E:5 Clarissa Moll

Clarissa Moll is an award winning writer and podcaster who helps bereaved people find flourishing after loss. Her debut book, "Beyond the Darkness: A Gentle Guide for Living with Grief and Thriving After Loss" was a best selling new release in 2022. During our engaging interview Clarissa discusses new beginnings after her husband fell to his death in 2018 during a camping trip. The now remarried mother of four shares grief can be very isolating but widows have to show up and keep showing up while "learning life in tension of joy and sorrow".  In the process of understanding sometimes it's stormy all the way to the horizon.

Also visit AWG55.com to enjoy more encouraging interviews from more widows.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hi, this is your host, Dale Josie, and welcome to another episode of Lost and Transformative Life, highlighting real stories of hope, sharing strategies useful to other widows facing similar challenges, and also pointing listeners to valuable resources designed to inspire connection and hope. With that in mind, this podcast series is also available on Apple, Amazon, Spotify, or wherever you choose to enjoy listening to podcasts. Today's guest, Clarissa Mall, is an award-winning writer who helps bereaved people find flourishing after loss. Her debut book, Beyond the Darkness, A Gentle Guide for Living with Grief and Thriving After Loss, was a best-selling release in 2022. She's also the author of Beyond the Darkness Devotional, Hurt Help, Hope, a real conversation about teen grief and life after loss. And also the book Hope Comes to Stay. With that, without further delay, Marissa, welcome to Lost and Transformative Life. How are you today?

SPEAKER_00 1:15

I'm doing well, Del. Thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Absolutely. You know, and I think it's important that again we have we have different widows come on and share their different experiences. And and and yours, I like to always start at the beginning, right? Um You talk about uh your husband Rob losing him in 2018 when you're the outbat when you're in the uh outer parts of Mount Rainier. Walk us through that and how and what happened.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Sure. Well, my story as a widow is a story of sudden loss. Um my husband went out for a hike in the backcountry one day and he didn't return home at the appointed time. Instead, that evening, police chaplains came to my campsite and gave me the news that he had fallen to his death, uh that he had died, and that our lives were going to be forever changed. Um it was news that really shook the world of uh myself, my four children, and uh propelled us into a future with a lot of unknowns, a future where the plans that we had developed for ourselves uh really needed to be scrapped. We needed to start over to rebuild.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Start over to rebuild. And what do you what I mean, I cannot imagine that kind of tragic loss. So what are your strongest memories from the time immediately following that loss? You said you had to have a friend who was nearby, she came and held your hand. You said that was critical to you.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Yeah, the first few days and months after our loss were filled with disorientation, a lot of fear, um, not so much anger, but just confusion. Uh a sudden loss is not part of the calendar, it's not part of a vacation itinerary, it certainly wasn't part of ours. And so that level of disruption really just shakes you to your core. And so for us, a lot of those first days and months were trying to find ways to ground ourselves in what was real to separate out all of the crazy places your brain could go after loss and uh focus on what was before us for that day. A lot of times that meant focusing on things like eating properly, sleeping well, making sure that we had connections with close and trusted friends who could care for us, and uh and letting a lot of things go. Anything that didn't seem extra, uh, or anything that seemed extra when it came to surviving, just had to wait till later.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

So basically you had to jettison all the things that you thought were important to you at at that moment in your life prior to Rob dying, but it's also some things that you held on to to preserve and protect his memory, yes?

SPEAKER_00 4:03

That's true. You know, loss uh clarifies what is important for us. And so there were things, yes, that I had thought were important before. For grieving people, it is a great comfort to discover that there are many things that do remain the same after a loss. And those are really the places on which we can build as we are trying to figure out how to remember our person well and how to build a life without them in it.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Well, you know, as you talk about building a life without them in it, uh you write, I think I read on Instagram where you and Rob actually talked about dying early and you discussed the ramifications of that with your kids. What prompted that conversation? Did you have a was it a premonition?

SPEAKER_00 4:49

It certainly wasn't. Uh in fact, I didn't want to have those conversations. Rob was a journalist and he studied uh euthanasia as he was reporting on it for Christianity Today and other outlets. And so he was deeply involved in trying to understand what it meant to die with dignity. To do that, he became a hospice volunteer. He began working the night shift at a local funeral home to try to get as close as he could to people and families who were experiencing loss because he believed that uh as a person of faith, that faith probably had something to contribute to conversations like that in a highly medicalized society. And so he would come home from those events and want to debrief, want to talk about those things. And of course, as a mom with young kids, that was the last thing I wanted to talk about. Um, but those conversations about what it means to die well, what it means to take care of your family after you're gone, how to talk to your children about death and dying, those uh I consider now to be conversations of deep love that he offered to me many years before I would ever need to put them into practice.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

So, Clarissa, let's talk a little bit about changes in the immediate area, right? Because all of a sudden you go from uh a group of friends to now you're a young, single uh uh mother. Uh, how does that shift the family dynamics and the friend dynamics being now by yourself?

