Refuge In Grief With Megan Devine

Well Megan,

Thank you so much for joining us today on Coming Back.

I have heard from so many listeners who are so excited to hear your voice,

Hear your story,

Hear more about your book on this podcast because the way that you speak about grief just resonates with so many.

But before we jump full on into the interview,

I would love if you could share with us your perspective and your lost story.

Sure,

And thanks for having me.

And thanks for requesting me so often,

Everybody listening.

It's always really so sweet to know that my words and my message are actually landing with real people.

Doing this work can often be me alone in the studio or me alone in a cafe writing.

And to know that those words get out and they actually reach people is really lovely.

So I always like to hear that that message is landing for people.

So the time that we're recording,

Refugee and Grief has been around for six years in its current form.

I've been a psychotherapist for a really long time.

I always have to sort of go back and count,

But I think it's been somewhere around 19 or 20 years,

Might be 20 years this year.

And so most of my life,

I've actually been involved in the darker,

Harder parts of life,

Right?

And I was good at what I did.

I was getting kind of tired of sitting in an office and listening.

And my partner and I were actively sort of rearranging our lives,

Restructuring things so that I could close my practice,

Stop sitting and listening and wonder what was next.

And he was going to take over financial support of our family so that I could do that.

But before we could do that,

Matt died in an accident.

It was a beautiful,

Ordinary,

Fine summer day in 2009.

And we went out for a,

Quote,

Quick dip in our usual river.

And I always find myself doing air quotes when I say quick dip,

Because we really just like,

We've got about an hour,

Let's go have a quick swim,

And then we'll go do the things that we need to do.

But that quick dip sort of turned into an eternity.

It had been raining in the place that we lived for about six solid weeks.

So this was one of the first sunny days.

And we went out,

As I said,

To our usual river for a quick swim.

And Matt was amazing in the woods and the water and the wilderness.

We used to joke that he was half mountain goat,

Incredibly skilled.

Yeah,

Like running up the face of waterfalls,

Because you know there's rocks under there.

Like just incredible feats of crazy,

Amazing strength and skill.

It was really a wonder to watch him.

So I never worried about him.

I never worried about him in the woods.

He would take off,

He'd be like,

You know,

I'm going to backpack over this mountain pass.

Will you pick me up in three weeks?

Like,

Sure.

See you on the other side of that.

Always really skilled.

So I never worried about him.

And the day that we got to the river that morning was the same.

Neither of us looked at the river and thought,

That looks dangerous today.

Matt had amazing skills.

And it was our home place,

Right?

Like we knew that place.

So he went in for a swim.

I stayed in the woods with the dog because the dog and I were running around out there.

And Matt went in for a swim and he started coughing.

And again,

Like,

You know,

It's Matt.

He's mountain goat.

Like didn't think anything.

And I actually looked at the dog and I was like,

Wow,

He gets a lot.

He makes a lot of noise when he's got water up his nose,

Doesn't he buddy?

And I don't know how long the time was,

Because you're not thinking about these things when life is normal.

At some point,

His coughing changed and he called out for help.

And I turned around and he was holding on to the top of a sapling,

Very tall sapling,

Probably like 15 feet high,

Because the river had suddenly risen really high and it started to sweep him away.

And he let go of the tree and he fell back into the water and the dog and I ran into the water after him.

And Boris,

Our dog,

Boris and I were carried about three miles down the river in the fast moving current before the river spit us back out.

And then we were lost in the woods for about two hours.

I always like to amend this because I was lost.

The dog wasn't lost,

But the dog followed me until I gave up and said,

I don't know where we are anymore.

And he turned around the opposite direction,

Also better skilled in the woods than me at that point,

Turned in the opposite direction.

And in about 20 minutes,

Led us out to a housing development where we could find somebody and call for help.

And then the game wardens came and they searched for Matt for about two hours.

They had rescue divers and search planes and eventually they actually had to drain the river by damming it upstream to find his body.

So that quick dip in the river changed everything.

Ordinary life just disappeared in that moment.

As we're talking today in early 2018,

I'm coming up on year nine.

Like,

What?

How is that even possible?

It's just,

Even at nearly nine years,

There's still that what the hell happened response to it,

Right?

I talk about grief and loss every day,

But there is still a very deep element of like,

Wait,

What happened?

