Undertow

Kelly Campbell's life changed forever when her best friend Emma was killed in a car accident in 2007. What followed was years of unprocessed grief, trauma, and pushing forward—building a successful career while quietly struggling beneath the surface.

In this episode of The Shadows We Cast, Jenn sits down with leadership and legacy coach Kelly Campbell for an honest conversation about grief, burnout, identity, and the hidden emotional currents that shape our lives.

Kelly shares how the loss of her best friend, followed by the sudden death of another close friend years later, forced her to confront the grief she had spent years avoiding. Together, Jenn and Kelly explore why grief remains such a difficult topic in our society, how loss can impact our mental health long after the initial event, and what it means to find purpose and meaning after life's hardest transitions.

This conversation is a powerful reminder that grief isn't something to fix or rush through—it is something to honour, navigate, and ultimately integrate into our lives.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Grief, trauma, and post-traumatic stress
• Burnout and the hidden cost of always pushing forward
• Identity loss and major life transitions
• The connection between grief and mental health
• Meaning-making and honoring those we've lost
• Supporting others through loss and difficult seasons of life
• Practical ways to create space for healing

About Kelly Campbell

Kelly's journey into mental health advocacy was shaped by profound personal losses. After losing her best friend Emma in a 2007 car accident, and later her good friend Susan in 2024, Kelly discovered her calling in supporting others through life's most challenging transitions.

Following a 16-year career in federal public service, Kelly left government in 2024 to focus on guiding individuals, families, and organizations through personal transformation and lasting change. She currently serves as Senior Manager of Stakeholder and Government Relations for Matthew Perry House while operating her own legacy coaching practice.

As an ICF-Credentialed Leadership and Legacy Coach, Kelly combines executive expertise with deep emotional intelligence, believing that legacy flows through personal, familial, and systemic dimensions—like water carving enduring channels across landscapes. She joined Bereaved Families of Ontario – Ottawa Region first as a volunteer in 2023, then as Board Director in 2025, channeling her experiences into support for others navigating grief.

Connect with Kelly

• LinkedIn: Kelly Campbell
• Website: kellycampbell.ca
• Instagram:  @kellycampbell.ca 

Host/Producer/Writer/Director: Jenn St John

Editor: Andrew Schiller
Website: www.jennstjohn.ca
Follow along:
Instagram: @jenn_stjohn
LinkedIn: Jenn St John

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Subscribe, leave a review, or just send a little love—your support helps these conversations reach the people who need them most.

Transcript

PODCAST:                              The Shadows We Cast

EPISODE:                                 Undertow

HOST:                                       Jenn St John

GUEST:                                     Kelly Campbell

LENGTH:                                  00:45:32

TRANSCRIPT:

Kelly Campbell  00:00

Despite death being the most certain outcome for every single one of us, we just don't have the language to talk about death, to talk about dying, to talk about grief, and I think unless you have experienced a really significant loss, it is hard to relate to someone who is in the depths of deep, deep grief, and so that is really hard for people who just want you to be better.

