Grief, Guilt & the Gifts We Don’t Expect ft. David Kessler

I'm excited for this chat. You are going to be helping so many people just by us having this conversation.
Thank you. I think we have the illusion that grief is somehow this straight arrow better better better better and it really is just a big mess.
What's the goal of grief? It's to remember with more love than pain in your own time, in your own way. Grief must be witnessed.
We need to witness without fixing. There is no, let me point out the bright side.
Let me get you to a better place. Let me let you have your experience.

And I don't know what it's like for you,

but I'm just going to show up and be with you.

One of the things about grief and loss and breakups

and divorce and betrayals and death and everything is,

we continue, we survive.

We're very resilient.

I always say we're resilient and fragile.

None of this is logical.

It's matters of the heart.

Hi, everyone.

Chloe in Wonderland is going to be taking a two-week spring break.

New episodes will resume on Wednesday, May 14th.

I'll see you guys then. Hi, David.
Thank you so much for being here. You are the most renowned expert in grief, and you've written so many books about it.
And I'm just so excited to chat with you today. So thank you.
You and I were just chatting on the side and I was saying how I'm so excited for this conversation because I really believe it's going to help so many people channel their own grief in whatever capacity they have it in. And I don't think grief is spoken about as much.
I think people feel a lot of shame in grieving or the timeline of what they feel like they need to meet this grieving expectations by. I'm not for any of that.
And I know you're not either. But I just wanted to first dive into how you came to the position that you're in helping millions of people process grief and what occurrences happened in your life that brought you to this stage.

I'm so glad we're doing this publicly because it's so important for people to get these conversations modeled. Yes.
Because no one does it. So, as you can imagine, I grew up with a mother who was a normal mom, but she had some illnesses, and then she had to go to the big city hospital, which was hours away.
Now, no one decides, like, I wasn't in third grade or fifth grade, and everyone's talking about police officer. Oh, no, I want to be a fireman.
And I'm like, it's death and grief available. I mean, no one thinks that, right? So it's a profession that chooses you.
Right. So she has to go to the hospital.
We're there. You have to be 14 to visit.
I'm 13. That was in the day when families were like a little bit of an interruption of the healing process.
Spent a lot of time in the hospital lobby. Then at a certain point, we're at our hotel across the way and someone starts yelling fire.
Everyone runs out. We're all outside looking at this fire on the 18th floor.
Fire trucks pulled up. I'm kind of a bored kid,