And I survived that?

That doesn't make any sense.

Yeah,

I'm definitely hearing.

And I'm getting this visual for you of just being swept away like a large sweeping motion and also having this,

I'm feeling air literally coming out of my body and not returning.

Just this feeling of exhaling,

Like almost this chasing or this reaching moment,

But not getting anything back in return.

And I think in a lot of ways,

That's what grief feels like is,

Especially when you lose someone so suddenly,

It's like,

And you feel like you're paused,

But the entire rest of the world keeps moving without you and you get led to a housing development,

You have to find a phone and somebody to help.

And I'm just,

I'm wondering this entire time,

Because right now,

Nine years away,

You can break it down into these steps in this timeline.

But what was going through your mind?

What were you thinking while all of this was happening and unfolding for you?

I think in many cases of emergency,

Like you stop thinking,

Right?

There's no I will do this and then I will do this because this,

I mean,

Our brains and our nervous systems are designed to respond with immediacy when that's necessary.

That's very different than rehearsing for what would I do in the case of a fire?

It's very different when the situation actually shows up.

It's like the animal body takes over.

I have a moment that I consciously remember being in the water and just saying,

This is not fucking happening.

You have got to be kidding me.

This is not how this happens.

And that frame,

That one and thinking frame like a movie film spool,

Like that one frame of this is not fucking happening.

That's the only thing I actually consciously remember,

Those choice points,

Right?

I remember the point where I realized if I kept fighting the current to find Matt,

I was going to die.

I remember that moment.

I remember letting go and being like,

You know what?

This river is bigger than me.

And if she wants me,

She can have me,

Right?

And just letting go.

And that letting go process in the current is probably why I didn't die.

I don't consciously remember a thought process in any of that other than those sort of choice points.

I remember the point in the woods where I realized that I was lost.

I actually thought that I was on one side of the river,

But it turned out the river had spit us out on the opposite side.

So I was completely turned around.

The woods were so dense that I couldn't tell where the sun was.

So I couldn't get my direction.

My sense of time was also completely obliterated.

So I couldn't remember if it was morning or afternoon or where the sun should be or what time of year it was like my ability to locate myself in geographic space was gone.

So I remember that moment of sitting down and just looking at the dog and being like,

Babe,

We're lost.

I don't know where we are.

Can you do this for me?

And the dog's like,

I got this.

I remember that.

But as far as what goes through your mind,

I think that the front part of the mind in a lot of ways,

Like our normal thought process,

Our normal chatter ends.

It's like,

In case of emergency,

All of the available energy goes to survival.

It does not go to rumination.

So for me,

That time period,

From the moment Matt disappeared to sitting there at the riverside in 95 degree sun with the dog trying to play ball with the wardens who are looking for Matt,

That is a series of still frames with a lot of blankness in between.

I like that description because it reflects so many other stories that I've heard about loss,

Both in my own story and from the folks that listen to this show.

And in a lot of ways,

I'm kind of going to go off on a tangent here,

But sometimes there's this shame about not being able to remember what happened.

I suppose I carry a lot of this with me where I have these vivid,

Vivid,

Vivid still frames.

And then it was like,

I blacked out entire hours and days and weeks of my life.

And it's just these huge highlight points that I remember.

And they're tragic,

And they're gruesome,

And they're horrifying,

And they're broken.

And all of these things are confusing or exhausting or whatever the emotions are that come up in those moments and everything else in the in between.

I'm sure I was doing something.

I had to have been doing something with my life.

I had to have been speaking words and talking to people or writing things down.

But what happens to our memories in the split moment that something happens that shut off onto autopilot or survival only?

Yeah,

There can be shame surrounding that in the world of grief.

And people looking at me like,

You don't remember?

And I was like,

Well,

No.

Well,

It's so weird,

Though,

Right?

Like,

That's not just in grief.

That is normal life.

Right?

Like,

If you think about your childhood,

You don't remember what you thought day to day.

If I asked you,

Like,

What was going through your mind in 2004,

On Thursday,

In September,

Like,

What did you have?

Like,

We don't remember that shit.

Why is it in grief?

We think like,

This was such an important time.

Why don't I remember?

Well,

Because that's not how brains work.

That's not how brains work.

So there,

I think there's this weird thing that happens when like,

Grief is subjected to so much scrutiny that quote unquote,

Ordinary life is not.