Jenn St John  00:33

Hello, and welcome to The Shadows We Cast, a podcast about what we carry, the impact we leave, and the messy, beautiful reality of mental health. I'm Jen St. John, a writer, business owner, and a mental health advocate who grew up in a family shaped by mental illness. Some of it was heartbreaking, some of it darkly funny, and all of it shaped who I am today. Here, we're going to share honest conversations, stories from me, from you, and from those who have walked this road in different ways through journal entries, letters from my mom, and real conversations. We're going to pull back the layer on mental health, the tough parts, the moments that shaped us, and how we move forward together. So, grab a coffee, settle in, and let's talk. So before we begin, just a quick note. This episode includes adult themes, including addiction, mental illness, trauma, and suicidal ideation. Please take care in choosing when and where you listen, especially if you're in a sensitive place or you have little ones around. I also want to gently remind you that I am not a mental health professional. The conversations you hear on this podcast are grounded in lived experience, mine and the stories generously shared by others. My reflections, questions, and opinions come from that place and not from clinical training. Our goal here is connection, not diagnosis, and this is a space for real stories, honest conversations, and the hope that in hearing them you might feel a little less alone. We all carry grief differently. Sometimes it arrives all at once, loud and life-altering, and sometimes it moves quietly beneath the surface for years, shaping the way that we work, we love, we cope, and we survive without even fully realizing it. For some people, grief looks like sadness, and for others it can look like over functioning. It can look like staying busy, or burnout, or sometimes becoming so focused on holding everything together that we lose touch with ourselves in the process. And the complicated thing about grief is that it isn't only tied to death, it can come from trauma, from identity shifts, from endings, from the loss of the life we thought we'd have, or from the realization that we've spent years surviving instead of truly living. Today, my guest is Kelly Campbell. Kelly's journey into mental health advocacy was shaped by profound personal loss after losing her best friend Emma in a car accident in 2007 and later losing another close friend unexpectedly in 2024 Kelly began to understand how grief can quietly live beneath the surface of most of life, and from the outside you can still appear completely fine after a 16 year career in federal public service. Kelly ultimately left government work to focus on helping others navigate change, grief, burnout, identity shifts, and life's hardest transitions with greater compassion and intention. Today, she works in leadership and legacy coaching, while also supporting mental health and bereavement initiatives through organizations like Bereaved Families of Ontario and the Matthew Perry House. In this conversation, we talked about unresolved grief, trauma, burnout, emotional survival, meaning making, and what happens when we finally allow ourselves to stop out running the things that we never fully possessed. This is undertone my conversation with Kelly Campbell. Okay, when I was trying to find an excerpt or a letter to include at the beginning of this interview, which I do for all of my interviews, I had a really hard time narrowing it down to just one, because I've had so many different kinds of grief or loss, as my mother has as well. But when I lost my mom when she was in her early 60s, there was a massive amount of grief there, because we lost my dad as well in less than 10 months. I did find one excerpt that my mom shared about loss, which I thought would be a good one to share. So, she said, "I have a horrible sense of loss for who I have been and for where I have been, it is really difficult to give up the high flights of mind and mood, because the necessary medications, even though the depressions that inevitably be follow, can be devastating. Like everything else in my life, the grim was usually set off by the grand, and the grand, in turn, would yet again. Be canceled out by the grim.

Jenn St John  05:01

It was a loopy but intense life, marvelous, ghastly, dreadful, indescribably difficult, gloriously and unexpectedly easy, complicated, great fun, and a no exit nightmare. Grief has been a thread through my life, and it's not always visible, but it's always been there, and I think that's true for many of us, we lose people and places and versions of ourselves, and we rarely talk about the mental or emotional toll that it takes. So today's conversation is about that, all the kinds of grief that we carry, and how they shape our mental health, our identity, and even the way we lead and love. My guest, Kelly Campbell, is a leadership and legacy coach who helps people navigate life's hardest transitions. Kelly's own journey into mental health advocacy was shaped by her profound personal loss, and through those experiences she discovered her calling, helping others move through life's transitions with compassion, clarity, and meaning. Kelly, thank you for being here.

Kelly Campbell  05:57

Thanks for having me.

Jenn St John  05:59

Why do you think that grief is so taboo still in our society?

Kelly Campbell  06:06

I think generally we are a very death-averse society. We don't want to talk about death; we find it awkward, despite death being the most certain outcome for every single one of us. We just don't have the language to talk about death, to talk about dying, to talk about grief, and I think, unless you have experienced a really significant loss, it is hard to relate to someone who is in the depths of deep, deep grief, and so you know we generally just want to make people feel better. We don't want to see someone suffering, we want to fix it. But the reality is, you cannot fix grief. You cannot bring enough meals to someone or give them enough flowers. You just can't take someone's pain away, and so that is really hard for people who just want you to be better, I think. In reality, when all you can do is just sit there and honor their sadness and honor the space they need to grieve, that can be really, really hard for people, and so I just think that's not something that people are ready to do if they haven't experienced that depth of loss,

Jenn St John  07:26

and even just like an identity loss, having friends go through divorce, for example, or you know, being in a profession for 28 years, about to retire now, all of a sudden they're exited out, there's so much identity loss that we go through as well, and it's interesting, because, and I know this is the work that you do, but I feel like we associate grief so much with the physical loss of somebody, but we don't associate grief with all of the other losses that we have in our lives, and how they can compound over years and decades, and how you're going through that, and you don't have the tools to go through that.