so this is interesting at first. And then when they start to extend the ladders, shooting starts.
It turns out it was an active shooter. It went on for hours and hours.
Oh my gosh. It's now considered one of the first mass shootings in the U.S.
And I saw police officers and hotel guests killed. My father was desperately trying to get us back to the hospital.
We finally get back. And then in a couple of days, my mother dies without me being able to be with her.
I'm downstairs. And I even remember them bringing me upstairs to see her after she had died.
And I had been so, you know, upset about all the rules that by that point, I remember seeing her hand and so wanting to hold it one last time. I came away from all of that, number one, realizing there was no one there to help me back then.
And I've kind of tried to grow into the person who could have helped me. Yes.
And I also wanted to make end of life and grief better for people. I mean, we're all going to go through it.
It's like the death rate's 100%. We're all going to go through it.
It's inevitable. And we don't talk about it.
I think we don't talk about it because it's so final and people don't want to accept that finality. Right.
And it's a pain. You know, I often say, I'm talking to people about what our great grandparents knew, how to be with the dying, how to be with people in grief, how to talk about it.
You know, if you want to see death now, it's kind of in a TV show or movies. And what do we see there? We see the first episode, someone's diagnosed or dying.
Second episode, person cries. Third episode, back to life.
Right. And grief has a longer shadow than that.
Yes, it does. I mean, you just made a good point about our grandparents or great grandparents, they would converse so much more about death, and it would be more of the norm, if you will.
Do you think that has to do with sort of, I don't want to say the loss of religion, but religion isn't as strong as it used to be 50 years ago? I think it's partly religion. I think with that, we've lost rituals.
Religion has wonderful rituals and its spirituality has wonderful rituals. There's also changes that happened in the 40s.
Illness moved into the hospital. It used to be in our home.
So I think we lost a sense of this part of life. Right.
But do you feel like people are more accepting of death and grief because we've sort of been faced with so much of it? I think COVID got us talking about it. Right.
Like, how did you not talk about what was happening? We had to all talk about the loneliness, the isolation, the collective grief. It wasn't just one of us, it happened to all of us.
So there's all those feelings that came up that I think finally are getting it talked about more and more. And I'm so glad.
I think the other thing that COVID helped with is we often think about death and grief as those two are the only grief. But I always say, grief is a change you didn't want.
So a breakup is the death of that relationship in the romantic form. A divorce is the death of a marriage.
A job loss is the death of that paycheck with those people. In COVID, we collectively lost our freedom, our contact, our touching one another.
So we live with so many types of grief and loss. And I am so glad we're finally talking about it more.
I loved, I saw an interview you did, and I loved what you said. You were on a walk during COVID with a friend of yours and someone came up to you and was expressing her grief over having to reschedule her wedding.
And you just lost your son not too long before that. And your friend was like, I can't once the lady left, I can't believe she had the audacity to go on and on about this wedding with everything you were going through.
And you were like, no, it's not a comparison, not a competition. And it is such a profound, empathetic way to think about people.
And you're right. It's not about comparison or, well, mine's bigger than yours because it is still a loss.
And it's that person's reality. And it's interesting that people always want to know which is the worst grief.
Is it the death of a child? Is it a murder? Is it this? Is it the loss of a marriage where the person's still rejecting you and all those things? And what I said to my friend in that moment is, she's 20 years old. Her marriage got canceled because of COVID.
She couldn't have her wedding. For her, that is her worst loss.
She hasn't had the other things. And I think we do get into a mindset of trying to compare.
And yet it's about our experience and no two people grieve alike. No.
Every grief is so completely unique, like our fingerprint. And so to understand that when we're comparing, we're in our mind and we don't have a broken mind, we have a broken heart.
You're right. What are some tools that you could share with people about dealing with grief? I think talking about it.
You know, sometimes people will say, my friend had this horrible loss and they're so isolated. And I often think you might be isolating them.
And we isolate them when we don't see the world as they do. Like, what's the world like through your eyes, through my eyes? Everyone's got a different world, especially when it comes to grief.
And so it's that idea of listening and being present. And one of the things I don't think we understand is grief must be witnessed.
We need to witness without fixing. You know, there is no, let me point out the bright side.
Let me get you to a better place. But let me let you have your experience.
And I don't know what it's like for you, but I'm just going to show up and be with you. I couldn't agree more.
I lost my dad when I was 19. And I can't tell you what people said to me, but I can tell you who showed up for me.
Because you're in this state, I'm 40 now, it doesn't matter that I was 19. You're sort of in this, well, at least I was in this fog and just living life through autopilot for a while.
And you don't have a clue really what you're doing. You're just navigating the best you can.
And so I think I always try to remind the people around me when they are dealing with someone else's loss and they are that person that they want to know, how do they show up for i just tell them to show up yes and as long as you're there and yes not trying to be like i'm going to get you through this like people have to feel their feelings and it could be so uncomfortable for that other person that's just trying to be the supportive person because you you feel like you're never doing enough but just by being there you are. And you're trying to find the right words.
And your scenario and situation is so true of what happened to you. It's not what people said that you remember.
It's how they were there, that they showed up. And the other thing you mentioned that I just want to point out is it's actually been proven with science.
There a thing called grief brain brain fog that you get when we're in grief we can't focus we can't concentrate we can't remember and that's why we need people in our lives to show up one of the things we say to grievers is what do you need i don't know what i need i'm i'm barely getting through the day. I didn't make a list.
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So you mentioned it was at 19 when he died. Grief is what's inside of us.

Trauma and grief are what's inside of us.

It's not really about the details.

It's how we experience them.

How did you experience it at that time?

It was interesting.

So when my dad died really quickly, he had esophageal cancer.

And I think he died like six or seven weeks after diagnosis of his cancer. So it was really fast.
And my dad, I don't think was lying to us. I don't think he could accept himself that it was terminal, but he never used those words with us.
So I just thought, oh, if I don't see him, this isn't real. So I, at 19, sort of distracted myself with my friends.
And when he did die, I remember what guilt I felt for not spending more time with him. But then that guilt turned into anger, because then I was like, oh, no, I'm going to, I need someone to blame.
So I'm going to blame my dad, because he didn't tell me that it was terminal. And in my head, I rationalized it.
If he would have told me, I would have showed up more. But I don't know if I would have.
I just dealt with his passing the best way I knew how. And my dad was a healthy, shaped man.
And then towards the end of he died in hospice at the house. And towards the end, he was very thin.
And it was really hard for me to see him like that. And so I think I would have stayed away, regardless, because at 19, I didn't know what else to do.
I wasn't mature enough to be like, this is the right thing to do. I want to sit with him.
I have limited time. I didn't think that way.
Just a dumb 19 year old. But I would say, huh, I got to stop.
Yeah, I got to stop you. You weren't dumb.
You weren't dumb. Just, you know, we we are judgment machines on planet Earth.
We are. We are judgment machines.
And I could maybe compete with you on self-judgment. I probably would win.

But, you know, here's the thing.

People say to me, my loved one's ill.

I'm going to force my 19-year-old, my 15-year-old to spend time with them.

One of the things I say to young people and people who are adults, you're doing grief right.