Right?

Like,

That's weird.

So here's this time when your heart is smashed open,

When your emotions are running high,

When the whole universe is getting rearranged,

And you're also supposed to do things that normal humans don't do in normal life,

And you're supposed to do it better and be able to articulate it.

Like,

That's just not fair.

And if you also think about,

Like,

We go back to that story,

You know,

The story of that day that Matt died,

Like,

The ticker tape of the mind and the memory is always running.

Right?

My body remembers everything that happened that day.

Your body remembers everything that happened in those weeks that the front of your brain can't remember what your body knows.

And if you think about like,

The brain sort of creates highlight reels.

That's how the sorting of memory works.

And in such a heightened state,

Like,

Of course,

I don't remember certain things,

Because my brain was remembering other really bigger important things.

Like the image that I have is sort of like the,

You know,

The sine wave,

Right?

When your intensity level is really high,

Those are the things that are going to get remembered.

So I remember the lead warden's name.

I remember the way that everybody was telling me to get out of the sun because they were afraid I was going to get sunburned.

And I'm like,

That's the worst of the fucking issue.

I mean,

That's not the worst of the fucking issues right now,

Me getting a fucking sunburn.

I don't care.

Right?

I don't remember other things because they had to rise to that level.

Anything else would need to rise to that level of intensity or poignancy or whatever in order to make it to the clip that stays at the front of my memory instead of on the cutting room floor.

Right?

This is true in normal life as well.

I'm getting this visual of like the height requirements before you get on a roller coaster.

Like you must be this vital in order to be remembered.

You know,

You must have to have some importance relating to life and death in order to be remembered.

And then you know what's going on with the human brain is that we also remember the entire cast of our favorite TV show growing up,

But we can't remember like when our parents' anniversary is.

So that's kind of like,

It's always an enigma.

It always is,

Right?

Like,

I can totally geek out on brain science forever.

But like the way that I think about the brain is that it's relationally structured.

My brain is relationally structured.

Let's just put it that way.

The librarian who lives in my brain has an amazing cross-referencing system that I don't even begin to understand.

But relational,

Right?

Like,

You remember the cast of your favorite TV show when you were younger because it mattered to you,

Right?

Because it got stitched into your daily touch points,

Right?

You could hear the first four notes of the theme song of that show and you know exactly what it is because it mattered.

And it's not like when I say like it mattered,

It means like it was of significant importance.

No,

Like,

You dug it.

Like it was cool.

And is your parents' marriage important to you?

Of course it is.

But is that day important?

Maybe not so much,

Not in your world.

And that's not a judgment.

Like that's like,

This is the way that memories work.

And we are bombarded with sensory input all over the place.

Your brain has to sort that because it's undifferentiated chaos if it doesn't,

Right?

It has to sort it.

And in order to sort it,

There needs to be a hierarchy of sorts,

A preference of sorts,

Right?

It's the same sort of thing of like you buy a yellow car and then you suddenly start seeing yellow cars everywhere.

That is your brain hard at work going,

Oh,

Yellow is currently important.

Let's find all the yellow,

Right?

This sitcom was important to me in the 90s.

So anytime you hear that,

Let's bring up this memory.

So like there's,

There doesn't need to be any shame in what you remember and what you don't.

And we haven't even touched things like,

You know,

Really deep trauma.

Sometimes the mind takes care of the organism by putting that traumatic memory in its own separate wing so that it doesn't come up often because it's too unsettling.

So there are lots of things that the mind does to protect the organism.

Some of them useful,

Some of them not so useful,

But I just,

I really,

It gets my hackles up when I hear grieving people shaming themselves or other people shaming them for something that your body and your mind and your heart do naturally as a way to take care of yourself.

I love that you described it that way because getting hackles up automatically conjures,

We're conjuring a lot of images today,

Which I love,

Conjures this image of like mother wolf,

Ancient wolf being like,

No,

I'm going to protect this.

And it's really cool because that's,

Again,

It goes back to the animal brain,

The animal instinct,

The survival instinct,

And almost like a back to our roots place of needing to say,

No,

This is the way it should be,

Not what society dictates up in our brains.

I'm motioning to my head right now.

I know you can't see this,

But kind of bringing it back down to the ground and back down to our pause for lack of a better phrasing,

Which I love.