Kelly Campbell  08:02

Absolutely, when I left government, I expected it to be like a massive celebration. I expected to be happy and relieved, and in some ways I was, but I was also a bit sad, and that came out of left field, frankly, even for me, where I like should have, I guess, anticipated it because we tie a lot of ourselves to our career in terms of identity, and you know, all of a sudden this identity that I held for 16 years was no longer something to be true anymore, and so that really was a struggle for me. Thankfully, I recognized it pretty quickly, and I was able to really acknowledge that sadness for what it was, and think about what was behind the sadness. Why was I feeling those emotions? And I think for me, part of it had to do with some of the experiences that were attached to my time there, and some of the reasons that pushed me to leave, and so I could really unpack a lot of that and understand what parts of those were tied to my identity and what parts of those were experiences that I needed to process and deal with the further emotions that were there. So I think my career was shaped by loss, and I say that because the first significant loss in my life was losing my best friend Emma in 2007 and that happened at the very beginning of my career. Emma and I met in England and university and went all through our undergrad together, and then went on to do our masters together. She was my very best friend, my person. So, after our master's degrees, I decided to move back to Canada to start my career, and so within about six months of leaving, I was back visiting Emma, and that was about May 2007 and coming back from a weekend away together, we were hit by a driver who fell asleep at the wheel. And Emma was killed instantly, and that moment in time changed the rest of my life, and it came at the very beginning of me becoming an adult and launching into the world of career, and so the rest of my career trajectory was shaped by that. After the funeral, the first thing I did was bury myself back into work, because you know, here I was supposed to be starting a career, and everybody around me seemed okay, and just went back to their life, and even though I was like dying inside, I didn't know what else to do, and so in a lot of ways, it just became kind of the pattern I then maintained for another 15 years, which was just to put my head down and forge forward.

Jenn St John  10:51

Oh, not only were you dealing with the death of your best friend, you were in that car.

Kelly Campbell  10:56

Yeah, and to be honest, like you say that, and that was something I didn't even factor in for years. Wow, yeah.

Jenn St John  11:06

Oh my gosh, the amount of trauma. Holy,

Kelly Campbell  11:09

I was diagnosed with PTSD and anxiety and depression, and that was a diagnosis that did not fit for me. It was something I fought against for a really long time. PTSD for me was like something that soldiers and combat get. How could someone who had been in a car accident end up with PTSD? So it was that shame and guilt really led me to struggle with even identifying with that diagnosis for a really long time,

Jenn St John  11:39

and so you just putting your head down, you're doing your thing, you're not really dealing with the trauma or the grief, and so then what happens?

Kelly Campbell  11:50

Three months after my accident, I met my husband, or now husband, I transitioned to my career in government, I got married, I had two kids, I moved up the ladder, and so to the outside world, my life looked great, and in a lot of ways it was great. I was really happy, there was a lot of joy, but in reality I knew that something was really, really not okay inside, because there were moments of very low lows. The people who loved me most saw the worst parts of me during the pandemic. I would say that things really started to show, because it was easy at work to put on this sort of brave face and then come home and crash, but then it became less tenable when I was managing my kids at home, work at home, my husband at home, it was less easy to sort of balance all of those things, and then by about 2021 all the things start to converge at once, and I remember some really difficult conversations with my husband about whether we were going to be able to continue our marriage the way it was going. Our youngest at the time was only about four, our oldest just seven and a half, eight, and there were some really deep conversations, and it was in the moment that I started to realize the people who mattered most got the least amount of my time and attention. I wasn't the mother I wanted to be. I wasn't the wife I wanted to be, and for some reason work was getting that best version. And even though I was realizing that I still became an executive that year, I still took on more to push that career forward. Yeah,

Jenn St John  13:39

it's like the checklist, too, right? Like, oh, this is what we're supposed to do when you just keep doing it.

Kelly Campbell  13:44

100% I started my coaching program, actually, in that year, and I often call that period my great unraveling, because the more self-awareness I developed, the more I realized how unsustainable this lifestyle was, and that it all came with choices, I couldn't be the mother and the executive that I was trying to be. There had to be some trade-offs, and I had to start to make some really tough decisions.

Jenn St John  14:13

Was anybody around you able to name anything that started to resonate for you, or do you feel like this isn't sustainable, this doesn't feel great.