You were doing it in character as a 19-year-old. 19-year-olds don't know how to do it.
And you had a father who didn't know how to die. It kind of goes right back to he was as much in the dark too.
We don't teach people how to die. And so he's lost.
You are lost. So what are you going to do? You're going to be a 19-year-old.
There's no dumb in that. Well, and it's interesting because obviously I would love more than anything to have my father still here with me.
But now that I'm older, there's so many life lessons that I've learned to navigate my life now 10 years ago. A friend of mine, she passed away this past Halloween and left behind a 13-year-old daughter.
And the daughter, when her mom was dying, still wanted to go out and celebrate Halloween. And I remember saying to all of her friends, I did the same thing.
And I don't think I shed a tear until his funeral because it wasn't real to me. I just remember I was avoiding, avoiding.
And then the funeral is like, okay, now this is my reality. And I processed it.
But it's so interesting things that I would probably be so judgmental on if I didn't have the experience of losing my father. I have so much empathy and understanding for when other people are on their journey.
And as horrible as it is, but there's so many different elements of who I am today that I wouldn't be if my dad was here because he would be that person that we would always lean on. There's so much, I don't want to say good that came out of him passing because that's not the right thing to say.
But with such grief, you can find these glimmers of greatness that does come. Or like I forever have this guardian angel that I know things are working out because he's up there meddling around.
And how lucky they are to have you in their life because you do know this world. You get, you know, once we've had a loss, we get x-ray vision.
You're like, oh, I know that 13-year-old now. I want to go back, if we can, to the guilt and anger because I want to make sure to give folks some understanding of this.
First of all, anger is grief. I think many people don't realize it's grief.
And anger, I often think is pain's bodyguard. It is.
The anger shows up first to protect you. And 19 year old you had to shut down on all of that to survive.
You know, I always say, if you had all the feelings of your father's death in that day, and I had all the feelings of either my mother's death or my younger son's death in one day, we would be on the floor and we would never get up. Right.
There's a grace in denial. You're so right about that.
Denial paces things out so that we can digest it a little slower. You couldn't have taken it out.
Right. And the guilt, I always say, and this is an interesting one to think about, we would always rather feel guilty than helpless.
A 19-year-old or anyone really, when they experience grief, sometimes life is out of control. What? He died? Some more people could die? So what happens? Our guilt gives us the illusion of control.
Oh, maybe if I had showed up more, it'd be different. It would feel different, all that.
And it's like a Rubik's cube that we play with so that the feelings don't overpower us. Can you go back and see that 19-year-old different now with those thoughts? No, I can completely.
And I think what's so interesting is how you said it comes in phases, because we couldn't handle it if it was all knocked us off of our feet in one wave. And you're so right about that.
And I think we should almost thank the phases and encourage that as opposed to yes. Absolutely.
Because it is, you get just so flooded with so many emotions.

So that's how you held it then. How do you hold his death today? I'm totally at peace with his death.
I will say for about, I always say like for about three years, I was incredibly angry. And I was filming my show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
And on season one, I remember one of my producers was making me do an interview about my dad because I wouldn't talk about my dad. Because at that time, if I spoke about him, I would just break down.
And I was so annoyed at this producer. I was like, why are they making me sit in this dark room and talk about something I don't want to talk about? And it was honestly how we said at the beginning of this conversation, we're so happy that because people do need to talk about this more.
It was as if a house got lifted off of me after that conversation. And I was kicking and screaming while doing it.
But as soon as I had that conversation, that was the last time that I cried when talking about my dad, like in a bad way. I let go of all of this guilt and anger.
And now I could talk about my dad with smiles and happiness and admiration and understanding, even the understanding of, because I used to be so angry, why wouldn't you tell us that this was terminal and but i could understand how hard now that i have kids too how hard that would have to be to admit to yourself i'm not going to be here for my children but maybe he also he's superman right like maybe he thought it wouldn't be terminal and that he could fight that there's a a lot of. Right.
He was going to maybe beat it at the end. Or I could have a million conversations with strangers.
It's really hard. Like, oh, my gosh.
Even to talk to my older son about, you know, his younger brother's death. It's hard to see.
Like for your dad, I think about to have to look into all of your faces your sister your brother and to say goodbye yeah i mean brutal brutal brutal yes and so it's the best he could do it's how society taught him we also have a medical system that misleads people we don't know how to even tell people who are dying the truth always. And prepare families still today that, oh, you know, there is a time for optimism.
And I'm the most optimistic person in the world. There's a time for optimism.
I believe you. And I am.
And there is a time when optimism becomes denial. And we're not great at understanding that.
That's why these kind of conversations just will mean the world to people who are like, no one's talked to me. And the thing that the producer did, I say people need to do this in their own time, in their own way.
So I wish you would have had more choice in that. It was very producer heavy, like in hindsight, but it did get me over that.
Because somehow they became, the camera, the audience became a safe place for you to talk. And what you learned is we can't heal what we don't feel.
Right. And you got to say it.
I also know that, you know, we both love writing. And one of the things I love about writing is it's a place you can witness your own grief.
Because we have distortions we We have stories around death. I remember I used to always think since my mother died at 13, she abandoned me.
And then I did this exercise with myself on paper. I wrote this story out from my father's perspective, who wasn't good with grief.
I thought, what's it like for him?

