Mindfulness and Grief with Heather Stang

Originally released on March 6th, 2021

From the loss of a loved one to grappling with addiction and facing job loss – life presents us with countless challenges. While the list may seem never-ending, maintaining the right mindset can empower you to overcome and persevere and discover moments of joy amidst painful circumstances. 

On this episode of Grieving Out Loud, we're revisiting a past episode that can offer valuable insights, no matter what you're going through. Our guest is Heather Stang, a thanatologist and grief expert, a yoga therapist, and the author of Mindfulness and Grief and the guided journal From Grief to Peace. Heather founded the Mindfulness and Grief Institute and hosts her podcast, Mindfulness and Grief. 

Join us as we explore practical tips for navigating grief and life's challenges, which can be particularly difficult during the holiday season.

Transcript

Original Episode 38

[00:00:01] Heather Stang: it is very easy to be mindful when you are on the beach, at your dream vacation, all your loved ones are alive. You have plenty of money in the bank. And everything's perfect. It is so easy to be present in that moment. 

But what happens when it all falls apart? You know, what is mindfulness then? And mindfulness is about giving you the stability to be with even the rough places.

 (MUSIC UP) 

[00:00:28] Angela: The death of a loved one, addiction, job loss, the list goes on and on. Life can be pretty tough, but having the right mindset through your struggles can not only help you overcome and persevere, but can also help you find joy in spite of painful circumstances. 

[00:00:53] Heather Stang: You stop struggling against what you cannot change. You find a way to live with reality and you always steep it in love and compassion and self compassion.

[00:01:05] Angela: Thanks for joining us on this Thanksgiving week. I'm Angela Kennecke, and this is Grieving Out Loud. Today we're sharing one of our previous podcasts we think will be very helpful, no matter what you're going through in life. Today's guest, Heather Stang, is a thanatologist, or grief expert, as well as a yoga therapist, and the author of Mindfulness and Grief, and the guided journal From Grief to Peace.

She also founded the Mindfulness and Grief Institute. and is the host of her own podcast by the same name. Join us as we talk about practical tips to help those navigating through grief and other challenges, what can be especially difficult during the holiday season.

 (MUSIC TRANSITION) 

[00:01:51] Angela: well, thank you so much, HeatheR, for joining me today. I am so excited to talk to you because I feel like you have so much good advice for all of our listeners. I listened to your podcast and I just reached out to you because of that and asked you to be a guest on mine. And thank you for graciously agreeing to do that.

[00:02:10] Heather Stang: I am really grateful to be here, Angela. And I I'm, I don't want to say happy because I wish nobody had to be going through what they're going through, but I guess the word is grateful to get to connect with you and your listeners and maybe together we can survive the storm of pain and grief. 

[00:02:31] Angela: Yeah, it does really take a person by storm and especially in the beginning. And I think those of us who are talking about it, like you and I are, we learn to incorporate it into our lives and to live with it. Right. And help other people. I always say that helping other people helps me the most with my grief. Do you feel that same 

[00:02:50] Heather Stang: way? 

Absolutely. It's, you know, it's what fuels, I think our ability to sit and hold space with people when they're in their darkest moments.

Because that's not easy. And it's not something, you know, it's not just like a clinical thing where you're just sitting and going, Uh huh. You're feeling it. And there has to be some wellspring of care. inside of you to be able to do that long term. 

[00:03:16] Angela: Well, it's been three years now, and I don't, I don't see myself ever stopping.

It's sort of my new mission. 

Yeah. 

In life. Um, you're a thanatologist, so explain to our audience, I've spoken to a thanatologist once before in an earlier episode called Broken Heart Syndrome, but explain what a thanatologist 

[00:03:35] Heather Stang: is. 

So thanatologists are people who have some sort of expertise, so to speak, in death, dying and bereavement.

Um, for me, I have a master's degree in thanatology. Other people go through, uh, the Association of Death Education and Counseling offers a certification and a fellow in thanatology based on people's academic or work experience. So that's the. the nerdy side of what a thanatologist is. And it's a very broad multidisciplinary field.

So we have art therapists, yoga therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, chaplains, you know, it's really broad. Um, and, but I want to say the heart side of it, with one exception out of the thousands of thanatologists I know of, I haven't met them all, but at our conference, we'll meet many of them.

Um, we're all in this field because we have some sort of. History with love and loss that like you and I were just mentioning, that has inspired us to dedicate our careers or volunteer service to helping others, either with end of life decisions or grief or. In the case of maybe working with the government, helping plan public memorials.