Kelly Campbell  14:24

My husband definitely, but it was about three days before my 40th birthday in June 2022 and in one of my frenzies, my husband and his friend were working in our backyard, and I decided it was the absolute best time to hang a swing in our country. That swing had been sitting in a garage for a year, but that was the moment that it needed to be done. So I pulled out the eight foot ladder and in flip flops climbed to the top of that ladder on the. Eerie top rung, and started hanging this swing, and my oldest daughter was right beside me, and I fell off that ladder, and I was right beside the tree, and thankfully I didn't fall on the roots or anything like that, but one of our friends that was in the backyard working with my husband saw me, and I remember as I was falling, seeing him run towards me and my daughter, and it almost felt like I was falling in slow motion, and I was like, what am I doing? This is such a mistake, and I remember my eyes closing, and then looking up at my daughter right away, who was just like panic-stricken and thinking, like, oh, this was a really big mistake, and I remember getting up right away, and our friend being like, don't get up, don't get up, like, make sure you're okay, but I had to get up because I had to show her I was okay, and I remember just thinking to myself, I am spiraling so far out of control, and I think I was embarrassed because I didn't let anybody else see the mess that I was in. I didn't let our friends know, I didn't let my family know it was just my husband and sometimes our kids. And in this moment, the outside got a view in. And then later that night, after a couple hours I decided I should go to the hospital. I was pretty sure I had a concussion, and so I did, and I sat in that emergency room in a full collar and brace, and thought to myself, this has got to be it. I've got to do something to change, because I am not breaking the cycle, I am doing the same thing over and over and over again, and the irony of all of this is that I was the mental health champion at work. I had encouraged numerous people to go on burnout leave or take extra time, or, you know, go on a vacation, but I couldn't give myself that permission, and so I sat in that emergency room staring at a white ceiling, making a plan for what came next. I would love to say that Monday morning I took leave, but it took me another three months before I officially went on leave, but that was the start of my burnout leaf, and it was the start of a new chapter in my life.

Jenn St John  17:28

When you're sitting in that hospital room looking at the ceiling with your collar on, how would you describe that feeling of burnout?

Kelly Campbell  17:37

Yeah, it's a really good question. I just felt like in so many ways, if I stopped and if I took a break, I wasn't sure that I'd ever be able to start again. I think that for the longest time I knew that I hadn't ever really grieved Emma, and I was not sure that if I did, I'd ever be okay again, and I felt the same way about my burnout. I was so scared that if I finally stopped, would I ever get up again?

Jenn St John  18:14

Yeah, so when you stopped, what did things start to look like that you were doing for yourself to be able to deal with those two pieces that you knew you had to deal with.

Kelly Campbell  18:25

Yeah, well, I had an escape clause. So my husband had been diagnosed about a year earlier with an aortic aneurysm, and so we knew he needed open heart surgery. So he was kind of my finish line. That surgery was where I was basing my leave around, and so I scheduled my leave for September, and it was going to be a couple weeks before he went off for his surgery date, and I remember his surgery date got delayed, and I remember thinking to myself, like, oh shoot, now I have to tell people I went off because of me and not because of Keith, and in that moment I had a lot of shame and a lot of fear, but then I also just felt this huge relief, and so I wrote this giant email to my team, and to my boss knew what was going on at the time, but I wrote this giant email to my team, basically coming clean about this is what's been going on, this is what's happening, and I'm not going to be back for a while, and the sense of relief that that gave me was unbelievable, and in the end I ended up being off for almost two months before he went into surgery, and it was probably the greatest gift I could have given myself, because I had all this time before I had to switch into caregiver mode, and it was incredible. And during that time, you know, I actually leaned into grief. I think I cried more than I've cried in a really long time. I did lots of journeys. Feeling and walking, and I worked on various workbooks that I had had sitting on a shelf for years, but I really just spent that time sitting in my feelings and just letting those feelings move through me. Lots of therapy scheduled in there too, but really just honoring how I felt in those moments,

Jenn St John  20:22

it's so interesting that you ended up getting that two months, because it would have been very different if you're.. I'm

Kelly Campbell  20:28

not sure what would have happened, it would have been a very messy place, that's for sure. Yeah.

Jenn St John  20:36

you said there were a lot of tears, there was a lot of journaling, a lot of therapy. How do you feel that grief showed up for you during this period of time in ways that you didn't expect that it was going to? We started to finally let it out.