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Yeah, that's a great question, Dale. For some people, um things get better in their family relationships and friend relationships after they lose a loved one. People show up, they commit to them for the long haul, and then other people feel a real loss. Uh, friends ghost them, family members get complicated with lots of other feelings that they bring to this shared loss. In my case, I was really blessed to have a number of people who committed to walking beside me. They took my kids to youth group, they picked them up from school, they brought us meals, and they were willing to treat us like we were still normal. I think for uh families who are experiencing loss, nothing feels normal anymore. And so an invitation out to a movie, even if you end up turning it down, is a really gracious gift to receive in loss because it says, I see you and I care about you. And, you know, it takes a special measure of grace for the supporters of a grieving person to receive no as an answer sometimes. But if you're committed to loving someone for the long haul, I think you get that long-term vision where you realize that even if something is tender right now, maybe three weeks from now, three months from now, maybe even three years from now, a person will be ready to re-engage in new patterns of relationship after the rawness and tenderness of grief have sort of ebbed away a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

I think you're right also uh on on Instagram. I think I read where you said it's okay to say the D word, you know. And I think that, you know, it's like uh if you have a death, right? I don't want to talk about your ex, but you're saying in your position, let's talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Yeah. Right. Let's talk about it. Let's talk it, let's use death and dead and dying. Uh, we don't need to talk about crossing the rainbow bridge or passed away. Um, you know, for people of faith, we tend to like to use euphemisms um in the arms of Jesus. And even when, as a person of faith, you believe those things to be, as they say, gospel truth, uh, we still need to use concrete language to talk about our loss. It grounds us in reality. And especially if there are young children in earshot in your circle of influence, that concrete language is really important for them too.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Yeah, but Joe, while we while we're talking about this, uh you you also posted, I think, that um Artemis II, uh, the space shot, uh, recent space shot, four astronauts going into space. And you said, I've to find I'm gonna read this because I don't want to mess this up, and I was doing my research. You said that it symbolized walking forward into new life after loss. How did uh explain, unpack that for us, and what did you mean? And why did Artemis II uh be such an allegory for you?

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, the NASA commander of the Artemis II mission, his name is Reed Wiseman. He was a widower, he is a widower uh with two young daughters in their early 20s. Uh, Reed lost his wife a number of years ago to cancer. And uh in all of the news reporting, it mentioned that as Reed and his daughters talked about the possibility of going to space, it was a hard decision for them all. Uh, we know that there's a lot of risk in space travel. And, you know, even from my own experience, I know it's hard when a parent goes away after the loss of another parent. You can wonder, well, if I were to lose dad, who would I have left? Uh, I'd have nobody. And so there is a real and palpable sense of risk in stepping forward into new ventures after loss. But as I saw that Artemis II mission complete its orbit around the moon and come back to Earth, I thought, what a triumph for that family. Um, it is not a triumph that has come without pain, uh, that does not carry grief alongside of it, but it matches grief with bravery. It matches sorrow with joy in trying new things that uh transform us as we tap into the resilience that is just a part of our nature.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

Mm-hmm. Tapping into resilience is part of our nature. And even for Reed Wiseman, uh, what a loving tribute to his ex-wife uh who had Carol who had passed away from cancer. Uh actually, I was reading where one he one of the one of the craters on the moon he named Carol in honor of his wife, which I also thought was such a beautiful testament.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

Yeah, to the relationship. It's important to find ways to carry your person into the life that you live without them. Whether it is uh putting a plaque on a park bench or um running a 5k in their memory, starting a foundation to garner support for the disease that took their life early, or yes, naming a crater on the moon. There are a number of ways, concrete and immaterial, that uh that people can engage in that really give us a sense of continuity as we carry that love forward.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

That's so good. Carrying that love forward, not as a debilitating, and we're gonna talk a little bit about that in your book in a minute, because you have certainly carried that uh that uh that grief forward without it decapitating your life. And we're gonna talk about what happened to you 18 months after Rod's passing. But before we get there and looking back, what do you wish you had known about grief before your loss?