You know, thanatologists can do many things. I landed 

[00:05:01] Angela: in... 

Yeah, I was going to ask how what brought you to 

[00:05:03] Heather Stang: the field.

 Yeah, I landed here. It's, it's a long... Story that I'm going to make short as possible, but when I was seven, my mother had to tell me that her brother Doug had died by suicide. And just to give you all time frame, that was 1977.

That was a while ago. And that changed me, you know, that as a seven year old learning that that can happen, your world is different. Now I didn't know right then or even for a long time that I was going to become a thanatologist, but fast forward to my, I think my thirties and I'd found yoga and meditation because I'd gotten diagnosed with shingles because of all the stress I was under.

And that journey into yoga and mindfulness made me want to give back, made me want to do something to make the world. better. And I was called to volunteer on the National Suicide Lifeline in my local community. 

So I started, you know, volunteering for a while, eventually became an employee and I was a call, I answered calls and I loved that work. Uh, and it was while I was there that I met another thanatology student and found out that the program, that there was a program right here in my hometown, uh, Frederick, Maryland. So that's, that's the, I hope the short version of a long story. 

What is it that 

[00:06:35] Angela: you find most satisfying personally about working in this field that most people don't want to deal with like, right? Our culture doesn't want to deal with death or grief. It's just like, okay, somebody died. All right, we're sad. Now get over it and move on. 

[00:06:49] Heather Stang: Right. 

And, and I think that's the people who haven't been through it 

[00:06:53] Angela: probably, or there was a whole, whole generations of people that just stuffed it down when it did happen to them. And I have a friend who's, um, who lost, uh, her aunt, um, and her, her grandmother had, her grandfather had told the grandmother and the rest of the family, You know, we're never speaking of this. The woman was like 21 at the time. We're never speaking of this again. They buried her and they said, that's it. We're never speaking of this again. So I think that was sort of a, that's changing. Um, but I also think that for we who, we and many, um, parents who've lost children to overdose listen to this podcast, and I hear from them all the time, and I talk a lot always about the stigma surrounding this kind of death, because I will have people even say to me like, Oh, I lost my daughter too, but, but not in the way that you lost your daughter. And I'll just always say, you know, loss is loss. 

[00:07:51] Heather Stang: Um, so, you know, how do you, 

[00:07:53] Angela: how, how do you advise people in dealing with some of that stigma and shame and denial or that still goes on? 

[00:08:01] Heather Stang: Yeah. And, and, you know, I grew up in a, in a. an environment of denial because of the way Doug died, you know, in the time frame.

And so my mother did, my mother did great. I always make sure to say that on podcasts in case she's listening. She did so, such a great job without knowing what she needed to do of allowing me to talk about him. And, you know, even to this day, we talk about him at least once a week. Um, my grandmother's response was to make up a story.

He didn't die by suicide. He was robbed. 

[00:08:34] Angela: Oh, because it was too 

[00:08:36] Heather Stang: shameful. It was too shameful. And that was her story till the day she died. And when it was even mentioned, you know, she might mention Doug here and there, but I think that leads into like, you know, what is my favorite part about this work? If you can have one, I think about my grandmother a lot.

And It breaks my heart that she had to feel the shame she felt or that, you know, I, I don't, I don't know if I want to use the chose because maybe she didn't feel she had a choice. But she definitely, there was a part of her that felt, I imagine, that there was something she should have, could have, would have done, which happens a lot with suicide and overdose.

Overdose all the time. All the time. Yeah. And so I think one of the things, one of the things I work with the most, because I'm a thanatologist, but I'm also a yoga therapist, and my flavor of thanatology is, to help people cope with the physical reactions of grief, but also compassion and self compassion, which is huge with these stigmatized losses.

[00:09:40] Angela: Well, as a mom, we are supposed to be able to fix everything. Oh, and we somehow and I know weren't as mothers as a mom. I'm not a puppet, you know, not whole. I'm not a puppet master. I'm not holding my children up and determining all of their choices in life. Yet, even to this day, people will use my daughter's death against me, especially if they don't like something in my day job, you know, some type of reporting.

