Episode #25-Robyn Houston-Bean

In this episode, Robyn Houston-Bean shares the growth she has experienced throughout her grief journey following the loss of her son, Nick, who passed away from an overdose on May 23, 2015. Robyn is the founder of The Sun Will Rise in Massachusetts, an organization dedicated to creating and facilitating safe spaces for peer support groups for individuals experiencing various types of loss.

Robyn reflects on how, prior to Nick’s passing, she had never truly experienced grief. Encouraged by her sister, she took the first step off the couch and attended a peer support group—an experience that would become foundational in her healing. As she puts it, “I didn’t need fixing; I needed someone to listen.”

To learn more about Robyn and the impactful work she is doing, visit www.thesunwillrise.org
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to this episode of Turning Grief into Growth: The Journey of Transformation. This is a podcast that's hosted by Greg Jacobs and Don Lipstein. Well, good day, Don. Man, I don't know if you know this or not, but this is our 25th episode that is being recorded.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

I do know it, and you promised that we were gonna be in the Caribbean when we recorded our 25th episode. What happened to that?

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Well, I promised we'd be underwater in the Caribbean. And you know, you live about as close to that walking around a lighthouse every day. So I always have to uh make fun of that. You know, speaking of walks, I was walking around the neighborhood with my wife and daughter last night, and the dogs uh jumped a rabbit, and uh I made them sit back. And boy, I'll tell you, I got on my hands and knees and uh crept up as close as I could to that rabbit. I was about five feet away, and it was just so lethargic. Uh, just uh what not lethargic, that's the wrong word. It was just so satisfying, just really watching that rabbit look at me and uh just calling. It was very nice. So uh I know we talk about your walk every morning. I'm uh gonna look forward to another nice walk this afternoon. But uh we have a great guest on today, Robin Houston Bean. So, Don, I'm gonna kind of turn it over to you to introduce our guest today.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

All right, thank you. Um and besides being what I consider a very good friend and colleague, uh Robin Houston Bean is the founder of the Sun Will Rise Foundation, a nonprofit providing peer grief support for people bereaved due to substance use related causes. After her son's death, she turned her experience into action, building a community that now supports thousands of people each year through peer support groups, events, and connection-based programming. She also serves as a peer grief support consultant with the support after a death by overdose, which is also commonly known as SEDOD, where she helps expand access to grief support across communities in Massachusetts. Robin is also involved in the restorative justice efforts and co-hosts the Healing Through Wonder project. In addition to her nonprofit work, she is the fourth generation owner of the family insurance agency, Houston Insurance. She is an active community leader in prevention and addiction support initiatives and is committed to breaking isolation and grief and creating spaces where people feel understood. You know, it's amazing when I think about uh what you have done with your grief, um, all the things that that you have done. And I just um I feel honored to uh be uh facilitating two of the groups that the Sun Will Rise hosts. And uh it truly is an honor for me to to you know do that work uh with you and and uh anyway, please uh love to hear uh just welcome you. You're very welcomed. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Thanks so much. Um, and I am honored to be here on this podcast, especially for the 25th episode. That's quite an accomplishment in the podcast world. I know that, you know. So you guys are doing a great job bringing grief um and healing and wonderful stuff out there to the public. So we all thank you for that.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

