What Nobody Tells You About Grief and Loss

Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.

Today, you and I are going to cover a topic that over 18,000 of you have emailed in asking me to get a world-class expert to come talk about.

It is one of the most requested topics that I've never discussed on this podcast. What nobody tells you about grief and loss.
And I want to say something before we jump in. Thank you.

Thank you for hitting play. This can be a hard topic for every one of us to lean into.
And so I am so proud of you and proud of myself for being here.

Now, I've waited until now to have this conversation because I needed the right person to guide you and me through this topic. And that person is David Kessler.

David has over 30 years of experience helping people through unimaginable loss. And David also knows what it's like to lose someone.

He's lived it, he's studied it, he's taught it, and today he is here in our Boston studios for you and the people that you care about.

He's going to walk you through the science and process of healing from grief, and he's also going to explain why love and grief are a packaged deal.

He'll share what no one else tells you about grief and loss, and he's going to do it in a way that you've never heard before. This conversation.
is also about what comes next.

Living with grief with more peace, more grace, more laughter, and more meaning. You're going to discover how to carry your love forward without being trapped in pain or guilt.

You're going to get the tools for how to deal with intense emotions when they crash in.

And you're also going to learn what to say and the things to never say in grief, whether you're the one grieving and you're saying it to yourself, or you're just trying to support someone who is.

By the end of our conversation, you're going to feel less alone and you're going to look at this topic and what's possible completely differently because it's going to open the door to healing, happiness, hope, and give you the roadmap to living a more meaningful life after loss.

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Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am really excited that you're here.
It is always an honor to be together and to spend this time with you.

And if you're a new listener, or you're here because somebody shared this episode with you, I wanted to personally take a moment and welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family.

And I also wanted to thank you for hitting play on an extraordinarily important topic. Joining us in our Boston studios is one of the world's most trusted voices on grief and loss, David Kessler.

David is the founder of Grief.com, an online platform with workbooks, workshops, and support groups that have helped over 5 million people navigate every kind of grief that you can experience in life.

David has also spent over 30 years training doctors, nurses, counselors, and first responders on grief. He's also the best-selling author of eight books.

And across all of his work, David Kessler gives voice to what nobody tells you about grief and loss. David's wisdom doesn't just come from research or decades of counseling other people.

It also comes from his own painful lived experience. David lost his mother at the age of 13, and David's son died at the age of 21 in a very tragic and unexpected way.

Both experiences have had a profound impact on the way that he thinks about grief.

the way that he talks about it, and how equipped he is and skilled he is in guiding you and your loved ones through the experience of it. This isn't going to be depressing.

You and I are going to feel less alone. We're going to laugh.
David's going to drop a few F-bombs because sometimes that's how you feel when you're going through loss.

And one more thing, this isn't an easy topic. And so I wanted to say I'm so proud of you for pressing play and for being here.
And I'm also grateful.

for how you're going to share this with the people that you care about. This conversation is a gift to all of us, and I am glad you are here to experience it.
All right.

Please help me welcome David Kessler to the Mel Robbins podcast. It is so great to see you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for making the trip here to Boston to be on the Mel Robbins podcast.

I am thrilled to be here. How does it feel to know that this is the

topic

that is one of the most requested topics that we have received from listeners around the world.

I know it. You know it.
It is the most needed, requested topic that no one wants to talk about. I want to start by having you talk about

how is my life going to be different if I take everything to heart that you're about to share with us

and I apply it to my life. How will my life be different? This is going to sound strange, but I can almost guarantee it if you were to do this work, listen to this, share it,

your life is going to be fuller and bigger.

And it's going to be richer.

And I'm evidence of that.

You know, loss is about subtraction. We need to find ways to bring addition into this.

And so I'm going to

throw every tool I can think of at everyone, at everyone to really help folks have ways to find their inner wholeness.

Well, what's interesting as I listen to you already is nobody can go through life without experiencing some kind of devastating loss. I have been studying the statistics.
Here they are.

It's a trend. Death rate, 100%.

100%.

Every ancestor, like, listen, and I always tell people, to begin with, you come from a long line of dead people. Like, every ancestor you have has died.

There is something in us that knows how to do this.

I'm teaching people what our great-grandparents knew how to do. And the thing is, Today, if people can find a way to grieve fully, they will live fully.

If people can find a way to grieve fully, they can live fully.

And let me tell you the most bizarre concept.

I spent my, so much of my life in hotel meeting rooms, giving talks. You know, there were days it was 10 people and 50 people and 300 people.
And after the talks, it happened more than once.

We're in a large meeting room, the hotel.

There's the realtors are in the next room. And after the day, the staff would say, what were you teaching? And I would go, why? And they would go, because your room was laughing the most.

And I would go, grief. And they would go, what kind of grief? I would go, that kind of grief, like someone's dying or someone's already died.
And they couldn't understand it.

And here's why that happens.

Loss in our life pushes our bandwidth for pain, but it also pushes our bandwidth for happiness and joy and laughter. People in my rooms learning about it,

they probably did cry a little harder, but they also laughed harder. I love

that promise

that in grief, yes, it expands your capacity to feel pain, but it also expands your capacity to feel joy and laughter and all of these other aspects of life.

And you say that not just as somebody, David, who has spent your life

counseling people going through grief, educating other health practitioners, mental health practitioners, medical professionals in the actual doctors, how to give bad news.

Yeah, like in the field of grief, but you experienced a loss of your own. Your son David died, and that shifted how you think about and how you talk about grief.
So, could you just share

what happened with your son? Sure. And

let me start with,

I was a grief expert for decades. I had lost my mother when I was 13, horrible tragedy.

So I grew up in grief

and was looking for my own healing. And I'll tell you, when my mom died when I was young, and people will get this,

I thought I was the only person that ever lost a parent.

Like, I didn't know this happened to other people at 13.

You asked about my son, David.

I adopted two boys, four and five years old.

David had been born drug exposed.

I

really

thought love would conquer all.

They had an amazing childhood, great childhood.

And when he hit his teenage years,

his trauma and addiction began to come up.

And

I was thrown into that hell that anyone who's living with a loved one with addiction knows what that's like.

And he worked so hard to get through that.

And he struggled and struggled

and made it and was doing well and met an incredible social worker. He was dating

and

hit 21, was in program, sober, doing well.

He and his girlfriend hit a bump that anyone at 21 year olds olds do.

Called up some friends. They got high again.

They lived. He died.

I was on the floor.

And

I'll tell you,

I didn't know if I would get up again.

One of the things I remember people always want to know, like,

what did you learn that you didn't know?

How intense the pain can be. I had forgotten that.

I wanted to write every parent that ever had a child die that I'd counseled a note saying I didn't get it.

