009. Mourning & Grief w/ Liz Allen

009. Mourning & Grief w/ Liz Allen

By Brian Arbor | September 3, 2025

About Liz Allen:

Liz Allen is a 23-year Board Certified Chaplain and Grief Counselor, working in hospitals with individuals and families to support their emotional and spiritual needs. 

Prior to her current work, she was a registered Occupational Therapist for over 30 years. The scope of her practice included working with pediatrics, rehabilitation, nursing homes, acute medicine, and mental health patients.

In addition, Liz has a Master’s Degree in Education and taught at the University of Wisconsin Occupational and Physical Therapy Schools for several years.

In this episode: 

In this episode, Brian speaks with Liz Allen just weeks after the death of her younger sister. Despite nearly three decades of working with loss, Liz finds herself navigating grief she's never experienced before: losing a sibling. She shares what it means to let yourself have grief rather than avoid it, the difference between grief and mourning, and why the parts of people we resisted in life are often what we miss the most.

Key Conversations:

Survivor’s Guilt

Grief vs. Mourning & How to Heal

The Lakota Teaching on Grief

Quote from Liz Allen on How to Grieve:

"You write about it, you talk about it, you art about it, you dream about it, you share about it with someone. Get it out of you. Give it its own life... You need to let it be so it can let you be."

How to Connect with Liz:  

Please send all connection requests to brian@tracesoftrauma.com, and we will facilitate an introduction.

Traces of Trauma Podcast is currently sponsored by the following:

Embrace The Darkness: Somatic Breathwork for Grief and Healing  |  embracethedarkness.org 

Practical Sanctuary: Sensory Interior Design  |  practicalsanctuary.com

Connect with Brian:

Website: https://tracesoftrauma.com/

Email:  brian@tracesoftrauma.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tracesoftrauma

Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/tracesoftrauma

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracesoftrauma/

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/brianarbor

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to Traces of Trauma, where we explore the quiet echoes that trauma leaves behind and the gentle path of healing. I'm your host, Brian Arbor, inviting you to join me in conversations that honor our stories, our struggles, and the strength and grace it takes to move forward. This is a safe space to listen, reflect, and connect in the shared journey beyond our trauma. Welcome back, everyone. With me today is Liz Allen. Liz has been a friend and cohort for probably, I don't know, three years or so. Um we met through an organization called the Caregivers Project, which we're uh currently still forming the future of. Um Liz has been a hospital chaplain for 28 years and has certifications in uh grief, preventing burnout and caregivers and mental health. And uh living in Madison, Wisconsin with her therapy dog Carlita, who is just a fluffy little bundle of joy. Um her background includes occupational therapy and improv training at Second City. So uh, you know, in the realm of hospital chaplain, I'm sure uh improv humor and occupational therapy weave together quite well. Um and part of why, Liz, I asked you to be here is we're um it's only a few weeks following the death of your sister. And I know you're um facing and dealing with your grief. And the way that you face and deal with your grief is powerful. And I wanted to invite you into a conversation to share not only how it is for you, but how you are with it. So, anything else you want to say to let people know who you are or what's going on in your world?

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Well, I'm ecstatic to be here and to talk about grief for sure. I love grief, I have opinions about it, and I am in an experience of grief with the death of my sister, and as you alluded to, I know everything there is to know about grief. I've been trained, I work in it every day, I've had two near-death experiences myself. So, you know, what can you teach me, grief? And then I said to myself, Miss Know It All. And I didn't include in in my bio that I'm a university, have been a university professor. So I'm paid to know. I am a know it all. And from the second city point of view or other points of view, I don't mind telling you that I know something. So now my sister dies, actually, July 18th. So I was thinking today, uh, it's August 15th, and then, hmm, so it's been however long it's been. And I realized that I miss know it all, have never had a sister die. I've had parents die. I almost died, I've had friends die, I work in death and die, and I have never had a sister die. And so I took it on. Like, teach me, teach me, because I believe in lifelong learning, teach me, my sister Kate, how to let a sister go. And um here I am now sharing that experience with you, Brian. You're the perfect one, and with anyone who's grieving, and I say everyone is grieving. Yeah, we'll more about that later. So that's who I am right now about the sister my sister's death, and she's my younger sister, I'm the middle child, we're all four years apart. My older sister's 85, I'm 81, and it's my younger sister, 77, who died first. Not supposed to be that way, yeah, and so it is.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

And what are you learning about grief in this period of your life?