So let me I'll tell you a little bit about myself beyond that biography. So I and I didn't mention in that, right? I'm a wife and mom and a new grandma, too, and that's a big part of my identity. But um this work with um grief started after the death of my 20-year-old son, Nick. Um he was young, and we really didn't experience a lot of addiction issues with him for a very long time. Um it it was it was it was pretty sudden in my eyes. You know, looking back, I know a lot more than when it was happening. But um uh Nick passed away um of a combined fentanyl, cocaine, and um heroin overdose. And it was the last thing we expected at that time in our life. He had told us he had um become addicted and right away he wanted to get help for it. And we went into a program for seven months and everything was working out great. So the morning that I found him was just beyond devastating. You know, I didn't I didn't know how to go on um after that happened. I was always a go-getter, always, you know, my personality hasn't hasn't changed a lot at this point. Like I used to do a bunch of stuff, and then I could do nothing at all but sit on the couch. I didn't, I didn't know how to live without having my son here. And I had never experienced grief. I mean, I've been very blessed that um there hadn't been um many people in my life that had passed. Um and I I you know I don't think many people get out of early childhood, young adulthood, and um middle age without having big losses, and and I had. So I was inexperienced with death. And um I would say the the thing that helped me go on the most was what we ended up creating. I f I found a small group that that helped me, a peer support group, and it was in a different part of um not the the state, but it was across the city and it was hard, hard to get to, but I found the people there who understood me. And I loved going there because I could just be me and everybody got it. They understood my pain. Um and I felt heard instead of people, everybody around me was trying to fix me, you know, and I didn't need fixing, I needed somebody to listen, and they did. And that person, the facilitator there who I will be always thankful to, her name's Rhonda Lottie. She was the person who said, you know, you can create this where you live, you'd be an amazing facilitator. And this, like, just kind of snowballed, and that's where we got to the point of the sun will rise starting. Um and it was good, you know.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

And and you live in Boston, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:00

So I live in a suburb of Boston, yeah. About well, now I live about um 45 minutes. I live in Plymouth, you know, birthplace of America over there. Um but at the time I lived in Braintree on the um south side of Boston, and this group was on the other side of Boston, and it was of course during rush hour and traffic and having to, but my sister convinced me to go, and that's what I needed. I needed someone who was really concerned about me to say, you need to get off of that couch. I need, I need my sister back. Like you have a family, you have um a life to live after Nick, and we need to figure out how to get you going again. And I'm so glad that she was so annoying and just kept saying, Here, here's this information, please, please go, just go try it. And I'm like, I don't want to, I just don't want to. But um, you know, when I sat in that room, I just felt so understood. I just was like that empathy. I felt like I could breathe again, you know. So I I don't know if other people have experienced that once they find other grievers, right? They just they just know other people understand.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

I I would say that uh for pure support, that how can you not feel that? But I've known people that have gone to groups and have never gone back and said that it wasn't for them. So it's just it's different for everybody, Robin. If you don't mind, I'm gonna share my screen because uh for those that are on YouTube, um, I want them to be able to see uh a picture of Nick because we like to bring uh humanity to this conversation. Uh a lot of times there's just names and numbers and things like that in life, and we want to be able to just kind of call out um just the beautiful soul that uh he was and the smile. And I love the please be happy, the sun will rise uh next to him on there. So for those on YouTube, you could uh see this. For those that are on Spotify and Apple, obviously you can't. Uh but just wanted to share that just for a second.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Which Greg, just so you know, I know the sun will rise. Um, the name came from Nick, uh, right, Robin. Can you talk about that a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Yeah. So uh in the media days after his death, you know, you're searching for answers. What happened? What went wrong? He was, you know, doing well, I thought. Um, and it just took a little, you know, like a little waver for him to to die. Um, you know, that one thing he went out with a friend who wasn't really a friend. And um, yeah, so you're searching for questions. What happened, right? And one of the things I was doing, I was going through his room, like, what did I miss? And I found the this notebook and I knew it was his recovery notebook. He was using it to write down things and exercises that he was doing mentally, and and he was writing some poems and things like that. And that was on the inside cover, and it said, please be happy, the sun will rise. And it at in that instant moment, um, I I knew that was his message to himself, right? That he could go on, he could live a good life in recovery. That was like his mantra to himself. Then I took it. I'm like, I'm gonna take that from me. I'm gonna take that from my family. So I mean, I took that message and I held it. It didn't mean I could go on right away because I did go into that period of I don't know what to do. I'm I'm depressed, I'm anxious, I'm scared to live. But I held that. And I and it was so important to me to just keep thinking about that. Please be happy, the sun will rise. He would want me to go on, I would imagine, right? He would want me to do something. So when we decided to do a group, like I couldn't imagine a better name for it, right? The sun will rise. What a what a great message, right? Maybe today is a horrible, wretched day. Maybe you can't do anything today, but tomorrow the sun's gonna rise and we will try it again. You know, we'll we'll try and we'll try and we'll try. And um, I mean, I I just love it so much. I have I have it tattooed on my arm, that exact handwriting of his. I I like rub my arm, you know, when I'm thinking about him. And um, yeah, it just it just worked that he left that message. And I feel like it's just built something, you know.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Yeah, it it was a message for him that you have used uh for yourself as well as for the thousands of people that are benefiting from your you know the work that you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Right.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