And they will try to point a finger and say, You, you're the problem. This happened to your daughter. Um, you don't have to write to have a voice on anything. Um, because, and I think so. And I'm in the public eye. So I get that. But I think so many people, so many mothers I've talked to through Facebook groups and other groups. Moms who've lost kids to overdose go through this on a smaller scale, you know, 

[00:10:36] Heather Stang: absolutely. And I, I remember one of the first groups I hosted back when we were doing things in person, you know, back when I had a meditation center, uh, where the, the overdose loss population was so great that the maturity of the women in my group were.

Mothers who had suffered an overdose loss and so I hadn't advertised this group as Specifically for that but that's who showed up because that's who really needed help and we went around the circle and each person shared their story and by the end like there was just kind of this overwhelming weight and As a thanatologist, or actually more as a yoga therapist, I had to kind of go to, how do I find some balance here?

Because the, the theme in everyone's story was, I didn't do enough. And as someone sitting on the outside of this group, I mean, I'm inside the group, but like, I am not currently holding the grief of the loss of my child in my heart. So I have a, I have my feet on the ground, so to speak. And I'm looking at each of these beautiful people and thinking, I know in my heart, you, you did everything you possibly could with the information.

In fact, the stories, many of you are telling me you did so much like you're super women, but I get that, that they couldn't feel that. And so I was like, what can I do in this moment? And so what can I do to help broaden their view? And what we did is we did a meditation. We closed our eyes. And put our hands on her heart and breathe it. Breathe in compassion for yourself. If you, you know, just try, you might not be able to get there, but just try. But on the exhale, send out compassion to each of the women in the circle. Like just, even though you just met, you might not know their name. Just try to picture them in your minds.

And, and I'm not gonna say it happened. Immediately, but what eventually happened over the weeks that followed, and this is a practice that I've incorporated into most of my groups, is you start to see, like, I would not judge the woman sitting across from me, and even, and none of those women in that group are judging me, and, and you start to show yourself mercy, and I'm not, again, I don't want to pretend like that's easy, like you said, you're a mom, you want to fix it all, but it's a practice.

[00:13:08] Angela: And I, and I talked to a mother, um, Once, and I was having just a heart to heart conversation with her, someone who had lost. a child. And I said, well, well, is it my fault? I mean, cause they were saying it's, it's my fault. This happened. And it's, I said, well, is it my fault that my daughter died? And she said, no.

I said, well, why would you judge yourself in that way? Yeah. You know, I think, and that's so true. We do. And I, I, I, I go over in my mind, like different times and I should have done, would have, could have, should have, right. If only, and then I have to stop and think about everything I did do, which. it consumed my life for seven years, you know, trying to save my daughter's life and trying to take steps that I thought were right. And some of them weren't always right, you know, but in hindsight, we can all look back in hindsight and say, Oh, you know, if only, but about a lot of things, but I do think we do fail to in society doesn't always let us have that self compassion. 

So you talked about that, like a yoga meditation and in mindfulness and grief is what you do. So can you explain. How we are, that's a buzzword mindfulness, right? Live in the moment, live in the now. And, but how, how does it apply to grief and how can our listeners maybe learn something from that or maybe take some steps to help themselves?

[00:14:27] Heather Stang: I think you're right. Mindfulness is definitely a buzzword and I think it can be seen at face value and the nuances can get lost.

And I always use the example of whenever I'm in the grocery line, there's always a Time Magazine special on mindfulness with this blissed out person on the cover. 

And so sometimes mindfulness gets defined as, being present, just, you know, being aware, being awake, but there's, there's a second piece to mindfulness that can get stripped out when it gets too clinical. And that's the, it's having a compassionate attitude to whatever's arising.

And so one of my favorite quotes is from the researcher, Jon Kabat Zinn, meditate, great meditation, teacher, great author. And he says in Asian languages, the word for mind and heart are one in the same. And if you are not hearing in some very deep way.

That mindfulness is heartfulness. You're kind of missing the point.

[00:15:29] Angela: Yeah, that's beautiful. I love it because it's, we tend to operate just out of our minds and in this culture, right? So we have monkey minds and they're, they're going crazy and we're up at three in the morning and our mind is going crazy, but we're not always in touch with our heart. And to have the mind and the heart aligned.

is, is the best place to 

[00:15:48] Heather Stang: be, right? 

It is. It really is. And one of the ways I like to explain mindfulness is that it takes us out of our time travel mode. And this happens, especially when things are going wrong, is we tend to spend a ton of time in the past. What could I have done differently? Or we get very anxious about the future.

What's going to happen next? And hyper vigilance. We all know this, right? Everybody listening knows that hypervigilant feeling because that's what you're going through when your person is alive. And it's what you're going through after they die. And that's future and it's a body, right? The bot, it's not just your mind going there.

