Grief, Growth, and the Father’s Journey — with Coach Rev

 summary

In this heartfelt interview, grief and resilience coach Lee Atherton shares her journey into end-of-life care, the importance of compassion, and practical advice for supporting loved ones through loss. Discover insights on grief stages, honoring life, and caring for those who serve as first responders.


 keywords

grief, end of life, resilience, compassion, support, first responders, grief stages, living well, dying well, mental health


 key  topics

End-of-life and grief counseling
The role of faith and compassion in healing
Stages of grief and emotional resilience
Supporting loved ones and caregivers
Unique grief experiences of first responders


 guest  name

Lee Atherton


Titles

The Power of Compassion in End-of-Life Care
Navigating Grief: Stages and Healing Strategies


 sound bites

"Forgiveness is key to healing and peace."
"Schedule time for self-care, even in chaos."
"Living well and dying well require intentionality."


Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Grief and Resilience Coaching
03:05 Finding Purpose in Grief Counseling
04:26 The Role of Faith and Compassion
06:11 Understanding Coach Rev at the Crossroads
07:15 Common Misconceptions About Grief
08:25 Personal Experiences with Loss
09:52 Navigating the Stages of Grief
11:51 Supporting Loved Ones in Mourning
13:54 Lessons from the Dying
15:30 Planning for End of Life
16:43 Celebration of Life vs. Traditional Funerals
20:15 Unique Grief of First Responders
23:50 Preventing Compassion Fatigue
25:09 Living Well and Dying Well
26:21 Future Goals and Outreach

 resources

Coach Rev - End of Life and Grief Support - https://coachrev.com
Phoenix Rising Service Dogs - https://phoenixrising.sdsl.com
Critical Incident Stress Management Teams - https://www.cism.org


 guest links

Website - https://coachrev.com
Email - lee@coachrev.com
Phone - 508-308-7116

Losing a child to cancer is a grief no parent should walk through alone. The Father's Refuge Podcast is a safe place for fathers and parents to share, heal, and find hope in the midst of heartbreak. If you are a father and you would like to share your grief journey with others reach out to me at FathersRefuge@proton.me 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

There are um great processes that we can bring first responders through. Uh I'm part of a a team of responders critical incident stress management. And we go in and we sit with we do sit with one person at a time, but more often it's for a group debrief where all the folks who are part of that incident come into a room and we talk about what happened in a prescribed way, but it helps take the emotion out of the event. So the memory always stays there, but the emotion can settle down a bit. And as we're able to more and more encourage our first responders to partake in these, instead of what it used to be is we had a really crappy experience, let's go out and have a drink. And if you did anything other than that, you were considered wimpy and not strong enough to do the job. That's changing. And our first responders are healthier.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

How are you doing, Coach?

SPEAKER_02 2:02

I am doing fabulous on this Saturday morning. How about you?

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Good. So Coach Rev is a certified grief and resilience coach, chaplain, and officiant who has dedicated her life to helping others find peace, purpose, and hope through death and loss. With over 20 years of experience and with her faithful companion Shadow by her side, who's going to make a guest appearance today on the video, Lee has guided countless individuals, families, and first responders through trauma and transformation. She reminds us that while we can't control life's endings, we can always choose compassion, courage, and connection. Hello, Lee. Thank you for being on the show. Please introduce yourself to the listening audience.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Thank you, James. It's an honor to be here. As James said, I'm Lee Atherton. I love the work I do. It's profound. It's um it's an honor to be with folks at life's ending. And uh as James said, I've got my faithful companion Shadow by my side. And he mmm he's such an important important part of all I do.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

All right, let's let's see the puppy. Come on. We want to we want to see Shadow. Where you at Shadow? He's hiding.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

He's hiding. Whoops.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Look, well, we almost saw him.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Yep, let me fix the camera. Go over here.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

There he is. He's camera shy, probably like my dog.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

He'll say hi here. Hey puppy puppy.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Okay, that's fine. Where you at? Shadow. There's Shadow. He's kind of in the shadows, but that's normal for Shadow. He's he's involved in something else.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

Something under there, but he'll come out and I'll get him up here.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Yeah, it's fine. So, what inspired you to dedicate your career to end of life and grief counseling, Coach Rev?