That's you know, cool.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

It's interesting. I my son uh was a journaler, I am not. Um, and we found a bunch of his journals after he passed away. He served in the army. And one of the pages in there said, Forward is the direction that the arrow flies. And it was kind of like a kind of an old warrior creed, I think. Um, but it was his way. He also struggled with addictions, and it was his way of move forward every day. And some things are very outward, like the sunwill rise, you know, dot org uh in uh your organization. Other things are private. So I I had a personalized uh license plate made and it says arrow. And it's my reminder every single day forward is the direction the arrow will fly. And I've been asked so many times on there, I regret almost, you know, uh sometimes putting it on there just because I get asked questions and it's just very personal to me. So every time I look, you know, go around the back of my car, I see that plate, and it just reminds me keep moving forward, keep moving forward.

SPEAKER_02 12:37

Yeah, you know, I want to back up a little bit to um Robin, you attending that Pure Grief support group and how you know you you felt heard, you felt seen, uh, you felt like people understood what you were, you know, what you were going through. Um, I can recall I started going to a group uh a couple weeks after Josh died, and uh I went for two months and there was something that just wasn't connecting for me and I couldn't figure it out. Um but um I, you know, I'd stopped going and then I found, you know, this other organization that it did feel right. And I just want to point out to our listeners that, you know, not everyone is going to be as lucky as as Robin was to find that group the very first time. Um don't give up, don't, you know, just because it may not have uh that group may not have worked. Uh there are plenty of groups out there and we can find them. And even in The Sun Will Rise, there's um there's different facilitators, and some facilitators may work for some people and may not work for others. Um, so you know uh that there's lots of options. Um, so don't give up.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Yeah, I I I agree with that. I I was really, really lucky that that was the group that I walked into because I have heard from other people, you know, that they didn't have the same um, you know, feeling when they walked into the room. They didn't seem hurt, or the here's a horrible thing. There's a um, you know, uh a substance use death is a stigmatized death, you know. And um I've had more than one person say they walked into a general grief group and they were saying, oh, well, my person didn't do this to themselves. Like what a horrible you're going there to get support, and now you're getting like blame for your person that, you know, that you that's not gonna help anybody, you know, to walk into something like that. So we've specifically created many different types of groups. We we offer right now over 40 groups a month with multiple, like we have about 40 facilitators, probably a little more. I think there's about 45 in the rotation. Um, and therefore anyone 18 and over. So we have general groups that has any relationship to someone who passed um due to substance use. So, you know, we have mothers, fathers, siblings, cousins, coworkers, anybody in those groups. And then um listening to our grievers, because that's how we build everything, is what do you want? What do you want to see? And so then we've started carving out these specialty groups. So we have groups for men, for moms, for siblings, partners, LGBTQ, multiple loss, because we have a lot of families that have lost more than one person due to substance use. Um, Dawn does one for suicide-related loss, and he does one of our regular groups where in person were virtual, which, you know, COVID was a horrible thing that happened, but there was some positive stuff that actually came out of it. And one was for this type of um support. We we were only in localities, you know, we had one in this town and that town and that town. And if you weren't within 30 minutes, you weren't going to come. But then COVID happened, and now we have people from all over the country joining. And we've had people from, you know, Canada and other places that come too. So that's been um, you know, a little side effect from the COVID thing that happened. But it's um, and then within our regular groups, the facilitators are all different. We're doing the groups the same. We have a structure we follow, but personalities, um, you know, people click different ways, and the members that come um can be different. So I always say, don't give up. And then I will from that, I've also said not everybody wants to sit in a group and talk about their feelings, right? So we started doing events um so that you could just be side by side another griever, being in a safe place together, that if the conversation turns to your grief, your person, whatever, it it's a it's a nice place to be together. Because I don't know if you guys found this, but one of the things I found when I started to go out back into public with people and I would be with my friends who hadn't had this type of loss, you know, they were very careful about, you know, oh, don't don't say his name, don't make her sad. Like, let's not make her, you know, feel like trigger. Right. And then they so they'd be tiptoeing around me, or if I did cry, they'd be like, Oh, it's a big huge deal. But no, most emotions just bubbled up, right? And then if I was laughing, but someone said, Oh, I'm so glad you're feeling better. Like I was like, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not feeling better at all. So we do these events because you can be with people who, if you're laughing, you're crying. No one is gonna think anything of it, and that has been just a beautiful thing that has grown. We started it from just one um hike with a couple moms walking up. There's like a small little like mountain, and they went for a hike together, and then they called their person's name off the side of the mountain, and we call them the call your name walks. And we started doing those, and then we started just doing you know, all sorts of stuff. So this past weekend we had the young adult group, they went into smash room, you know, they beat the crap out of a bunch of stuff, and they just loved it, you know, get that anger out. Um, but then we do, you know, pottery, and uh, we took a whole busload to the Red Sox, which was beautiful. Um, I'll tell you one story from there. It was it's like the invitation to come back into the world, right? Of doing things and whatever. And this family came and it was a um a father and his daughter, and um the brother and son, he had died. And it was the first time back at a Red Sox game because the last time they were there was the day they got the phone call that he had passed. So it was associated with something really tragic and horrible. And here was this opportunity to come as a group of grievers and make a new, you know, like a new type of feeling around that moment to take it back a little bit, which surrounded by others who get it. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