And then

I got to tell you, I was someone who used to dish out, oh, go to a grief group, read a book, you know, go to a grief counselor. And then I had to do that, Mel.

And I went to a grief group. It took me three times to get there.
I went to a grief group, took my contacts out, put my glasses on, baseball cap. I had to literally sit five feet from my books.

And I couldn't tell anyone. I'm that expert.
I couldn't be him. I actually

was in that place so stuck,

didn't know if I'd come out of it.

And that's an important place we go through. If you haven't been stuck, you haven't been in grief.

How did that experience of losing your son, David,

shift the way you

understand

and talk about grief?

First of all, the biggest thing is I got to tell you, when people show up for themselves, when they reach out to a friend,

And like, if you're a friend, you need to listen to this. If someone reaches out to you, your job is to applaud them.

If they say, I'm stuck, I need help, I don't know what to do next, applaud them for reaching out. It's so hard to do.

I think that's the biggest thing I want everyone to know. Just you got to reach out for help.

And

it's the hardest thing in the world. And we live in a grief illiterate world

that thinks it's like TV. We've all seen TV, right? TV episodes are episode one,

person dies. Episode two, we cry.
Episode three, back to life.

Grief has a longer shadow.

Grief is in three episodes.

What is it? I'll tell you something that'll blow you away. Tell me.

Talk to a lot of my colleagues.

When do you think is the time

most people reach out to a professional and say,

I hope this was going away. I was wishing it away.
I thought I was kind of working on it, but I need some support.

One month, six months, nine months,

five years. Five years? Five years, Mel.
People are living with pain five years before they reach out. And Mel, those are the lucky ones.
Because there's a lot of people that never reach out.

Don't we know them? Yes. Don't you all have someone in your life that like

something

happened and they just never recovered?

I want to stay on this for a minute because I do observe

that sort of with some people, the tragedy happens or the death happens. You spend a week or two celebrating the person, planning.
It's a flurry of people and the memorial and the celebration.

And then for a lot of people, it's like, let's move on. Now, I have a name for them.
What is it? Practical grievers. Practical grievers? Practical grievers.
Okay. That's okay.
That's who they are.

And by the way, they were practical about everything. They were

practical about the divorce, practical about the move. They were practical.
That's just who they are. It's going to be.

And we always think, oh, when they get to a big moment, a big loss, they're going to change. They don't.
They're consistent.

And it drives everyone else nuts because we think they don't have enough feelings. And by the way, they think we have way too many feelings.
So these are just different styles of grieving.

And that's okay. We don't need to change them.
They don't need to change us.

If you're listening and you either are like, oh, yes, that family is definitely practical grievers or my brother is a practical griever

or you're listening and you're like, oh, well, that's me.

What do you want us to know

about what's going on beneath the surface when somebody is very practical and then we move on, but something's lingering? What do you want us to know?

Well, I would first ask, is the something lingering a projection of ours or is it real? Because in real practical grievers, nothing's lingering. For real? For real.
That's possible? Yep. They're done.

They went to the funeral. I mean, a practical griever doesn't go to therapy.

I mean, a practical griever will say, therapy? I got friends for that. Why would I ever go to a therapist or a coach? Why would I do that? No, practical grievers have events and move on.
That's them.

Nothing wrong with them. It's just they're from another planet.
Most of us on this planet don't get them, but it's okay. It's okay.

We need to make sure we're not going to practical grievers for support. Oh, because they're very pragmatic.
And that's how they do it. It's time.
It's time. Move on.
No pity parties. Let's move on.

That's your practical griever.

Oh, my gosh. And I have a lot of them in my life.
I've had to become a champion of not making them wrong. What do you do if you're married to a practical griever? Let them be themselves.
But you

are trying to be a practical griever, but you're not. Well, in grief, it is a time when our best friends, our spouses can feel like strangers,

but strangers can feel like friends and family. Here's the thing.
If your spouse, if your best friend, if your sister who gets everything doesn't get your grief, let it go.

Like the saying, you can't walk up and down the aisle of a hardware store hoping to find milk.

Let it go. Let them off the hook.
They're not your support. I tell people, the issue isn't that they can't support you.

The issue is you're going back to them after they're saying, I don't have the tools. I love you, but got no tools except move on.

So, but there's other people out there. And you got to be like a GPS

and go, okay, all right, not spouse, not spouse, not spouse, and switch over to someone else.

Do do you have a name for the other types of grievers you've talked about practical grievers do you have sometimes people call them feeling grievers but i think that just sort of so it's sort of like practical grievers and everybody else everyone else yes got it so for somebody who's listening because you know when we poured over the more than 18 000 emails that have come in

A lot of the same sentence was written. I don't know how to move forward.

And I want to read a passage from your best-selling book, Finding Meaning.

And you're writing in the introduction, this is on page nine, about

the early days

after losing David, your son.

In the early days after losing my son, David, amazing people like my partner and my spiritual teacher, one of the godmothers for my son, spent countless hours with me listening, talking, trying to help in any way they could.

My friend Diane, who is also a bereaved parent, herself told me, I know you're drowning. You'll keep sinking for a while, but there will come a point when you hit bottom.

Then you'll have a decision to make. Do you stay there or push off and start to rise again?

The problem is,

most people

don't have other people in their life to say that.

And when someone's sinking, we say, you're sure sinking too long. Swim.

And they're still sinking. And we need to just be there with them,

not change them.

You know, the one thing I know for sure

slows healing down is judgment.

And what are surprising ways

that judgment shows up? Because

let's just take the dynamic where you're somebody

who is really stuck in this loss,

but you're surrounded by, as you said, practical grievers, like it's time to move on. Pull up your big girl pants, your big boy pants, and let's move on.

and so you are sinking but you're getting that message it's time to move on can you give us some of those subtle ways that you may feel judged because you're not able

to rise up yet and the problem is that outer judgment is contagious

and we also catch it So what happens is people go,

enough, long enough. You got to get back to life the divorce the death it was this long ago it's time you are doing and here's no matter what they're saying they are saying this you are doing it wrong

you are doing grief wrong

and

one of the biggest things i i don't even do one-on-one support anymore i do all group work because I think we need to find other people. I mean, if you can find other people who get it, great.

If you can't get support, you know, sometimes people go, oh, I should just get through this. And I'm like, I have a maintenance plan on my tires.

Like if my tires, I hit a pothole, I bought a maintenance plan. And like somehow we get to the hardest moments.
And I tell people that we don't get it. Like.

If you're going through loss, you're probably in one of the hardest moments of your life.

Get support. And if you don't have it around you, find it.
I've got it. Other people have it.
Find it.

We find ourselves in each other's stories. And we find our healing in each other's stories.

I'll tell you: if you were to listen in to my groups, you would hear me say a couple of things over and over. I'm constantly saying to people, you're not crazy.
You're in grief. You're not crazy.

