The Rise Back: Tiffaney Childers on Suicide, Silence, and Healing

Some stories are hard to hear — but they are the ones that matter most.

In this powerful episode of The P-I-G Podcast, we sit down with Tiffaney Childers, a suicide loss survivor, advocate, and founder of her local chapter of The LOSS Team, to explore what happens when grief is buried in silence — and what becomes possible when truth is finally spoken.

Tiffaney shares her experience of losing both of her parents to suicide, followed by the sudden death of her father-in-law and the loss of her brother to pancreatic cancer — all while raising two young children and carrying the weight of trauma quietly for nearly two decades. What followed was not only emotional pain, but physical suffering: chronic pain that became her body’s way of holding what her voice could not yet release.

Together, we talk about the long-term effects of suppressed grief, the stigma surrounding suicide loss, parenting through trauma, and the moment Tiffaney realized healing could no longer wait. She also shares how her journey led her to create meaningful support for others navigating loss — and why speaking openly about suicide saves lives.

🎙️ In this episode, we discuss:

• Surviving suicide loss and carrying it in silence
• How unprocessed grief can manifest physically
• Parenting through trauma while honoring truth
• Chronic pain, emotional suppression, and healing
• The Rise Up Method and living forward with intention
• Why breaking the silence around suicide loss matters

This may not be an easy listen — but it is a necessary one. A reminder that silence does not have to be the end of the story, and that healing begins when we allow ourselves to be seen, supported, and heard.

Learn more about Tiffaney at: www.risesavage.com
Connect on social: @tiffaneychilders (IG), /tiffaney.childers (FB) & /tiffaneychilders (LI). Purchase Tiffaney's book, "The Rise Back: Reclaiming Life After Suicide Loss, Pain, and Silence" on Amazon.

Transcript

Naming Suicide Loss And Silence

Erin 0:02

Some losses don't just break your heart. They change your body, your nervous system, and the way you move through the world. And suicide loss is one of the most isolating griefs there is. Not because it hurts more, but because it's so often wrapped in silence. Today's guest, Tiffaney Childers, knows that silence intimately.

Kellie 0:20

After losing both of her parents to suicide within a year of each other, then her brother to cancer, Tiffaney did what so many survivors do. She pushed down the grief, carried on, and survived until her body could no longer hold what her heart never had space to release. What followed was an 18-year journey through unprocessed trauma, chronic pain, and finally healing. A journey that led Tiffaney to write, rise back, and create programs that now walk alongside families in the immediate aftermath of suicide loss.

Erin 0:52

This conversation isn't just about surviving layered losses. It's about what happens after, about grief that lives in the body, about truth that was never spoken, and about what becomes possible when we choose to rise, not by bypassing pain, but by finally facing it.

Kellie 1:08

Welcome to The P-I-G, where we explore life, love, loss, and legacy through real conversations and meaningful stories with purpose, intention, and gratitude. We're Kellie and Erin, sisters, best friends, sometimes polar opposites, but always deeply connected by the life and love of the woman who taught us to rise back again and again. Our mother Marcia.

Tiffany’s Parents And The First Shocks

Erin 1:36

Today's conversation is one that reminded us why we created this space in the first place. We haven't met Tiffaney Childers before today. We didn't grow up together, we don't share mutual friends, and we didn't cross paths through work or community. Tiffaney found The P-I-G on her own, and she reached out because she felt called to share her story here. When we read her guest submission, we both paused. Not because it was polished or performative, but because it was honest, tender, and deeply aligned with what we hold sacred on this podcast, telling the truth about life, love, loss, and legacy without rushing it or cleaning it up. Tiffaney has lived through profound loss, including the death of both of her parents to suicide just one year apart, and later the loss of her brother to pancreatic cancer. Her story isn't one she tells for attention or answers. It's one she carries with care and one she's willing to speak out loud so others don't feel so alone in their own grief. What moved us most was not just what she's lived through, but how she speaks about it, with presence, humility, and a deep respect for the complexity of loss. She reminds us that grief doesn't arrive on a timeline, that survival can last longer than we expect, and that finding your way back to yourself is often a quiet, unfolding process. Out of her own journey, Tiffaney wrote The Rise Back: Reclaiming Life After Suicide Loss, Pain and Silence. And today, she also serves on the loss theme, showing up for families in the immediate aftermath of suicide, offering presents in moments when words are hard to find. This is our first conversation with Tiffaney, and we're grateful she trusted us and this community with her story. So without further ado, I am so honored to introduce Tiffaney Childers. Tiffaney, thank you for joining us. We are so glad you're here, and we would love for you to just dive right in and begin wherever your heart is leading you today.

Tiffaney Childers 3:41

Oh, thank you so much. I'm so honored to be here. I couldn't wait to be on this podcast. I just love you girls. And I don't even know you yet, but just our little conversations. I'm super excited to be here. So I'm gonna dive right in. It has been 18 years since I lost both of my parents. I lost my mom to suicide. She took her life, and then one year and five days later, my dad took his life as well. They weren't married at the time. They hadn't been married in quite some time. So it was really odd that both of them chose to leave the world in the same way.

Erin 4:12

Yeah.

Tiffaney Childers 4:13

So my son was little. He was about five years old. Whenever he was in the hospital, he'd got a scorpion bite on his toe and ended up getting MRSA, like a staph infection in his toe. So he was in surgery and he had just got out of surgery. We were in the hospital getting antibiotics and letting that heal. And my stepdad had called me and he said, I think your mom's dead. And I was like, Wait, what? Mom's dead. And he's like, Yeah, there's pills everywhere. She left you and your brother and sister a note, and I think she took her life. So, I mean, it was just shocking, but it wasn't. It shouldn't have been as shocking as it was. My mom had multiple sclerosis and she'd had it since her she was in her 30s, and it had gone into remission for a long, long time. So she was good until she wasn't. And so her MS kind of came back with a vengeance. And she had hip surgery, she had a back surgery, she had lots of surgeries, and the doctors had gave her just an arsenal of pills, pain pills, oxy, hydros, valium.

Erin 5:16

Wow.