You know, I I want to come back um to something you said earlier. You said, quote unquote, I didn't need fixing, I needed someone to listen. Um, and I wanted to call kudos out to your sister, um, because I think that there's a lot of family members that just make the comment of, you need help, get off that couch, um, without providing uh an avenue of help or resource. And a lot of times I think, well, it's okay, you're telling me I need to go see a psychologist, which might be the case. They might need to, or a counselor. Um, but I just I kind of wanted to ask uh for you to just kind of expound on that a little bit. There's two different mindsets with that. I'm not broke, stop trying to fix me. Or, you know, I most days I want to have a t-shirt made, I'm broke, and so are you. Um, so there is a brokenness aspect to that. It doesn't mean that we won't uh heal back, probably not the same way. We're probably still going to have some scars, obviously. Um, but getting off the couch for loved ones who mean well but might say it in the wrong way or don't know you know what you're experiencing or feeling, a lot of times it could come across as very pushing back and very obstructive to them. Um what would you say about that? Because I am a huge fan of peer support and getting off the couch.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

You know, it it I know from her it came from a place of love, right? She's very concerned about me. And all family dynamics are different. So for everybody else, it's it it may not work the same way. But, you know, it I like to try to educate the non-grievers out there. Like, how how can you be helpful? You know, so you know how we do that thing, like, oh, let me know if I can do anything, right? That is useless to to grievers. Like, do something. So I think if people out there just do something, get a flyer for some places that might be helpful to your person, you know, do a little research for them. You're in such a place. I, you know, I felt like my whole like I felt like I had like brain fog that just covered me, that I couldn't even have the energy to type and search for my own help. So it was helpful that she was doing that for me and giving me the ability to be like, no, not today. But she didn't give up on me. That's the other thing. She knew in there was Robin who could go on. So I think if people give their griever that credit, they there's a person in here who is going to go on with life. They're gonna get that place, they might need a little bit of assistance from you and you be helpful in actual concrete ways. Take them out for a walk and don't Freaking give them advice the whole time.

SPEAKER_02 22:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Listen to them.

SPEAKER_02 22:04

Just listen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

Yeah. Listening is so powerful. And and you know, uh, I I know your sister, and and it doesn't surprise me that she would uh be the one to really, you know, support you and help you through that those really dark, you know, difficult days. Um, and that she didn't give up on you. I think that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