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Here's what I would say I've learned from my sister's grief is I've known this, but knowing by the by is the booby prize. Experiencing is where the where the juice is, and I am living the experience of loss, and I'm letting myself have it. Like the tears just were there now. All right, you got tears about your sister's loss. You prepared for it. She knew three months before she died that she was gonna die, and she planned her death, meaning not suicidal, but she had hoped to die after she retired within 10 years, because that's all her money would last. And she lasted 17. So she is teaching me how to be how to let yourself experience the loss. You can know everything there is about something, but that isn't where it's at, yeah. Where it's at is letting yourself have the experience because that's how you heal. You heal by experiencing it. One of the things that's what you're teaching me. Yes, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

One of the things you said in a prior conversation is it's there's more to grieve than the absence of your sister. There's all the different ways that that shows up, all the different things that maybe it seems like it shouldn't be showing up, but it is. All the little all the little futures that you didn't know were taken for granted. What would you say about the um like the ways that grief creeps in unexpectedly?

SPEAKER_01 8:00

What would I say about the way grief creeps? It's so well said, creeps in. So when a person, and then in this case me, loses something, it brings up every other loss. There they are again in living color. The big ones, the middle-sized ones, the ones you even thought you forgot. No, there they are, one more time. Because grieving, you don't get over grief, you integrate it. I two months ago had my younger sister, Kate. I couldn't stand her half the time. She scolded me a lot because we didn't live the same way. I didn't live like her, and she didn't live like me, and so she scolded me a lot of the time. We were together from early on, and so I now am noticing that I'm missing her scolding, like what's up with that? You know, I might have almost wished that she died when she'd scold me, and now I'm missing her scoldings. So how it shows creeps in. If you had asked me before she died, even before she was diagnosed, well, I miss her scoldings, I would have said that on your life, and now I'm missing her scoldings because I'm missing the her that's scolded, so it creeps up, and the other way it creeps up. I said, I believe early in my speaking, that I myself had two near-death experiences. One at the age of eight years old, in which I had a ruptured appendix. They operated, which had they known it ruptured, they wouldn't have. So I was in a semi-coma with infection throughout my body. For a month, they thought I could die. And then there's the earlier one, the three-month-old one, that was born with an enlarged thyroid, so I couldn't breathe. Is anybody out there even caring? Because I'm having some trouble over here. I wouldn't language it dying, but I would language it. What the hell is going on? I am not right here. Somebody, mother or dad, do you care or not? And so, of course, I I was known as unsat, I couldn't be satisfied. And that's the me you are now talking to right now. I still can't be satisfied. Or I can, but I have to, I have to notice that I'm feeling unsatisfied, that I'm trying to get my way, and therein lies my sister Tati. I was older than her, I wanted all the attention. She came along and she got it. I'm like, uh-uh, uh-uh-uh-uh-uh. I had a good thing going, sister, and you have ruined it, and that's the basis of our relationship.

unknown 12:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Oh my gosh. And I can laugh and I can cry about it.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

Yeah. You know, there is no uh grief going our way. Grief goes the way grief is gonna go. That's it. And it's gonna grief when it's griefing and it's not when it's not. Absolutely. And um, you know, I I heard you say, you know, dude, there were times you might have even wished she would die in the midst of all that scolding. Um and it's struck a chord because it's such a familiar guilt trigger for people dealing with grief.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

So, in I mean, it didn't sound like there's much guilt over there where you are. Great. Uh, but if you were in your chaplaining, you've run into family members who wished ill or had bad thoughts, and then all of a sudden the person died, and they're left dealing with like that ill will uh being uh a burden. Yes. How do you face something like that?