SPEAKER_02 3:40

Many years ago I had met someone when I was in school. We were both getting our bachelor's degree so that we could move on and get our master's in divinity and serve folks in ministry. She knew then that she wanted to be a hospice chaplain. I always thought I would just be serving a local church. And she would often say to me, You really should be a hospice chaplain. You'd be great. And I would say, Yeah, I don't think so. I'm not going to do that kind of work. Fast forward a few years, we had graduated and been ordained. She was in her hospice work. I was in between jobs. And uh she needed someone to cover an extended vacation. Couldn't find anyone. She asked me. I had said no thanks a couple times. And finally she said, Come on, you can do anything. It's just short term. So with a sigh and some resignation, I said, All right, I'll I'll cover your vacation. Wow. I am so thankful that she pushed me to do that because right away when we were out visiting patients and I was in my training, I just felt such a calling, such a, yeah, this is where you belong. Kind of a feeling that's hard to explain, but that was back in 2007, and I've been doing end-of-life work ever since.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Wow. So you found your purpose.

SPEAKER_02 4:58

I did.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

So how do faith and compassion shape your approach to healing?

SPEAKER_02 5:02

Faith and compassion shape my approach to healing. For me, my faith definitely says there's something greater out there than we are. And you know, the people name that in different ways. God, Buddha, scientific ways of naming it. But that that conviction that there's something bigger than us has always, throughout the challenging times in my career, um helped carry me through. And I think although when I visit with my patients, with my clients, they don't know whether I'm Christian or Jewish or whatever, it's internal for me and it helps me be my best person with them, even when it's a heartbreaking visit, a hard visit.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Right. Well, I'm sure that in your work, you experience all different types of people, and everybody's in a, you know, we're all human, but we're all in sort of a socioeconomic category of our own. We have different educations, we have different uh vocations and things like that. And you're gonna run across people that have a different flavor of spirituality, if you want to call it, or a different flavor of religion. And while while our understanding of who God is or what his name is, it may be different than theirs, but we have to uh we may not agree with them, but we have to we have to we have to respect it.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

Absolutely, absolutely. And my folks would never know what I like the word you use, what flavor of religion or spirituality I am, unless they ask me directly. My goal is to meet them where they are.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Right, exactly. So what does Coach Rev at the crossroads symbolize in your work?

SPEAKER_02 6:50

So I had coach training, which when I took my training many years ago, I viewed it as being with people to help them discover what their future goals are and how do I reach my goals in the future, what's there for me. And being with people at end of life was sort of an opposite end of the spectrum where we're saying goodbye in ways. We're not uh looking toward the future quite the same way. And I found fortunately a training that was end of life coaching that brought those two worlds together for me. So the coach, Coach Rev recognizes that coaching aspect. Rev recognizes for me a powerful spiritual moment in my ordination. And then at the crossroads, we're all at crossroads in our lives. And what do we do when we're there? How do we how do we choose what direction we want to go in? And to be with people to help them navigate that.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

So, what's one of the most common misconceptions about grief?

SPEAKER_02 7:52

That you get over it. I would say we never get over grief. It ebbs and flows, and over time it does get easier, but it's never gone. We're always missing that person, that place, that moment in our lives that we've had to say goodbye to for some reason.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Right. And that, you know, I think a lot of times we associate loss and grief with losing a loved one, child, parent, wife, whatever, husband.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

But I think we can all we also need to uh bring uh job loss, uh divorce, separation, relationship issues.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

Pet loss.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Yeah, pet loss, losing a a fur baby.

SPEAKER_02 8:33

Community loss is another one that a lot of folks um don't immediately recognize. But when we've been transferred to another job, we've got to move across the country or um say goodbye to our family home. Those are big losses as well that can make an impact. And if we are able to if we're able to acknowledge them and intentionally say goodbye, it can help that transition a bit.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

So have you have you experienced loss and grief in your life?

SPEAKER_02 9:06

I have. I have to do that.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Could you share a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_02 9:10

Sure. I've lost both of my parents. My mom, when I was in my 20s, and she was on hospice. And my dad much later, he also was on hospice. I was with him when he died. Powerful moment to be there for that. I've lost a lot of pets and I've lost my family. I had a brother who died in 2016, and uh the rest of my siblings and and their families uh pretty much said they never wanted anything to do with me again. I was the black sheep uh for reasons that I would never change, decisions I made. But that was huge. That was really huge for me because I lost so much in that. I lost relationships, my brother through his death. I lost a sense of what I had anticipated my future being, and that's when I got shadow. Uh yeah, it was a pretty traumatic time. Uh looking at at what was lost in the moment and in the future, but also uh some questions that made me um remember traumatic times uh growing up. So I had PTSD after that, and for a couple of years couldn't work. Shadow came in as my service dog.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Awesome.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

So can you can you walk us through the stages of grief and what that looks like?