It is your whole being and mindfulness slows things down. Okay. What if we pay attention to how anxiety feels in your body right now, rather than spending so much time on the story of what hasn't happened. So even if you're feeling anxious or sad or afraid. Mindfulness isn't telling you not to feel that.

And I think that's where it gets misused a lot is in fact, I often tell the story of my first meditation retreat where the The teacher said during our meditation, everything is already okay. Well, what if it's not right at the moment? Everything was okay for me. I was very fortunate, but I kind of thought about what if we're in a room of 200 people, the odds are someone in here is heartbroken and to say everything is already okay as an insult and a disservice to the love that fuels the grief.

You 

[00:17:30] Angela: know, I love it that you said that because that is one of the things I have the biggest problem with, with some meditations as all as well. When I can't, my daughter is gone and that is not well, I mean, and I can't bring her back and I know I can't live in the past and I can't change it, but how 

[00:17:45] Heather Stang: do I, how do I sit with that?

Right. Yes. And that's what real mindfulness is about. I'm real and, and goods. And I always say we need to have grief informed meditation teachers, you know, not every meditation teacher is grief informed, just like not every yoga teacher is trauma informed. These are really important. And we need to be trauma informed for meditation too.

Um, so the, the real heart to me of mindfulness, mindfulness. When you are deep in grief is to be able to say, this really hurts. I am suffering. I'm going to hone in on the places that hurt. Not go to the past and figure out what I could have done differently or the future. Not go to these delusional places that you can't change.

And I'm, I'm using delusional in a loving way. I do it. I'm not saying that's pathological. That's normal. That's the normal human brain. In fact, mindfulness, we're asking the mind to be abnormal and stay present and just sit and hold the space. Without adding fuel to the fire or adding suffering on top of suffering and look at the truth of what really hurts And there's a technique I want to rather than being kind of, you know Just giving these words out that the technique that I think is one of the most powerful techniques if and when you are feeling like you can do it because It's important to say that there are times where looking at your suffering is too painful and there are meditation teachings for that.

Well, 

[00:19:23] Angela: sometimes I think when you dive into that grief, it feels like you just might 

[00:19:27] Heather Stang: die yourself, right? 

It absolutely does. And that's when you need a stabilizing meditation, something that doesn't make you think, something that gives you a break. 

[00:19:37] Angela: Right. But what you were going to talk about is when, when you are ready 

[00:19:40] Heather Stang: to face that grief, 

[00:19:43] Angela: face that emotion and pain 

[00:19:45] Heather Stang: head on.

Yes. And so this surprised me when I first learned it, but it was to go to the body and it kind of, I think alluded to that a few minutes ago, instead of going to the mind or trying to solve something that can't be solved is you say, you know, what, what is my physical experience of anxiety? I use anxiety a lot because I think that's like a real big one with, with, with grief.

Huge. 

[00:20:10] Angela: I had anxiety attacks after Emily died and I never had experienced, maybe just very few times in my life had I ever experienced that kind of thing. 

[00:20:19] Heather Stang: Yeah. And, and it really does make you feel like you're going to die because your breath gets stuck and you feel your heart racing and your emotions are crazy.

Emotions are crazy. There's all this happening. And so, so the practice is to remove one of the variables, which is. the thinking about it and come into direct experience in the present. So this is where that mindfulness is. Where am I feeling the anxiety in my body? How big is it? Is it vibrating, pulsing, moving still?

Does it feel like it's made of steel or cotton or rubber ball? I mean, you know, there's, so it becomes this almost, um, visualization. Although people who aren't visual can still come into the feeling sensation of it and you're you're turning towards what's Physically the physical aspect of the emotion and you're also breathing in that breath piece.

You've taken the Mind out of the equation which can stir the pot you've come directly to what hurts which is mindful and you're starting to kind of Get your stress response tamped down by noticing what's happening in my body I can breathe. I, I invite people to also notice when they're ready, when they feel they've explored the sensation fully.

To notice the other parts of your body. Where can you soften and unwind? Can you soften your jaw? Can you drop your shoulders? Can you unclench your fists? You know, can you soften somewhere? Can you make sure you're breathing? And then the compassion piece comes in and this is where you, you say to yourself, like, this really hurts.