SPEAKER_00 11:50

I wish that I had I had known how long it would last. Uh I know that um when I began the grieving process after my husband died, I I thought I could maybe complete it in 12 to 18 months. Um I was a straight A student as a high schooler. Maybe I could even beat the system and complete it in less than a year. Um but you know, almost seven years out, I have realized that grief is actually not a process. It's not a seven-step um kind of endeavor where you get a certificate of completion at the end. It is a companion. And when we learn to walk with grief as our companion, we discover that there are any number of places that we can go with grief beside us. We can uh go into the boardroom, we can go into the classroom, we can go into a new marriage, a new relationship. Um there's so many ways that we can take grief with us as collective wisdom, as discernment, as reordering of priorities, and of the love that energizes us to keep living even after our person has died.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Yeah, that's very positive. Writings, and your writings are amazing. We're gonna get to your book in a second. But I also in my research read somewhere that you wrote, um, sometimes it's a storm all the way to the horizon. Um, and that's that's that that's very oppressive. And so uh so right up front, we'll talk about our faith. You know, both of us are are are uh believers in our in our in faith. We we that's I'm sorry, it's essential to our core. Uh I'm an elder in my church, you are a writer for a Christian magazine. So outside of our strong faith, which by the way, people suspect if you say that you're a believer in Jesus Christ and your faith is strong, they see it almost as a knee-jerk, right? Like, yeah, well, of course they're gonna say that. So let's look at it. Uh, if it's possible, shift the prism a little bit. Outside of your faith, what else did you do? What else happened? What else helped you in pragmatic steps independent of your faith walk?

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Hmm. That's a great question because I think for a lot of people, they think of grief as an emotional or psychological experience. But grief is actually a whole body experience. So for me, it began as elemental decisions about whether or not to consume alcohol, whether or not to consume coffee, uh to add caffeine that can cause anxiety feelings in my body. Uh, it began with making decisions about how late to stay up at night before I went to bed, whether to watch uh TV or be on social media before I went to bed, how much to consume social media at all. All of these are very elemental kinds of decisions uh that really help a person in the early days and in the years to come, even after their loss. Uh I know that now when I have a wave of grief, I need to take extra time to be outside, to take walks, to do some gardening, to get busy with my hands and my body, to um help the grief flow through me instead of get stuck and build up inside of me. So those were many of the kinds of instrumental things that I did at the very beginning. I also made a point to reach out to friends. Uh sometimes this meant a text, and sometimes it was forcing myself to go to social gatherings, even when I was worried they'd be awkward. I was worried about awkward questions, uncomfortable silences. I knew that to some extent I had to put myself in those situations because community was going to be core to rebuilding, to the resilience that I knew that I wanted to develop. I'd have to do it with other people and not as a lone wolf.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

That's so good. And not as a lone wolf, and also not as a lone wolf would suggest there are traditions and rituals that you have adapted to keep the memory of Rob alive in your heart as you move forward.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

That's right. You know, when Rob first died, a group of friends and family came together. We pulled some money and we made a donation to an organization that mattered to Rob so that we could make a significant gift in his memory. Uh, but there are many ordinary ways that our family has chosen to remember him as well. We talk about dad all the time, uh, the things dad liked, the music he liked, the food he liked, but we try not to mythologize him. It's really important that we all remember him as a human. Uh he was he had feet of clay, and so we remember his foibles as well. We remember the things that irked him or uh that annoyed him because we want to remember him as he was, not as our memories hope he would be. And I think that that's something, particularly as the days and years go on, it's easy to get a blurry vision of your person. And so whether you're doing material acts to remember them or you're just bringing them up in conversation, uh, remembering them as a whole person is really important.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