SPEAKER_02 10:34

Hard to say what it looks like. So there are many stages of grief. A lot of people think of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's stages, and that's a great foundation, but she never meant it to be. You do stage one, and then at a certain amount of time you go to stage two, and then stage three, it's not linear like that. Stages of anger, denial, especially denial if someone dies suddenly, a tragic death. Our minds can't handle it. So we just nope, that didn't happen. I I just can't wrap my mind around it. Denial, anger, resentment, at times, joy. That's a tough one to imagine. Joy with loss. And I've renamed and reframed some of the stages. Obviously, I don't think she talks about joy, but at some point we're able to look at what we've lost and remember the joyful moments in it to celebrate who that person or whatever it was we lost was, and be able to laugh and smile again. I talk about grief as riding a class five Whitewater River. So you're on that boat and you are holding on for dear life. You don't know what's around the corner, whether you've gotta lean this way, lean that way, duck your head, what's gonna pop up in front of you, and it's a wild ride. But eventually you do come to those still waters of rest and peace. Um, it's all over the map.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Right. Anxiety is another one that I like to talk about.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

People people get anxious and suffer with anxiety and you know, fears go hand goes hand in hand with that.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

Right, right. Uh often our world is upside down when we've lost someone or something. And when we're in an uncertain time or place in our lives, we can't help but have anxiety come in. It's just a normal human response.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

How can we better support a loved one in pain or mourning?

SPEAKER_02 12:35

I always think of the words the ministry of presence and just being with someone, knowing that you don't have to find the perfect words to say. Uh, there's not the right thing to do. Uh, but just being there, being a shoulder for them to cry on, to express what they're going through without any judgment or pushback. Um, not saying things like, oh, you'll get over this, or it's okay, God wanted your loved one. God called your loved one home for a reason. Even if you're the person you're with would feel that way if they were talking to someone else, you don't want to say it. Um, because they can be hurtful even when we're trying to be most helpful. That and I tell folks, don't say, what can I do for you? How can I help? Rather, take a minute to think about the person you're talking to. What do you know about them? And say, I'll be over tomorrow to get your grocery list and go shopping. Or I know the kids probably want to go out and play and you don't have time. So we'll stop over and bring them to the playground for you. I'll be over and do your laundry for you. Just be specific and tell them that you're gonna do that because it's easier for someone to say, okay, and let you come do that, than it is for them in their chaotic mind um to think about what needs to be done or to even ask. It's so hard for us to ask.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

It's it's always very helpful to be the hands and feet of Jesus, right? And and go go do whatever needs to be done, whether it's babysitting, whether it's a you know, a parent night out or doing laundry or going grocery shopping or walking the dog, or there's a thousand and one things that goes on in keeping a household afloat that we can immediately do. Because we do those things ourselves, and so we can we can offer our hands and feet and our compassion and our love to people.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

That is so very true.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

What lessons about living have you learned from walking beside the dying?

SPEAKER_02 14:39

To live life to its fullest, to take advantage of every moment that you have because you never know when it's gonna be gone. Those are some cliche things, but they're so very true. Another one is uh a more practical one. I tell people, think about what you want at the end of life. And folks say, I don't need to think about that. I'm not sick, you know, I'm young, whatever, but you don't know when life is gonna change in an instant for you. You don't know when you might get a terminal diagnosis and be given a very short time to live. You don't know when you're gonna be in a traumatic accident and decisions need to be made. And they're not just the medical decisions about do not resuscitate or would I want a feeding tube? But they are decisions about how do you want to spend the end of your life? Would you want to be in a hospital or be at home when you're taking your last breaths? Do you want to be surrounded by family? Could be little things like for me, uh, and I've written these things down. I love the power of touch. Touch is so healing and comforting, but do not rub me like this. That's for me, that's like nails on a chalkboard.

unknown 15:56

Right?