You're in grief.

And the other thing I tell people

is you're doing grief right.

And people will say to me, like, if I'm talking to a practical griever, they'll go,

well, no, but they're not. They're staying at home.
I can't tell them they're doing it right. And I'll go, well, you're telling them they're doing it wrong.
How's that working?

How does showering them with you're doing it wrong, is that really helping them get out of bed? Is that helping them enjoy life more hearing you're wrong?

And

the griever catches it. We, in our moments alone, go, maybe I am doing it wrong.
Maybe,

maybe I am stuck. Maybe I'm in trouble.
Maybe this is it forever.

And it doesn't have to be.

Yeah, I'm so glad you gave us that research that the average amount of time that passes before somebody seeks help is five years.

Because I would, I can, I can see as you're laying this out, especially the difference between a practical griever, which is very helpful. And again, everybody grieves differently.

Everybody's timeline is different. Our grief is unique as our fingerprint.
Our grief is as unique as our fingerprint. And so there's no, there's nothing wrong with being a practical griever.

It's your style of grieving. Correct.
But recognizing that's your style versus I'm more of a feeler. I'm somebody that needs to process this.
I think it's a really beautiful thing.

I need to talk about it. I need to talk about it.
Practical talkers. Yes.
I'll tell you, practical grievers are like, oh, my God, enough with the talking.

Like, stop with the talking.

They're like,

it's too much. Well, what I'm laughing about is.
Well, we all have them. We know these people.

But here's the thing. As a deeply feeling person, I'm probably judgmental of people who are practical.
As they are of you. Correct.

Well, I also appreciate the door that you're opening because one of the things, David, that really catches people off guard is how you can think

that you're through it,

but then all of a sudden grief comes out of nowhere. You know what I mean? Like suddenly you're crying in the grocery store or it's a random Tuesday and it's been years.

And you're just flooded with sadness. Why does grief ambush you like that? Let's talk about that.
I call those grief bursts. Grief bursts? Grief bursts.

You're at work, things are fine, something happens, you go there, it comes up, it overwhelms you. It's a grief burst.

So I want to normalize that. Okay.
See, this is why we have to talk about all this because people, now, not only is there a grief burst, I want you to think about this with anyone in my life.

My son, I didn't just love my son like, I love him. Oh my gosh, like anyone in our life.
Some days we're pissed at them. Some days we really love them.
Some days they touch our heart.

Other days, not so much.

Not only do we have grief bursts after someone dies, we have love bursts.

We just get filled with love.

And both of those things are normal. And I think...

You know, I mentioned the five-year mark, but I also want you to know the second time people show up for support is after the one-year mark, thinking, I thought this was going to go away at a year.

Isn't that what's supposed to happen? Not true.

I often think of early grief, and this is what people need to know, especially if you've got a friend out there and you're wondering when they're going to get over this.

I think of early grief as the first two years.

Early grief is the first two years. Your friend that's taking too long is still in early grief.

I would say 99%

of the people

that wrote in 18,000 emails

are

feeling guilt and pressure that you feel

to

become their self-judgment. Yes.
They're doing it wrong.

And it's really important

to hold true to yourself and not to the people who are giving you advice. Listen, most people, when I'm talking to them, they'll go, my sister, my brother, my person says it's time to move on.

And I'll go, oh, and they did that in six months when

their husband, wife, sister, brother, parent died? And they go, oh, no, no, their loved one's still alive. And I go, wait a minute.

You're taking advice from someone whose loved one's alive that hasn't gone through what you're gone through?

I tell people, you've just become the grief expert, not them. Don't listen to someone who's never gone through it.

Don't take that on.

Trust yourself.

What is the number one thing you wish people knew about grief?

Don't put it on a timeline.

Get it off the timeline.

I think the other thing is that grief just isn't being sad and crying in the corner. Grief is sometimes anger.
Grief is sometimes

just annoyance, challenges in life. You know, I often say, there's so many different colors to grief.

There's not,

there's no one way to do it.

In my group, every week we take on a topic, jealousy, anger, some feeling, who would they be if they were still alive, all kinds of things. And tons of people share.

And I purposely do that because I want people to know there's not one voice in grief, not even mine, not anyone. Like there's a hundred opinions.

And we need to get so many different ways to do your grief.

David, thank you for saying that. I want to hit the pause button so that I can give our amazing sponsors a chance to share a few words.

And I also want to give you a chance to share this life-changing conversation. Please be generous with this episode.
This is truly a gift that will help make someone feel less alone.

It will help somebody find their power again. It will help somebody move through the loss and the grief that they're feeling.
And we all could use that help and don't go anywhere.

Because when we come back, David is going to keep telling us the things that nobody's ever told you about loss and grief so you can create a more meaningful life. So stay with us.

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Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins, and today you and I are here with best-selling author and grief expert David Kessler.

He is one of the most trusted voices on healing after loss, and he is teaching us everything that no one's ever told you about loss and grief.

So, David, why do you think grief shows up in so many different ways and is so unpredictable? And are there ways that you can help yourself start to recognize, oh,

this is the grief. Like, for example, I can think about somebody that may lose their spouse and they're coming home from a long day at work and you walk in the door and it hits you.
It's just you.

It's just you and the kids. And there's anger and ups and frustration.
But a lot of times you probably think it's about the workday or the mess in front of you.

And it's deeper than that because what you're really tapping into is the loss of your partner who's not there i always say when people have had a spouse die it's like being half a pair of scissors

it's like being half a pair of scissors

now here's the thing

sometimes

we make a mistake in our modern world and use toxic positivity

Your mom whose spouse died says,

it's brutal to sit across from that empty chair.

Sometimes we think, oh, let's throw some spirituality at them.

Oh, mom, dad's always with you.

And here's the thing. We miss them in that moment.

We miss them. Grief must be witnessed.

And so our work, the harder work,

is to say,

what's it like to sit across from that empty chair, mom?

Tell me what that feels like tonight. Talk to me about it.

And here's the thing: for anyone supporting anyone in grief, what they say is going to make you uncomfortable, and you're going to want to fix them. I'm a fixer.

Mel, give me three problems, I got solutions.

I get to grief, and there's no fixing because no one's broken.

And

it's really important, this idea of just sitting with them. I just got back from Australia, and I was talking to a researcher who told me she goes to these small villages.

And in the village, the night someone dies,

everyone in the village has to change something in their house or in their yard.

And the researcher said, why do you do that?

And they said, because when the family wakes up the the next morning, we want them to know now that your loved one has died, everything has changed.

That's witnessing grief. Now that your spouse, your parent, your sibling, your child, your friend has died,

all of us get

everything's changed. And people say to me so many times, I just want mom back.
I just want my friend back. I want dad back.
And I say,

they'd love to be that person they were before also.