His wife's dying and he's got this kid he doesn't know how to raise. What's it like for these nurses

that won't let me in? Oh, they've been told these rules that are best for the patient.

And then I thought about my mother, this woman who has to say goodbye to her child,

doesn't know why people aren't visiting. She probably didn't know about the visiting hours.
And once I put it on paper, I suddenly got, my mother didn't abandon me. She died.
Abandonment was a story my distorted mind made up as a child. Children's minds always think they're at fault or something's wrong.
Where do you think you get your optimism from? Because all the events that you said to me right now, that would make me so angry at all of those individuals. Oh, anger is my go-to emotion.
Oh, believe me, I get angry. It's like one of my go-to emotions, but I try to really release it.
My father was steeped in his addiction, didn't know how to be a parent, but oh my gosh, the biggest optimist. If I said to my father, I think I want to be an astronaut, he would go, well, which planet? He would never say, well, how's your eyesight? Do you think you'll get in? I mean, and I think I got some of it from him.
I got a lot of other things from him. I wish I didn't, but I got a lot of good things from him too.
But like you said, not to be confused with, what'd you say, denial? Right. Yes.
We confuse like, you know, at a certain point, optimism can become denial. Right.
And I'll tell you, sometimes people can also distort religion and spirituality. I mean, what breaks my heart so many times is I'll hear a child I'll say, I guess I didn't pray hard enough.
Oh, that's so sad. And I try to really teach people, you know, that the idea that sometimes healing isn't of the body.
And we so internalize everything. I know.
And with children, they're like puddle jumpers, just like you. They go into the pain, then they jump out back to school, they play, they go in, they go out, and they have to do grief their way.
One of the things people often ask me that you already have mentioned here is, what's the goal of grief? It's to remember with more love than pain in your own time, in your own way. Not anyone else's way, not the person who's telling you to move on or get over it or why are you still in it, but in your time, in your way.
You know, you mentioned the idea of some of the gifts that you got from your dad's death. I talk about that as meaning.
And just like you said, people think like, oh, wait, how does something good happen? I always say, no matter what comes out of anyone's death, I'd rather have them back. That goes without saying.
100%, yes. But I know when my younger son died, he loved my work.
And I had that moment that I thought, I live in this cute little neighborhood, these little small cute houses. And I pictured someday in the future, teenagers riding by my house and going, who lives in the haunted house? What's that? Cobwebs, all that.
And someone would go, oh, it's the grief expert. And then one day his son died and he never came out again.
Chloe, I knew that could happen. And you know, I thought my son loved my work so much.
His death can constrict it or expand it. Yes.
And all of us, after we've had any kind of grief, after we've gone through so much of the pain, so much of the hurt on our time, then have a decision to make, right? Do we stay or do we begin to swim again? Does this event constrict us or expand us? And I love, you know, how things have expanded you and how you can get messy and show it and you know I I think we all need that in life so I'm going to get messier in your honor online a little bit more I just but I want to let people know that you know one of the things people don't realize is all the colors of grief. People think it's happy, sad, angry.
No, it's not. Right.
There's bitter. There's jealous.
There's upset. There's good days.
There's bad days. There's a million of them.
You're right. And not that I feel like you need to do that.
I just, if, because if you're not feeling that that's in you to do, then don't force yourself to do it. Just the same thing.
If you're still grieving, don't force yourself to have an end date because somebody else... And there is no end date.
No. I mean, people say to me, like, my loved one, my sister, someone died.
So tell me, my brother, my mom, dad, how long we're going to grieve? And I always go, well, how long are they going to be dead? Right. If they're going to be dead for a long time, you're going to grieve for a long time, but hopefully with more love.
When we talk, I feel your dad's love through this. One of the things I always say is, it's talked about Einstein, that energy can't be created or destroyed.
I say this all the time. And when your dad died,

a part of you died with him.

But a part of him lives on in you

that replaced that part.

So we're always still whole after people die

because we have a part of them with us.

Yeah, I believe that for sure. Do you ever feel him? Yes, I feel him a lot.
My sister Kim will dream about him. I don't necessarily dream of him, which sometimes I get jealous about.
Right, right, right. And I'm like, well, why does she get to see him in the dreams? And I don't then i try to you know be happy for her and i'm like okay it's fine because i feel him in ways that she doesn't i think we all me and all my siblings we do in different ways and you all had different relationships with him and my little sisters who that's not their biological that's not their dad right um they have signs because they were really close to him and they feel him or he'll come to them.
And I think it's such a beautiful thing. Some people get scared or sad and I look for it.
I love that. And I think it's fascinating.
It is the place where psychology and religion, I think, coincide. Years ago, it was thought, let's help someone find closure.
And we know now we don't close the book ever. No.
And we learned to live with that loss. And now we talk about continuing connections, continuing bonds.
I wore my dad's old antique watch today in honor of us talking about fathers. You know that he still lives within me.
And one of the things that was really shocking to me, this is the other side, is when my father was dying, he was just in such despair. And at one point a day day or two before it shifted, he seemed okay.
And I said, what happened? And he said, your mother came to visit me. Oh, wow.
And I'm going to be with her again. Doesn't that give you a little piece? And he said, you know, we're all going to be together again.
And I did a lot of research on that, about this idea of how the dead come to greet the dying. Wow.
And how all religions, people, no matter who you are in the world, this experience happens. And I think that veil between life and death is thin and it's meaningful.
And for us to just be a little more open. I mean, so many times we want proof, but I think religion tells us, spirituality tells us, and psychology now says, those bonds continue.
You know, I always say, don't give death any more power than it already has. It has the power to physically take our loved ones.
It doesn't have the power to end their eternal life. It doesn't have the power to end our relationship and it doesn't have the power to end our love.
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Terms and conditions may apply. I have no fear of dying at all.
I, cause I,