And I care about it. Or may I have the strength to move, to, to, you know, to move through this, this difficult emotion right now, or you can pray or you do something supportive and kind to yourself. And so knowing that you have options. in your practice. One, if you don't feel, if you feel like it's going to bowl you over and you're never going to come out of it again, go to those focusing practices, those, those guided meditation type thing, yeah, or something stabilizing, or again, pray or recite a mantra or go outside and look at a tree or something.

Just get yourself not, not in thinking mind. If you feel like you're ready to really explore the emotion, Yeah, Turn towards where it is in the body, offer yourself compassion. And I've had some pretty amazing just moments of inner wisdom show up after that practice where just my, from somewhere inside or outside, these words have come to me that were either comforting or insightful or wise.

But you're, you're kind of slowing down, right? You're looking at it in a different way. And so instead of relating to it to whatever the emotion is with. By turning away from it, pretending it's not there, or from diving onto it and grasping onto it, you're just being like, okay. I see you, anxiety. I'm going to hang out with you, but I'm in control of how I'm going to hang out with you.

[00:23:35] Angela: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And, and the other thing that I think that when you lose someone, especially a child, but any loved one, I think the first year is really, shock in dealing with those intense waves of grief that wash over you. Um, and the second year to me felt like depression, felt like darkness and depression because the reality is my child is never coming back.

I don't have a physical relationship with her anymore. And when you're coming out with a journal, A journaling book called from grief to peace. So when I talk about like shock and waves of grief and I talk about depression and then how do we make peace with it? I mean, I sometimes and I talked to a lot of moms who say, Oh my gosh, I could live for another.

20, 30, 40 years, you know, depending on how old they are. And I can't imagine living that long without my child and it is a reality. It's a depressing reality. And so how do we get to that point 

[00:24:42] Heather Stang: of peace? So I want to first say I did not make the title. And I was really actually uncomfortable with the title.

I had to make peace with the title because I work with a publisher. But, but after talking to some people, we were like, well, it does kind of sound my problem with it. And by the way, people, I love this journal. Love, love, 

[00:25:03] Angela: love. Well, we all need peace. We all want peace. That's what we're 

[00:25:06] Heather Stang: looking for. And so I kind of wish it was like grief and peace.

Like I always like the ampersand, like it's mindfulness and grief. You know, that's the title of the first book because it's mindfulness is about all of it. it's not exclusive. And, and so your grief is always going to be there because you cannot separate grief and love. You 

[00:25:26] Angela: can't. I'm never going to stop loving 

[00:25:28] Heather Stang: my daughter.

Never. And you know that, like you said, the intensity early on, it changes, but your love never changes. Right. Oh, 

[00:25:37] Angela: that's so true. 

[00:25:39] Heather Stang: I was trying to explain this. I was like, it's like an alchemy. You know, we're, we're, it starts off as just this ball of pain, but I don't want to say over time because we know it's not time that.

Heals, and I don't even like the word heal, a time that changes the intensity of grief. It's the grief work you do that, that changes the intensity, but that ball still, it's the same size. But when you look at it, there's more love than the pain. There might be, there might be sadness in that love. It's, it's a different kind of love than when they're alive or when they're, you know, riding their bike for the first time.

And there's this joy. I mean, there's sadness there, but the love isn't going to ever change. 

[00:26:23] Angela: Yeah, I really like the way that you put that because it is true that it's that fiery ball of just pain and it's not that the pain is gone, it's just that there's the love is so strong, but there's sadness mixed in with that love.

[00:26:40] Heather Stang: It's so hard to explain unless you've been through it, right? And as someone who uses words, I'm like, it's hard. Cause I'll just say a couple of weeks ago, we were cleaning out my basement and there was this box, an innocuous box. And I'm like, Oh, it's a box of stuff I forgot about. Well, it turns out it's a box my mother gave me like before the pandemic that I hadn't gone through.

And I'm just opening the box. I'm like, Oh, these are things I don't recognize. And I pull out this little pouch and I open up the little pouch. And all of my uncle's driver's licenses are in this pouch. Again, I told you all 1977, but in 2021 for a couple hours it felt like it was today. So it's also not, there are triggers.

There are triggers. There are. And it, but it was also beautiful. Like, it was so painful, but I was like, discovering this part of him I'd never seen. And suddenly I have his addresses, you know, like, I'm gonna go look at his houses or, you know, it's, it, it just, but it was, it was awful and it was beautiful. 

[00:27:41] Angela: I get that.