I kind of want to get into next what the time of your life was like immediately after he was found dead,

Declared dead,

You had to tell his family kind of what the days,

Months,

Weeks following were like for you,

Maybe what you remembered what you didn't what the state of your brain.

Yeah.

I'm the organizer.

Right.

Like,

One of the things that I that I will often say is that however,

Or whatever somebody was before the death or the accident or the illness,

They are more of that afterwards,

Right?

The people who are batshit crazy and poorly boundaried,

Are batshit crazy and poorly boundaried and the people who tend to be nurturers through food or through touch do more of that.

I organize shit,

Right?

And I don't mean like organize the cabinets,

That's my mom's thing.

But like,

Logistical details.

This is what needs to happen.

So,

I'm the one like,

Okay,

Who needs to be called next?

Where Matt's son turned 18 the day after his dad died,

We were actually,

The thing that we had to do after our air quotes quick dip was go pick up my stepson at the airport.

He had been visiting his mom for his birthday and we were picking him up because he was coming home.

So,

Happy birthday,

Kiddo.

Making those phone calls,

Calling Matt's father from the Riverside,

Finding someone to go pick Matt's son up at the airport,

Calling my parents,

Right?

Organizing all of that stuff.

I remember going home and all of Matt's friends being at the house and I walked in,

I saw my kid,

I took him by the hand,

I went into Matt's in my bedroom and I sat down and I said,

What do you need to know?

Like,

I'm sorry this happened,

Kiddo.

I can tell you the story of what happened and then,

As always,

You can ask me whatever questions you want.

Like,

This is normal family stuff,

Like whatever questions you have,

I'm here to answer them for you.

And then,

A few hours later,

Back in that bedroom,

Jake and I sitting there splitting up the contacts in Matt's cell phone.

Which people do you want to call?

I'll call the rest of them.

And then just sitting there and making phone call after phone call after phone call,

Using Matt's phone because that's where the phone numbers were and having people answer the phone going,

Mattie,

It's so good to hear from you and having to say hundreds of times,

Sweetheart,

Are you driving?

Not Matt,

It's me.

I need you to not be driving right now.

Over and over and over.

Oh my god.

And then figuring out what to do with his body.

Matt always said,

I'm going to live to be 111.

I need you to know that if I am unable physically to get myself into the mountains,

Up in the woods,

Up in the mountain,

You will need to carry me.

He would have this conversation with his son and I all the time,

Like,

This is the deal.

I will die in the woods on my own time.

And if I cannot get my body there,

It is to you to carry me out there.

So that was his plan.

That was his plan.

And I'd be like,

That's nice,

Dude.

You need to have advanced directives and a living will.

He's like,

Everything would go to my son.

I don't need a will,

Which we know.

Everybody,

If you do not have advanced directives and a living will right now,

Pause this recording.

Go get that started.

Because yes,

You do.

Yes,

You do.

So a will is not just who gets my stuff.

It's also what happens with my body,

What are my wishes.

And because we didn't have that,

Sort of all hell broke loose with extended family members who really weren't a part of Mets in My Life.

But as I said a minute ago,

People are more of who they are,

Especially in sudden deaths like this or accidental deaths,

And sometimes even ones that you know are coming,

That everybody has an opinion and everybody is sort of snatching for pieces of the person.

They're claiming their right,

Quote unquote,

To be a decider,

To make an important decision.

If we had had legal documents that were very clear about what Matt wanted,

It wouldn't have made his death one tiny bit easier,

But it would have kept a lot of crazy from my doorstep.

It would have kept a lot of crazy from Matt's son's doorstep and from his dad's doorstep.

So again,

My plug here for please,

Please,

Please,

Please get your legal shit together.

If you need help with that,

Check out getyourshittogether.

Org,

Which is one of my friends' organizations that helps people get their legal stuff together.

Please do that.

It's actually called getyourshittogether.

Org.

It really is.

G-y-s-t.

Org.

Chanel Reynolds,

Whose husband was killed in a bike SUV accident,

So he was hit while bike riding by a truck.

And so her organization does this really cool thing where they have,

To the best of my knowledge,

This is what they used to do,

I'm pretty sure they still do,

But they'll have bar parties where you invite all of your friends to your local watering hole and bring all of these legal documents that you can find on Chanel's site.