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Um, first of all, I I do have feelings of guilt. So I'm not immune to it, and in fact, I notice it probably more. So I in my work as a chaplain, I not only notice it in others, because I notice it in myself, but there are terms for it, and you might know well from trauma. It's called survivor's guild. There's a name for it. How come they did and I didn't? And how it showed up with my sister is she shouldn't have died first. If any one of the three of us, I'm the most raucous of them all, I should have died first. I smoked, told dirty jokes, and loved my beer. My older sister is almost a teetotaler, she's eighty-five, and she's never smoked. Yeah, thus she's eighty five, going strong. My younger sister smoked, she she didn't drink, she didn't tell dirty jokes, she did it right, so it was supposed to be me. So there it is in my sister. Now, your question was how do I deal with it with in my work and when I see it? And yes, I see it all of the time, and this is something about grief that uh your listeners may find useful. Someone dies, oh my gosh, you feel bad because they died, could be your mom, could be your dad, could be your enemy, and you're kind of glad they died, and then you feel bad that you're glad that they died. I mean, what kind of human being would feel glad that somebody died? And it is part of grief to in the early stages sanctify the dying. Well, they weren't that bad, and you know, they were my mom or my dad, or they were, and so we tell the good stories about them. But there's the that son of a gun used to scold me all the time, so there is that other side of it, and culturally, and I say culturally, universal internationally, you don't, it's not nice to talk bad about the dead. Some cultures even have professional mourners, um, and some cultures mourn the way the culture mourns, and they go to the funeral and they feel bad and they cry and cry and cry, and they get in the car, and they're like glad that's over. So, um, and I am quite a storyteller, so I have to watch myself. The point is, how do I deal with it with people who are survivors, shall we say my commitment is for everyone we survive on our own, it's built into our system. Your body, mind, and spirit will survive. I'm interested in people thriving in their life, not surviving, and so when I see it, I notice it and I let them notice it. I don't talk them into it or out of it, and I just notice we'll say in a particular situation that they're sainting the dying. And then I say, is there anything you would say about how they they were with like, gee, they seem kind of my sense of the person dying from stories or even their dead self. I say, they seem pretty stubborn to me. Their body like tells me that they're pretty, and boy, did they let loose. Stubborn, you don't know the half of it. Did you know that person? It sounds like you did, and then they have a right that it brings up. Now I can talk about the not so nice part, the part that I didn't like about them. Yeah, they were my mom, dad, sister, brother, enemy, best friend. But boy, I couldn't stand it when they do some of that stuff, and so that's how I bring it to be available. I don't tell them, but they get to tell themselves. Yeah, yeah, they weren't all the glitters ain't gold, let me tell you.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

Definitely, you know, there are aspects of people that like just really the world is better without that. And sometimes what what we what we think we would really prefer to do without um it winds up being the thing we're missing. You're scolding with your sister, right? Absolutely. Um I don't know, it's not the right word, but like the real evil in a person. And um the things that we just didn't like. So, you know, boy, your sister could just shove it where the sun doesn't shine if she came after you one more time. Absolutely, but here you are, and that nagging and scolding was a part of the sister you loved, and it's a a part that doesn't keep you from loving her. Yes. So there's room sometimes in death and grief to celebrate the parts of someone that we resisted with everything we had while they were here. Um, and it seems like perhaps that's a way to bring them closer now that they've gone further away. Absolutely, it's to have them present again.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

Yeah. That's it, Brian. Absolutely. It's that's the usefulness of it. Is you're missing how they loved you. That's how they loved. She scolded me. In fact, in her last three weeks for sure, or maybe month, she said to me while she was still kind of talking, you know, I don't like the way you live. And I said, Do you know what? I am well aware of that. I am well aware that you don't like how I live. And I just left it like that. And I knew that's how she loves people. She tells them how they should be doing it. And that's fine for her, just not for me. And so I how I managed it was I shut up. So I didn't express myself around her. I wasn't authentic with her in the way that I normally am. And that's how she loved. And she was known in our family as that. And they would say, Don't tell Kate this if you don't want her opinion about it. And so stuff was kept from her because she'd tell you it wasn't right. Or don't do it like that, or you shouldn't do it. And if you didn't want to hear that, there were instructions that came with our sister Kate, then don't tell her stuff. Because she is gonna correct you. That's how she loves you. Yeah, I don't want to marry somebody that loves me like that. So anyway, and it brings to mind and uh what I learned in my grief training from the Center for Loss and Life Integration in uh Denver, Colorado, uh with Alan Walfeld. If anyone wants to look up all kinds of writings he's done. What it taught me, this training program I was in, uh it taught me there's a difference grief and mourning. And grief is the outward expression of loss, and mourning is the experience of the loss, and some cultures are great at the outward and not so good at the inward, and some cultures are better at the inward. Oh my god, they faint and carry on, and you got to get the smelling souls and have the experience of the loss, but they can't talk about it, and then some people talk about it. Oh my god, you know, my sister died. Do you know what it's like for me now? They can talk about it, but they won't let themselves experience it. So the grief is the outward expression of mourning, and the mourning is the internal experience, rather, of loss. Grief is outward experience of loss, mourning is internal. I worked with a uh chaplain, uh, black chaplain, Melvin, and I was saying to her something about grieving, and she said, Oh, in our culture, we're great at the mourning park. You know, we have the fans and the people come and they collapse, and the spirit overcomes them and they drop, and yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've experienced that with that culture and other cultures as well, by the way. But talk about it, they won't talk about it. Not no, it's never gonna happen. It never did happen, it's not that, but the mourning part, they have got it in space. So, and this is this is international. Cultures have uh particular cultures pay for mortars to come and carry on. Oh my god, you just gotta love it. So it's human being, and human being does it the way human being does it, and we do it differently because we're different. I'm not you, Brian, you're not me. I didn't have the experiences you had, you didn't have the experiences I had that I've put into my story of my living.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Yeah. Um, one of the things that you brought to me, I don't even remember how far back, was uh quote from Tara Brock. I've got it right here. You gonna read it? Sure. Yeah. Do you want to read it? In the Lakota Su tradition, a person who is grieving is considered most wakan, most holy. There's a sense that when someone is struck by the sudden lightning of loss, he or she stands on the threshold of the spirit world. The prayers of those who grieve are considered especially strong, and it is proper to ask them for their help. You might recall what it's like to be with someone who has grieved deeply. The person has no layer of protection, nothing left to defend. The mystery is looking out through that person's eyes. For the time being, he or she has accepted the reality of loss and has stopped clinging to the past or grasping at the future. In the groundless openness of sorrow, there is a wholeness of presence and a deep natural wisdom. Amen. And I see pieces of that in the way you've shown up these last six weeks. Just being in a moment of grief when it shows up, um, and recognizing the past and the unfulfilled future without losing the sister you actually had in trying to hang on to those past experiences or those futures.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