Here's the bad news. They can't be that person again.
We'd have to bring someone back from the dead. And that's beyond our powers.

So they've got to accept this different life that they're in. They're not the old them anymore.
And you have to accept your friend, your family member, not the old them either.

Be with them who they are now.

Love them who they are now.

Right where they are, even if you think they're doing it wrong, love them.

I love that

image, half a pair of scissors.

Is there a way that you think about the type of grief that a parent has when you experience the loss of a child? I think in our modern world, like I worked early in my career in children's hospital.

I knew children died.

The world used to be full of bereaved parents. Every parent was a bereaved parent, you know, 100 years ago.
Luckily, it doesn't happen as often, but it still does.

And we don't understand

the depth of that pain and the additional support they're going to need. There's a lot of things that complicate it.
It can be a sudden death.

It can be death of a child, addiction, mental health issues. When it becomes complicated grief, it's going to just take longer and you're going to need more support.

How do you know it's complicated grief, David? Here's how I think about it. Grief is like a river.
The river of grief will take us to our healing.

The river of grief, some of us step into it slowly as a loved one's really sick.

Some of us are thrown into it and we're drowning on a random Tuesday.

But the river will take you to your healing. Imagine a little branch falling in the river.
That little branch might slow the river down for a second. I didn't tell dad I loved him the day he died.

Afterwards, you're like, okay, he knew. I told him a lot.

But imagine a big branch falling in the river. If you've seen a big branch falling in a river,

the water begins to go in a circle.

It's no longer evolving, it's revolving. Our grief is going in a circle.
It's going nowhere. That's the complicated grief.
I tell people, it's a big branch. It fell in the river.

It's slowing the grief down. We've just got to get in there, examine it, be with it, talk about it.
What is the most important thing for somebody to do if they resonate?

with that description, whether it's a year out or five years out or 25 years out, that there's still something about that experience that is having them swirling?

What's the most important first step to take other than recognizing it? I would first of all tell them,

I maybe didn't get how brutal this is.

And I see you're still having such a hard time. And maybe I heard this podcast and I realized, of course, you are.

Of course you're having a hard time.

Why was I thinking you would be over that in six months, like the TV show?

I would have that discussion with him and almost apologize.

I didn't recognize, you know, even the word bereaved comes from an old Latin word that means to be robbed.

You've been robbed of your right arm, your left leg.

And it's not coming back.

And to say to that person, oh my gosh,

i'm here with you in this

you don't have to be alone anymore

no matter how stuck i thought you were or you might think you are whatever you are you're not alone anymore

that will be magic that will be magic and i'll tell you one of the problems we think this is about words

Everyone wants to find the right words. What is it about if it's not about words and talking? It's about our presence.

Here's the thing I want you to know.

Your presence is all that matters.

Your presence is all that matters. Some of the most amazing work, I have a grief certificate program that I teach therapists and coaches and folks who want to turn their pain into purpose.

And I bring some folks on to work with them. I'm giving this away, but it's amazing to see.
I purposely bring

someone someone on who's had a murder, a child die, spouse of 50. I mean, the worst, worst things you could imagine.
Child die, parents, both parents killed. I bring them on

and I

ask them to tell me about their loss. I say, tell me about your loss.

Tell me about the person who died.

And tell me a story about them.

Tell me one of your favorite stories about them.

That's it. And I sit there and I listen.

For the rest of the time, I listen. And I got to tell you, hundreds of people watching go, oh my gosh, that was amazing.
How did you do it? And I point out, I didn't do anything. I listened.

I listened. I didn't need to intervene.
I didn't need to come up with three interventions. I sat.

It's the power of sitting.

Like, there's a strange thing. This is a tough concept to get for ourselves and for others.

This is not self-help. This is self-acceptance.

And when we accept ourselves and our friends exactly where they are,

then we change.

That's the weird thing. We come into this going, you've got to change.
And they resist. But if we go in and say,

if you're right here for the rest of the time, I'm going to sit with you and you'll never be alone.

And they say, if this is it, I'll sit with it. It's okay.

Then we begin to change.

It's such a paradox. It's not doing its being.

I think a lot of the push to want to get through it is you don't want to feel the pain because a lot of times, like, for example, David, for somebody who's experienced a loss and they just can't stop crying and they feel stuck in this raw sadness and they can't even imagine what it's going to feel like without the sadness that they feel right now.

Because if you let go of the sadness,

you're letting go of the person that you lost.

All right. So a few things.

Many times I'll say to that person who says to me, you don't get it, I'll never stop crying. I'll say, I've been with thousands, hundreds, millions, I don't even know how many.

Everyone stops crying. Everyone stops crying.
They may cry again, but everyone stops. Now,

this idea that we think, because sometimes I'll work with vets who tell me, you know, this pain of my, you know, best friend dying in war or whatever it is, you know, is a badge of honor.

I'll go,

yeah, pain's not a badge of honor. Love is.

So I say to people, when they say,

I

need to hold on to the pain or I'll lose them, I say to them, let me tell you this. When you release the pain in your own way, in your own time,

you will be connected only in love.

When you release the pain, the love will be there. I want to tell you a story around this.

In the pandemic, maybe week two, a friend of mine, practical griever, comes over. We're going to take a walk, six feet apart in the middle of the street.
We're walking. A young woman walks up to me.

probably 20 years old in tears, one of my neighbors, and she goes, aren't you the grief person? And I went, yeah. And she goes, my wedding's just been postponed.
And she's in tears.

And she says, I don't know how I'm going to make it. And she's crying and she's devastated.
And I talked to her and I listened and I talked about it.

And after a few minutes, after we talked, she thanked me and she said, can we talk again? And I said, sure.

My friend turns to me. and said, oh my gosh, I can't believe how she was going on and on to you.
I mean, you've been to shootings in 9-11 and your son died and here her wedding's been postponed.

And I said to my friend, you know so little about grief. First of all, whenever you compare, we are in our mind.
And we don't have a broken mind. We have a broken heart.

So first of all, let go of the comparing.

People want to know, David, which grief is the worst. Is it a murder? Is it a child's death? Is it a divorce where where they're alive rejecting you every day on the planet?

Is it sexual abuse that robbed you of a life it feels like? What's the worst grief? And I always say, yours.

Yours is the worst grief. Other people's grief don't matter.
Now, here's what goes wrong. People think grief is like a pie.

I have my pie of grief, and all of a sudden, the 20-year-old whose wedding's postponed is taking a piece of my pie. No,

there's room in this world for all our losses.

Here's a tough thing that I work with therapists on a lot and coaches, people who run bereavement groups. Let's say in a bereavement group, there's a woman there, her fiancé

died after three months.