Yeah, and and validating how this is like so hard. Robin, this is the worst thing that ever happened. This is not trying to dismiss it, you know, like, oh, well, you know, everybody loses somebody, you know, other people have like, no, like listen to me. I am devastated. I this is like I just wanted to, I wanted a hole to just suck me down and never come out of it again. And um, and she let me say those hard things, and I think that's hard for people, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Just you in that and I would say on the flip side of that too, it's okay if you go to a group, it's okay just to sit back and listen yourself and to take it in and listen to others. Don't feel any pressure that you have to immediately out of the gate um share your story if it's too painful. Um, it's okay just to be.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Yeah, we this this quiet people Don knows this too, right? Sometimes the quietest people they come in, they're like, We we do we do a go-around, right? So everybody brings their voice into the circle, at least. And if that's all you do the whole time, that is just fine. And a lot of times um grievers will be like, I can't, I can't talk. This is too hard. And then they become the ones the whole thing that they just they finally found a spot that they could open up. But yeah, it's fine to sit and just listen and be there. And maybe it takes you a few times to before you want to open up, but just being there for other people and listening is such a beautiful thing.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

Yeah, for for those that want to facilitate groups. Um, I I don't know. As a facilitator, I feel like my the biggest role that I have, uh, and the most important role is just to create that safe space that that people feel comfortable. And you know, whether they're quiet uh or not, that's fine, you know, just that gotta create that comfortable, safe space.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Yeah. Well, and our all of our facilitators are bereaved due to substance use related loss, and most of them have been helped by somebody else, right? So they want to reach that hand passive forward, you know, and pull someone out with them. So that's been beautiful to see that happen.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

Yeah, I I've got a guy in one of my groups, uh, it's an in-person group that my wife and I lead uh through TAPS, and um he could not say a word probably for six months. Um, and then now he's the one that speaks the most and has found his voice. Um, so it's been beautiful to watch.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

You know, speaking of that, I recall, Greg, uh that you came to one of our groups at TAPS that I was facilitating about two or three weeks uh after David died. And I was shocked uh that you found us so quickly and that you had the courage to show up. Um and then, you know, you shared, and I was like, wow, this guy's special. Like I knew that that you were going to be in this helping role.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

It's interesting to hear you say that because you've told me that so many times. And it's, you know, sometimes you can't remember back at the very beginning of your journey. You kind of block it out, or you're like, man, have I actually come far at all? And sometimes it really helps to have others affirm you along the way uh to say, look, you're a frog in a pot of boiling water. I you don't realize how far you've come, uh, but you have made huge strides, and and we need that affirmation along the way.

SPEAKER_02 26:01

I can tell you, I have never heard that metaphor, a frog in a pot of boiling water until you've said it. I've heard of you say it, I think twice now. Um, but I'm like, what does that even mean?

SPEAKER_00 26:17

So you're you're in the boiling water as a frog and you don't even realize it's boiling, and you're just sitting in there and you don't jump out of the pot. Um, and it's hard for you to know the situation, the surroundings you're in, or that there's an escape hatch. Um, but it's it's really a matter of peer support group might be that. Um finding somebody else of like trauma, of like kind uh grief uh might be that where you can actually jump out of that pot uh of boiling water. But in the meantime, you're just sitting in there, just kind of vegging on the couch, Robin, as you said. And uh you need to be able to be shown a path forward, a shown a way, as your sister did uh with that. Does that make sense, uh Don?

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Now it does. Yes, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