SPEAKER_02 15:56

So it can be the little things that you're aware of that you wouldn't want happening.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:03

So yeah, lots of lessons from planning ahead to taking advantage of every moment that we have.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

So, in regards to planning ahead, probably one of the things that we hate to think about and and procrastinate on is uh putting together a living will. We're going to an attorney and having an attorney do an actual will, you know. Right. And you have to think about will, end of life, probate, all of that stuff. If you have a lot of stuff, if you got lots of money, if you got IRAs, 401s, bank accounts, credit cards, all of that stuff, you are going to do your loved ones a huge, huge service. By getting all of that stuff nailed down, writing down your passwords, giving access to your son or daughter or wife or whoever, husband, you know, like a lot of families, like my family, I I take care of all the budgeting, or I try to. I do what I can with it. Uh, you do the best you can with what you got, right? Right. And uh there's always more bills at the end of the paycheck.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

But but if if you're if you're the partner that does all the budgeting, handles all the money and makes money decisions, you know, and has have access to accounts that they don't have access to, it's a good idea to give them access to it, you know, before before the end. That way there's not any kind of red tape or whatever that they gotta roll around in to to gain access to the funds or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

Right. So and and more immediate, let me ask you, James, have you thought about your funeral or your end-of-life celebration? What you'd want that to be like?

SPEAKER_01 17:43

Yes, I I I'm gonna get cremated, and then Katie's gonna find one of the people that I don't like, and she's just gonna throw the ashes on them. I'm I'm kidding. When my ex-wife was alive, you know, she was the target, but she unfortunately she's passed away. Or maybe fortunately, I don't know. She had some sort of kidney disease and she's no longer with us, and so I can't speak ill of her.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

One of the pieces when I talk to people about planning for end of life is thinking about what would you like your funeral service to be like? What kind of scripture readings or other sacred text do you want? What kind of music would you want to be there? Would you want it to be a solemn moment where folks are dressed in black and have lots of weeping, or would you like people to be remembering all the fun stuff of your life and celebrating?

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Yeah, I want people to have a party. You know, and one of the one of the things I would like to bring up uh while we're talking about end of life and stuff like that, and I think they don't call it funerals anymore. I think they call it celebration of life, and which I think is awesome. But if you have loved ones, don't wait until they die to stand around and go, oh, I just love them so much. They meant the world to me, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, listen, if you have a loved one that you haven't talked to in 10 years, whatever's going on with you and them, just just pitch it out the window. Life is short and and find a way to bridge the gap and go see them. There's there's so many families that have angst. You know, they have they have ongoing feuds, and you know what I'm talking about. It's just childish, petty, excuse my French, bullshit. Just just life is short, we're all gonna die, your loved ones are gonna pass away. And the last thing that we want is regret. You don't want to be at the celebration of life and go, oh my God, the last thing I said to that person was what kind of a worm they were, you know, or some kind of hateful thought, or you we don't want those regret regrets, and you don't have to have those. Go make it right. You know, it doesn't mean that it doesn't mean that if somebody has done something awful to you that you're not gonna forget that, but but you you can forgive them. You can find the grace and the mercy that you need to forgive them of whatever it was that they did in the past and and find a way to bridge that gap and let them know that, yeah, you're a worm, but I still love you.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

Right?

SPEAKER_01 20:12

Right? Yeah, you know, yeah, you are who you are, and and you know, when you point a finger at one person, you're pointing five fingers, four fingers back at yourself.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

Back at yourself.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

We're all human, we all make mistakes, we all say things that we don't want to say in the heat of the moment. And what do we do? We have to learn how to forgive one another and to to get along. Right. So, you know, let's let's not wait until somebody has already passed on to go, oh my god, I should have said this, or oh my gosh, I should have said that. Yeah, I've carried this anger, you know, for so many years. And nine times out of ten, if you're angry with somebody, they may not even understand know that. They may not know that you're carrying that anger. And so who's that anger hurting? You hurting yourself. It's not hurting them, it's hurting you.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

But anyway, yeah. So much for that little sermonette. So you work closely with first responders. What makes their grief experience unique?

SPEAKER_02 21:11

I think um I think there are a lot of pieces that make their grief unique. So if you think about what a first responder often goes through day to day or week to week, they are seeing lots of loss, lots of traumatic loss. I'd say 99 times out of a hundred, um, they have built a wall that some people would say, oh, they're cold, so they never cry. They've got to do that for some protection. And so when it comes to their own personal loss, it's harder to break down that wall and to let themselves feel any grief in the same way that you or I might, to be able to let it out in some way. I always tell people don't pretend you're fine. Don't Stuff it down because it'll always come out to bite you. It's not as easy for a first responder to do that. And when they experience a loss, it's a lot more than just that loss, because it opens the door to remembering all of the losses that they've seen along the way. And that compound trauma, that's what we call it, uh, can make it so much more challenging, so much more difficult to get through it. I'd say that's one of the bigger ones.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