I know where I'm going. I know who I'm going to see.
Like I have such faith and confidence in that. I'm not, I don't want to leave my children, but I'm not afraid of when it is my time to go.
I just hope it's in a very long time. Are you someone that has a fear of death? It depends on the day okay and this is a hard world to leave so there's been times when i'm like oh yeah if it happened i'd be fine and one of the things i really try to practice is enough am i enough can this be it because and yet i also know from being with so many dying people

we don't let go of this body easy we want to stay we want to be there for our loved ones they never look ready feel ready so i think it is hard but in terms of just fear of death no like you i'm like what if we don't arrive into an emptiness, but instead we're in a fullness? Everyone we've ever loved and known is there with us. You know, what if birth isn't a beginning and death isn't an ending? When I've been with people have died There is an essence to them like there's an essence I feel and sometimes with you're with people who are dying Six months a month an hour Depending on if they were in a coma whatever you can feel they're kind of gone already, right? And when you're with someone who's died and you're with their body, they're gone.
Whoever that was, that energy, that was a suit of clothes that we wore this lifetime. Have you ever been around someone who has passed and then came back to life, like had a near-death experience? I've met people with near-death experience.
I've also met a lot of people who were, you know, revived. And, you know, sometimes they see the tunnel, sometimes they don't and all those things.
And what's fascinating to me is in all my years of this work and people sitting with people who visit as their dying relatives, it's always comforting. No one goes, oh, I don't want to go there.
Sometimes they go, I don't want to go yet. Right.
But it's really interesting that people seem to find peace, even if it's in that last second. Mm-hmm.
I read a bunch of books about near-death experiences. I don't know why I'm a little morbid and find that just so fascinating to me.
And most of the time when they are now back and living again, they feel this emptiness, not that they want to die, but of just what they saw was so peaceful and beautiful. And they did see familiar faces or energy feelings.
It's like reassuring. It's calming for me.
Because I felt like, oh my gosh, you know, the end of life, the end. And I had my own religious and spiritual beliefs.
But when I did my research and writing around how the dead come to greet the dying, and it was interesting, the people that I interviewed were doctors, nurses, social workers, paramedics, because I didn't want anyone to sort of dispute that about all their stories, who in the corner of the room, their dad was there, their mom, someone came to greet them. We don't die alone.
That's so beautiful. We don't, you know, whether it's their religious belief happens.
And no one got anyone that upset them. You don't see an enemy and all that.
There was actually one person who she had been a victim of domestic violence. And I remember when she was dying, she was so afraid that the person who hurt her was going to be there waiting because he had already died.
And she died so peacefully. You know, there's something about, it's only the love then.
It's only the love we're with. What is your release through times like that? Because you've seen so many people die before you.
So when does it not, I'm sure at a certain point, it just becomes a norm for you seeing that, or does it ever? It has made me appreciate life more. I feel more present.
There's times I'm in a really bad space and I have to see someone or go online or do something and like takes me to a higher place. It's it is my meditation when I'm serving someone and we're all going to experience this.
And it makes me take more joy in life. This is a world we've all been given.
And when we're stressed and in trouble, I'm like, okay, feel it, enjoy it. This is what stress feels like on planet earth.
And not, you know, I think it's not about being so heavenly, you're no earthly good. It's like, oh, this is this world.
This is what happens. This is how we live here.
Oh, this is what a bad day feels like. Let me enjoy a bad day on planet Earth without trying to change it.
One of the things when I work with people in grief, I often work through a lot of the what ifs. What if I had done this? What if I had tried this? And you can learn this with people in life, we all have.
You don't even need to die, all the what ifs. And then I go through the what ifs and I help them understand that even if they did the what if, the person would have still died.
Or they would have still had taken that action or had their addiction or did their relationship the way that whatever it is or the job and i eventually get them to cross out on a piece of paper the what if and write even if even if i had been there more my dad still would have died right it's just that reality and to just be with this thing that we can't accept. And I think that's so important to change the what if to even if because so many people beat themselves up for years, decades over.
But if I only was there five minutes sooner, you know, what's meant to be is going to be. If it's your time, it's your's your time and picture this if I was sitting in a restaurant and I was sitting there alone and there was a couple next to me it's two people talking and one said they just had a horrible loss whatever the loss may be and the other person was like you need to get it together you need to do all that, this is self-pity.
I'm tired of your pity party. I'd be like, excuse me.
She's just had a horrible loss. She needs kindness.
And yet the person, we have this hallmark version that in grief, we're going to be so kind to everyone and to ourselves. Nope.
We're brutal to ourselves after loss. My mom lost her sister a year ago.
Right. And she has taken that death, of course, but so, so hard.
And, but she's so, what if, what if I should have done this, or I should have done this better. And she seems to not be that type of person she seems like let's just grieve but not to really question some because she's so methodical she plans everything methodical in a great way everything's organized and planned so the fact that she's going back and retracing her steps and wanting wishing she did things differently it's always so interesting to me because in my eyes she she's done everything that she possibly can.
Now, here's a tip for that. Yes.
If someone's going, if only I had done this and what if I had done that, our tendency out of love is to go, don't talk that way. You couldn't have done anything.
But instead to go, tell me about it. Play it out.
Let me hear it. Because people get so shut down and they don't get to talk about it.
So sometimes we need time to explore the what ifs and have our detective hat and be in the pain. You're right, because I've definitely never let her do that.
Not that I've been mean. I've always been like, but you've done, you did everything.
I just try to remind her how much she did do. But I've never said, you know, tell me about it.
What would you have done differently? And what would that have done? How would that have helped? And here's the really important one. Well, if I had done this, saw them