Stigma, Police Protocols, And No Support

Tiffaney Childers 5:16

You know, anything that you can think of. Just a arsenal of pills. And that was way that was back when oxy was kind of new, hydros were kind of new. I don't think any of the doctors knew how addictive they were going to be and how they were going to rewire your brain. So she, I think, pretty much thought she was just a burden to us because she was wheelchair bound when she passed. And so I think she just thought she was a burden to us. So, anyways, I mean it was just complete and utter utter shock, even though it shouldn't have been. I I talked to her probably 10 times a day. We were very close, her and my brother and my sister, we were so close to her. So, yeah, there's that. And we, my sister and brother and I kind of spent the next year just trying to muddle through that. The the police officers took the notes as evidence because a lot of times when you have a suicide, the police officers come in and they don't know if it is a murder or if it's a suicide. They really need to assess the scene and make sure that neighbor Joe down the street didn't come in and do something. So you really have to wait until they kind of cleared the scene. And so they took the notes as evidence. So I think we were just all so ready to get those notes and ready to see what m mother had said to all of us. And we got those back, I guess about six months after she passed. And it didn't help anything. You know, I kept thinking, gosh, maybe I'll have some answers and maybe I'll know why or what or it didn't. It just said, I love you and I'm so sorry. And so it didn't help anything. As much as I wanted it to fix me, it didn't. So I think we were kind of just all focused on, you know, my mom's death. And a year later, we were uh my husband and and my kids and I were at a baseball game for one of my my son's best friend. And I got a call. My sister was there with us and her kids, and I got a phone call from it was one of my best friends. She lived about right by my dad. And she said, You need to come over to your dad. There's cop cars everywhere. I don't know what happened. So my sister and I jump in the car and we go there. And in the meantime, I had called another one of my friends and said, Hey, can you go check on dad? Because he was a really good friend of my dad's as well. Can you go check on him? There's cops there. I don't know what's going on. And you know, this was back when we didn't really text. I mean, we had cell phones, but it was the one where you push it three times and you what it was at the I9, I don't know what it's called, but you know, you really didn't text. And, you know, you kind of had phone calls, but you know, cell phones just weren't real popular. So, anyways, I didn't expect a call from him, but whenever we pulled up to the house, he was still sitting on his motorcycle with his head down and he wasn't looking at me and he wasn't inside the house. And I thought, uh oh, you know, what's wrong? Why isn't he looking at me? Why isn't he in the house? So my sister and I were knew right then that something bad had happened. We didn't know what, and we kind of just collapsed in the front yard and just wailing and crying, just the worst sound you've ever heard. And of course, the police officers are inside, they won't let you in, you don't know anything. And finally one of them came out, and my stepmom was there as well, and she was just crying and crying, but they had come out and told us that he took his life by self-inflicted gunshot wound. So that was utterly shocking. We had no idea he had any kind of depression, any kind of issues, nothing. No idea. And I always say, you know, not everybody that has a mental illness dies by suicide, and not everybody that dies by suicide has a mental illness. And I don't even like the word mental illness. It's not an illness, you know. I mean, even depression, depression doesn't cause someone to take their own life. Yeah. You know, grief is just a very natural occurring thing that happens after a death. And I think a lot of people want to label that as depression and that they need medication for and mental illness and mental anguish. But grief is just a natural occurring process. Of course, I didn't know that at the time. And I've been trying every antidepressant on the market after that. That's a whole nother story about antidepressants and pain pills and all the pills. But sure. That's a whole nother story that we might dive into. So yeah, so here we were with another death, another tragedy, so close together. I mean, I just we didn't even know what to do with ourselves. And you know, the police officers weren't much much help. Nowadays, they really are. They have really had training where they are so empathetic. But back then we just didn't know what was going on. We didn't have a clue. We had no frame of reference. And suicide, you didn't talk about it. This was 2007 and 2008, and we didn't talk about it. You didn't talk about suicide. There were no support groups, there was no frame of reference. There was nobody that we could talk to that says, hey, did this, you know, I know you know this happened in your family. Can you help me? There was nothing, it was very hush-hush. Yeah, you just said they died. You really didn't even mention the word suicide. You just said they died. That's it.

Erin 10:24

It was, I mean, and maybe still it is more of a taboo subject. You know, there is a lot of judgment, I think, that comes along, you know, with a death by suicide and the stigma.

Tiffaney Childers 10:40

Yeah. I mean, I was embarrassed. I was just embarrassed. And what do you what do you say? What do you what do you tell people?

Erin 10:47

So especially when you had no indication, you know, when it does come as such a surprise. And I think that probably, you know, some of the stigma then falls on the survivors of how could you not know? You know, and the reality is you don't know.

Tiffaney Childers 11:08

Yeah. And that is a stigma that I that I talk about a lot. You know, when someone dies of a heart attack, we don't say, well, gosh, they shouldn't have had McDonald's for 30 years or they shouldn't have smoked for 20 years. You know, we go to the funeral, we support the family, we, you know, talk about memories and reminisce, you know, with the suicide. It's like, gosh, how could they do that? Why would they do that? Why would they leave their kids? Why would they leave their spouse? Why didn't they get help? Those are the questions that are asked. And that, you know, both of those things deserve our grace.

Kellie 11:39

They do. I think that, you know, hopelessness is just as bad as heart disease. And they both deserve our grace. And that's not what you get, unfortunately. Yeah, and along with every other illness and suicide is so prevalent. It is.

Tiffaney Childers 11:58

And yet a crisis right now.

Kellie 12:00

We're not talking about it.

Erin 12:02

Yeah.

Kellie 12:02

And so thank you for showing up today. Thank you. To shed light with grace on something that we need to be shining more light on and bringing to the surface so that people don't hide away that grief, that loss. It shouldn't live in a deep dark space.

Tiffaney Childers 12:26

I agree. Now I didn't talk about it for about 18 years.

Kellie 12:30

So yeah, and that's okay.

Tiffaney Childers 12:34

I shoved it down. I went back to work. I went back to raising kids. I went back to anything that I could do to avoid that conversation and to avoid that pain for 18 years. And, you know, I I decided to write a book about it, but you know, we'll get into that later after the whole 18 years conversation. But I take responsibility for my healing now, which I didn't for a long time. But I also had to quit shaming who I had to be to survive because you absolutely go into survival mode. And I know there's a lot of conversations out there now about healing and your nervous system and and you know, do this and do that. I didn't know that back then. I didn't even know I had the option to heal, you know, it when you don't know.

Kellie 13:21

Yeah, or what does that look like?

Tiffaney Childers 13:23

Exactly. Now we have Instagram and and we have all these holistic people and things, and you know, you go up and you touch grass and you do all that. I didn't even know any of that.

Kellie 13:33

Yeah, we have things like trauma-informed care, yeah, psychological safety, and yeah, all the things that exist.

Tiffaney Childers 13:40

I didn't know any of that.

Kellie 13:42

Well, and you're navigating it as I I don't know how old you were at the time, but you had 32, one or two small children. Yeah, your son was five.

Tiffaney Childers 13:54

Three and five. There were three and five.

Kellie 13:57

And what a thing to be navigating at that point in your life. And that those two deaths came on the heels of each other so close together.

Erin 14:08

Yeah. Did you say one year and five days apart?

Surviving By Numbing And Staying Busy

Tiffaney Childers 14:12

Mm-hmm. My mom was July 2nd and my dad was July 7th the following year. Wow. So it was right in the middle of July 4th. In fact, we had to hold off my mom's funeral because of July 4th and have it the following day. And then my dad's was right after July 4th. So the July 4th holiday is just for me. Yeah. Brings back a lot of memories.

Erin 14:35

Now, did you all live in the same area? You and your siblings and your parents.

Tiffaney Childers 14:41

My brother was the only one that didn't live here. He lived about six hours away, but he still lived in Texas.

Erin 14:48

Okay.

Tiffaney Childers 14:48

But yes, all of us lived in Amarillo, and it's a pretty small community.

Kellie 14:52

Yeah. Yeah.

Tiffaney Childers 14:53

We lived here our whole lives. So, in fact, my dad was babysitting my son the day that he took his life that evening. He was babysitting. My babysitter called in sick. So I had just picked him up from work at five o'clock, and we had gone to the baseball game, and by six o'clock, he was gone. Just shocking. That you said that your husband's dad took his life, and I don't know if there were any signs or any warnings or anything, because you'll usually 90% of the time there is not.

Kellie 16:04

Yeah. There wasn't an immediate warning. We talk about it in a previous episode. He talks about it, but his dad had battled Crohn's disease for almost Marcus' entire life. And so from a teenager forward, his illness had progressed. It had gotten worse. But no, he showed up just like he did every morning to bring him a cup of coffee, his favorite coffee from his favorite coffee shop. And when he walked in the door, that's when he realized what was really going on.

Tiffaney Childers 16:37

Yeah. Most people don't. They don't talk about it. They just they already have a plan. So yeah, for 18 years I survived because I didn't know that I could heal. And I think that I had to ask myself a really hard question of at what point do I stop carrying the weight of my parents' choices? Like it was some kind of life sentence for me. Like if I was happy and my life was going good, is that okay? Does that mean I'm forgetting about my parents? Does that mean I don't there's just such a conflict between happiness and know if you want to call it survivor's guilt, but guilt for being happy when they weren't. So I had to make a really hard decision and tell, you know, like I I'm not responsible for their choices anymore. And this isn't a life sentence for me. And that's when I decided to start talking about it. That and I had a hip surgery and that kind of went south and showed up as chronic permanent nerve damage in my body. And really think it's from shoving down emotion, shoving down grief, shoving down everything for 18 years, you know, burning the candle at both ends, just so I never had to stop and think about it.

