you ready to rise above your challenges with purpose like never before? Well, welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion. I'm Beverley Glazer and I'm a transformational coach and therapist, and I help women to have the confidence to create the life they know they deserve. And you can find me on reinventimpossiblecom or text me in the show notes below. I want you to meet Kimberly Harms, Dr Kimberly Harms. She's a dentist, a commissioned officer in the public health service, a dental school professor, a grief counselor, a deaf doula, a civil mediator, the first woman president of the Minnesota Dental Association, a national spokesperson for the American Dental Association, and she's a best-selling author and international speaker. Kimberly has also been around the block many, many times and she helps others rise above the challenges with strength, resilience and a renewed sense of meaning. Stay tuned to reclaim your power and move forward with purpose, no matter what life throws your way. I want to welcome you, kimberly because, boy, you have a lot to say to this audience. Welcome.

Kimberly Harms:

Thank you so much, Beverly.

Beverley Glazer:

Now, Kimberly, you were born with challenges. Right from the get-go. You were a thalidomide baby. You were born with seven fingers. Right, I get missing. Yeah, and how did that shape your early life?

Kimberly Harms:

Well, my mother was a hand model and so you know that, yeah, it did affect her when I was born, that that you know that did affect her when I was born. Anytime you have a child that's born with disability, it's a hard thing. My spine was kind of deformed. They didn't think I was going to be walking, but it turned out that wasn't as much a problem. But what happened was my parents were divorced when I was three and when I was six. That's when they discovered that the littleomide had caused those abnormalities and my father called my mother and said to her that it was her fault that I was missing those fingers, because on the way cross-country from from the east coast to the west coast my dad was in the navy. They stopped at my mom's hometown of Cincinnati, ohio, and in that one spot in the country they were testing out the drug thalidomide. Her best friend was taking it for morning sickness. My mother had morning sickness and motion sickness from the drive so she took some tablets. It was being used in Europe. There was no cause for alarm at the time, but when she found out that the thalidomide was the likely culprit for my missing fingers, it put her into an emotional tailspin. She ended up going into a mental hospital. My dad took us and she got out of the hospital. She said I want the kids back and he said, nope, I bought the bedroom furniture no kids coming back. So we were taken away from her my mother's, you know, we were her life and I, as a mother myself, I can't imagine that happening to me. And she ended up back in the institution for the rest of her life, that happening to me and she ended up back in the institution for the rest of her life, eventually leading to her suicide death about 10 years later. So the travesty with thalidomide was really I mean, I've survived well with the missing fingers but the biggest travesty was what happened to my mom, the guilt, the shame, the suffering she went through because of that.

Kimberly Harms:

And but when I went to, when I got to college, I met this really cute guy named Jim Harms who wanted to be a dentist, and so I thought, well, maybe I'll be a dentist. But I thought, well, maybe the seven finger thing might stand in the way. So I went to an advisor, my advisor back in the day. This was the 70s now, as you remember the 70s, my advisors I was back there smoking a big cigar, and so there is no way they would ever take you into dental school with seven fingers. Which made sense. And I kind of thought, oh darn, I'll have to find a different way to get Jim to marry me now, because, you know, dental school's not going to work.

Kimberly Harms:

But as I walked out the door, he said something. It changed my life. He leaned back in his chair, he put his feet up on the desk, was smoking a cigar and he said but maybe if you were a man they would let you in. Oh, I was an 18 year old. You don't say that to an 18 year old. So instead of changing careers, I changed advisors, found one who discovered that indeed, one hand holds a mirror, which I could do. The other goes to dental school. I was in and I ended up. It was a successful plan. I got into dental school and I got the guy and Jim and I were married until his death, 44 years later.

Beverley Glazer:

That is crazy. So it's like why did you go to dental school? Because he was going to dental school.

Kimberly Harms:

This is the 70s. This is not good life advice Out there. The 70s was a different time.

Beverley Glazer:

Totally, it really did. And so from that beginning, which was really rough, and a mom with bipolar disorder which eventually took her life, you went to dental school. The two of you had a practice. This was probably your dream and totally ideal.

Kimberly Harms:

Absolutely. We had a wonderful practice in a small town of Farmington, minnesota, just exactly where we wanted to be, and we had three beautiful children. We were involved in the local community. I was on the school board, he was on the Housing Redevelopment Authority. We just were. It was just a wonderful life. But then in 2007, my brother died suddenly a heart attack, and at 56. And then a month later, my husband was diagnosed with liver cancer and expected not to live. And then, six months later, a miracle happened he got a transplant. And so we were on that roller coaster of life. We're up on the top again. And then, six months after that, the worst thing that we could possibly imagine happened to us Our 19-year-old brilliant, loving, kind, caring son, eric, who was at Columbia University.