And there's someone else who's been married for 40 years. She says to a woman who had three months, Oh my gosh, your grief is nothing.
Three months is nothing. Try 50 years.

The top line, I would say, is: We don't compare griefs. There's enough room, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I give her that speech. We're not going to judge each other's grief in this group.

Hopefully, I've said that at the beginning. But what I want therapists, coaches, and friends to know: the person who's saying,

Hey, they're getting too much, is really saying, My grief hasn't been witnessed enough. Oh,

we got to go. The person who's complaining that someone else is getting too much attention or doing too well is saying to us, I'm still in need and you're missing me.

And that's the thing that, like, if you don't have the grief training, therapists, coaches, all of us can easily miss. Let's talk about denial.

So for the person. I love denial, by the way.
Why do you love denial?

What a grace.

What a gift the universe has given us.

Here's the thing, Mel.

When someone dies, there's a divorce, a tragedy,

your psyche couldn't take the pain in in one day.

You would be down and never get up again.

There's a grace in denial. Denial helps us pace.

the feelings over time.

When someone says, my loved one's in denial, I go, thank goodness.

Thank goodness. Wow, your psyche's working.
When someone says, I'm numb, I'm stuck. I go, oh,

what an amazing, wise mind you have

that your psyche

is titrating these feelings.

It knows not to give you too much.

It's brilliant. Denial's amazing.
Is there too long of a period to be in denial? I think your psyche knows that.

And I'll tell you, sometimes people show up with a lot of shame. We even have a group just for older losses.

People will show up at the 5, 10, 20 year point, ready to deal with something with shame and regret that they didn't deal with it. And I will say to them, you're ready now.
It's perfect.

Because sometimes we can shame those people and go, that's what happened when you go into denial. Learn that lesson.
No, you're ready now.

good for you it's time oh I love that it's time you're strong enough that

I love that

you're ready now you're ready now I absolutely love that how affirming and to your friend that you think is in denial let them be there it's okay trust their psyche Trust their psyche there are so many people in my life that I want to send this to simply to have them hear you say it chokes me up.

You're ready now. Like for somebody that's just really struggled for years or decades.
And imagine if you've struggled for decades and you finally get ready and people come over and hold you and say,

I love you. I'm here for you.

Good for you. Amazing work.
How does that feel versus someone going, it's it's about time. We knew you should have done it five years ago.
I mean, how hideous is that judgment?

How hideous is that judgment? Well, and I think it's so by the way, can we tell you before we go for what's that sadness about in your eyes?

Oh, I just have a, I have a number of people who are frozen in grief. Yeah.

And I know that they're frozen because they are either scared of their feelings. or they're surrounded by practical grievers or they don't know how to feel the pain.

And so they're like forcing themselves to just go on.

And

I think it's a beautiful thing to have this conversation.

And I think it's really amazing that if somebody sent this to you,

that they're saying you're ready now. You're ready now.
They're saying there is life

that is available to you. There's an expansion.

I want to give you a chance to share this episode with a person in your life that needs and deserves to hear those words. You're ready now.

You're ready now to learn everything that David Kessler is sharing with us.

And so we're going to hit the pause button, give our sponsors a chance to share a few words, and I want to give you the opportunity to share this with somebody because when they hit play, they're going to hear exactly what they need.

Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

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Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins.
And today you and I are getting to spend time with David Kessler.

And we're learning absolutely everything no one's ever told you about loss and grief and how to support yourself and the people that you love as they go through it.

Your book is entitled Finding Meaning and

Cameron, who produced this episode, lost her father.

I'm laughing because I know where this is going, right? And, you know, you see the title, Finding Meaning in Death, and you're like, I don't want to find meaning.

Why am I supposed to find, I'm supposed to, oh, I needed to lose that person to find meaning. It's like another phrase that I don't like.
Everything happens for a reason. I don't believe that.

You know what? Someone said that to me after my son died. Everything happened for a reason.
I went, Yeah, what do you got? I could use a good reason. What do you got?

Well, I think the mistake with that phrase is things happen,

and

you choose whether you find a reason to go on. You choose whether you find a reason to learn from this.
You choose whether or not to find some meaning

from this experience,

not

meaning in the death, but a reason to lean into life and love again.

Here's the thing that I really got.

I

remember maybe at a year sitting in pain, going, oof, I don't know about this one.

And I thought about, I live in a little neighborhood in a little, it's all these little cute houses.

And I thought about

20, 30, 40 years years in the future, the teenagers would be riding their bike and they'd go, hey, what's that house there with the spider webs? Is it a haunted house?

And they would go, oh, that broken down, dilapidated house. It's a grief expert whose son died and he never came out again.
Mel, I could find that in me.

I could find, I could lock the door and never come out again.

And I'll tell you, I'm not the only one that feels that way.

And I had to really understand

it is a decision.

And meaning helped me get to that decision. But not meaning in the death.
What are you finding?

Oh, that's one of the first things I learned when I was researching this book is that the meaning is not in the horrible event.

There's no meaning in a child's death, a spouse's death, a parent's death, a tragedy. There's no meaning in all these losses.
Meaning is after we excavate the pain.

And I want to underline that, after we excavate the pain, the meaning is revealed underneath. And

it's in us. It's who we become.
This is really about

finding your way through that darkness. Well, and it's like that saying, everything happens for a reason.
Sometimes the reason why something happens is you're unlucky. You're in the the wrong place.

Life's unfair. But what that actually is saying to you is you get to choose

the reason why you move forward. You get to choose the reasons why you grow.
It's like the after.

And there's one thing I'd love to just tell you here that I think is so important in this.

One of the things I say about meaning is: your loss is not a test, a lesson, something to handle, a gift, or a blessing. Loss is what happens in life.

Meaning is what you make happen

after the loss,

after the pain. After your son died, you said that acceptance is not enough.

How much do we hate acceptance? I mean, when we tell people in grief, you've got to accept it. First of all, there's not one acceptance.
It's not like it was in the top drawer.

I looked everywhere, but no, there's a million acceptances. Over the years, you're going to have to keep accepting it.

And I think people think acceptance means you like it or you're okay with it, but it really just means you acknowledge the reality of it.

Is that how you, because I like, because one of the questions I want to ask you is: how do you start living the life that you're in,

even though you don't want to accept it you know you can't stop grieving the life you imagined you know you need to accept the life you're now living how do you do that because i understand that freedom is found in reality and i have to live in reality and sometimes when you're in grief when you're in the breakup the divorce the death

that reality is brutal for a long time and you have to be in it and go through it.

And then you will begin to see little lights of acceptance.

You might just get through an hour.

And little by little,

you let that grow and realizing you're going to hate it. It's never the life you want.
You know, grief rips us off of this road. that we were on with this person and puts us on a new road that

we don't know how to travel down.