Erin 17:54

Well, and you bring up a good point, which is that, and I want to talk a lot more about this, is that grief can manifest itself physically in our bodies in crazy ways.

Tiffaney Childers 18:10

Absolutely.

Erin 18:11

And to your point, it makes the healing and working through our grief that much more important. Because the stuffing of emotions and all of that, it's not healthy mentally, emotionally, or physically for anybody to do that. But we all do it.

Kellie 18:34

We've all done it, we all do it, and yet we know consciously that it changes the biological structure of ourselves, even down to the genetic level. And the longer we go shoving, layering, adding, multiplying, pushing, compressing, hiding it all away, the more intense that gets. And the more that manifests itself, not only physically, but spiritually, emotionally, intellectually. I mean, it has a massive outcome on all aspects of our wellness, including social and how we connect with other people inside our own family, in our communities.

Erin 19:21

Yeah. It's so interesting because I feel like so often we avoid that thinking that that's going to protect us. And it actually does the exact opposite.

Tiffaney Childers 19:33

But you know, God made us to survive. That instinct kicks in, and yeah, that's what we do. I just probably did it for way too long.

Erin 19:43

But you know, what did that look like for you? What did survival mode look like for you day to day?

Tiffaney Childers 19:50

Staying busy. Staying so busy that I never had time to stop and think about anything. And when you have two small kids, that's pretty easy to stay busy. Yeah. You know, then you get into the older years of, you know, sports and you're just running them everywhere and homework and you know, meals and just life. And I guess that was okay because it made me not think about it. You know, just life.

Erin 20:15

Yeah.

Kellie 20:16

Yeah.

Erin 20:16

Yeah.

Talking To Kids And Finding Words

Tiffaney Childers 20:17

I've been married 26 years, bless my husband's heart. Congratulations for putting up with me for that that long. But he's been a blessing. You know, we never talked to my kids about it. And that's a lot of what I put in my book as well as how to talk to kids about it, because we did not know and we did not say a word. We did not mention the word suicide ever, ever, ever, ever. And that's just wrong. We should have. And my kids did not know anything. And they were so close to my mom and dad. And it was so unfair to them to, okay, let's go to mama's funeral. And then a year later, okay, let's go to papa's funeral. And we never told them anything. We just said they died. And which is so bad because they create this story in their head that is probably far worse than uh what we could have told them. But we just did never say the word. And we didn't want the kids to think that this was okay to do if life got tough. And I think that was our main reason. But we never talked about it either. Me and my husband never talked about how are we going to talk to them. We just went on living life like it totally didn't happen. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that's what you do to survive. It's what you do to protect yourself. And so my poor kids, we, you know, can laugh about it now. They're 22 and 25 now. But, you know, my daughter says, Mom, I didn't even know until I would became a part of the lost team. And she kept saying, I wonder why my mom's part of the lost team and she goes on suicide calls. And she was a junior in high school. And I'll never forget my son was 15 years old when Robin Williams took his life, and we had we're watching TV. And he'd seen it on the TV. And he said, Is that what your mom and dad did? You know, because he was so young. He didn't even call him Mama and Papa anymore. He was just too young.

Erin 22:09

Yeah.

Tiffaney Childers 22:10

And I thought, oh my gosh, how did you know? So it's so funny. Kids know.

Erin 22:14

Yeah.

Tiffaney Childers 22:15

They know whether they're in another room and you think you're kind of whispering about it in another room, they can hear, they know. And I mean, I remember just being shocked, like, how in the world did he know? Because you know, that's before social media and all of that too.

Erin 22:32

So how did you handle that when he asked? What was your response? We talked about it. And then did that open the door then for finally having these conversations? What did that look like?

Tiffaney Childers 22:44

It did. It did. And and we finally talked about it. Finally. But I still didn't have the words at the time to tell him, especially he was probably 15, especially at 15. You know how hard that is. That's such a hard age for boys. You're just kind of trying to find your footing and your friends and if you fit in, and you know, middle school, fixing to go to high school and stuff. So we didn't touch on it a whole lot because once again, I thought I don't want him to think that's ever a a way out of something hard.

Erin 23:17

Yeah.

Tiffaney Childers 23:18

But we did talk about it. And I just wish I had a book that I could have read to like how to talk to kids at what age group, what words to use. So I do put a lot of that in my book as well because that's hard. You need to know at what age and what words that you can do use. And because you don't want to scare them to death, you know.

Erin 23:38

Yeah.

Tiffaney Childers 23:38

So it was a struggle.

Erin 23:41

I have so much respect for you recognizing that for what it was, and then to actually take steps and take action to put resources together for other people with that just spirit of compassion and help and the action that you took then to help other families. And I know we'll talk more about your work with loss, but wow.

Tiffaney Childers 24:08

Yeah, it was a struggle because there's there was just nothing out there. Nothing. And you know, that's kind of just when the internet was kind of getting started too. And, you know, there's so much information now that people can resource, but there just was nothing back then. My poor kids. I mean, thank goodness they're wonderful, thriving, great kids. But the poor things back then probably thought, well, what what happened here? We have another funeral. Then in the middle of the whole, I call it the messy middle in the whole 18 years, my husband's father passed away. He had a heart attack and died on my kitchen floor.

Kellie 24:47

Oh, goodness.

Tiffaney Childers 24:48

So my husband was doing CPR. My son was like 10 at the time, was on the phone with the 911, and they were walking him through how to tell his dad how to do CPR and stuff. So that was another trauma that we held that I didn't know how to talk about it. So I think I just felt so bad for everybody. I kind of just held all of that in myself and all of that grief and all of that sadness. And, you know, men can compartmentalize so much better than women. And, you know, my husband just thought, okay, we'll just put that up on the shelf in a box and I'll take it down from, you know, if I need it ever. But let's just put that up there and never talk about it again. So I think that was just another trauma that I held for everybody.

Erin 25:34

So well, it's a different type of loss. Right.

Tiffaney Childers 25:39

Right.

Erin 25:39

And yeah, right in the messy middle. That's as hard as that is, that's the perfect description. Yeah.

Kellie 25:48

And it was during this messy middle that you also lost your brother.

The Brother’s Cancer And The Quiet

Tiffaney Childers 25:54

Mm-hmm. So in 2019, my brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And, you know, denial is a really big thing. He was in denial, you know. He thought, oh, I'm gonna beat this. We got this. I was in denial and thought, well, of course we are. We're gonna beat this and we're gonna be fine. Because, you know, it's just me and my brother and my sister left. And I love how you two girls are so close. My sister and I are close as well. We're 18 months apart, so we're very close. But uh, you know, denial's, gosh, such a wonderful thing until he was given a year to live and he lived six months. And it was the saddest thing I think I've ever seen in my entire life. This big burly 280-pound man, he worked offshore on Ulrigs, he was the safety officer, and to he was literally skin and bones. It was like a stick, just skin and bones.

Erin 26:46

That that one's hard.