Kimberly Harms:

He was recruited by Columbia. He was elected to student government at Columbia University. He was recruited by Columbia. He was elected to student government at Columbia. He was playing in the jazz program at Columbia, which was his dream to study engineering and play jazz piano in New York City. I mean, he had everything. His dream was coming true. He came home after the first semester. He was on top of the world. He even made the dean's list. I mean just everything going for this kid.

Kimberly Harms:

And then he went back to school and two weeks later his girlfriend broke up with him, which is a normal part of life, right, that happens to us. But within 45 minutes, that young, undeveloped, very impulsive brain that made him such a good jazz pianist kind of combined into a fatal cocktail and he took his own life 45 minutes after the breakup with his girlfriend. And our lives shattered. We could not. You know, I lost my mother to suicide. Now I lost my son to suicide. I mean, what's the common denominator? Me right, it was just a horrible, horrible time. But I had something that happened to me that changed my life. It was an encounter in a parking lot a few weeks after Eric died, and you know anybody that's had a traumatic loss. You know, you can't eat, you can't sleep, you're in the zombie phase, you can hardly move, you're in the depths of the pit, you're trying to suck up the mud, trying to breathe. I mean, it's just a horrible, horrible place.

Kimberly Harms:

And I was coming out and I was in that terrible place and my husband, jim, was talking to his cousin who was in kind of an intense discussion, and he came over to me and he was wagging his finger in my face Now I'm a grieving mother. I'm not used to this. Right now, you know, I'm a little stressed Wagging his finger in my face and he said don't you ever let your remaining children feel that they are not enough? Don't you do that to them? And it was like a lightning bolt hit me, because I realized that he had lost his brother at about the same age and he felt that he had lost his parents as well.

Kimberly Harms:

And I was going down that same path. I mean, I was lost to everybody. At that moment, you know, you're just so deep in that pit you can't even think. And it made me realize that my grief affected everyone else. And I had a husband who was still struggling with that, recovering from the liver transplant. I had two daughters who were suffering. We're a very close family and I did not want them to suffer any more than they had to already, and so I did not want to be an additional source of suffering for them.

Kimberly Harms:

So I was determined at that point to kick and scream and fight and claw my way out of that grief pit, for myself, but for them as well.

Kimberly Harms:

I wanted to be a good mother. But it really helped me to focus on what grief does to you and how we can fall into that pit. I suffer from depression and I'm treated to well successfully but we fall into that pit and we don't realize that our unhappiness affects everybody around us. And so I just encourage everyone and it takes time, it took me years it doesn't happen overnight but to fight and kick and scream and battle their way out of that pit, because finding that joy that you can find again in life which I have found again, couldn't, didn't think I ever would, but I've been able to with a lot of super hard work and you know number of years going by it's such a much better place to live and when you live in a, in a state where you can have joy and live without that shroud over you, it affects every single member around you. You're at. My children, my grandchildren, are affected by the fact that I don't live in that grief pit anymore.

Beverley Glazer:

It's amazing how you stayed focused, because, in spite of the grief and believe me, the grief was overwhelming you were also running a dental practice, so you had to suck it up and for the rest of the world, you had to open up your mouth and smile and be very confident, because now you are practicing dentist and so not only a mother, not only a grieving mother. How did you pull it all together? Because there's stress in running that practice and your husband did not go into therapy. You said that you did, but how did you pull that together? Because he's grieving too. What went on during that time for you?

Kimberly Harms:

Well, I kind of feel I had little angels surrounding me that were not supernatural but human beings, and I got help from people, a lot of support from my wonderful friends, and so I was getting that support from my community. But going to work was very difficult and so you had to. So when you're a dentist, just think about going to the dentist. If you're going to have a person with a high-speed drill going into your mouth you know, drilling human tissue don't? You want them to be completely focused on you, right? You don't want them worrying about something else. We cannot be distracted, and so you have to suck it up and you have to kind of go and try to smile. What made it harder for me and for my husband was we were in a small town and everybody knew my son, eric, and they loved Eric and they were all shocked. It was a shock to a whole community His funeral. There were thousands of people there. It was just a shock. And so when you're a dentist, you know I see my like eight or nine patients that I've seen doing treatment. Then you have the hygiene patient, so that multiplies it to maybe about 20 or 30 people that you come in contact with, and each time, because it's a small town, you have to, for the first six months and the first year, you have to kind of come in contact with the person that first time.

Kimberly Harms:

After the grief incident, right, which is that uncomfortable meeting, right and so it was very hard to get through that, and so we worked really hard. We developed some systems in our office because we had other staff members. I have another hygienist in my office who lost her son to suicide after a breakup with a girlfriend when he was in high school and then she lost another child. So we are all suffering together. I mean, we understood each other so we developed some systems in our office. We have a crying room. There's a room upstairs, a bathroom we had by Z and we had some, you know, makeup remover up there so that if you have it, you know you're like you have a breakdown. We kind of had a signal so we could run upstairs and get ourselves put together and then the rest of the team would help.