Yes. Well, as described in the reading by the Lakota Sioux, you're present, you're totally present, and that's how you heal is by letting yourself experience your experiences. As human beings, we tend to, we have a hint that there's an experience and we don't like it. You know, I didn't wish her dead, other than on a rare occasion. I wished her to shut up. I didn't ever wish her dead. To shut up.

unknown 30:01

Uh uh.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

Anyway you don't need to. But healing occurs in the experience. It doesn't occur not experiencing.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

You know, there's tend to not want to be with certain things.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

Exactly. I mean, there's we've seen grief turn people to drinking, to drugs, to you know, some people deal with the grief by eating or uh just go like sleep, just going unconscious, and all you do is show up for work and go to sleep.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

Um and that smothering or hiding from the the real impact of like on ourselves. That's right. The cost of it. It costs us the ability to recognize that part of ourself. That's right. To reconcile the the what happened and the way that it shook parts of who we are.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

That's it exactly. You gotta be with it to heal, not deny it. Denial, besides being a river wherever it is. Denial, I say this about denial. It's useful because it shows you there's something you're avoiding. Oh no, I I don't. Oh, really? You protest so loudly. Uh-huh. What is it that you don't want to be with? And whatever you use to deny, as you said, eat, sleep, drink, tell dirty jokes, commit suicide, it's something you cannot be with. When the being with it is what's going to heal you.

unknown 32:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

Get support in being with it, but be with it.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

If we took grief and mapped it out like it fit in the world of occupational therapy. The the longer you ignore the issue in the OT world, the like it doesn't get better. If you're lucky, you just live with it. If you're if you're anything other than lucky, it gets worse. You get worse, it costs you. But the longer you ignore it, educate for it, you just pop advil three times a day and struggle on as if it's not there.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

Without actually doing the work to identify what happened. What does that particular injury need to recover and heal? It takes rest, it takes focused work to come back from the kinds of, I mean, that's what occupational therapy is all about. And we are much more willing to accept that truth about physical injury than emotional injury.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Amen. Yeah. Because they're all related. You have a physical injury. Let me tell you, if you ask somebody about it, they have emotions about it. And if they notice, they have a meaning added. It's called in occupational therapy, the spirit. What's it all about, Alfie? So the bigger picture is the spirit of it. And I'm not talking Catholic and Lutheran. I'm talking for your will to live what gets you up in the morning. And if you have a spiritual problem, it'll show up in your emotions and your body. You have an emotional problem, it'll show up in your body and your spirit. Because the ankle bones connected to the knee bone. There's even a song about it.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:02

We're connected.

SPEAKER_00 35:03

Yeah, you see depression set in for people who are dealing with unresolvable chronic pain.

SPEAKER_01 35:11

Absolutely. And it's natural.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

That it would. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 35:19

So, what are some of the ways people can approach their grief?

SPEAKER_01 35:28

Perfect. Great question. What's been there for me to say, so I'm going to say this now, and then I'll go on to answer your question. People think of grief as death. No, you grieve loss. You grieve your divorce. You grieve your car breakdown. I'm a, as I said, a university professor. So students grieve that they got a C or a D D or an F on a test. And they go through the grieving cycle. Sometimes it's quickly. Well, if I hadn't played the night before, if I'd studied more, took better notes, or did this or do that? So grief is about loss. And it doesn't have to be death. It's life not going the way you had planned on it going. Now, to answer the next question, how can people grieve well, go about it? They need to experience it. And how do you experience it? You write about it, you talk about it, you art about it, you dream about it, you share about it with someone. Get it out of you. Give it its own life. In picture, in humor, in however you express it, you need to express it. You need to let it be so it can let you be. And if you hide from it, denial it, then you're stuck with it. And I say it this way, we're all gonna die anyway. So it's gonna cost your life rather than give you your life. It's not gonna save your life. You are gonna die. There's gonna come a day and a moment and a situation. So it's not gonna prevent death, but it may cause you to feel dead or not alive, as you could be. So art its way. I have a dear friend uh who says it this way her byline is the arts are ministry to the soul. And that's what we're talking about here is the soul of a person. And I'm not talking go to heaven, soul. I'm talking about the essence of a person.