And why would you want to accept that new road or them dying?

But little by little,

we just allow it and sit in it, and it will begin to move through us.

And that's why, for me, I often thought, acceptance isn't enough. I'm, I'm not, this, I can't, the journey can't end here.
There's a finality that, you know, never wanted.

And so

I thought there has to be more. And that's really what led me to research meaning.
I wanted to find meaning that my son lived. I wanted to find meaning that all these people have died.

I want to read to you from your best-selling book, Finding Meaning. about this topic.
In my work with grieving people, I've often been asked, where am I trying to find meaning?

The death, the loss, the event, the life of the person I loved, or am I trying to find meaning in my own life after the loss? My answer is yes, yes, yes, and yes.

You may find meaning in all of those things, which will lead you to deeper questions and deeper answers.

Maybe your meaning will come by finding rituals that commemorate your loved one's life or by offering some kind of contribution that will honor that person.

Or the loss of your loved one may cause you to deepen your connection to those who are still with you, or to invite back into your life people from whom you've been estranged.

Or it may give you a heightened sense of the beauty of the life we are all so privileged to have as long as we remain on this earth.

And Mel, people sometimes sometimes hear that and think, oh, am I supposed to start a charity? Am I supposed to do a foundation? No, meaning is in the moments. Meaning is in the simple moments.

What can that look like

in everyday life for somebody who is grieving?

First of all, if you think about meaning,

And you want to throw the book, that means you're still in anger. You still got pain.
So allow that.

The book is meant to be thrown.

Allow it. Allow the pain.
Go through it.

In chapter 12, page 191, you have this beautiful section.

The common belief is that grief is all about pain.

Anyone who has been in grief would certainly agree with that. But I believe there is more.
There is love. Why do we believe that the pain we feel is about the absence of love?

The love didn't die when the person we love died. It didn't disappear.
Love remains. The question is, how do we learn to remember that person with more love than pain?

This is a question, not a mandate. I am the first to say that there is no getting around the pain.

You have to go through it because it is an inevitable result of the separation we are experiencing. It's a brutal, forced separation.

You have been robbed of what is dearest to you. The pain you feel is proportionate to the love you had.
Yes. The deeper you loved, the deeper the pain.

But you will find that love exists on the other side of the pain. It's actually the other face of pain.
What does that mean? It's the other face of pain.

People always go, I don't know why this pain's so intense. And I go, because the love was so intense.

You loved a little, maybe a little grief. You loved a lot.

You're going to have a lot. And that's the reality of it.

And I also say to people,

don't give death any more power than it has. Death has the power to physically take your loved one.
It doesn't have the power to end your love. It doesn't have the power to end your relationship.

I spend every New Year's Eve with my mother who died decades ago.

I, in my heart, for just a few minutes, I still parent my son, even though he's somewhere else that I can't find him and don't know where that is.

The love doesn't die. Don't let it die.
Keep it alive. The love will take you to your healing.

I would love to have you put us at that moment

where

you're either standing before the closet of somebody's clothes, or you're walking into the bedroom that has been left exactly

as it was years ago, the day the person died.

Is it important

to change the room? Is it important

to go through through the close?

I'm going to open this up a bit. Yep.

We sort of really make that horrific and wrong. Here's the questions I would ask.

I would say,

I'd love to hear about that room. I'd love to see it.
I'd love for you to take me there.

My questions would be.

Tell me about you when you come into this room. I'm looking.
Here's the kind of things I teach. I'm looking for frequency, duration, and intensity.

I'm wanting to know your loved one's room that's still intact.

Are you going into it

once a week?

Eight hours a day? Once a month?

What's the intensity? Do you go in for five minutes? Do you go in for three hours? Do you spend the weekend in there?

Does it bring you comfort or discomfort?

I mean, I can't just say wrong, right.

There's so much there.

There's so much there.

That's really important to understand that.

And

part of where

some people might get stuck in that moment

is

they need something to hang on to. And a lot of times when I'm working with people and they're saying, help me begin to release this possession,

here's what I tell them that changes everything.

You are hanging on to this

because you believe it's evidence that your loved one existed.

And we're all asking you to get rid of the evidence that they were here.

And I tell them,

I want to point out the biggest piece of evidence that your loved one existed. You.

You are the living, breathing evidence that they existed. You are the storyteller.
You are the memory keeper.

In time when you're ready, once you integrate that, that you're the evidence, you can begin to let those things go. And I tell people, practically, take a picture of everything.

We get the same emotional response from a picture as we do the article. What a brilliant idea.
Take a picture of it all. You could make a whole photo album of all these things.

Beautiful album of everything. So not only do you get a picture of your husband's suit, your child's graduation, whatever it may be, your,

you know, parents' baseball cap, you get all that. You get those pictures.

And then they get to go on and have meaning for someone else. The suit helps someone get a job.

Someone can't afford, like, literally, someone was telling me their child can't afford graduation, cap and gown, right now. Someone else could use that in that school, probably.

What a beautiful thing. When you're ready, when you're ready, in your own time, in your own way.
In Finding Meaning, you write about how anger is pain's bodyguard.

Yeah.

And

there's so much anger and feeling of unfairness when it comes to grief or loss, that this isn't fair. This shouldn't have happened.
Why did this happen to me? This didn't happen to that person.

Why do grief and anger

tend to travel together? Anger is pain.

It's an expression of pain. Now, let me tell you.
When we often get bad news, many

folks have two responses. We sit and cry, and to the person who sits and cries, well, rush over.
Here's tissues. We're here for you.
I'm the one who gets angry. Me too.

When I get angry, people are like, and you get that handled, and then we'll talk to you. Everyone treats you like a porcupine, right?

And you're in as much pain.

The thing we have to do is make that translation.

It looks like they're

in rage,

but they're actually in pain.

And if I can try to hug the porcupine, which is a hard thing to do, but I can tell you as the porcupine, I need a hug as much as anyone, even though I'm like, back, everyone, I still need a hug in that moment.

I will melt if you give me a hug in that moment. Now, here's what goes wrong.

So many of us

have old wounds and trauma from unhealthy anger that we don't know how to find healthy anger. And anger in grief is the healthy anger that we need to express.
What's a healthy way to express it?

Hit a pillow, scream in your car, exercise and run. You know, whatever it takes, you need to get it out.
Grief yoga. You know, people don't know about that.
What is it?

Grief yoga is literally Paul Denniston does grief yoga, and it is, he created it. It is around not the, he says, not the pretzel yoga, but it is around

the feelings that get stuck in our grief, finding ways to get them out and move. Because here's what he says, our emotions need motion.