And everybody get together,

Do this really hard,

Uncomfortable thing together,

And then have a round of drinks.

But we're going to make this fun and playful and accessible because this has to happen.

It's a will party.

It's a will party and you need to have one.

I also always talk about these things as this is a love letter to your people in advance.

This is an act of love that you can do for your people to make,

Whenever you die,

And I hope it's a very long time from now,

To make that process just a little bit more gentle for the people you love.

Yes,

It feels uncomfortable to do that because nobody really likes to think about their own mortality or what pain that might cause their people,

But this is a love letter,

An act of love you can do in advance for the people who will be left behind when you die.

And again,

I hope that's a very long time from now.

But I know that if Matt could have a do-over on this one,

If he could have done anything to make those early days more gentle for the people he loves,

He would have done it,

Even if he didn't think he needed one.

So there was a lot of navigating,

Delicate,

Interpersonal family situations.

And again,

I am the logistics brain.

I am calm in emergencies.

I am clear.

I've been told I can be a bit scary because I'm so calm.

Calm and direct,

Right?

There is this fierce,

Angry calm that happens when I'm really angry.

And I guess it could be a little bit intimidating,

But no,

You will do this.

This is what needs to happen over here.

And if you can't do that,

I need you to leave this house.

Right?

Like that sort of stuff.

Yeah,

No kidding.

And also,

Yeah,

Yay.

I'm really glad I have that.

I don't know where that comes from,

But I'm thrilled.

But also,

The people who stepped up in my life to be like,

You actually don't need to handle that situation right now because it's really stressful.

I need you to go take a nap.

I'm going to take over.

Right?

Thinking about the big questions that I get are the most common questions I get are like,

My friend's baby just died.

What do I do?

Right?

Do those sorts of things.

Right?

Like,

I'm going to come over and walk your dog this afternoon.

Let me know if you don't want me to do that.

Or,

You know,

That person who keeps clamoring that they want to come in and like,

Get the rug back that they lent them two years ago,

Like you don't need to deal with that shit.

Give me their phone number.

I'll do it.

Right?

Like,

Letting those gatekeepers bust some shit down for you.

Right?

Like there.

There were a lot of expressions of grief and shock from the wider community that were unskilled.

Unskilled expressions.

I'm not for saying that nicely.

There were some really deeply unskilled expressions.

Can you elaborate on that?

Because I like how you phrased it.

And I'm,

I can I think I know what you're talking about.

But I would love to have some specifics from you.

It's,

It's a much more gentle,

Respectful way of saying some people were utter assholes and poorly boundaried and had their own shit going on,

Which from the from the from a very calm and respectful position,

Like these are expressions of grief,

These are expressions of pain,

And I want to honor that.

And the way that you're expressing your helplessness,

Lack of control,

All of that stuff right now is fucking bullshit.

So to say that more kindly,

Really unskilled expressions of pain showing up in the world in those first several weeks.

And honestly,

Seeing them as expressions of pain.

I knew what they were,

But that didn't make bad behavior.

No,

It doesn't.

And I think like,

At least in our family system,

Again,

Everybody behaving as they do in normal life,

You know,

Some people retreat.

Some people are like,

You know,

This person that I love more than anything in the world is dead.

I'm not talking to anybody anymore.

That wasn't my response.

But you know,

I think a lot of crazy shows up when there's that much pain involved.

And how do you navigate that?

And how do you create boundaries around that and survive at the same time?

So that I mean,

That's that was just my personal experience.

Because again,

I did exactly what I normally do,

Just on tilt,

Right is like,

Very Vulcan,

Which doesn't mean that I wasn't vomiting from crying or screaming or having nightmares or freaking out because I absolutely was most of the time alone.

But when there were actions to take in those first couple of weeks,

Like that,

There's a,

There's a very Vulcan machine part of me that gets things done.

And,

You know,

Organizing.

You know,

It's almost nine years out and the word other than memorial that starts with F and ends in AL is actually still very difficult word for me to say in conjunction with the man I love.

But organizing one of those after somebody dies events.

Organizing one of those within like four days of Matt dying,

And like,

Waking up at two o'clock in the morning because the eulogy that needed to be the message that needed to be delivered about Matt and his life and our family,

Just railroading through me at two o'clock in the morning and needing to be written.