I really like that, uh, not mythologizing the person. And I think that is so critical to healing because all of a sudden uh they they they almost obtain this uh this immortality of a superhero, if you will, as like that was not him or her, right? So it's important to make sure they did have feet of clay. And I just wanted to kind of hammer that home. There is a ritual uh that you do have uh that you said the National Park Service has set a cardboard box and you still have that beside your bed. Or at the time of the writing when I read this, it was certainly where you said there was some mementos in there of uh of Rob that are near and dear to you. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Yeah, you know, in the process of um bereavement, after you are trying to figure out what to do with the person's things, there are a lot of hard decisions, and we've had to make those too, determining what to save and what to let go, what to give away uh and what to keep. And our family has determined that we would make those decisions together. So whenever we made a decision about a book or an article of clothing, uh Rob's hiking compass or his binoculars, we would get together as a family and we would talk about it. And any one of us had veto power. So if four people wanted to give something away and one person wanted to keep it, we kept it. And uh we did that because even though our grief is unique to each of us, it is a shared loss. And part of the way we honor that shared loss is to learn to honor one another in the process. And it's an exercise that together we have worked hard to do as a family, and we've extended that to extended family as well, you know, including them in the process of receiving particular items that would be meaningful to them. Um, because Rob is a part of so many people, and we want to honor that.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Yeah, before I go to my next question, and we talk a little bit about your book and also next stage of your life, which is also important for those who've joined us in the middle of this podcast, this uh episode of Loss and Transitional Transformational Life. We're talking to Clarissa Mall. She's an award-winning author who helps breathe people find flourishing after loss. And in a minute, we're going to talk about her debut book, Beyond the Darkness: A Gentle Guide for Living with Grief and Thriving After Loss, which is a bestseller when it was published in 2022. Carissa, you made a decision which is uh very important and moving forward. There was a wonderful day in your life that happened at a bakery. What happened? And what year, and how long did that happen after uh Rob had passed away?

SPEAKER_00 19:57

That's right. Yes, uh I remarried and uh we got married in a small bakery. It was um very quiet and unassuming, and it was just the perfect way to uh start this new uh this new chapter of my life. I'm really grateful for the opportunity uh to experience love, married love like that again. And uh it was important to me as I was um thinking about the possibility of remarriage that I came to that as a whole person. And uh Rob and I had talked many years before as we talked about end of life planning and decisions about death and dying, that if we were to die, we wanted each other to remarry. Um, that that was an important conversation that we needed to have. And so I went into that experience really with a very strong sense of Rob's blessing. Uh, that this was something we had talked about, that he trusted my decision making and my wisdom, not only for myself, but for my children. And um, and that this is the kind of new life that I would have hoped for him and that I knew he would have hoped for me.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

But what's intriguing about that decision, I wanna I want to kind of get your thoughts on this, despite the pain of losing a spouse, despite the trauma, the depth sheer devastation from that landscape, from that position, how are you able to say yes to love again? And I do.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

That's a good question. Uh, I think the landscape is all still there. And uh, that is one of the things that you learn as you live with loss. It's one of the things that I think until you've experienced loss, uh, is really hard for folks on the outside of your life to realize. Many people look at remarriage after loss as like a happy ending, it's a conclusion to a sad story. That the sadness of what was has been completed and restored and redeemed in this new marriage. But if we believe that grief is a companion, I am remarried, but my first husband is still dead. I still miss him. My children still miss their father. And a part of the life of grief is learning to live in the tension of joy and sorrow, learning to receive happiness and the pain of loss in the same hand, to carry them gently, to make space for both, uh, to allow them to be in conversation with one another. And so that's chosen, that's how I've chosen to um be remarried. Uh I honor the love that was and that continues to be as I remember Rob. And I honor the love that is now just beginning to grow in my new marriage.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

That's a beautiful concept. I I really like that. And but you know what? In our society, there's always going to be uh women who are gonna clutch their bees to say, just I can't believe she's getting married so soon. Did you encounter any of that? If so, and how long was it before you ended up remarrying after the death of Rob?

SPEAKER_00 23:18

Well, um, I did not experience that. I'm really grateful. At least no one said it to me out loud. And so I'm grateful for that. Uh, I was married in 2023, so it was four years after Rob had died. And um, you know, the reality is that any life decision, uh, whether it is to sell the house after your partner dies, to sell the car, to move to a new place, uh, to get remarried, to take a new job, any of these milestones that come after loss, there will always be naysayers. There will always be people who tell you don't make any big decisions within the first year. That's right. Or extend it. Don't make any big decisions in the first five years. And you know, I have come, Dale, to understand that those aren't mean-spirited critiques about the decision making that we have to make after loss. Those are the words, however jumbled up, of people who don't want to see us hurt again. And uh the loss of a partner is a profound, painful loss. And people who love us, they don't want to see us hurt again. And opening yourself up to love, moving to a new place and the risks that come with change, all of that is scary to people who love us. And so I've come to see even those awkward questions as questions that are born out of a spirit of love. And so with that love, I try to respond with reassurance and an understanding heart.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