Go take a walk with your anger. Let it out.

let it go through

you know one of the things that i think about is that when my husband's dad died it was due to complications of a surgery that they rushed to have and in the aftermath of his death there were so many what ifs

we should have gotten a second opinion you know if only

if only they didn't get behind the wheel if only i had picked up the phone call if only you know they hadn't gotten in the the car, on the plane, whatever.

How do you

get out of that stage where you're bargaining with the past

because

the present is so painful to accept? I mean, and this was almost 20 years ago. Right.
And I know my husband, who is a death doula,

who has volunteered with hospice for over a decade,

who

counsels people as a death doula. I know there is still in the back of his mind, if only he had gotten a second opinion.
Okay.

Here's what I would say: a few things.

Guilt is grief's companion.

Guilt is right on that road with grief often.

And

here's what people don't understand. Our mind would always rather

feel guilty than helpless.

Explain that. You'd rather feel guilty than helpless than helpless.
So guilt, even though it's not great to feel it, feels a little better than feeling completely helpless. Self-control.
Oh my gosh.

Here's my control. Second opinions are the key.
So I'm just making this up for your husband.

I don't know him or anything, but it becomes like, as long as I know to get second opinions for the rest of my life, I'm keeping everyone safe.

That makes so much sense because otherwise we live in a world where home

and die. And we do.
So guilt is that false control that we need for our survival.

And here's what I have people do. I go through all the what-ifs

and I have people write down, what if we'd gotten a second opinion? If only we had seen another all those what ifs.

After I have them list the what ifs and if onlys give it space, let it breathe, talk about them. I'm not gonna, you know, people go, don't talk that way.
You can't bring your dad back.

Shut up, let me talk.

People talk, I listen, we go through the what-ifs, I give them their due, then I have them cross out the what-if

and go, even if.

Even if dad got a second opinion, he would have died.

Even if

that's the reality now

if i was talking to your husband i would especially say this knowing he's a death doula i would say to him i worked for over a decade in a hospital system we had in the hospital system

we had the person that would show up early for the appointment They would research everything. They would get second opinions.
They would do everything right, Mel.

And they would still die. How unfair.

And then we'd have someone else.

They wouldn't show up for their appointment. They wouldn't take the medicine.
They wouldn't do the therapy. They wouldn't do the procedure.
And we couldn't kill them.

Part of this is out of our control. So much of it is.

So much. Well, life and death for sure.

And in that guilt, we think we have control. And I'll say to people, well, what are you going to do?

Like, if you stood outside a hospital and said, everyone, second opinion, second opinion, do you think there'd be no more deaths in that hospital? No, people would still die.

If someone that you love is grieving,

how do you help them?

I think of

the threes.

Show up at three days. Show up at three weeks.
Show up at three months.

Just show up.

And a lot of times we ask the person in grief, what do you need?

Oh my gosh, I'm barely breathing and you want a list of needs? I don't know what I need. We know what they need.
They need food. They need their car taken in.
They need groceries.

They need the kids to get to soccer. Like, use your imagination.
You know what they need. One of the things that I remember, I just, it touched my heart.

my son died there was probably i don't know three weeks later i was hungry there was no food

i opened up the freezer and there was a frozen lasagna in there

that i could see the brand that it's not a brand that anywhere near me and i thought someone had the wherewithal to slip that in my freezer knowing this night would come

How amazing. Show up, two things.

What are the things you should never say to somebody who's grieving?

Well, we've talked about a few at least. There's a reason for this.

They're in a better place. Now, context is everything.
If you're talking to your clergy, I actually want my clergy to say maybe they're in a better place. I get it.

I don't want other people to say it because I would go, the better place is here with me now. I don't want to hear about another place.
I don't want to hear God needed another angel.

What's this God that's got an angel shortage? I don't want to hear that. That's crazy.

What should you say instead?

I don't have the words. I don't know what to say.
I don't even know that there are right words. I don't know what your path is going to be like.
But you're not going to walk it alone.

I'm going to be here with you.

I'm going to be here with you. Angry, be angry.
Sad, be sad. Stuck, be stuck.
I'm here with you.

You have this practice, David, called a living amends contract. Will you walk me through it and just explain why it works? Sure.
And living amends have been around for a long time.

Living amends is this idea that sometimes

the person's not here to make an apology to.

So for example, maybe

my loved one died and

our last words were an argument.

Maybe I didn't tell them I love them that day.

So I always say, if you still have something to say in your heart, if you say it purely in your heart, they'll hear it in theirs.

And a living amends

is

you literally

write down, and I have it in here, people can find it online, I apologize for not saying I love you at the end.

My living amends to you is for the rest of my life. When I make a mistake, I'm going to apologize quickly in your honor.

And it's going to be my living, breathing apology.

We died and my last words were an argument. Oh my gosh, my living amends is going to be for the rest of my life.

I will never leave an argument like that again with anyone. And every time I'm in an argument, I will do my best to at least end it with kindness and love, even if we disagree.

And that's my living, breathing apology to you. A lot of people writing in talked about this lingering feeling of guilt

for laughing or starting to date again or falling in love or even just catching yourself

enjoying a normal day because it feels like

in order to move on right

you're letting go of the person that you love

i have a disloyalty checklist i walk people through because it's things like this disloyalty checklist it's literally things like you said here's the disloyalty checklist you find yourself laughing having fun feeling guilty for making a big decision, trying something new,

doing something for yourself,

making a new friend. Like people feel disloyal about these things.

Saying goodbye to the person's clothes, accepting an invitation, changing something about yourself or where you lived,

changing

something about the trips you take, skipping a tradition, moving.

forgetting a birthday, there's a million little disloyal moments.

And

they interrupt the pure grief

because we think it's about disloyalty.

And the truth is, disloyalty doesn't live in the heart. It lives in the mind.
And if we can release that, and go,

I'll tell you something that was one of my disloyalties.

I had to cancel a lot of lectures after my son died.

I had to

then go back and pick them up months later and didn't know how I would do that. We sent out the same brochure

that was originally sent, new dates, blah, blah, blah.

And people wrote in and said,

He's smiling. I happen to know his son died and you send me a brochure with him smiling.
And I had to go, oh my gosh, I get that's an old picture, but should I not smile? Does that look bad?

And I had to go, disloyalty belief, not true. Did my son David

dislike my smile? No, he loved my smile. Would he want me to never smile again in his honor? Absolutely not.
I need to release that disloyalty.

It doesn't serve those who have died and it doesn't serve us.

Disloyalty serves no one and gets in the way of healing.

You know, if you are

left with a mess in the wake of a loss, whether it's the bills, the paperwork, the family tension

that can happen in death and in divorce and a number of other things that create grief for us.

What can someone do if you're the one having to deal with this mess now? Number one,

this is a moment when all your friends are saying, let us know if you need anything to go, I do. Hey, who's good with bills? Hey, who's good with,

I need you. I have grief brain.
People don't realize grief brain is real. What is grief brain?