I really get that because there are times where something will, Oh, just on my phone, you know, my phone will have a memory, a picture. Now I kind of hate 

[00:27:49] Heather Stang: it that they do that or Facebook. 

[00:27:51] Angela: Well, today, just today is a, is a memory of when, um, I got remarried and Emily is, I don't know if you can even see that.

But she is in, you know, in the wedding. And, you know, I I, that's such a happy memory for me. But now it's also a sad memory because she's not here. But I remember everything about every action she did that day and everything. And I wanna remember those things about my daughter, 

[00:28:16] Heather Stang: you know, and I wanna bring you back to the question you asked about how do we get to peace?

And a big part of what your modern day, an ontologist is going. to do in whatever format they use is help you create a healthy continuing bond with your person. You know, it used to be back when Freud was doing his thing and by the way, his daughter died. Yes, I, I know that. And he said, you know, we're supposed to just forget about him and move on, but he never forgot about his daughter.

He wrote about her for decades. Like he, he didn't actually practice what he preached and, and we know that's not healthy and, but what we do know is that finding a way to carry around their memory. with you in your heart or however you feel it is important to being able to Get back to work to form other relationships to live a meaningful life And so part of what I do in from grief to peace the guided journal Which by the way mirrors my book mindfulness and grief.

They're both kind of eight Originally I called it eight weeks, but my intent was not that people actually like you're not completing grief in eight weeks. The idea is you would know what tools you have in eight weeks. I just want to be nice. Yeah. But it mirrors it. So the eight modules are the same and the first module is conscious relaxation, which is caring for your grieving body.

noticing how your body's relating. And then as you move through the eight modules, there's, there's a section where you spend a lot of time reflecting on how your relationship with your loved one has changed, but how it continues on. You know, you write down the memories. You write down the things you maybe wish happened.

You, you know, you write them a letter. And so I think part of getting to, we'll just say grief informed peace, if I can say that, um, is to stop struggling against the things you can't change, you know, and this is like the serenity prayer. It's, it's, you, 

you stop struggling against what you cannot change.

You find a way to live with reality and you always steep it in love and compassion and self compassion. 

[00:30:38] Angela: I think that's very helpful advice. I, I, I just recently lost a friend who, uh, completed suicide three years after the overdose death of her son. And I see mothers on some of these Facebook groups who've lost children, overdose, commenting how they don't want to go on.

Their life is meaningless now. So what advice do you have for people? you know, to try to find meaning in their life following loss. Because some people just feel like, what? There's no joy. No. And I felt that way for a while. I understand it because I don't know when it was exactly, but I remember thinking like, there's, there's just no joy.

No, nothing's fun. And, you know, nothing's fun and there's nothing to look forward to. And, It's that that's faulty thinking. Now, I think that, but I've been in that spot where I've, I've had those thoughts. So what, what do you say to people that are stuck in 

[00:31:33] Heather Stang: that place? And I've been in, I've been in that place too.

And as, as a helping professional, I would never feel comfortable saying to someone, don't worry, it's going to get 

[00:31:42] Angela: better. Well, no. And if we're loving 

[00:31:44] Heather Stang: the moment, it doesn't always get your reality and it doesn't always get better. And so I think this is where the mindfulness helps too. Okay. We come back to where are you right now?

What do you need right now? Do you need to re because, because when you're in that place, the even some people do have a sense of hope. Some do. I've, I've talked to people who've gone through horrific things and my assumption before our first meeting is they're going to be telling me they can't go on, and then they show up and they have hope and I've had the opposite happen.

So, you know, there's different reasons why, but I think if you are someone who is feeling Right now, totally hopeless and like, this will never get better. First, I want to really encourage you to reach out for support because right now I get it and I told you I worked on a suicide hotline for seven years and I went down and worked on the New Orleans hotline after Hurricane Katrina when their staff had been wiped out.

I went and volunteered down there and that was a pretty hopeless time. reach out, whether it's to the National Suicide Hotline, to a friend. I know it's hard because sometimes you don't feel like reaching out and it's unfortunate that Sometimes when we're in pain, we have to summon up the energy, you know, to, to connect and, and I hope that anyone listening who's feeling that way can summon up the energy to connect because after working on that hotline for seven years and doing the work I do now, I have seen people go from, I'm about to die, like I am about to take action on this plan to where years down the road, they're leaving, leading full and meaningful lives.