more, been there, gotten there sooner, then I go with, do you think that's really true? And sometimes I'll say to someone, someone will go, if I'd gotten to the hospital after they fully explored it, I'll say, I wonder if we can always save people by getting to the hospital on time. I wonder, does that always play out that way? Right.
Yes. Basically having them arrive at the conclusion on their own.
And that's our inner wisdom we have to get to. Right.
Why don't we talk a little bit about the grief of non-death losses? Because I think it's important for people to sometimes give themselves permission

to go through grief.

I sometimes think people think,

oh, it's so trivial, it's a job,

or a divorce or a breakup.

But I do think that it's all relative

to what they're going through in their lives.

Absolutely.

And every grief has a little nuance.

I mean, someone dies, you're never seeing them again. Right.
A divorce, wait, they can be on earth, rejecting you every single day, not wanting you. It kind of feels like the grief that can keep giving.
One of the things when I talk to people who are dealing with divorce and breakups, we're grieving the person who's left, but we also have this distorted thinking that the person that's divorcing you or leaving you or with someone else or acting out was your soulmate. And so they have this grief of the relationship ending, but also the grief of losing their soulmate.
And I remind them,

I don't believe your soulmate is the one who leaves. I think your soulmate's the one who stays.
Right. So I think that's a challenge in the relationship wants.
Betrayal, a huge grief, the loss of trust, the loss of security, job loss, the loss of pay. You know, there's so many abuse, the loss of self and loss.
You know, these, luckily, those griefs, we can bring ourself back to life. We can find ourselves again.
Hopefully. I have a few friends that they're not out of that stage.
Well, and we think there's something important, some loyalty in the pain. And also, our old wounds show up in grief.
Like you would think when you're overwhelmed in grief, well, why on earth would my old wounds show up right now? I mean, I'm overwhelmed. And yet old wounds come up, our old trauma comes up in stress.
And grief is clearly a time of stress, divorce, death, huge stressful times. You're right.
May I? Yes. Ask you? Please.
About something that I saw recently and I thought about. Okay.
In your life and your experience. I think about that get together that you had with Lamar.
Yes. I looked at that and go, when people go, she shut down.
I was like that's grief oh I did shut down that but that's grief that's traumatic grief the weird sorry to interrupt you the weird thing is I didn't know I shut down in real time I remember when I left and I think it was like hours later I was sort of like just happened? I couldn't recall exactly what was said. I needed, I think even like a week or two to process.
And almost my memory started coming back. I definitely was an autopilot.
I was just there coasting. But I couldn't have told you if you asked me after.
So how was that talk? I would have been like, what did we talk about? My heart about I heart went out to you oh thank you can I tell you a bit about that from just the outside and see if it no totally first of all you're trying to do repair work and you're trying to do repair work with this person who was the love of your life and everything everything went so badly out of your control, despite your best efforts. And here's when I looked at you and watched that.
I saw the moment he was late, I thought, this is not going to be good for her. And I thought, talk about post-traumatic stress that your mind has to go into, probably as it did lots of times with him.
Exactly. He's late.
What's going on? Is he okay? What happened? And so it has to go into protection mode. It had to go there.
It's unconscious. You didn't.
That's why it's so out of body now. Because you were just feeling, oh my gosh, have I lost him again? Did he die again? This is what happened? How many days, nights and all that? Now, those are his wounds.
If I was talking to him, I'd be having a different talk or both of you together but this is about your reaction that i felt like got a little overjudged it did and that you know here you are thrown back into it it's also a moment i thought you're really seeing clearly you're going oh this oh, this isn't the person I imagine. This is who he really is.
Let me really meet him. And it was really hard.
And I think we don't talk about those griefs around those relationships. You must have had so much grief day and night.
And just as someone who's dealt with addiction and my own son dying of it, it's brutal. And there's no, there's no happy place you get to.
No. And even, I think even when people do recover, the person that was on that journey with you when you were not sober, it's hard for them to recover.
So just because that addict might recover, the bystander doesn't always because they have so much PTSD. And it's like you said, when I felt totally fine and I was excited to meet with Lamar and then when he was late, instantly I sort of blacked out and I was like, okay, I'm not here.
My trauma goes just coast autopilot and I just may I get by. And then what they showed I think was maybe 20 or 30 minutes tops.
And we were there for four and a half hours. And the first hour was not speak.
He would not speak. It was just sweating, tardiness.
He was so uncomfortable. But then I was uncomfortable.
How much of your relationship were you doing the work? Were you doing a lot of work to help him in his addiction? Yes. And here he arrives and you're doing the work again.
Now my heart goes out to him. He's got a horrible disease.
Yes. That is a lot for him.
But when we talk about grief, going back to what I said about grief must be witnessed, even in those moments that you said it was four months of misery. Yeah, I don't remember that.
Oh, your grief's not being witnessed in that moment. Right.
I mean, I wanted... And that made me very angry.
Of course. Of course it did.
How could it not? It made me angry. But I will say, I stand by a lot of my responses in that meeting.
But then also, some I was like, why am I snapping at him right now? Some I was like, I'm... Because you were angry and hurt and thrown into an old situation.
I mean, we all have this idea of what's today going to be like. And you expected him hopefully on time and you're reconnecting and here's your stuff.
And it's so different than what you expected. Yes, it definitely was.
I have so much compassion for you both for you. Because it's it's two horribly wounded people trying to do repair work.