Grief brain is that fog you're in, that confusion you're in, where things that would have normally just you would have plowed through, you can't figure them out.

Now,

get support.

I also work with a company called Empathy. Okay.

And empathy helps people with the logistics of grief. And one of the things people don't realize is grief makes the logistics harder, and the logistics make the grief harder.

So

we need help. I mean,

Mel,

my son had a bank account. I think it must have had probably $300 in it, not enough to get a lawyer.

I went to the bank. I saw the awkwardness in their face when I said, my child died.
I need to close an account. They bumbled.
They didn't know what to do.

Then they finally, someone said, you need a death certificate. And I got it.
Oh, it's not the original. I mean, it was killing me.
And I'm a grief grief expert.

And I got help. Literally get help from people.
David, I want to ask you some of the questions that we received from listeners. And this one comes from Aaliyah.
My life took a turn I never expected.

ALS is a brutal disease with no cure. And watching my dad slowly lose his abilities has been heartbreaking.
It's hard to accept that he may not be there to see me graduate, get married, or have kids.

The emotional weight of that at 21 is exhausting.

How do you deal with anticipatory grief? So heartbreaking.

So the first thing I would say is to recognize that grief before the death is real.

People think, oh, it's just what comes after. It's real.

Little by little, she's having to say goodbye to him. Each one of those moments is a grief in itself.

Anticipatory grief is what's going to happen when he dies, and that they're anticipating that very slowly, which is the most painful kind, practically. And

to understand,

be present,

grieve each of those moments, and don't attend the funeral early.

He's still here.

Those moments will mean a lot.

And the biggest thing, I always say this to caregivers and care partners, get support.

And if anyone out there has a friend that's dealing with an illness, take them to lunch, bring them lunch, bring them groceries, take them out, give them a 15-minute break to take a walk.

How do you do that? How do you experience the moments?

as you're watching somebody that you love die or succumb to Alzheimer's or just you're you're grieving the life you thought you would have while you're still living the life with this person that's not gone yet.

Yeah, you have to have people in your life or find them, whether it's online. We have anticipatory grief groups, caregiver groups.
There's a million things out there.

You have to have people that you can go to and say,

you can't talk anymore today.

And you've got to be able to process that and feel it and do it with other people.

It comes down to anticipatory grief, just like other grief, needs to be witnessed. You think you don't know how to help your friend?

Just listen. Just listen.
That's how you help them. Jack writes in, my mom's birthday would have been next week.

I can't shake that. Birthdays are so brutal after someone died.
How do you celebrate a birthday when they've died? No, how do you?

It's just the most, it's hideous. It's hideous.
Some people go, there's no more birthdays. Other people still get a cake, a candle, wish them well.

Any way you want to do it is okay. Any way you want to do it.
And what's right for your neighbor isn't right for you.

Jack continues, I can't shake this feeling that there will come a day where I will have spent more years without her than with her. Yes.

I want to honor her on her birthday, but can't shake this sadness.

Because the sadness is not done.

And quit trying to shake it. Instead, just let it be.
Feel it. Be with it.

Just be with it. Why should you just be with it? Because that's how it will move through us.
We're the first generation that has tons of half-felt feelings. Oh, I got to shake this sadness.

I throw it behind me. It sits behind me, half-felt.
Anger, inappropriate. I throw it behind me.
And we've got buckets of half-felt feelings. You got to feel them.
Once you feel them,

they move through you and you just go to another feeling.

You know, we're afraid that this gang of feelings is going to get us and you just have to allow it.

Seema writes, two years ago, I lost my husband to cancer. I'm 54.

How do you navigate grief after losing your partner late in life and having to reinvent yourself? when you feel like the best years of your life are behind you.

That is a feeling feeling we have in grief. The best years with him

are behind her.

May not be the best years of her life, but the best years with him are behind her. And she does need to grieve them and eventually hopefully see

that there is

a life to still be lived that's hers.

I have an, and we'll try to link it to the the show, a worksheet that helps people who have had a spouse die move from we

to I.

How brutal to move from a we to an I.

That's the challenge.

It can be done. It can be done.

It can be done. And it needs to be done.
And it's your work and your destiny and your life. You know, we feel like our life was with them.

Of course it does in the pain of grief. Our life was with them

then.

Our life is with us now, and we have to continue to live it.

David, if you take just one action

from absolutely everything that you have taught us, that you have shared with us, that you have poured into us today,

what is the most important

action that I can take

from this conversation? Show up for yourself or someone else.

Show up and do one thing to just move towards healing. And I remind people, healing doesn't mean forgetting.

Healing means the event no longer controls us.

I don't want the deaths in my family to control me. I want their lives to impact me.

So

really just step towards that.

What are your parting words?

It's so natural to run from this pain.

Of course.

Of course.

And

what we run from pursues us.

And what we face transforms us.

You are a gift. Thank you for doing this work.
Thank you for showing up. You promised that we would laugh.
I

view this conversation as a life-changing and a life-saving and a life-giving resource that I will use for the rest of my life

to lift other people up, to help myself when this inevitably happens. I just feel so grateful

that you do this work and that

you came to Boston to have this conversation so that this will live as a resource for people around the world. Thank you, Mel.
Forever going to be grateful. And I am grateful that you are here.

And I want to thank you for being so generous with your love and with this conversation and sharing this with people that you care about.

And some of the people that I'm going to be sharing this with are people who lost,

experienced the loss a decade ago, experienced a loss a couple of years ago. Somebody that went through a divorce and hasn't quite found their center again.
And I know you have people like that too.

And so bookmark this, share it.

And one more thing: in case no one else tells you, I wanted to tell you as your friend, I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life.

And what I am so hopeful about is that I do feel

with my full heart after learning from David today

that there is a big, beautiful life that is waiting for you and the people that you love on the other side of the losses that we're all going to go through.

And I know that this gave you the tools and the perspective and the stories that you needed to believe it too.

Alrighty, I will see you in the very next episode. I'll be waiting to welcome you in the moment you hit play.

Tracy, your hair is silky today. You guys ready? Awesome.
Hold on. Are we rolling? Hold on.

Okay, great. Go for it.
Here's what I'm after. Tell me.
This is going to be the realest,

funniest, interesting, insightful podcast on grief I've ever done. We're going to do this today.
It's going to be the one that helps so many people. I believe you and I agree.
Grease and loft.

Oh Oh my God.

Do you want me to hold up? Okay.

David, you're killing it. I think this is going to be the best interview you've ever done.
David Kessler, holy. Oh, my gosh.
How long was that? Well, that was powerful. Oh, my God.

Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper.
This is the legal language. You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you.

This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend.

I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good.

I'll see you in the next episode.

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