I think first responders, because they see so much loss and and they see the worst of humanity sometimes, or a lot of times they see the worst of humanity, and they, you know, they're rolling up on all sorts of scenes and they see horrible things, they experience horrible things. And so I think one of the ways that they survive is to compartmentalize uh these things so that so that they don't have to deal with them. But it's like you said, eventually the dam's gonna burst, you know. And so there's there has to be healthy ways for them to deal with that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Which is where you come in. I try. I think that's what chaplains do, right? When when they're like a v voluntary chaplain for the fire department or police department or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 23:12

Right. Exactly. And they're go ahead. There are um great processes that we can bring first responders through. Uh I'm part of a a team of responders, critical incident stress management. And we go in and we sit with we do sit with one person at a time, but more often it's for a group debrief where all the folks who are part of that incident come into a room and we talk about what happened in a prescribed way that helps take the emotion out of the event. So the memory always stays there, but the emotion can settle down a bit. And as we're able to more and more encourage our first responders to partake in these, instead of what it used to be, is we had a really crappy experience. Let's go out and have a drink. And if you did anything other than that, you were considered wimpy and not strong enough to do the job. That's changing. And our first responders are healthier. They have a healthier response to things when they're able to process it in a good way.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 24:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

What can caregivers and helping professionals do to prevent compassion, fatigue?

SPEAKER_02 24:31

Self-care, for sure. And self-care comes in lots of ways. It's important to take a minute to think about what brings you joy, peace. Think about it when you're not in the midst of chaos and be sure you do those things. Intentionally build them into your, whether it's a daily routine, a weekly routine, or what have you. It could be as simple as making sure you're drinking enough water throughout the day. For first responders, since we were just talking about them, how do you intentionally weave that in when your days are often pretty dang chaotic?

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

Two, for me, it's knowing that I love to be out in nature. So how do I intentionally step away from everything I want to be doing? And it's it's a it's a pull to be there to take care of people. But I need I know that I need to say, nope, I can't right now. Today is my day that I set aside to go out and weed the garden or go for a hike or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

You have to find a way to decompress.

SPEAKER_02 25:35

A way to decompress and and intentionally schedule it, which isn't always easy.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

What does it mean to live well and die well?

SPEAKER_02 25:44

We talked about planning for end of life, right? That's that's dying well. Thinking about what do you want for living the last chapter of your life, creating that, excuse me, knowing what setting you want to be in. But living well and dying well is is about intentionality day to day. You know, thinking about what do you want in the future, but thinking about today as well and being intentional.

SPEAKER_01 26:10

What's next for your mission to impact 100,000 lives?

SPEAKER_02 26:14

My next one, I I just signed up for a class. I love to lead retreats and I've led several. I want to create and lead a retreat for people who are grieving. So that's the next bigger milestone for me. That and my work and my advocacy with service dogs.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

So if people wanted to get a hold of you, how would they do that?

SPEAKER_02 26:35

They can email me, lee at coachrev.com. They can always call uh 5087116 and my website, coachrev.com, and for the service dog work, phoenixrising.sdsl.com, service dogs saving lives.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

So is so shadow in a in a better frame of mind where he can he can say hi to us?

SPEAKER_02 27:01

He was just snoring. Give me one sec. Come here.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

Okay, mom, I don't want to do this.

unknown 27:06

Whoops.

SPEAKER_02 27:06

All right, you ready? Here we go. Yeah, he's a pretty dog. Come on over here so they can see you. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

There you go. Yeah, he's pretty over here. Is he a lab?

SPEAKER_02 27:18

He's a lab.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Yeah, we've got we've got two labs. There we go.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

Now we're too tall. Here we go.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

He's a big boy.

SPEAKER_02 27:26

He's a big boy, yes.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

Yeah, good boy. Yeah, yeah, he's pretty. Thank you. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

So thank you for spending time with us on Father's Refuge. To the listening audience, I want to say thank you for the privilege of your time. These conversations exist because grief, loss, and healing are deeply personal, and none of us are meant to walk through them alone. Coach Rev, thank you for being here today. If something is in today's episode connected with you, connected with your own story, I hope it reminded you that your pain is seen, your questions are valid, and your journey still has meaning. If you found this episode helpful, I'd be grateful if you'd subscribe, leave a review, or share it with someone who might need encouragement today. That's how this message continues to reach those who are hurting. To learn more about Father's Refuge and the resources we offer, visit our website at fathersrefuge.com and our Facebook page. Until next time, be gentle with yourself, hold space for others, and remember there's refuge even in the midst of loss. And Coach Rev, thank you again for being here and for the the the ministry that you uh are doing in your community.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

Thank you.