And I think one of the things we miss in life sometimes, first of all, in grief, it's a

time when people close to us cannot get it and feel like strangers.

And strangers can feel like friends and family.

Right.

I get that.

We often want the person that hurt us to do the repair work and it's going to be done by others that's the openness to try to find right to allow that repair work to come in the next time there's a similar but different situation and you did the best you could and so did he and I'm like bravo for both of you for showing up and just trying it yeah we both tried it I was very proud of him because I'm sure that was very intimidating for him you know coming to my best friend's house it was more in my comfort zone than his. And I was very proud of him, although he was late, but that's okay.
Okay, hang on, which had to be a huge trigger. Oh, major huge trigger, which like the moment it happened, I'm like, Oh, my gosh, this is going to go bad, just because of the lateness.
And then when I heard like 20 minutes, 40, I'm like, Oh, not going well. No.
All right. One more thing here.
You said how proud you are of him and you lit up with how proud you are of him. Can you be that proud of you? I'm, I'm proud of me.
I'm proud that I got through it. And you know, your protection systems needed to kick in and they did.
That's how you had to survive.

Yes.

That's how you had to survive those moments. One of the things about grief and loss and breakups

and divorce and betrayals and death and everything is we continue when we survive.

We're very resilient.

We're very resilient. I always say we're resilient and fragile all at the same time.

We are. And I don't think we give ourselves enough acknowledgement for either one of them, because we are for sure.
If you were to go out there again, dating-wise, life-wise, what stories come up in your mind? Bad. Yes.
Okay. And here's why you're still trying to process them.
And so you're living in that reality. And what we do is unknowingly, we take the bricks of our last relationship to try to build the next ones.
And none of us want to do that. So it is about what do you think? Because I think there's some some grief work there still what do you think there is around your past relationships because i had so much abandonment in mind what do you think that story is that needs to be healed for you to just go out there as an open book whether you go out there next week week or next year or in 10 years, but you arrive as an open book, what story is saying, please heal me? I think for me, I need to learn to trust myself again because I feel like I've let myself down trust-wise.
And because I've made bad choices in the past, I'm afraid to make another choice and have it be the same outcome. And those choices, and I'm sorry to say this because I know some of them were really painful, were the right choices that you needed to go through to get to the next place.
And so you want to make sure

we choose people. And here's the thing, we go, we're attracted to the wrong people, or we bring the wrong people.
It's like, let me not choose familiar. Mm-hmm.

There's something familiar about that.

I got to tell you, i was a attractor of people subconsciously that i knew were going to leave let me tell you how did you identify that though oh my gosh i learned if i went into a party and there's one charismatic person that I heard, oh my gosh, you know,

tricky.

I'm like, oh, I got to go talk to them.

I mean, I was going to change them.

I saw their potential, all that stuff.

Shockingly, by doing the grief work.

Okay.

So you're willing to go deep for a second?

Sure.

All right.