And just,

Just all of those details,

Right.

And there's,

For a lot of people,

Myself included,

There's a letdown when all of those actions are done,

When the body has gone wherever it's going,

Where the all of the decisions have been made.

Because all of those decisions as challenging as they are,

It's like,

These are the things you still get to do for your person.

It is your last scraps of holding on.

Yeah.

That's right.

They don't need you after those things are done.

Right?

And you think about like,

You know,

Parents whose children have died.

As a parent,

Like,

There is always shit to do,

Right?

Like,

Pick this kid up,

Do this over here,

And make sure you're eating your vegetables and take your prenatal vitamins and all of these things.

And then all of a sudden,

There is no,

There's no caretaking left.

There are no actions associated with this person anymore.

And so,

While those early details can really feel relentless,

When they're over,

There's no tangible action to take on your person's behalf anymore.

There's nothing left to do.

And that sudden vacancy is,

Um,

I'm getting these words in my brain of,

It's a shift from doing four,

You no longer do four,

You no longer do four,

You do in honor of,

In memory of,

In remembrance of,

Which is a totally different state of,

Talk about a state of mind,

Talk about your brain shifting.

It's like a totally different state of mind.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You suddenly have to go past tense,

You suddenly have to start thinking about somebody as in honor of or in memory of like,

Fuck that.

Like all of the discussions of would you like a memory bench here?

I'm like,

I want the person back.

Like,

I don't want a fucking memory bench.

I'm gonna kind of ask an off the wall question,

Kind of,

But it's going back to what you said,

I think a couple minutes ago about fearing for mortality after we die or after somebody we love dies.

And I'm kind of curious,

Especially because of the way in which Matt died,

Were you afraid of water or entering water or being back in that space of that river again?

Because that could certainly turn into something very,

Very scary for you.

Absolutely.

So I think it was eight or nine days after Matt died,

I got in the car and I drove back out to the river and about halfway there,

I had a total panic attack and I pulled over and I called one of Matt's friends and I was like,

Going to the river right now?

And he's like,

Um,

That a good idea for you to be doing by yourself right now?

And I was like,

I just I just need to tell somebody that I'm going.

But I know that if I don't go back right now and get in that water,

I will never touch water again.

And I don't want to lose that.

Right?

Like the water and especially that river,

That was our happy place.

Matt was there probably four or five times a week,

Except in the winter.

And we were there probably together,

You know,

Once or twice a week,

Like this was our place.

And if I didn't go back,

I would never go back.

And I didn't want that for me.

I brought the dog and the water was very different that day.

It was it was like back to her normal self.

And Boris stuck really close to me.

Normally,

He would be off running in the woods and swimming and he stuck right by me.

And it was just it was a really powerful time to be there.

And when we left,

Like I actually went in and went for a swim.

And we left and Boris just howled.

He cried in that car all the way home.

All the way home.

He was just inconsolable.

You know,

Boris was our dog,

But he was Matt's dog.

Like the sun rose and set on that for Boris.

And to just hear him sob was awful.

So water and I,

I mean,

We've got a history of water.

There are activities on water that are out for me.

Whitewater rafting is never going to happen in my lifetime.

Never.

I don't want to do it.

I don't want to watch people do it.

If somebody I love is going to do it,

I need them to not tell me about it.

Like,

I don't know.

Not happening.

I still have a rough time watching someone I love in fast moving water.

Boris died in the water.

Boris died two years ago now.

And when we would go out for swims,

Like I couldn't throw the ball for him into the water if the water was moving quickly.

The visual of watching the dog struggle,

Even though he was 80% perfectly safe,

Watching that is too much for my nervous system.

I can't take it.

But water itself,

I mean,

Swimming and being in the water,

Like,

It's something that I need and I don't want to lose that.

So it's a work in progress,

That relationship.

It really is.

And you know,

For me to feel free in the water with people I love,

They need to know my history.

So if I'm going swimming with you,

You know that either you and I are really close or there is somebody I'm really close with.

Right?

You know what I mean?

Like,

Something has happened to make my nervous system okay with being in the water at that moment.

It's amazing how often water struggle or drowning scenes come up in movies.

It's a fucking thing.

Drives me crazy because I don't need to see that.

My nervous system doesn't need to see that.

Yes,

And it's not one of those things that's listed on a trigger warning.