And I gather that reassurance, an understanding heart was part of your inspiration for writing your book, your debut book, Beyond the Darkness, a gentle guide for living with grief and thriving after loss. Tell us about that process and how you came to write your book, which debuted in 2022.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Yeah, as I looked for resources about grief, I found a lot of really great practical secular uh guides that would give instruction on how to manage your finances or how to deal with probate courts or uh, you know, how to transfer your bank account into your name only. But many of these practical resources were frankly kind of hopeless. Uh they left me with this sense that it was always going to be a hard slog with grief. And that my life was just about as good as I could make it. Um there was some pull yourself up by your bootstraps language that I just didn't find believable when grief was so hard. When I looked to uh religious resources, faith-based resources, many of them were kind of uh more heavenly good than earthly good. Uh they were devotional in nature, they were inspirational, but they didn't deal with the very hard nitty-gritty. And I thought, what if we put those two things together? What if we put the hope that a life of faith can bring integrated with practical information? Um, what kind of a guide might that be for people who were grieving the loss of a loved one? And that's how Beyond the Darkness came to be.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

What a wonderful promise of marrying or uh integrating your faith walk with practice with practical matters, with pragmatic suggestions, right? And and I do think that gives a lot of different widows more hope than versus basic, basically uh scrambling around, if you will, trying to find their way. How would they go about getting a copy of your book?

SPEAKER_00 26:49

You can find it uh on any online bookseller. Uh Amazon has it. You can also go to my website, clarissamall.com, to find information about all of my books there.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

Yeah, as we go to our close in a few minutes, is there anything that you wish others understood about grieving or the grieving process, including supporting someone who is grieving?

SPEAKER_00 27:12

I think the most important thing to remember is that grief uh is a lonely pursuit. Uh it is a lonely walk when you are coming home to an empty house, when you're sitting across from an empty chair at the table, and um and it can feel very isolating. And so for people who are supporting a loved one who has experienced a death in their circle, uh it's important to show up. It's important to show up and keep showing up, no matter what. And uh, and if you have experienced a loss um and you're feeling lonely, I think there's also another side to that story, that in your experience of loneliness, the sanctity of your particular loss, loss is something we all face. Uh each of us, you know, they say uh death and taxes, we can't escape them. And so uh for those people who feel very alone, it's amazing that when we open ourselves up just a little bit, we discover that everybody has some level of grief that they're carrying, maybe different from ours, but um, those shared griefs can become a point of connection that is vital to our flourishing in the long run.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

When you talk about flourishing in the long run, uh it's interesting. Um actually, let me go back to this other question because that's something else just came to me from Swiss. Sorry, it's the mind that keeps it's the Gemini mind, right? You see us a shiny pity moment, is what my wife calls it. Focus, Dale, focus. Uh let's talk about other widows that you've come into contact with, because from my research, grief is not a linear process. It touches, destroys, rebuilds everybody in different ways. Is there one salient attribute, one salient experience that you think has been universal uh outside of obvious grief, outside of obvious trauma to other widows whom you've connected with?

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Yeah, I've heard that uh grief is just love with no place to go. And I think that if there were a common denominator in all of the relationships that I've made with widows, uh in the encounters I've had with widows at conferences and speaking events, it would be the tremendous amount of love that they carry within themselves. And so for many of them, uh it is about channeling that grief and channeling that love. So it doesn't have no place to go. Uh so it is channeled into relationships with grandchildren or in their communities, in their churches. Love is something that grows more and more with time. And when we see these widows who are um rebuilding new lives, they are always grounded in love.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

And we're gonna leave it there, grounded in love. And I trust uh our listeners have enjoyed this interview with you, Clarissa, as much as I have. All good things must come to an end. So thank you so much for your time today in discussing Beyond the Darkness, a gentle guide for living with grief and thriving after loss. We encourage our listeners to get a copy. Let's repeat that one more time, Clarissa, how they can contact you and get a copy of your book.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

Sure. You can visit me at Clarissamall.com. I'm also on Instagram, and you can get my book on Amazon or any of the other places where you purchase books online.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

So please share this series with other widows whom you may know and who are also navigating this traumatic journey. Whether you're looking for comfort, community, or guidance, we welcome you to join us on future episodes of Lost and Transformative Life. And now, as always, I always like to leave you with an inspiration, something that I wrote, something occurred to me for today, as follows. Never forget your life holds meaning, your presence still matters, and the love you shared continues to live through your courage, your kindness, and the way you show up one day at a time. Hopefully, you've heard that message resonate through my guest, Claire Samal's life. As again, I say goodbye, wish you the best today, and we'll see you next time.