Kelly Campbell  20:51

It's an excellent question, because that was 15 years after my accident, and after Emma died. I did a lot of work in those 15 years, I did lots of therapy, I did tons of different modalities of therapy, sanitary therapy, EMDR, like I did lots of work, and so I was really surprised that I hadn't, like, fully dealt with things, but at the same time recognized that I was often just skimming the surface of grief, that I didn't really dig deep, but I think maybe the thing I was the most surprised about was how much guilt I held still, and we talked a little bit about the piece of the recognition that I was actually in the car, that I was actually there with her, and that was a piece I think that I hadn't really processed, I hadn't really grieved for myself for the person who went from being what my mom often described as this young idealistic full of life energy person to someone who became really risk averse, measured, serious after Emma died. I spent time like really grieving for that person. I spent time figuring out who I was. Now I just went through the motions for a really long time without really discovering what mattered to me. Now, who I was, Emma was like my biggest cheerleader. She gave me confidence to do things that I often would have never had the confidence to do before, and in a lot of ways my life afterwards became a little linear, like career in government is very rewarding, but you kind of set yourself off on a path, and I was reflecting about when Emma and I would dream about the future, she was going to be the big entertainer, she was studying drama and acting, and I was going to save the world because I wanted to work in the charitable sector. I reflected a lot about how, while I always worked in social programs in the government, I had really lost my way in that sense, and so I really came back a lot to purpose, and what did that look like for me, and was I living a life that really steered me in that direction, and so a lot of that time really was about that self development and giving myself the space to recognize that I had also been through a major trauma.

Jenn St John  23:25

I know you've described it, but what do you hear from people about how grief lives in their bodies? Like, how does it show up for them daily?

Kelly Campbell  23:32

I'm certainly not a doctor, but I know in my own experience with grief, particularly in the years where I was not really managing or actively dealing with my grief, I would experience headaches and digestive issues and exhaustion, a lot of emotional instability that particularly for me manifested in a lot of anger, and so I think that is something the research has demonstrated can lead to things like cardiovascular issues can lead to respiratory issues and has greater consequences on someone's overall general health. Increasingly, we're seeing better research and better data in the literature on the impacts of grief, and so hopefully we'll see a better recognition on the need to treat grief or recognize grief, whether it be in the workplace or more generally in society,

Jenn St John  24:26

and so what do you think would change if there was more education around grief and loss, and in general people were able to get to those places that you got to when they're going through these things.

Kelly Campbell  24:40

Yeah, I think just in general, if we recognize just mental health as part of primary health,

Jenn St John  24:46

yeah, let's just assume that,

Kelly Campbell  24:48

assume that one first, and then you know, and then recognize that grief is just an emotion, right? Grief is just part of a spectrum of emotions that we feel and that we don't always. Have to be happy and joyful and wonderful and great, like there's ebbs and flows in our lives, and understanding that grief is something that comes as a result of a process in life, an ending to something, whether that be a life, whether that be a job, whether that be a relationship, and understand what it is and process what is associated with that grief, and I think that's where, from a workplace perspective, better training for managers and leaders is really critical for them to understand. I am always shocked at this day and age. How change management is still so challenging for leaders, change is difficult, undoubtedly, but there is so much research and information out there on change, and so you know, grief comes with things like change, right, and so when managed appropriately, we can help people through that process, and so I think that in the workplace is one way, but also just in life, recognizing that this is just a part of life, and that we need to just give space for some of it, and allow people to be the way they are, and have the feelings that they'll have, and not be critical when people need to take time, or when people are not feeling okay that day, but allow them that space they need to just process what they're going through.

Jenn St John  26:27

I think sometimes there's a lot of confusion or overlap with grief and anxiety and depression. I remember when I was going through the compound grief, when I definitely tried to find a good kind of therapist or counselor to talk to about it, and it didn't end up landing for me, so I just did a lot more on my own. Have you come across, like, either in your coaching or in your research, have you come across anything that talks about that overlap?