Kimberly Harms:

And I think that's what I did, and I think this is the other thing that I learned that was such an important thing for my healing is that if I just suffer through what I've been through in my life and I don't tell anyone about it. I don't try to help anybody about it. It's useless. The only value in what I went through is that I can help other people get through it themselves. And so a big part of my healing was I was a speaker, a professional speaker in dentistry. So I was speaking in dentistry for a number of years about the worst has happened.

Kimberly Harms:

Now, what? How do you manage a crisis or a catastrophic loss in the dental office or in a place of business when somebody is out of commission? They might come and they might physically be present, but they are gone. Their brain, they're in the zombie stage. You know they're like trying to look. You know like they're happy, but they're not. How do you come together as a team and help the team get through that? And so I learned a lot, you know, from my experience. And then I went on to kind of talk to other people about it, and I'm doing that. Now we have a podcast, rethinkingdeath Life, that we're trying to help people and businesses understand what needs to happen and how you can build a community by working through grief and in an office space, and especially right now, because people are leaving. You know people leave work a lot. They change careers more than we did. We would stay in one career a whole life, but the young people are changing careers. How do you keep them in a place where they feel they're valued?

Beverley Glazer:

And part of that is managing understanding and managing grief as it occurs in a group. What did you learn from genocide survivors Because you worked with them?

Kimberly Harms:

Oh, let me just tell you, the most amazing people I have ever met are the Rwandan genocide survivors and I was again drawn. You know, I think it's divine intervention in my case, I think. But I was drawn to Rwanda Shortly after, about a year after Eric died. We were working with Books for Africa because my best friend, one of my best friends, was on the board to bring libraries to Rwanda in Eric's name and Eric loved books. He would rescue books from libraries. He loved classical literature, so he'd rescue the classic books Nobody wanted to read anymore. He'd read through them. You know, that's just kind of who he was, and so it was a perfect way to honor him and we thought we'd go and do maybe you know a couple libraries there. But over the 10 years I couldn't stop because I fell in love with the Rwandans. And we have 65 libraries there. We have four law libraries, we have medical libraries, dental libraries, nursery libraries, university. I mean I can't even tell you how it happened.

Kimberly Harms:

Books for Africa is a great group to work with, but what I found by going there is the Rwandans. Not only did they go through a genocide, but the genocide was perpetrated on them by their neighbors. It wasn't an invading army coming in and wiping out a group, it was their next door neighbors that were doing it with machetes and garden tools and whatever. And they realized and this is so important and I wish our country would take a little note of this they realized that if they didn't forgive and try to understand and overcome the differences, now how do you understand a genocide? I never know, but they had to forgive. If they did not forgive, then their children would be in the same boat that they were in. The genocide would repeat itself. So they chose the hard task of forgiving the unforgivable to give their children a better place to live. And now I think it's 30 years later. It is a beautiful country Rwanda is. Last time I checked it was a number one safety level for the United States State Department, which is like Canada.

Kimberly Harms:

So people say, kim, how can you go to Rwanda by yourself? Because I do. And I said, well, do you go to Canada by yourself? And they, well, yeah, we go to Canada. Well, then you go to Rwanda by yourself. In fact, the Rwandans are a little nervous when people come here. So I mean, I just, I just say it, you know it's.

Kimberly Harms:

They built this beautiful country with a focus on forgiveness and reconciliation at its heart, and they were the best grief counselors ever. When I went there shortly after Eric died, they surrounded when they realized that these libraries were memorial libraries in honor of my dead son to give to their families. They just I was in like flit. I never felt loved like I did from those women, and men too. Mostly it's women. I ended up working mostly with women in Rwanda, but they were just an amazing lesson and I just would like to recommend anyone go and research what's happened to that country.

Kimberly Harms:

There's always political issues that people don't agree with and so on, but the reality is, if you take a look at Rwanda and you look at some of the countries around it and just look at the safety level, just look at it as one mechanism, you'll find that country has done a fantastic job of forgetting, forgiving. They don't forget, they forgive and they work through and they form new families. That was the thing that really hit me. There was a group of AIDS women who were given AIDS during the genocide by the perpetrators, so the people that killed their families and then raped them and gave them AIDS intentionally, and they have grouped together to form a sewing cooperative and they're like said we are now our own family because we don't fit into the other families, because we were raped, so they found new families.