Tiffaney Childers 26:48

So, yeah, so he passed of pancreatic cancer in 2019, and I think that's when I kind of crossed an invisible line that I didn't even know was there. Both the kids have moved on out of the house and to college and their dream jobs, and the house was quiet, and my husband worked a lot, he still travels a lot, but I think that I didn't know what to do with the quiet. I didn't know what to do with no kids running around and no no brother to take care of and no, you know, rushing to take care of him. And and that's when I started drinking quite a bit. And you know, it's not something I'm proud of by any means, but because it's not like you wake up and say, gosh, I'm gonna drink myself silly from now till the end of eternity. But you know, it's just going to happy hour, going to friends' house, drinking more. You know, I never drink at home alone, but just that I gotta be outside of the house. I gotta be out doing something. Let's go to happy hour, let's do this, let's let's drink, let's start to drink at 10 in the morning and let's go to have margaritas and you know, mimosas, and let's go on vacation and let's drink all day long, you know. So I think I crossed an invisible line after that that I didn't realize was happening and the drinking just got to be, you know, every other day, every day until I had my hip surgery and I hadn't drank a drop since. Thank you, Lord, that he took that all away from me. But yeah, you don't realize you're going down this slippery slope. And I think once that mask came off of no drinking, I'd had my hip surgery, I was in chronic pain. You are left to sit with yourself and your feelings and everything that has happened. And I think I thought, oh my gosh, you know, I don't think Ed McMahon's coming to give me a million dollar check for surviving this many years. Nobody's coming to save me or give me any money or a check or anything. And that's the loneliest part is sitting with yourself in the quiet after everything that you've been through and trying to figure out, all right, where do I go from here? How do I heal? What do I heal? What do I do to heal? And moving forward.

Kellie 29:00

And where do I even begin?

Tiffaney Childers 29:02

Yeah.

Kellie 29:03

Where do I even begin?

Tiffaney Childers 29:04

Because I had no clue. You know, I'm an accountant. I don't I'm not a holistic person. I I I do taxes. I don't, I don't heal. You're like, what is that? And you know, I didn't know there was any kind of coaching programs out there or any people out there to even heal.

Kellie 29:24

To hold your hand and walk you down that road. You know, what I heard in everything that you shared, Tiffaney, was something that we don't often talk about, but we all know it exists, and you're an accountant, and it really exists coming up into tax season, and that is the power of distraction.

Erin 29:43

Oh, yes.

Kellie 29:45

Right? And whether the distraction was drinking, socializing, happy hour, getting out of the house, but anything to not be alone with your own heart and your own head until you were forced to be alone with your own heart in your own head. And I would love to explore how that moment when you were finally able to be alone with your head in your heart cracked open the process of healing.

Alcohol, Hip Surgery, And CRPS

Tiffaney Childers 31:01

So, you know, yeah, I had to be alone with myself, and I realized I was carrying so much. I was still carrying the grief from my parents, the responsibility of my parents' decisions, the stigma, the shame, the guilt, the, you know, grief from my father-in-law, the grief from my brother was so fresh. I was carrying so many things that were just weren't mine to carry, but I didn't, I didn't know that. I think I knew I was never gonna go back to who I was. Um, so I I had to start realizing, okay, who am I now? Who am I now that I want to heal? And I'm telling you, and so I was diagnosed with chronic regional pain syndrome. It's called CRPS. And I wasn't diagnosed for about six months. I had no idea what this pain was. So the pain wasn't in my hip, it was in my right foot. My surgery was on my left hip, and it was unsuccessful, but the pain was in my right foot. It was so bizarre. I could not figure it out. The surgeon couldn't figure it out, didn't know what was going on. I did find a holistic person here in town who put me on every supplement known to man, then asked me if I wanted to be part of their MLM. And I'm like, wait, what? No, I'm in such do you not know how much pain I am in? So, anyways, you can spend a fortune trying to get your pain to go away. And that's what I did. I spent so much money chasing things to make this pain go away. Finally, I went to Dallas, and this neurosurgeon in Dallas said, You have classic CRPS and it is permanent, you'll always have it. They call it the suicide disease. Oh, isn't that ironic? Because the pain is so bad and so sorry, and have a nice life. Pretty much.

Kellie 32:52

Really? Wow.

Tiffaney Childers 32:55

So that was devastating. And so I came back home and you know, my husband and I just kind of looked at each other and thought, okay, well, now we have a a name for this, but what do we do now? And I said, Well, I we can't do anything now because I've pretty much spent $10,000 on, you know, trying to fix this with holistic things and red light therapy and the vibration plate and the hyperbaric oxygen and just everything. And I said, I have got to just kind of chill for a little bit. I can't go to one more appointment. I can't go to one more, we I can't spend one more penny. And I think once I stopped obsessing about it, it started getting a little better. So I thought, okay, the power of the mind and the mindset, I'm not gonna believe that this is long term and that this is incurable. I'm gonna have hope and just really changing my mindset. I started walking. I mean, I couldn't walk. I can't, I still can't wear socks. I can wear shoes now, but I still can't wear socks. But I started walking. And I mean, my husband laughed at me because I look like the little baby toddler just like trying to walk in a new pair of shoes, you know, and now I walk up to five miles because I'm afraid there one day there's gonna be a day I can't walk. So I'm obsessed with walking. I'm obsessed with getting my steps in. If I don't get 10,000 steps, I mean it's just a non-negotiable for me.

Erin 34:17

Yeah.

Tiffaney Childers 34:18

I will get 10,000 steps.

Erin 34:20

Now I have a really quick clarification question for you. Did your hip surgery cause the CRPS?

Tiffaney Childers 34:29

Yes. Yes. It's very prominent in women over 50, and it's usually caused by like a sprain, like if you sprain your ankle or your wrist or a surgery. Wow. That's what it happened when it happens. So, yes, this surgery kind of opened the door for the CRPS. I had no clue what it was. I didn't even know that it even existed. No clue.

Erin 34:51

Yeah, I've never heard of this before, and so it's crazy to me.

Tiffaney Childers 34:56

And so it's basically your peripheral nervous system and your central nervous system, which is the base of your neck, is constantly firing. It's constantly telling your body, hey, we've got a fire, even though the fire is put out. It's your fire alarm saying, Hey, you've got pain, you've got pain, you've got pain. And it wild.

Kellie 35:14

Wow.

Tiffaney Childers 35:15

And I'm still learning a whole lot about it. It's been uh just a little bit over a year, and so I'm still learning so much about it. But I keep telling my husband, if I could just, you know, get my brain right and turn off the pain, I would, but I just I don't know how to. But I think stopping all the holistic stuff and stopping obsessing about getting rid of the pain help just a little bit.

Kellie 35:38

It sounds so much like a fight, flight, or freeze reaction biologically in the body. Have you discussed or do they have any information about the connection of CRPS to trauma?

Tiffaney Childers 35:57

See, no, no doctor will, no surgeon will ever make that connection. Ever.

Kellie 36:03

It's interesting.

Tiffaney Childers 36:04

The neurologist wouldn't even see me because he was like that. We can't do anything for you. There's nothing we can even do for it. So you would think a neurologist would think that there's a connection between trauma and yeah.

Kellie 36:18

And holding that much grief and having that many traumatic experiences back to back to back to back. And, you know, our body, there's a book by this title, right? Our body keeps score.

Tiffaney Childers 36:30

Yes. I read that book. Yeah.

Kellie 36:32

Yeah. And that's what I thought of immediately was, you know, the back-to-back deaths, the loss of the father-in-law, the loss of the money, the loss of movement, right in your hip, your surgery, your brother. There's so much that your body was holding and is still to some degree holding. And could that be a trigger for CRPS? Very interesting. I am gonna have to investigate.

Tiffaney Childers 37:03

Well, if you find out stuff, let me know because I think it is 1000% trauma related. Yeah. But a lot of kids have it. A lot of kids have it. You know, I would say teenagers. So that's what I can't figure out. Because I mean, I wouldn't think that they would have enough trauma in their life to have this, but I I don't know. So that's the part I can't. With an adult, and 1000%, I believe it is related to carrying so much grief and so much trauma for so long. Interesting. But it's like, what do I do to get rid of it? It's like my brain is stuck in this loop.

Kellie 37:41

Yeah.