You know,

Now that trigger warnings exist,

I know that so many things are but not in there.

Struggle against water,

You know,

Is not listed.

Not in there.

I mean,

There's,

And drowning is also a really common metaphor in grief,

Right?

I'm totally drowning in my grief right now.

And I'm like,

Actually,

That's not factually true.

I've been drowning.

This is not it.

So the language is really challenging.

Sometimes when I do author panels or panels with other people who are working in the grief field,

And they're talking,

They're using drowning metaphors when they're speaking.

When it gets to be my turn,

I always say,

So for my fellow people whose person died by drowning,

I want to just say that I acknowledge that sometimes the language we use to talk about grief is really personal for you.

And I want to let you know that I hear that,

Right?

And that is also sort of my way of gently reminding the people who are speaking that people die by water.

And if we're using that language,

We are inadvertently causing harm and pain to those whose people died by water.

Now,

If we did a trigger warning for every way that somebody could possibly die,

The trigger warnings would be longer than the movie or the narrative or the top,

Right?

I mean,

One of the,

I don't know,

Gifts and hazards of this line of work is I know more ways that people can die in strange ways or in ordinary ways than a lot of normal people do.

So you can't do that.

But like,

You know,

When people say,

Oh my God,

You almost gave me a heart attack.

Like,

Don't say that,

Right?

Like,

If your person had a heart attack,

And you were the one on the floor giving them CPR,

You joking about,

I nearly had a heart attack when so-and-so celebrity announced they're dating this person,

Like,

That has weight to it for other people.

It's just a thing to be conscious of.

Yeah,

And I'm sensing in a lot of your responses to your grief and to working with grief the way you do now,

There's almost this insistence on kindness and consciousness and awareness,

Not only within our grief,

But spreading out,

I'm getting branch visuals,

That we're not going to be able to do that,

But we're going to be able to spread out our branch visuals to the griefs of other people.

And I'm kind of wondering,

Like,

Where that comes from for you.

And I caught,

I latched onto it really,

Really strongly in this article that you wrote,

I actually shared this with my grief growers a couple weeks ago.

It was an article you did for WBUR called Stay Strong,

Another Useless Because.

I don't engage in Facebook arguments very often,

But I keep seeing this commentary about the Stoneman Douglas high school shooting and all of these,

The Vegas shooting and the Pulse shooting,

And they're mostly in relation to shootings,

But people are upset that grievers are angry.

And I'm like,

How dare you?

And I just have,

Because I suppose because anger was my go-to emotion when I was grieving,

But I was like,

How dare you tell us we don't have the right to grieve in this way?

Or how dare you try to police grief?

And so I feel like there's this insistence in your work in kind of policing grief in a different way,

In a more opening way,

As opposed to a more shutting down kind of way.

And I'm wondering,

I guess,

Can you tell us the whole,

The story of how Matt's drowning got you out of psychotherapy and then kind of back in,

In this totally different,

Like a trap door.

Yeah.

So there's so much in all of that,

Everything that you said.

So going back to what I was saying about being mindful of your word choices,

I think some of the pushback that I get often,

In comments on articles or the occasional hate mail,

Or just this exasperation from people about like,

I can't say anything,

Everything is wrong.

I don't want people to so tightly police their own words that they feel constrained and they're not saying anything like,

Oh,

Are we really going to make the entire culture stop saying you nearly gave me a heart attack?

No.

Right?

Like there are bigger issues to work on.

I just like,

I want,

I want us to be mindful of the fact that our words have power and they impact others.

And if you're around somebody whose sister died of an undiagnosed heart condition and like dropped dead of a heart attack,

That you be more careful around your usual aphorisms on saying you're surprised by something by saying you had a heart attack.

Like if you know somebody in your circle has died by a certain way or is wrestling with a certain thing,

Maybe yes,

Then do pay attention to your language.

Right?

I just want us to pay attention to that.

And the backlash from things like that,

That stay strong article and a lot of articles that I put out in the world is like,

Why don't you tell us what we should say instead of what we shouldn't say?

And honestly,

Again,

We go back to an unskilled expression of pain.

People are frustrated because they feel helpless.

They want to help and they don't know how.

And that feeling of helplessness is difficult.

And instead of claiming that discomfort of really acknowledging how helpless I feel in the face of this,

It sort of turns into this snipey,

I do everything wrong.