I I will clarify, I said that it was very lethargic looking at that rabbit earlier on. What I meant to say was cathartic, but uh they sound alike. Robin, you had made a comment that you had never experienced grief to that point. Uh I was also in that same boat um where my dad passed away. Uh, parents got divorced when I was nine months old, was raised by my mom. Uh, dad has some visitation rights. Uh, but when he passed away, I didn't even shed a tear. It just there was no, it wasn't that relationship. Um, and then we've had a host or a guest on here, rather, that we hosted, uh gentleman who lost his uh dad and two brothers. And each one of those losses was totally different, you know, for him. The last one threw him down a rabbit hole. Uh, so talk a little bit about that. As far as like um, you don't necessarily have to have experienced grief before to have this experience, even like the loss of a child, it's going to be one of the harder griefs. And that's not to say that somebody that loses a spouse, it's not difficult or hard. It is. Um, but I think that there's this uh this newness or this aspect of some people have that, oh, I've lost other people. I know what I'm talking about that they kind of impose on you. I don't know if there was a question there, but I rambled.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Yeah, no, um I've been like, you know, like both my parents are alive. I even I have a hundred and one-year-old grandmother still alive. Yeah, there's like longevity in the world here. And and you know, I I got real I got really mad that my old dog was still alive and it died, uh Nick had died before the dog. I had a real anger at that that animal for for a little while, displaced, but made it like why are you still here? And he's not um but yeah, you you can't you can't I think you can't understand until you've gone through something that has been, you know, this type of death, it's right, it's out of order, it's sudden, traumatic, stigmatizing. There's a lot of layers to a substance use death of a child. And in our groups, we're always trying to not like one group, one grief is not more than the other. Like we try to do that, but people will do it themselves, like within the thing, they're like, but I didn't lose a kid, you know, like they they do that, so they feel like some type of grief hierarchy there. Um but I you know we're we're not a really grief aware society, which I think is the problem, right? I love that this is here. There's a bunch of podcasts about grief. I think we're doing a better job about it. I talk about grief sometimes when I'm doing my my um like uh prevention workout in the uh grief support is prevention for families, um, is a public health issue. And I don't think it gets caught up like that, right? Like it's just, oh yeah, there's someone who had something happen and uh, you know, this is horrible right now. At least it wasn't me, and they'll be over it at some point. You know, that's like kind of like pack it up, put it away. And you know, all of us are doing stuff that puts grief kind of in your face. Here it is. I'm talking about it all the time. I'm doing stuff, I'm living in this place. Um I don't know that had anything to do with what you just asked, but that's where I ended up with that in my head.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

So well, and I I think talking about it is um uh one of the ways that I found healing uh through my grief is just being able to talk about Joshua. People, you know, listen to to his story uh was really important to me. Um and I think um just talking about my grief too and and uh allowing others to to talk about theirs and and sharing because I learned so much from people just listening to to them you know tell me what's going on with them. It's like, oh wow, I didn't even think about that. Like, but yeah, that that's happening to me too. But I didn't know that that was it until somebody else said it, you know. Um oftentimes, and I don't know whether it's different for men than women, but I know um I can't always name my feelings. Uh, you know, uh, and I think I have heard other men uh say similar. Uh I think women are probably a little bit better about that than than us men, but uh when I hear other people say it, and metaphors, you know, are really helpful, Greg. You you help me a lot with um a lot of these uh metaphors that you use. I know Dr. Frank Campbell, who was a guest on our um on our podcast, he used metaphors, but you know, it's like, oh, okay, that's I get it now. I understand what's going on inside of me. Um so I think that's uh partially what what you uh were referring to, Robin, and and uh you know just letting it out.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

There's a there's um a gentleman that's been coming to the second group that I ever did. So we started in Braintree, Massachusetts, and we moved to Quincy. And shortly after I started that group, um, their son died, and the husband and wife came and he said nothing. He just sat there. He'd say, you know, my my name is blank and whatever, and um said nothing, said nothing, said nothing. And it took him a couple years to finally get his voice. And when he did, it was because he said he listened to all of these other people and felt permission that he could then share that it was okay as a guy, you know, he was like tough guy from the city type of thing. And um, and now when people come in, he will be like, I used to not talk at all. And then he goes on to this whole thing and he's like, and it's okay if you don't, and and if you do, and um it's that permission, right? Yeah, it's just such a beautiful, it's a beautiful thing. Don, you do it so well. We um, Greg, if you could hear the feedback I get from Don for being a facilitator, I just he's just so compassionate and caring and understanding, and that um ability to just listen so deeply and make the person feel understood as a gift. And not everyone can do that for you. So, you know, I say, you know, go out for a walk and and and listen to a person. Some people don't do that very well. They, you know, they have to they have to interject their own story or something else like that that kind of devalues it. And I think it's the beautiful thing when you find a group or a person who can really, really, really understand what you're trying to say as a griever.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