Tiffaney Childers 37:41

In a loop that I cannot get out of as much as I try. Then if I obsess over it, then it's really bad. So then I'm like, okay, just forget about it. Like, you know, it's it's it's a horrible side circle of insanity. So I feel like I'm still stuck in here. But I mean, I do, I do my journaling, I do every kind of anything that I can do. Journaling gets all those feelings out of my body onto paper where I can get them out of my head, get them out of my body, which love. And I've never journaled before. I really always thought it was for little girls with puff pins and glitter pins and a hello kitty.

Trauma In The Body And Mindset Shifts

Kellie 38:21

Yes, and their little fluffy little diary.

Erin 38:24

Dear diary. I know, I know. Remember, you have the little lock and throw away the key.

Tiffaney Childers 38:31

So I've never journaled before in my life, but oh, I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I do it every single morning, I do it every single night. And then my walking, I mean, I've got to get my steps in. And I'm so, so, so passionate about protecting my peace. You know, whenever I quit drinking, I had to get rid of a lot of things in my life. And that meant a lot of my happy hour friends, which I'm so sad, but it it had to happen.

Erin 38:55

Yeah.

Tiffaney Childers 38:56

It had to happen because, you know, it's just who you surround yourself with. And you have to just get yourself around people that are gonna encourage you and support you. And that's kind of a lonely place to be as well. But you have to protect your peace, especially with this pain that I have. Yeah. I had to.

Erin 39:13

Well, and it's so interesting how you know we've talked about you did have all this grief just stacked on top of each other, right? All of these losses. And Kellie mentioned it briefly, but we talk all the time on this podcast about other types of loss, not just death. And the pain that you're experiencing and living with every single day brings about its own grief cycle.

Kellie 39:45

Yeah.

Erin 39:45

You know, grieving the lack of pain, right? Grieving, you know, the things that you were able to once do when you didn't have pain. It's so interesting to me. And I know that our our house scientist and Kellie is going to dive down this rabbit trail and research this like crazy.

Tiffaney Childers 40:06

Yeah.

Erin 40:07

Which I love.

Tiffaney Childers 40:08

Fear of the future. Sure. Well, I mean, I had real fear of the future, you know. Sure. Was I going to be able to work? Could I even make it through an eight-hour workday?

Erin 40:17

Absolutely.

Tiffaney Childers 40:18

And I think, you know, and when you talk about grief, I think, you know, once my kids left and you know, we were empty nesters. I mean, my husband was like, woo-hoo, we are empty nesters, yes. And he still loves it. But I was like, Oh my goodness, I have completely lost my identity. I completely lost what I've done for so long. It was awful. It was awful. It's I'm getting better now. It was awful.

Kellie 40:46

I'd love to talk about that.

Erin 40:48

Yeah. Yeah, I would too, because I also feel like that loss of identity comes from, you know, when you lose both parents, then what does that do to your identity as a daughter? And when you lose a sibling, then it changes your identity as a sister. And then when your children fly the nest, then it changes your identity as a parent. You're still a parent, right? You're still a daughter, you're still a sister. But it does transform, it does change. And I feel like so often in things in life, we don't have language for that. And when we have language for things, we can work through it, you know, and talk about it. But when there's no language, when there's when we've never put words to it, then that silence and kind of suffering in silence is a real thing. It's a real thing.

Tiffaney Childers 41:44

That's such a good point. Yeah. What language do you use? Because I didn't know what language to use. I didn't even know what was happening to me.

Kellie 41:52

Yeah.

Tiffaney Childers 41:52

And my kids saved me and they didn't even know it for so many years because they were the reason that I kept functioning. You know, my husband traveled every other week, and so he was gone a lot. And I mean, they are the reason they kept me going. They saved me and they didn't even know it.

Kellie 42:07

Yeah, that's where all the focus and attention went.

Tiffaney Childers 42:10

And it had to, right? It did. It did, because they were so young and it had to. It had to go to them. Yeah, that's why I said I had to stop shaming myself for surviving because we were made to survive. And that's what I did. That's the only thing that I knew to do. My body kicked in and did what it needed to do. And I think that's why suicide's such a hard subject and why we cannot fathom somebody taking their own life because we are made to survive. We have the instinct to protect ourselves and keep ourselves on this earth. And we can't wrap our minds around taking our own life.

Kellie 42:48

Yeah. And yet at the very same time, the number of people who have had that thought cross their mind in their mind, it's something that we all know is a potential possibility of being alive. We all know we're going to die at some point in time, somehow, some way. And so the survivor's guilt that you were just referencing that comes along with being a survivor of somebody in your close circle, in your immediate family, in your community, in your neighborhood, who dies at their own hand. That is a big space to navigate. And you navigated it to the point where you developed a strategy and now you work with teams and families and organizations to help them rise up in the same way that you were able to rise.

Tiffaney Childers 43:52

So I started the Lost Team in 2019, 2018 or 2019.

Erin 43:59

Yeah.

Journaling, Walking, And Protecting Peace

Tiffaney Childers 43:59

And so we We go on scene within 15 minutes to a suicide loss. The police officers call us, and we are a two-man team. It is a survivor like me, and it's a mental health professional. So we go as a two-man team and we are there to help the loved ones left behind navigate the worst day of their life.

Erin 44:17

Wow. So you started the Lost Team. I didn't realize that. Now, is this something that existed or exists in other areas and that was modeled? So you started it in Amazon.

Tiffaney Childers 44:31

All over, all over the United States. Yep. And so you can go to Lostteam.com and you can figure out where in the United States they have these teams. And a lot of places don't have these teams. So yeah, it started in, yeah, it was 2018, I think. Wow.

Erin 44:48

What an incredible resource. I really want to learn more about this. It's amazing.

Tiffaney Childers 44:54

So we provide them with information on how to write an obituary because I mean that's not something somebody knows how to do immediately unless you've written one before. What resources we have, what kind of therapy, what kind of counseling that we have local to our area, what kind of support groups that we have, we do put in there how to talk to children, what words to use and how to talk to children. Thank goodness we eventually put that in there. Because I think that was the question that we got a lot is, you know, what do I tell my five-year-old? Where do I start? How do I explain to my five-year-old that dad's gone? You know? Yeah. And I think it's just the ministry of presence. You don't, we're not there to fix anything. We're not there to say, well, go do this and do that and do this and do that. You know, we're just provide resources. And just I've been there and I have done that, and I am just here if you need anything. It can be like something as simple as letting the dogs out because the dogs are going crazy, because the police are there and so many, you know, unusual people are there and the dogs are just going nuts. I'll let the dogs out. I've fed a baby so mom can go deal with the police officers. I have called family members when, you know, they can't, they don't have the words to call and tell people what has happened. I've held a lady's hair back who is vomiting in the toilet because she cannot believe what's happened. I mean, it's just little things like that. You know, they have no idea who I am, but it's just the Ministry of Presence. And, you know, I can tell them I've been there and I've done that. And tell me what you need.

Erin 46:27

Well, and they're not little things. The little things are uh really big things in that moment. Is LOSS an acronym?

Tiffaney Childers 46:36

Yes, it's Local Outreach to Suicide Survivors.

Erin 46:39

Thank you.

Kellie 46:40

Well, the first thing I want to say is they may not know who you are or who the survivor that's showing up at their home in their community through the program with a mental health professional. But I will tell you that whoever that is, whether it's you and somebody else or somebody in a different community and their partner, those are angels showing up in that moment when somebody who lost somebody they love need an angel desperately to be by their side. So kudos to you for not only starting the program, but giving it wings to spread across the nation and to have that little piece of your experience that ignited a spark in you to make this a thing. And that fire is catching. And I just I'm so excited to learn more.