I've seen it. And so I have faith. There is hope. There is 

[00:33:32] Angela: hope. I always say as long as you're still breathing, you have purpose. There is purpose and it doesn't have, we sometimes we think of purpose as being this big thing, you know, like saving the rainforest or something like that. But purpose can just be you know, to care for a child or an elderly parent or to, you know, be a friend to somebody.

I mean, there is purpose for each of us. Um, and I think people lose sight of that in grief. 

[00:34:03] Heather Stang: Yeah. And I want to, I want to just talk about this idea of being stuck in grief. Cause I think that's something that maybe comes from, you know, back in the Freudian days. Although we do know that that a number of a percentage of people are going to have what's called complicated grief or actually now it's called prolonged grief disorder, which.

There's a wonderful treatment plan for that, by the way, if anyone gets diagnosed with that, it comes from the work of Kathleen Shearer out of Columbia University, but the work that they do is about rebuilding your story and it's quite, it's quite meaningful, I think the work itself, but they're about 80 percent of us aren't going to have.

prolonged grief disorder. And I'm, I'm not someone who's allowed or certified to diagnose, so I'm not going to get too deep into what that means. But, um, but basically it's when the intensity gets worse over time, rather than seeing some alleviation, if that makes sense. Right. Right. 

[00:35:03] Angela: I think of it as like the backpack I've kind of learned to live with grief, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. But if it, if it intensifies. over 

[00:35:11] Heather Stang: time. It gets heavier and heavier and heavier over time. You know, or you become, it's, it's something good to be aware of. Um, so, so the thing about grief is it doesn't have. It doesn't have a timeline, right? We can't say, well, in two years, three years, 10 years, we can't do that.

And if 

[00:35:30] Angela: anybody mentions the stages of grief to me again, I'm going to, I think even, even the woman who came up with that, right? She didn't mean it in the way that, but we don't have to get into a long conversation with about that, but just let people know there's not some sort of succinct thing. Like you've experienced A, B, C, and D and you're done.

That is not 

[00:35:49] Heather Stang: true. No. And, and I do want to say, you know, to Dr. Kubler Ross, um, she was studying dying patients, not grieving people. And she herself, if you read the introduction, she makes it very clear. This is, this is not the, this is not finite. This is not research based and what we know is than, so thanatology kind of picks up and.

This grief theory and does research. I mean, we're evidence-based people, so that's important to know. And there are a lot of what we would call, we call models of grief that are more task-based. So these are the things you as a grieving person want to work on. to continue your life, not these are stages you need to check off.

Okay. Um, and so I think it's really important for everybody to understand that there is also research that shows time does not heal your grief. In fact, in the study, they found that time accounted for 1%. of change. Isn't that amazing? That is. Yeah. What's the other 99 percent is what you do with your time.

Okay. Okay. So it's, there's many different ways and you know, it was actually bereaved parents who were studied. And so, you know, for some of them it was finding religious meaning for some people, it was volunteering for some people, it was just throwing themselves into their passion or, you know, their surviving fit.

There's, infinite possibilities of what it is for you. It's probably the reason why 

[00:37:16] Angela: a lot of grieving parents, not just from overdose, but just start foundations 

[00:37:20] Heather Stang: or charities, right? It's, it's a meaningful enterprise. And if, if you're listening and you don't feel like starting, 

[00:37:26] Angela: you know, no, I'm not saying, I mean, I did it and I don't know if I would advise it, but sometimes I'm really glad I did it.

And sometimes I'm like, why did I do this again? But yeah, 

[00:37:35] Heather Stang: I mean, you know, for some people it's that they decide to wear red every day of their life. You know, there's different ways that we, that we make meaning and we people's memories. And so, so sometimes feeling stuck, that feeling is true, but sometimes it doesn't mean you're stuck.

It means you're just in the cauldron. Like that's part of it. is feeling, because you, you, when you're feeling bad, you want to get out of it. And if you can't get out of it, you feel stuck. But part of grief is, unfortunately, having to hang out with the pain some of the time. And so I get people, and I've, I've done this too, even though I'm a thanatologist, I didn't get into my, my stepfather died 12 years ago when I was in my final semester of thanatology.

So I got to watch myself go through it as both a professional and as a bereaved stepchild and a disenfranchised type of grief because stepchildren don't always. Right. 

[00:38:33] Angela: It's a, it's a different relationship for sure. 

[00:38:36] Heather Stang: Yeah. So I want you to know I've gone through grief as a professional and it doesn't change much.