Kelly Campbell  26:55

Yeah, I think, again, not a professional or a doctor, a psychologist, or anything of that major, but certainly there is a new diagnosis in the DSM five, I believe, is the latest edition of the Bible of psychology and diagnosis. There is a diagnosis for grief as a mental illness and disorder, and so you know it is being increasingly recognized as a disorder in and of itself, and I do think many people who experience grief can experience other symptoms, like depression and anxiety. PTSD, in my case, are all things that I experienced, but I often really think coming back to something I mentioned earlier, that we can be really quick to want to wish away sadness, right? And I think it's important that we recognize that death and grieving and loss of identity or divorce, all of these things are sad, and it's important that we lean into this sadness again, like we often in society want to find that quick fix or want people to cover up and rush to be okay, and it's really something that I think we need to honor, and we need to recognize that it takes time to process this sadness. In February 2024 we lost one of our best friends to a very quick diagnosis with cancer. It was terminal, and it was very quick, and when she died, it was the first time I really allowed myself to just grieve completely and honor that. It was heartbreaking, and it felt really different. It allowed me to just acknowledge that she was gone, and it was fast, and it came out of nowhere, and, it was okay to be devastated by that, and I think in these days we live in a tumultuous world, and we experience a range of emotions, and so it's not natural to always be happy, and I think giving ourselves the space to not need to constantly worry that it's a clinical diagnosis, but acknowledge that it is something that is natural part of life is really important.

Jenn St John  29:07

Yeah, when I was a filmmaker, I did a documentary down in Guatemala, and a lot of the research that I did in working with the Mayan people that we were working with that came up in my research was that in Western society we're taught literally from a very young age that we're supposed to be happy. We're supposed to do everything we can to make ourselves happy, you know. This Mayan society had for generations were teaching that you aren't just supposed to be happy, life is actually going to be hard. And I feel like in Western society, we've forgotten that, and so anytime there's a stumbling block, it kind of throws us off, and it's almost like we're not equipped to deal with that happening, or feels like we aren't equipped to deal with that happening, but I think it's a big realization, and I think it's starting to move, which is good,

Kelly Campbell  29:58

absolutely, and when. Comes to grief, I think, as a Western society, and particularly in North America, we've adapted this really closed view of how we grieve. In many other societies, grief and bereavement is very open, you know. There are some traditions wearing black for a certain period of time, or sitting Shiva, or there's this one tradition, and I've brought what culture it is, I think, maybe a Maori tradition of like moving your furniture outside on the lawn, so people know that you're grieving. We hide that internally, and to me it does so much damage, right, because it's like you have to turn inside and you need to hide your pain, and it doesn't make any sense,

Jenn St John  30:42

yeah, it's like we have that, you know, typical one week that everyone, you know, oh, funeral, and then okay, you're done, yeah, exactly right, yeah, and even our leaves, like talking about work, I mean, most companies, there's change, but it's not there yet for mental health, and for sure grieving is part of that mental health umbrella, and you're lucky if you get like three days or five days for, you know, losing, and it's almost like this - it's predetermined. Oh, if it's an ant, it's like it's just like, yeah, wow, no kidding. Came up with that one. You talk about meaning making a lot in your work as part of the healing process, can you explain what that looks like in practice, and where this came from for

Kelly Campbell  31:27

you? Yeah, absolutely. During my burnout leave, which is about six months, I did a ton of reading, and one of the books I read was by David Kessler, called Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. I struggle a bit with the title, because I don't like the stages of grief, but that's a whole other discussion. But it was so impactful for me, because in the book it talks a lot about the idea of finding meaning, and not finding meaning in the traditional way of, like, why did this happen, but finding meaning in what you do now that it's happened, and it really, really changed my perspective on what I was doing, and really made me go back and think about what I needed to do to find purpose with what had happened to Emma, and what needed to come next for me. One of the examples in the book that Kessler talks about is Candace Lightner, who created Mother Scans Drunk Driving after she lost her daughter, and so it was just stories like that, and talking about how meaning is really going back to thinking about why your person lived, what was important about that relationship, and then how do you honor them, and meaning being a way to honor the life that they had, and to me there was nothing more beautiful. Emma brought me so much in my life, and so for me to think about a way of honoring her was just there could be no better tribute, and so that became a really big focus for me on what I could do to sort of create a legacy for her,

Jenn St John  33:14

and what did that look like for you?

Kelly Campbell  33:17

Well, I think one of the biggest things for me was that Emma lived life to its fullest. She lived big. She laughed a lot. She was so present, and I think what I realized was that I had been languishing. I was unhappy. I was not present, and so I really needed to think about myself and where I was, how I could really change my life to give it more purpose. I thought about the confidence that Emma brought me. I thought about the conversations we had about what we were going to do with this life, and you know what would make her the most proud of me, and so in many ways now I often think about living a life that would make her proud, and so when I think about that, I think about who she would want me to be, and she would want me to be the best mom, she would want me to be present with my friends and my family, but more than anything, she'd want me to be happy, and she'd want me to be laughing, and so you know, I kind of keep that legacy as my north star and work to make decisions that sort of honor that.