Identity After Parents, Sibling, And Nest

Tiffaney Childers 47:42

Now, I didn't start the whole entire loss team. Dr. Frank Campbell did from Louisiana, and he is an amazing man. He started the whole thing because he saw the need of survivors getting help. Sometimes survivors never get help, never get therapy, never get counseling. And if they did, it was taking about four years. So he wanted to get that down to about four months. That started in Louisiana and Baton Rouge, I believe Baton Rouge. And so he had a mental health facility there and he started the whole team there. Then, if you want to start it in your community, then he would gladly guide you to start one in your own community. But you talk about a fascinating man, but he saw that need because survivors are seven times more likely to take their lives themselves. That's how bad it is. And the ripple effect, 135 people are affected by one suicide, which is, you know, neighbors, friends, teachers, coworkers, a boss, family members. 135 people are affected by one suicide. And I can't, I don't talk to anybody nowadays that has not been affected by a suicide that knows somebody, a friend, a family member, you know, yeah, like I said, a coworker that has died by suicide. We all know somebody, and it's a crisis. And I don't know why it's such a crisis right now. Is it social media? I don't know. Do we hear about it more? Well, you know, we used to not hear about any of the suicides. Now we're hearing about big celebrity names taking their life, you know, the Dallas Cowboys player a few months ago that took his life.

Erin 49:21

Right.

Tiffaney Childers 49:21

Yeah, Robin Williams, that all the celebrities, are we just hearing about it more? I don't know. I don't know. I I can't, it's a crisis.

Kellie 49:30

I think there's a lot of factors at play. I think that technology and social media and awareness of what's happening not just in our local communities, but in our region, across our state, across the nation, around the world. I think that that's playing into it. I think that we do have more awareness now than we ever had. We have more comfortability speaking about suicide and other types of loss, whereas we haven't had that in the past. So it seems to me there's a lot of things potentially all coming together at one time.

Tiffaney Childers 50:07

I agree. And then, you know, has pharmaceuticals taken over our lives and what we put in our bodies is it rewiring our brain to think that we no longer need to be on this earth? You know, that's a whole nother issue that we can probably talk about at another time. But, you know, pharmaceuticals are a huge part of the brain. It affects the brain.

Kellie 50:32

Yeah, it really does.

Tiffaney Childers 50:34

Pharmaceuticals are out of control. And, you know, you can just look at the commercials on the TV and let's take this antidepressant. But if you're still sad, let's go ahead and couple it with another one.

Kellie 50:44

Yep.

Tiffaney Childers 50:44

And, you know, then if you're still sad, let's just do one more. It blows my mind. It blows my mind. And we're talking about an antidepressant because people are depressed. And, you know, they finally put the black box warning on it that it causes suicidal tendencies. I don't know. You know, something we're taking to try and save our life is is it taking our life? Right. And I think I talked touched on this a tiny bit at the beginning, but grief is not a mental illness. I don't think grief needs to be medicated. And I trust me, I tried every antidepressant on the market and it made me a complete zombie. Like a complete zombie. You know, I wasn't sad, but I had no joy, I had no happiness. I didn't have any of that. I was a complete zombie.

Kellie 51:31

Yeah, you become numb. And then the side effects, like you referenced earlier, if one of the side effects isn't necessarily changing your biological cellular structure or your DNA, it can absolutely be right rewiring how your brain works and it can also change how your body feels both inside and out. I mean, all we have to do is look at the if you experience the list goes on and on and on from this medication. And so many people who are looking for a solution and finally finding a way to not feel so bad if the medication or medications only make them feel worse, then that can take them down a road of I see no way out.

Tiffaney Childers 52:23

Are are we changing our serotonin levels? Are we changing our dopamine levels? What kind of perfect storm is that causing in the brain? And that's what I always say about a suicide as well. It's a perfect storm in the head, yeah, in the mind.

Erin 52:36

Yeah.

Tiffaney Childers 52:37

Something has gone haywire.

Erin 52:39

And if the medication does "work," if it helps somebody feel better, is that feeling better contributing then to the avoidance of actually dealing with the grief? You know, like if they just feel better enough, good enough to get through each and every day, then does that become acceptable? And you're still not actually navigating through your grief journey and what that looks like and doing the work to heal your body and mind and soul through the grief process.

Tiffaney Childers 53:13

And and you know, I don't ever want to say medication's bad because if you need it, you need it and absolutely you take it. Of course. You know, I I I want to I want to make that clear. I don't ever want to make anybody feel bad for taking it, but I think too often that, you know, sadness, which is completely normal when you lose somebody, doesn't need to be medicated. We need to feel it.

Kellie 53:34

Yeah. Well, and I think just kind of closing the medication conversation, medications were developed to remedy an acute illness or situation. They were never intended to be. Long-term chronic, you know, you're gonna be on this medication for the rest of your life. That is not how medications came to be and pharmaceuticals, and yet we know our culture, and this is where we are, and we know what the healthcare system is like. And so we all need to be responsible. And maybe this is a great segue back to what you're doing now and what you've developed and created, but looking in the mirror and saying, okay, how can I, given the circumstances that I am in, learn to or choose to rise up? So I would love to talk about how you were able to reclaim yourself through the development of this process, this program that only came to be because of your own experience.

Medications, Grief, And Hard Questions

Tiffaney Childers 55:17

Yes, chronic pain. And just one thing I want to mention, and I talk about this in the book as well, but with this chronic pain, they prescribed me every pain pill, every single pain pill, and I took every single pain pill. And I think that's why I wanted to write the book as well, because I came full circle. I have been so angry at my mom for so long for taking her life, but I came full circle to where my mother was at when I was taking the gabapin, the lyrica, the oxy, the hydro, the tramadol, you know, all of these things. And I thought, oh my goodness. I have come full circle to where my mother was at, and I know a little bit of why she felt the way that she felt. So that's when I knew, all right, Teff, we gotta, we gotta stop here and we have to figure out what you're gonna do to help with this pain and to help process your grief, to help start healing. And, you know, it's a process. I don't think everybody's completely healed, not from a suicide loss and not from a loss of a dear parent, you know, like you guys have experienced. It's just you I don't think you ever fully heal. So I did, I came up with my rise up method. So the R is reach out before you shut down. And that is so, so, so important to reach out to somebody safe because I think we like to isolate ourselves a lot of time because we do think we're a burden and we don't want to burden anybody with our problems or our worries. You know, we want to be the strong ones. So reach out before you shut down is so important. The I is ink it out, which is my journaling. I think I talked about a little bit earlier. It's called Ink It Out.

Erin 56:53

I love that.

Tiffaney Childers 56:54

The S is you have to sit with it, which is the loneliest, loneliest, loneliest part is sitting with it. And that's what I had to do was sit with all of this stuff that I didn't want to think about when things got quiet. The E is embrace who you're becoming and you're not gonna be who you were before. You were gonna be a completely new person, but that's okay because survival grows into resilience. And what was that old saying? What that doesn't kill you makes you stronger. It's true. And the you is to unlearn the lies, and especially with the suicide loss, we have to unlearn all those lies. It was not your fault. It was not anybody's fault. You are not responsible to carry this for your whole entire life. I think that sometimes a tragedy like that is too strong and too powerful for the mind to fathom. So we have to go deeper to love and to hope and to faith and what's gonna emerge as a new person. So unlearn the lies, the what-ifs, the whys, stop. You're never gonna answer them. And then the P is protect your peace. And I talked about this too, protect your peace. It's so, so, so important, especially with my pain. I have to really protect who I'm around, what I'm around, what environment that I'm in, and really be around supportive, encouraging people in community. I mean, just being in community, just talking with you girls is good for my soul, just makes me happy and it's good for my soul because you you provide a space where I can talk about this freely, whereas normally don't talk about it this freely. So that is my rise up method. And then I get my steps every single day. It is a non-negotiable, and sometimes that is hard, sometimes it is dark, and I'm like, oh, I gotta go get my steps, and I'll just walk just around the block. Still gotta get my steps in.