You know, uh well, Don uh affirmed me earlier, so I'm gonna affirm him. I I don't need to hear the feedback because I'm the one that always gives a feedback on him. I he is uh helped me so much. People say, you know, how did you pair up with this guy on this podcast? I'm sure he probably gets asked the same question, people that don't know me. And it's like because he was one of the few that was willing to listen and pick up the phone when I was early on in my grief journey, um, when others weren't willing to. He's the one that was gentle. He was the one that was listening. Um, and and I've got tears in my eyes uh now saying it. So I wanted to bring that full circle to something else I wanted to comment on. Uh, giving permission, you know, to it's okay, Don, if you want to cry too. I don't have to be the only one. Uh so giving permission in my men's groups that I lead, um, I've got a new gentleman that I just took on uh mentee in uh in Atlanta that lost his son nine months ago to a motorcycle accident. And one of the things I told him this last week is look, I'm six foot seven, 325 pounds. I cry like a baby at times. Uh it's okay. Um, and you know, we don't understand that as a society a lot of times with grief. We feel like there's this you got to man up, got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and you can't show emotion, can't talk about it, and uh you gotta cough and look away if for some reason you get choked up. And it's like, nope, that's that's not at all. So we we try to model by example as much as we can.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

Yeah. And one of the benefits that I have here is uh my main job, right, is an as an insurance agent, which you said at the beginning, it's a family-owned business. It was so hard to come back to work, but the the love and support I got here that if I just started crying at work, it wasn't a big deal. It was like, give her give her what she needed. And not everybody gets that. So the permission to just be a griever, you know, is is something that um I wish more um, you know, businesses and stuff, but like they don't have any grief support. You you get how many days off, you know, and then you've got to come back, you've got to answer the phone. Hi, how can I?

SPEAKER_00 36:23

Yeah, maybe two or three days.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Yeah, and and just be immersed back into the the world of everything is fine here when it really is really not, you know. So um making these type of spaces for grievers, I think, is important and using our voices to say, hey, maybe people need a little bit more time off from work um after death. Uh what can we can we give, you know, flex hours or something like that, and um use our voices. I I our group is peer grief support, but we also do advocacy things too. You know, we have people that are out there holding signs, protesting, you know, at the Purdue Farmer and things, you know, like this. What whatever is giving them that strength and that energy that they can channel their grief into, like some people I'm just a griever, perfectly fine. No one's asking you to do anything more than just be a griever, but there are some people that want or are looking for something else to do. And so looking beyond what you know the traditional, oh, this is you should have, you know, you should journal or you should do that. Like, what else is there that grievers can do to just go on in their lives and um and build different things from it and and be whoever you are and have people listen. Um gosh. I I just I just love this, you know, this whole podcast. I do.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

We like that. Yeah, I love that you love it and um that you're gonna be able to share it with uh people that also hopefully will love it too. Um I'd love to, as we wrap this up, I just wanna um ask you one nugget that you would like to leave our listeners with.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

I would say for me, is don't stay in the isolation. Whatever you do, come out of it somehow. Whether it's watching something on the screen, listening to a podcast, going to a group, going to a walk. Um get out from just yourself. Find a person. There's there's you know, our Facebook group too, right? Like you can find Facebook groups. It doesn't have to be you, you can be anonymous on that. But find something where you can connect with somebody else that will support you in a way that you need to be supported.

SPEAKER_00 38:57

That's good. I love it. Yeah. You know, I look at this podcast, Don, as kind of a public service announcement. Um, not episode 25, but the actual podcast overall of Turning Grief into Growth, the Journey of Transformation. This is us being able to say, especially as two dads, as a host on this, hey, we don't have it all figured out. You know, we're figuring this out as we go as well. But uh do as you know, we're modeling, you know, for you. We have found a lot of uh relief. We've found a lot of peace and path forward. Uh, and a lot of it has come through peer groups. Uh so Robin, we can't thank you enough for coming on, being an advocate uh for uh peer support. And uh we definitely thank you. And I would just ask our listeners to uh like, to subscribe, to share this podcast with others that you know that are hurting and grieving. And uh by all means, we love to hear comments as well. So you can click on the comment button and leave a comment for us. So, Robin, thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_02 40:02

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

Thanks so much.

unknown 40:04

Bye.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to listen. We hope turning grief into growth spoke to your heart and becomes a part of your own journey of healing and transformation. If you know someone who could use a little hope, please share this episode with them. And don't forget to follow, like, or subscribe on your favorite platform so you don't miss what's coming next. Don and I can't wait to share more conversations to help you keep turning your grief into growth. Until next time.