[00:38:41] Angela: You couldn't just fix yourself. You couldn't just, 

[00:38:43] Heather Stang: uh, yeah. I mean, maybe the difference is you're surrounded by other grief professionals, but they're just sitting there going, it's a process. You know this. Um, and there are things you can do. Yeah. As we talked about, but I just want you all to be really patient with yourself.

And I know how hard it is to just have to be in that place. And so when you're feeling stuck, do something small, do some breath work, go for a walk, you know, um, find some, some little thing you can change little to create a little bit of movement, but don't force yourself to do more than you feel like doing.

Because there are going to be times where you feel stuck. That is part of it. 

[00:39:30] Angela: And the world expects a lot of us. 

[00:39:32] Heather Stang: You know, it expects you to take three days off and you're fine. Right. 

[00:39:36] Angela: That's unfortunate. I was, I was lucky enough to be able to take some short term leave, which was about three months. And I even felt like that was really probably too fast to dive back into my job in the public eye.

performance based on television, that kind of thing. Um, but I'm grateful I had those three months. I mean, a lot of, I know a lot of bill and I know moms who went back to work. I know two moms and both of their daughters completed suicide and both went back to work relatively quickly within a couple of weeks, both ended up losing those jobs.

both got fired because they couldn't, I mean, they were so in their grief and people didn't want to be around them. People felt sad around them, didn't want to have to face them or they met, then they had some absences and things like that. And our society doesn't support. I was, I was actually really angry about that, but our society doesn't really support.

Those women are grief or grieving people in general. 

[00:40:37] Heather Stang: So one of my colleagues did some research on when is the best time to go back to work and he's a bereaved father. And he works with a lot of large corporations on, uh, helping them. Navigate bereavement. And his, what he's found is about 40 days is kind of a sweet spot because it gives you enough time to, to go through the intense pain, but then it normalizes, you know, and so I always tell client and really most of my clients do not have the choice of getting, you know, to take time off with the pandemic.

People are working from home. or many are, which is both a blessing and a curse for grief. Um, but because you're isolated and they're isolated or in some case the, you know, their partner died in the house or, you know, and they're stuck in that. I'm like, that's, that's really exacerbate or your child died in the house.

I mean, that is exacerbating like prolonged grief disorder. I think is when you're stuck in the space where the trauma happened, not that you would necessarily move, but you could get out and. you 

[00:41:42] Angela: know, be there 24 seven, 

[00:41:44] Heather Stang: 24 seven, not work there. So I always tell people, because sometimes people feel guilty if they are ready to go back to work or something.

I'm like, no, this is normal. It's giving you something normal during an abnormal time, you know, and. I wish everyone had a choice but not everybody does. Right. 

[00:42:04] Angela: Well, I'm going to put links to your podcast and your website and everything on this podcast and I, again, I thank you for helping so many people with your podcast and it has helped me and I encourage everybody to listen to it.

When does, um, From Grief to Peace come 

[00:42:20] Heather Stang: out? June 1st, 2021. Okay. So we're getting up there. You it is available for pre order on Amazon. And if you go to my website, mindfulnessandgrief. com and look under books and click on From Grief to Peace, um, I have it so that you are able to download the very first part and excerpt.

Great. Um, so you can see the introduction and a few of the, the first prompts and it has some, some really good guidance on how to journal. When you're grieving. 

[00:42:56] Angela: And that helped me a lot. I, I did, I, I had, uh, em and a book that Emily had purchased to journal in, and I used her journal to write how I was feeling and what I was experiencing, just getting it out on paper.

And I ended up, uh, writing a poem, uh, which I have on my blog if you'd like to read it. And, um, It's just, it was just, I'm not a poet, but, but it was just something that came through me. I feel like sometimes some of these things come through me. Anything you'd like to leave our audience with to keep 

[00:43:29] Heather Stang: in mind?

My, my greatest hope for you is that even in those moments where you feel It's the darkest, it's the heaviest, you're feeling the most stuck, is that you can find in your heart the ability to love yourself, and I know that's not easy, but at least give yourself the space to be human, space to acknowledge that This loss comes out of deep love.

That's my hope. 

[00:44:05] Angela: Grief is a sign of love. That's for sure. So thank you again, Heather. It's been, I'm just so thrilled that I was able to speak with you and thank you again for 

[00:44:13] Heather Stang: being on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. 

[00:44:17] Angela: Thank you for joining me for this latest edition of Grieving Out Loud. If you're enjoying the podcast, please consider giving a positive review.

Wishing you faith, hope, and courage.