Kellie 58:45

Good for you. You know, I love every single bit of that acronym. What I really love is the you, unlearning the lies.

Tiffaney Childers 58:56

Unlearn the lies.

Kellie 58:57

And to me, that is the process of identifying, embracing, acknowledging shame, and then offering yourself grace. You know, there's so many lies that we tell ourselves throughout our lives. Erin and I just talked about this actually on our last podcast episode about, you know, the greatest gift we can give ourselves and each other in our lifetime is to be able to walk up to our own mirror and look at our own selves in our own eyes and be honest and truthful. There are all kinds of lies that we need to unlearn through the process of living. Just thinking about the layering of that, right? Because we do that just as a human being. But then if you're a suicide survivor, right, then you have all of these other lies on top of those lies. And so it becomes kind of this soup.

Tiffaney Childers 59:55

That's a good word.

Erin 59:57

Yeah.

Tiffaney Childers 59:58

Yeah.

Kellie 59:58

And I love soup. But one of the things I really love is like clear, clean broth, right? Think about the way that heals the body. And so I had this analogy of soup. Yeah. Stuff you can't see, but when we unlearn those lies and we get real honest with ourselves and we give ourselves that grace, to me, that just becomes that kind of healing, cleansing broth that is so healthy.

Tiffaney Childers 1:00:24

I love that.

Erin 1:00:25

I love that analogy.

Tiffaney Childers 1:00:28

I do too. The soup.

Erin 1:00:29

Yeah.

Tiffaney Childers 1:00:30

And yeah, it is hard as a suicide survivor as the layers because you ask yourself why? What if, what if I'd have done this? What if I'd have done that for years? If I would have just called, if I would have just gone by sooner, if I would have talked to them or done this or done that, and you will never, ever, ever get the answers to those questions.

Erin 1:00:50

Yeah.

Tiffaney Childers 1:00:50

And you will beat yourself up over all the questions. Yeah. So yeah, get them out of your soup. That's like potato soup, the chunky potatoes in the soup.

Erin 1:01:00

Right?

Tiffaney Childers 1:01:02

Yeah. No more potato soup.

Erin 1:01:05

I love it too because the concept of rising up doesn't mean getting over anything. It doesn't mean moving on. But rising up, there's so much power in, you know, when we fall down, what are we told to do? Just get back up. You just gotta get back up, right? That's how we learn to walk. You know, we don't fall down and stay down. We learn to walk by getting back up. Rising up. So yeah. Oh, Tiffaney.

Tiffaney Childers 1:01:34

It is the bottom of the barrel. The only way you can go is up.

Building The LOSS Team On-Scene Care

Erin 1:01:38

It is beautiful. I am so deeply touched by your development of the Rise Up method. And that acronym is it's so beautiful. And it is there is so much power in that. Thank you. Thank you for inking it out. Thank you for writing that and for sharing it.

Tiffaney Childers 1:02:02

And when I started journaling, I journaled a whole book. So that's what happens when you start inking it out.

Kellie 1:02:09

See, everybody start journaling.

Erin 1:02:13

Start your own book, share your story.

Kellie 1:02:16

One of the things that I love about your story, Tiffaney, when you share it with raw vulnerability and honesty, but there's two aspects, right? One, when you are part of the lost team and you're going into these devastating and very acute situations with people who are really hurting profoundly, you're providing such comfort. And at the same time, you know, you're coming in as a survivor and somebody who experienced this too. It sounds to me like it might be that writing your book, writing Rise Up, was a way for you to kind of help protect your own heart in that process while at the same time giving other people a resource and a tool that they could use to help guide whatever their resilience and grief journey is going to be as they start navigating it. Yes, that's exactly right. Was it hard for you in the beginning to protect your heart as part of that team?

Tiffaney Childers 1:03:19

And you know, right before my surgery, we had had just a ton of suicide calls and they just kept getting harder and harder. And I couldn't leave it. I couldn't, I couldn't get rid of the sadness. I felt so bad for these people, and it was just back-to-back to back-to-back calls. And I could not get rid of the sadness for these people. And they were just getting harder and harder to move on with my day after going to a call. Because we don't stay there all day. We stay there for about an hour to two hours, you know, and then we let everybody kind of do their thing. And then, of course, we follow up the next day, and then we follow up forever. But they were just getting harder and harder to shake. And I knew I wasn't protecting my peace and I wasn't protecting my heart, and I wasn't protecting myself. And so I did see an energy healer a couple of months ago in Dallas, wonderful girl. But she said, every time you go on a call, Tif, it your body is going right back to that place that you were at when both you heard about both of your parents taking their life. Your body, that's the only thing it knows to do. It goes right back to that day.

Kellie 1:04:23

It's like muscle memory.

Tiffaney Childers 1:04:24

Yes. And I thought, wow.

Kellie 1:04:26

Yeah.

Tiffaney Childers 1:04:27

Wow. I had I I didn't realize because it's not something that you think about. It's not conscious. It not consciously. It is absolutely your subconscious going back to that day. So yeah, I mean, you really have to protect your piece. So after my surgery, I took about six months off from the team just because I had to. I had to for myself.

Kellie 1:04:48

Do you have a strategy now after all this time and all that work that you implement for yourself to protect your peace when you do get a call?

Erin 1:05:00

It's a great question.

Tiffaney Childers 1:05:01

We always do a debriefing afterwards. We do a debriefing with whoever went on the call. And yeah, we do a lot of self-care with the team because you have to. You had to take care of yourself after a call, even if you think it doesn't bother you and you're like, oh, I'm fine. It shows up.

Kellie 1:05:16

It becomes part of your life experience.

Tiffaney Childers 1:05:18

It shows up. Sometimes I'm like, oh, my back hurts so bad. And I'm telling you, it's because that's how it's showing up. It's manifesting as lower back pain.

Kellie 1:05:29

Yes.

Tiffaney Childers 1:05:30

It's so crazy what your body does.

Kellie 1:05:33

Yeah. This is why I love seeing I have a holistic healthcare practitioner who's does energy work, tuning forks and oils. And I mean no, I love the oils. Yeah. I've told my husband every time I go see her, her name's Jasmine. She's amazing. But every time I go see Jasmine, I feel like I've been in a very long and intensive conversation. Counseling session, but I didn't have any talk therapy at all. You know, it's just the identification of where in the body, what emotion centers in the body are holding this emotion and being able to identify what the emotion is and then identify and experience with that emotion to help release it. It's such a profound way to tap into the body's own knowing and the body's own ability to heal itself because that's what the body was designed to do. We just have to give it the tools it needs to do that. Sometimes it's sleep, sometimes it's walking, sometimes it's rest, sometimes it's talk therapy, sometimes it's a healthcare practitioner, sometimes it's just being outside in nature and listening to the birds and the water, listening to children laugh and play. Like for everybody, it's something different. But our body does know how to heal.

Tiffaney Childers 1:07:03

It does. And I think when you're sad and you're down in the dumps and and you've had trauma, it's hard to find gratitude. But I promise if you can find just a couple of things to be grateful for each day, it'll change your mindset. And that's really hard, especially when you're in chronic pain or you've had a traumatic event. If you can find gratitude and change your mindset, that's what I well, you know how much we love gratitude here. I know. I know.

Kellie 1:07:29

Hey Tiffaney, as you think back over your life, and it's been 19 years now since you lost your parents...

Tiffaney Childers 1:07:37

Now that we're in 2026, yeah.

Kellie 1:07:39

What do you wish you would have known then? Or what do you wish somebody maybe would have said to you then as you look back that might have helped you in that moment of time, or as you were navigating all the losses that became a part of your story?

Tiffaney Childers 1:07:59

I don't know if anybody could have said anything in the moment that would have helped me, other than this is not your fault. None of this is your fault.

Erin 1:08:06

Yeah.