SPEAKER_00 38:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

So that's how express it one way or another. And it can be useful to get it out of you, whether you sing in the shower or curse in the shower or roll down your windows. We used to do this in California, and just shout out and have a mad moment on the freeway when no one can hear you. If you want to save your image and look good, or put a bunch of pillows in a closet and beat the heck out of them. If you're mad, be mad. If you're sad, be sad. If you're glad, be glad. So let yourself experience the loss. That's how you heal.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

Yeah. I heard you say, give it a life. Give it a life. And in the background, I heard so it doesn't eat away and worse.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

Yeah, it's exactly it. So it doesn't cost you yours. It gives you yours. Give it life.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

There's a there are kinds of grief that just don't end. They don't end. It it it's like, you know, I could spend the rest of my life trying to get my next door neighbor to move out of my neighborhood. Yep. And resent everything because they're still here. Yeah. And do everything I can to get them out. Yeah. Or I could just let them live next door. That's it. And grief, like settling into being at peace with grief. Yeah. Feels kind of like that for me. Like it's not that the grief is who I am. And I have to watch out because if I'm trying to undo its existence somehow, it takes so it takes so much of me. Yes. To try and negate the existence of that grief when I could let it live next door.

SPEAKER_01 41:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:11

And when the music's blasting at 2 a.m. and I want to swear at it, I swear at it. Swear about it. When the grief about it when the grief butts in, and I'm at work and I'm busy, when the grief has me like oversensitive to something, and I'm just, you know, whatever. It it is, it becomes a part of who we are. And I feel like grief is also a measure of honoring the value of what was lost. Yeah. Well said. You know, I don't grieve the sandwich I ate for lunch. That sucker's gone. Yeah. But I I grieve things that really mattered to me. I for a long time was really in the grip of grief around a failed marriage. And it wasn't the end of our challenges with each other. It wasn't the you know the it wasn't the moving on. It was the loss of what I thought we had.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:34

It was the loss of the future that we promised each other.

SPEAKER_01 42:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

Like we had named children that we didn't have yet. And now we're never going to have that. We had to let go of the family that I was building. You know, we grieve the loss of what mattered to us.

SPEAKER_01 43:01

That's right. That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_00 43:04

And as much as your sister nagging and scolding you was irritating, somewhere in there, you must have been glad she still cared. I did.

SPEAKER_01 43:18

When I said, you know, oh, this is how she loves me. I don't like how she loves me. I I don't love. Well, I do love like that. I didn't like what she I just shut up about. She didn't like what I and she told me about it. I didn't like what she and I shut up about it. And so it cost me my living. No, no, no, no. And I did that. She didn't shut me up. I shut me up. So it was costly to my living.

SPEAKER_00 43:56

Yeah. Yeah. And somewhere in Recognizing the value of what we've lost. There's a little spark of joy available, yes, hidden in the grief.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

That's it exactly. That's it exactly. I just uh less than a week ago uh lost a boss of mine who I also didn't like most of the time, but I respected her. And anyway, I happened to be involved, as the divine would have it, in her dying. And so I was writing her today, her family, a um card that we have from work. And I want to read the message about grief that we send people. And it says, May the blessings of love be upon you, may its peace abide with you, may the essence illuminate your heart now and forever. And that's the saying that we then write a personal message honoring someone's grief. Love be upon you, peace abide with you. Essence illuminate like the uh Le Code de Sue. The people that are grieving are awake, they are awake, awake, awake, and now and forevermore.

SPEAKER_00 45:45

Thank you so much, Liz, for the conversation today, for um, the way you walk in the world. Yes, it's really a pleasure to be your friend and colleague, and um I just love you to bits, and I'm sure we'll see more of you around the podcast in the future. Oh, great. Is there anything you'd like to say in closing here before we go?

SPEAKER_01 46:17

Certainly, thank you. And thank you for this opportunity, because it's in my commitment for well being for everyone, even my enemies, with absolutely no one left out.

SPEAKER_00 46:32

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 46:33

You're welcome. Keep on, keeping on, man.