Kimberly Harms:

So if their family was gone, they would find new families. What the heck? We just don't think like that. But it's one of the best things you can learn from the Rwandans is take your circumstance now the new normal is what I think our latest term for that is and make your life based upon what you have now, and that's kind of what I've done my life now is based upon. I have six grandchildren and I go back and forth from Minneapolis to Kansas City. I've got two locations so I can be part of their lives and I'm making the best of my life now and I think that's a key for everyone who's been through trauma.

Beverley Glazer:

My question is because you kind of answered it how can you tell someone what to do to move their life forward? What would your biggest advice be when they're stuck?

Kimberly Harms:

Fight, fight, fight, fight. And understand that. You know, sometimes when we get into those situations, we have a lot of negative self-talk. You know and look, and I, and all the things I'm talking about, I was there, so I'm talking about me. When my son died and my mother died, I got into that shame cycle of well, what's the common denominator here, kim? Am I driving people to suicide? What's going on here? Right, and I was going down that wormhole so deep and I think that we need to give ourselves the same advice we give our friends when we're talking to ourselves. So, self-talk, you got to talk to yourself like you love yourself and help yourself and, no matter what has happened in the past, forgive that. You can't change the past. We can't change it. All we can do is start right now and move forward. So forgive yourself and fight like the dickens. It's not going to happen by itself.

Kimberly Harms:

I don't really like the. I do, like you know, the Kugler-Ross kind of the stages of grief. That's something we all like. But there's something called the warden's tasks of mourning. I like the task because you know, you accept, you go through the grieving process, which is the hard part, you adapt to the new normality and then you find that place for your loved one in your heart and you can move forward. And I like the task. It's a fight, it's a battle. It's not going to happen by itself. You've got to get out there and fight for it it's words.

Beverley Glazer:

In other words, don't wallow, don't wallow, just move it forward. Fight to move forward, right. One final word, kim. One final word to give someone hope when they're struggling joy, no matter what has happened in your life.

Kimberly Harms:

No matter what has happened that might have divided your life into the before. You know, kind of this was my life before and then this has happened and now it's after, and we don't typically like the after. I mean, in my case, you can't do anything about that. You can't do anything about that. What you can do is how you approach the after. Love every, you know, love people. That's like if there's one purpose that you could have in your life, it's to love people. That's the greatest purpose ever. You can't go wrong with that one. Learn to love people, learn to find your purpose in life and focus on doing well in the after, knowing that you can't change the past but you can change a future and how you deal with it. And just fight, fight, fight and know that love and joy can be waiting you, no matter what, and that's a very wonderful place to live, not just for yourself but for everybody around you. Thank, you.

Beverley Glazer:

Thank you, kimberly. Kimberly Harms is a dentist who served as a commissioned officer in the US Public Health Service. She's a dental school professor, a grief counselor, a death doula, a civil mediator and she was the first woman president of the Minnesota Dental Association. She's a national spokesperson for the American Dental Association and a best-selling author and speaker, helping others to rise above their challenges with strength, resilience and a new sense of purpose. Here are some takeaways from this episode. Allow yourself to feel.

Beverley Glazer:

The process of grief opens the door to healing. Fight for it. Moving forward doesn't mean moving on. It's about evolving through the pain and finding meaning along the way. And, no matter what life throws at you, you're never too broken to rebuild. If you've been relating to this episode, think about one small thing that you can do to move past your struggles. Perhaps it's getting in touch with supportive people or volunteering in the community to help others get through it, or getting professional help for yourself. Take one small baby step to move forward. For similar episodes on grief and resilience, check out episode 104 and 108 of Aging with Purpose and Passion, and if you've enjoyed this episode, you may always also take a look at Fit, strong Women Over 50. That's a podcast for the Becoming Ellie community where Fit, strong Women encourage and motivate others to keep on to their goals, and you can find them on wwwbecomingelliecom and that link will be in the show notes as well. So where can people find you, kimberly? What are your links?

Kimberly Harms:

The best place is just go to my website, drkimberlyharmscom. Drkimberlyharmscom. Or you can check out our podcast, which is rethinkingdeathlife.

Beverley Glazer:

Perfect. If you didn't catch those links, they will be in the show notes and they will also be on reinventimpossiblecom. And now, my friends, what's next for you? Are you just going through the motions or are you really passionate about your life? Get my free checklist to go from stuck to unstoppable, to unlock your full potential, and that link will also be in the show notes. You can connect with me, Beverly Glazer, on all social media platforms and in my positive group of women on Facebook. That's Women Over 50 Rock, and if you're looking for guidance in your own transformation, I invite you to explore reinventimpossiblecom. Thank you for listening. Have you enjoyed this conversation? Please subscribe so you don't miss the next one, and send this episode to a friend, and always remember that you only have one life, so keep aging with purpose and passion.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining us. You can connect with Bev on her website, reinventimpossiblecom and, while you're there, join our newsletter Subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Until next time, keep aging with purpose and passion and celebrate life.