Presence Over Fixing And Real Needs

Tiffaney Childers 1:08:06

I think it would have been helpful. And I think if somebody said, you know, it's gonna be awful, but don't waste your pain, don't waste your suffering. Use it for something good.

Erin 1:08:19

I love that so much.

Tiffaney Childers 1:08:21

Use it like I'm trying to use it now, and I'm trying to use my voice now. If somebody would have told me that back then, whoo, I'd have been raring to go back then.

Kellie 1:08:32

That's pretty profound.

Erin 1:08:34

That is really profound.

Kellie 1:08:35

Yeah, don't waste the pain. I think that's why we love the conversations that we have here. We really focus on the growth and the learning and the resiliency and the flexibility of that. And how inside every hardship there really is happiness, there's hope, there's healing. It can be hard to find that. But to have had somebody say, Don't waste your pain and suffering, look for what's in this for you. Because there's something inside this.

Erin 1:09:11

It's really beautiful. It is really beautiful. It's a message of honoring the grief and honoring life at the same time. We also talked recently in an episode about joy and sorrow holding hands, that they can coexist and that ties in beautifully. I mean, it's the same message.

Tiffaney Childers 1:09:34

I wish I'd have known that 18 years ago. The things I know now.

Erin 1:09:39

There's a lot of things.

Tiffaney Childers 1:09:41

I know. And I love learning, I love learning it because it's kind of like an aha moment.

Erin 1:09:46

It's like, yeah, yeah, I didn't know that.

Tiffaney Childers 1:09:49

Now I do. And now I can take steps towards, yeah. I love it.

Kellie 1:09:54

And it's great to learn it because what we do know is that as long as we are living, we are going to experience some pain. We are going to have very difficult moments. There will be challenges and obstacles, there will be traumas, there will be deaths, there will be losses of all types. And we all have children who are all about the same age, all in their 20s. Such a fun age. I look back and I think, oh my gosh, if I had only known what I know now then. But me too, right? Same. But the great part about going through all of these experiences is now we have the capacity, the capability, the communication, the language to be able to walk alongside our children as they eventually go through change, loss, difficulty, trauma because we all know it's gonna come. We just don't know when. Yeah, we don't know how.

Tiffaney Childers 1:11:00

And I've got a lot of things I can put in my toolbox now. Yes, you know.

Kellie 1:11:04

Yeah, we all carry a really big, beautiful tool belt.

Tiffaney Childers 1:11:08

Yeah, like Tim the toolman.

Erin 1:11:11

Right? That's exactly right.

Tiffaney Childers 1:11:13

That's what it reminds me of.

Kellie 1:11:15

Yep, it's true. I know, and it just continues to grow. Life teaches us a lot of lessons along the way.

Tiffaney Childers 1:11:23

I agree.

Erin 1:11:24

I want to, because we were just talking about gratitude, and you know, Tiffaney, that we ask all of our guests, what is your PIG? And we talk so openly about our purpose and intention and gratitude. And so, of course, we want to talk about your PIG, but I'm actually going to read what you wrote us because when you submitted your guest form, you shared your PIG with us before we even had this conversation. And maybe it's shifted and changed, and we can talk about that too. But it was so beautiful and so profound and so deeply reflective of this conversation before we had this conversation. And so I would like to read what you wrote to us, and then I would love any reflection that you want to share on this. You shared that your purpose is to show up for people who are living through what I survived. That your intention is to be vulnerable and authentic, even when it's uncomfortable. Big one. And gratitude for the fact that I'm still here and still rising. So profound, so beautiful, so relevant and so relatable. So I really want to thank you for being so open and sharing that with us. And if there's anything additional that you would like to share or any reflections on that PIG, I'd love to, I'd love to hear more from you.

Statistics, Culture, And Why It’s A Crisis

Tiffaney Childers 1:13:06

Yeah, the vulnerability part, that is the hardest thing I think I've ever done because I just didn't want to share these things with people. Like I said, it's embarrassing what happened. And I think that I've stayed in silence for so long. Being vulnerable was really, really, really hard for me and very uncomfortable. Like every night I would go to bed while I was writing my book and thought, nope, I'm calling the publisher, I'm calling this off. There's no way I'm letting the whole world know any of this. And I would wake up in the morning with a fire in my soul. And I'm like, no, I have to share my story. I have to share my story and let other people know that are still in the dark, that it is okay. You are gonna be okay. This is how you're gonna be okay. I'm okay. You know, even if you screw it all up, you're still gonna be okay. So being vulnerable was so uncomfortable for me. The most uncomfortable thing that I have ever done is write a book about this and talk about on podcasts about it. And still here, still rising. I've kind of made that my tagline. I got tattooed the other day of it on my wrist because I wanted to see it. So yeah, I mean, I'm still here, I'm still rising, and that's what I'm gonna do.

Erin 1:14:17

You are still rising and you will continue to rise. You have named and put language to what so many people live quietly, and it goes back to what we talked about earlier. If we had language around it, that would help us, that would be useful. And you have done that, you have provided language and named things, and there's so much power in that and the message of you are not alone that you are sending to each and every person who listens to you, who reads your words, who's touched by you showing up after a tragic life event. You are doing incredible work with your life and with your story. And I am so deeply honored and very humbled by the fact that we got to hold space for you and your story today. I do not take that lightly. I get emotional talking about it. Thank you.

Tiffaney Childers 1:15:23

Thank you for being a safe space. I think I've talked with you girls more than I have ever talked on a podcast because you get it and and you ask questions and you talk and want to know things instead of like, let's just skip to the end, you know. You let me talk about the messy middle.

Kellie 1:15:42

Wow. Thank you.

Tiffaney Childers 1:15:42

I'm honored. Oh, thank you.

Kellie 1:15:45

I have a question for you, Tiffaney. What would you say to somebody who is listening right now, who is down, they don't know how to rise, they feel buried by stacked loss?

Tiffaney Childers 1:16:00

Reach out. You have to reach out to somebody safe. You have got to talk to somebody, anybody, and doesn't even have to be somebody you know, just somebody that is safe. You can always call 988, you can text the numbers 988, and somebody will talk to you. You've got to reach out and get that human connection. And I promise you will find something that you can hold on to in that human connection. Because a lot of time we don't have the money or the resources or whatever to kind of get ourselves out of the funk, out of the bottom of the barrel. I guess you could say we don't know how to get ourselves out of the bottom of the barrel. And I was that way for 18 years, trust me. I didn't know how to claw my way up. So reach out. And that's my number one thing, reach out before you shut down. Talk to somebody safe.

Kellie 1:16:47

Well, that's very beautiful. Thank you for not running and not hiding and not burying yourself anymore. And thank you for shining your light into the world because the world needs more of your light, all of our light in it.

Tiffaney Childers 1:17:04

I agree. Every single one of our lights. Yes. Thank you so much for having me.

Erin 1:17:09

Well, it's been an honor and a privilege, and we would absolutely love to have you join us again.

Tiffaney Childers 1:17:16

Thank you so much.

Kellie 1:17:41

Hearing the stories of others helps us create a more meaningful connection to our own. We hope today's conversation offered you insight, encouragement, or even just a moment to pause and reflect on the story you're living and the legacy you're creating.

Erin 1:17:55

If something in this episode moved you, please consider sharing it with someone you love. A small share can make a big impact. You can also join us on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn and connect further at thePIGpodcast.com.

Kellie 1:18:10

And if you're enjoying this podcast, one of the most meaningful ways you can support us is by leaving a five-star rating, writing a short review, or simply letting us know your thoughts. Your feedback helps us reach others and reminds us why we do this work.

Erin 1:18:25

Because The P-I-G isn't just a podcast, it's a place to remember that even in the midst of grief, life goes on, resilience matters, and love never leaves. Thanks for being on this journey with us. Until next time, hogs and kisses everyone.