Jenn St John  34:37

Oh, that's so beautiful, that really is, Kelly. Wow, I feel for me doing all of this is that's me making meaning with losing my parents, so yeah, I think that's a really big part. I only think in the last two or three years have I kind of come out of a really big part of my grief. I feel very different now in the last two or three years, and I. Think that doing this work, it just fills you up in so many ways, and it really helps you in your grieving process, for sure.

Kelly Campbell  35:05

Yeah,

Jenn St John  35:06

so how is your own relationship with grief evolved?

Kelly Campbell  35:10

I like to think about grief as like I picture it almost as you standing in this like vast, vast ocean, and it's like you're looking out and a storm is rolling in and Greek to me when it first happens is like this massive wave coming in and those waves start coming in faster and faster and they're relentless and then they're crashing in and they're knocking you off your feet and they're dragging you into the water and in those early days I really felt like I was drowning, I couldn't find the surface, but then slowly, you know, as it happens with the storm, those waves start to slow down, and you start to be able to learn how to read that water, and so when the undertow comes, you can push off the bottom, and you can find the surface, and so as time went on, and I learned to swim, and I learned to float, I was able to start to find my footing and find my way, but the reality is, like, I'm still in grief. I still always will be in grief, and so it's like you learn how to swim through the waves, and every once in a while I'll get hit with a big wave, and it'll pull me under, but I've learned how to get back up to the top, so you know, whether that's a song or an anniversary, or often I will see a glimpse of Emma in one of my daughters, or you know, hear her laugh in one of my girls, I get swept under again, but at least this time I feel like I am equipped to swim, but you know you're always kind of bracing yourself, you're always kind of waiting for that next wave to come in. Just last week I got some news at work, and I was like really excited, and all I wanted to do was call her, like it's been.. I did the math, 18 years, four months, and 22 days, and she was still the person I wanted to call, and so now I just have a strategy for that, you know. I know who the next call is, but it still brought me to my knees. I was still crying because she was the person I needed in that moment, because I knew what she would sound like, I knew what her reaction would be. I know those moments will happen for the rest of my life, and I also know that it's okay. It's okay to be sad, and it's okay to feel those moments, and I also know that I'll be okay on the other side of them.

Jenn St John  37:31

Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of those moments, considering it's my parents, especially. 

Kelly Campbell  37:37

Sure, I'm sure. I can't imagine

Jenn St John  37:39

Everything that you just said, I recognize all of that, but I also love having that moment of, like, okay, you know, I miss them because very quickly as a society people like to push them away and push it down, and you know, like, that was then, and so I really love part of the honoring is also keeping them alive in our memories, in our hearts, and our every day. Right? I think that's a big piece of that too.

Kelly Campbell  38:06

Absolutely. Do you talk to your kids about your parents?

Jenn St John  38:09

Yeah, we have. So, my daughter remembers, ish, my son remembers a lot more. We have, like, digital frames in our house. We have a lot of pictures of my parents. The company I had before I did this was named after them, so we talk about when it comes up, and they're like, "Remember that time. The idea is that hopefully it's normalizing something different for our kids for this generation.

Kelly Campbell  38:33

Yeah, my kids obviously weren't alive, but Emma is a part of their every day. It was so important to me that I carried her forward, and so you know they ask about her all the time, and her birthday is Emma Day, and we drive to where we did our undergrad together, and I had bought a bench there, and so we have a little birthday party for her there, and we try to celebrate Susan the same way, they obviously knew her quite well, and try to talk about her a lot, because you know, much like you said, I think part of changing the narrative of grief is normalizing it, right? And so I know for my husband and I like bringing death and dying into the lives of our children is important because we don't want that to be so jarring for them.

Jenn St John  39:19

I felt like my kids lost their innocence when my parents died.

Kelly Campbell  39:22

I'm sure it was hard.

Jenn St John  39:23

One of the things I was going to ask you was, like, there are things that you go through when you're grieving a huge loss like this that you actually wouldn't take back, like you wouldn't change. For you, like, what would you say are some of the things that, as hard it is to look through that lens, what are the things that you feel were actually gifts in the end?