I don't know that this is true, but it was true for me. There is a grief around my mother that I thought needed to be repaired by other strong women.
And eventually, instead of doing the relationship repair work, I had to do the grief repair work. And the grief repair work was to get this, and this is what was so hard.
And I didn't even think I consciously was doing it in my whole life, no matter where I looked, how I looked, what they look like, how strong, how familiar, they're never going to be my mother. I had to really grieve.
She was the one and only in that time span. and I wonder if there's a part of you, and only you know this, that like, I have to really just go so deep into this father that I deserved for the rest of my life.
And to just know that I could meet a million great guys, no one's ever going to be him. What's so interesting is I've thought, like, is this something related to my dad? But all of their characteristics, I feel like are so different from my dad.
Not bad, not good. Just they're indifferent.
I'm not talking about characteristics. I'm talking about filling a hole.
I could see that. Here's where it gets really crazy.
Filling the hole is accepting. It's never going to be filled.
I don't know if this is a great comparison, but I used to say,

you know, when you lose someone, it's like if you were born with all your limbs, then you lose a limb. It's not that you don't go on, you go on and you learn to adapt to life without that limb, but you always know that it's not there.
It's never the same, but you do go on, you do survive. It's just never the same and you miss it all the time.

And yes, I... the same but you you do go on you do survive it's just never the same and you miss it all the time and yes i i get that analogy so much because it's never going to be filled and no one could fill that and no one should right and we often know that consciously but it's an inner work so how do you do that inner work i think it just starts with this awareness okay it's an inner work.
So how do you do that inner work? I think it just starts with this awareness. Okay.
It's just that awareness of, oh, gosh, I like that person. And I miss my dad all the time.
And I'm never going to find my dad in the world again. And let me just show up fully for this person.
Because there's a familiarity in people that's not characteristics. That's what's so hard.
And the thing is, sometimes when we've lost someone through death, we seek out subconsciously people who are not predictable so that this time they'll stay. That's really fascinating.
I saw that in your eyes. Yeah.
I saw that hit. It's clicking.
Maybe this one will stay the way my dad should have. And of your dad couldn't yeah but none of this is logical it's matters of the heart right do you think it's irresponsible to tell your kids like i tell my kids all the time like i'm never going to leave you do you think that's irresponsible to say here the thing.
The moment there's been a death in the family or grandparent, kids immediately go to, mommy, are you going to die? And the answer is, yes, honey. Someday I'm going to die.
But I'm doing so many things to have a really long life because I want to have a long life with you and I want you to have a long life. That's why I do this and this and this.
It's all so we can have so much time. So always be honest.
Yes. Okay.
Because at some point they're going to make the calculation of your dad died at this age and someday you're going to hit that age. Right.
And then you're going to have to reassure them and yourself that you're going to outlive his lifetime. Right.
I think that's really important to, for people to hear and know for me at least too, because we've had, they know that my dad has died, but he didn't die when they were alive. Right.
But my daughter lost her grandma, my ex's mom, when she was young. But she was, I think she was like four.
So she wasn't that aware. But she'll like ask about her.
She has dreams of her. But she hasn't asked me yet, when are you going to die? She just

thinks I'm going to be 150 because she always tells me that. Great.
You don't need to bring it up until they ask. And kids are often the forgotten griever.
So it's so good that when we have those conversations, people will say to me, oh, the goldfish died. This has happened.
And, you know, the pet died.

We told him the dog ran away.

I'm like, what's your plan?

What? The goldfish died. This happened.
You know, the pet died. We told them the dog ran away.
I'm like, what's your plan? What's your plan to teach them about grief? And I'll say the moment grief happens in our children's life, someone dies, that's the moment to teach them. And I think the hardest thing is to be honest.
Right. You know, no one wants to be honest with kids.
We want them to be happy. Will you talk a little bit about your website? Sure.
Yes. I think that's so important for people.
Thanks. The website is grief.com.
And on it, there's so many resources there for people to get. There's groups, there's videos you can watch.
I'm also trying to post things on social media. It's I am David Kessler.
David Kessler was already taken, so I had to be I am David Kessler. And just to give people resources to talk about these things.
I love that I do the books. I have one on the afterlife that I mentioned to you before.
There's also just ones about finding meaning and getting through the pain and chiseling through that. And just to know there's help out there.
For everyone, there's help. So grief.com.
Grief.com. And I think it's so important for people.
A lot of people feel so much shame in their grief. And I think for them to know that they have that outlet and just to hear also your voice and how compassionate and empathetic you are for everybody in all their stages.
And you really are the master at, you know, helping people find their way. And I know I'm so grateful.
And I know I've taken more of your time than I should have had. And let me just tell you, here's the thing that I think is surprising about what you just said, is when people think like about grief groups I do, they think, oh, is it six people on chairs online? It's hundreds and hundreds.
And the thing that people don't realize is it helps so much with the loneliness and we find ourselves in each other's stories.

Some people talk up front, but some people in tender hearts are just in the background listening.

And we grow and learn.

And thank you again for doing this.

I want to leave you with one small thing that I hope will encourage people.

What we run from pursues us

and what we face transforms us.

Amen.