Kelly Campbell  39:46

Yeah, it's a tough question. I think grief itself, like the process of grief and really grieving, gave me my connection to Emma back, you know, it allowed me. Need to reconnect with her and find my way back to her. If that makes sense, I was able to really remember the best, best parts of her, and you know, start to figure out a way that I can honor her. And so, in those moments, you know, I now can feel that connection, and I think in a lot of ways it has changed the way I look at my life, like it has reminded me with the death of my friend Susan, you know, when Susan died, that was the moment that I looked at my husband and said, I'm, I am leaving my job, this is it, I am leaving government, you know. I didn't need another reminder of how short life was, but I got one, and so, you know, in that moment of grief, it reminded me that this life is so short, and we only get one run at it, and so it taught me that I really needed to be present in everything that I was doing, although I was very aware that death is certain, I wanted to enjoy living as much as I could.

Jenn St John  41:09

Wow, I think that's one of the biggest and best lessons you can all learn from loss.

Kelly Campbell  41:14

Yeah,

Jenn St John  41:15

huge takeaway. Yeah, huge takeaway. Well, I wanted to thank you very much for your time today, I really, really appreciate it's not just grief and loss, but it's trauma as well that you've been through, and that you're so open to talking about. So, thank you very much. I just wanted to ask you one question, as we wrap things up, we have a hashtag create calm mental health, and if you could just give us one or two things that for you on a daily basis, you've learned to use to help you bring yourself peace, whatever it is that stillness that you're looking for.

Kelly Campbell  41:51

Yeah, so one thing is I have this little wooden bird that's like a bit of a kind of adult fidget, I'd love to call it, that I often will play with and sort of use to calm myself, and use as like a distraction when I'm, you know, talking or nervous, kind of calms me down a little bit, but I mean, for me, one of the biggest things is just really like taking a moment to take a break and take a few breaths and recenter myself, it's something I still really have to remind myself to do, I'm really good at getting really focused on what I'm doing and forgetting to eat, to stop and take a break, to go to the washroom, and so I really need to schedule those breaks in for myself.

Jenn St John  42:37

That's a very good thing that's come out of all this, and for you, yeah,

Kelly Campbell  42:42

yeah. Thank you for sharing that.

Jenn St John  42:46

I really appreciate it.

Kelly Campbell  42:48

Thank you so much.

Jenn St John  42:51

So, what really connected with me after this conversation with Kelly was the reminder that grief doesn't always arrive loudly. Sometimes it lives quietly beneath the surface for years, and it's shaping the way that we move through the world, and the choices that we make, and the roles that we take on, and the ways we try to survive, and I think so many people are carrying things that they've never fully had space to name, not just the loss of people they love, but the loss of identities, relationships, dreams, versions of themselves, or simply the weight of trying to hold everything together for too long. What I appreciated so much about this conversation was the honesty in it, the reminder that healing isn't linear, that grief doesn't have a timeline, and that sometimes the bravest thing we can do is to stop out running what hurts and allow ourselves to finally feel it. But I also think that there is something really hopeful in this conversation too, in the idea that grief can reconnect us to what matters, that meaning can grow alongside us, and that carrying someone forward through the way we live, love, parent, lead, and care for others can become its own form of legacy, and maybe that's part of what healing really is, not forgetting, not moving on, but learning how to keep living fully, while still carrying the people and the experiences that shaped us. Before we go, if this conversation resonated with you, I'd love to hear from you. You can connect with me through the show notes on social media at triple W Gen St john.ca and that's Jen with two ends, supporting the podcast by subscribing, sharing an episode, or leaving a review is one of the best ways to help these conversations reach more people. If something difficult came up while listening, please remember you don't have to sit with it alone. In Canada, you can call or text 988 anytime for free confidential mental health support. You can also reach out locally to the CMHA Simco County Crisis Line at 1888938333 or you can text 686868 and you'll be connected to a trained volunteer through the Crisis Text Line in the US. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 By call or text for anyone in emotional distress, not just those in crisis. And for listeners in Australia, you can call Lifeline at 13 1114 day or night for free and confidential crisis support. Thank you for listening, for holding space for stories like this, and for being a part of this community. We'll be back next week with another conversation, and until then, take good care of yourselves and each other, and keep finding your way forward.