You don't like anything I say anyway.

Well,

I think in everything,

Not just in grief,

But in everything,

We can make a lot of,

There's a lot of room for progress.

There's a lot of room for growth in how we respond to each other's personal sovereignty.

Right?

If somebody is saying the way that you're speaking to me right now hurts,

Even if we disagree with that,

If we are kind,

We need to listen to what they're saying and respond.

Right?

So we go to what you were saying about people suddenly up in arms about how angry grieving people are.

Well,

I mean,

Anger gets the same sort of crappy reception that grief does.

Right?

Anything that is basically off of the culturally enforced narrative of calm,

Happy,

Rising above things,

Being nice,

Word geeks out there.

The etymology of the word nice means to pretend to be without knowledge so as not to upset anyone.

Wow,

I had no idea.

This is going to blow my mind right now.

I love it.

I'm like,

Grief growers,

Are you listening?

This is amazing.

What am I being risky?

Right?

So when somebody says,

Just be nice,

What they're really saying is,

Don't upset anybody else with your truth.

Pretend to be unaffected.

Pretend to be unaffected because you're making other people uncomfortable.

Well,

Fuck that.

Right?

When your life has just dissolved,

When you've just watched your classmates be shot in front of you,

When you had to call your mom and say,

There's a shooter in my school,

I might die soon.

What the fuck does being nice and polite and proper and rising above have to do with any of that?

What does being nice have to do with mothers sending their young black men out into the world telling them what to do to not get shot in the event that they get pulled over for a traffic violation?

What the fuck does being nice have to do with any of that?

Nothing.

Of course they're angry.

They should be angry.

Angry is a response to injustice.

Being shot in your school is not just.

Being targeted for your race or your sexuality or your gender is unjust.

Of course they're angry.

This just makes my heart so happy because hand in hand with of course they're angry is of course they're grieving.

And there's so much permission here and permission that you give through your work for grief to come through in so many different ways.

I'll tell you and I'll tell our listeners too that one of my favorite elements of the work that you do is your Instagram page where every almost every single day you have a story from someone else who is grieving and it's their stories,

It's their pictures,

It's pictures of them with your book,

It's pictures of their loved ones and it's the ways in which we grieve.

And again we're coming back again we're circling circling circling this idea of continuing to share stories of what our grief looks like helps other people define what their grief looks like.

Whether it's like oh I don't grieve that way at all I can separate myself from that or I totally identify with that or if it's somewhere in between.

And I want to know what are the mentalities,

The ideas,

The perspectives,

Maybe even the tangible resources like books,

Authors,

Blogs,

Websites,

Things like that and what has helped you and continues to help you come back?

So back when Matt died there was there was almost nothing.

It was such a wasteland out there.

You need to go like the surreal going from googling house prices in Florida to young widow sudden death and drowning what the fuck do I do now?

Right like that that's a shift.

So looking for resources there what I found were either resources for people over 70 because we all know that no one dies under 70.

So looking for widowed resources it was almost all for older folks,

Much older folks or it was heavily religious which is just not my thing.

The really the only voice in the wilderness nine years ago was Michelle Neff-Hernandez and her organization.

Right now it's called Soaring Spirits Loss Foundation I think it's SSLF.

Org I think is the new one.

But the blog at the time was called Widows' Voice and it was seven different widowed people.

Each one had a different day of the week and they were all young and I'm air quoting again with young I would say that they were all under 50 at that time.

The writers have changed quite a bit since then and there were accidental deaths,

There were long illnesses,

There were short illnesses and it was the the only place that I found any reflection at all.

I didn't resonate with every single one of the writers but you know when I say I was looking for resources what I really mean is I was looking for me.

I was looking for someone who sounded like me and in the entire universe of the internet,

I'm a researcher we're talking hours right like when somebody you love dies your entire full-time job is on the internet looking for yourself,

Looking for someone who sounds like you and the only place I found it was on Michelle's blog.

And I tracked people.

I read the comments.

If they had a link in their comment back to their blog,

I found them.

When we are talking needle in a haystack,

Trails of breadcrumbs searching for my people,

The people with whom I could say this is what's going on today and they would say yes.

Not have you tried a green smoothie?

Like no.

When I say fuck your green smoothie.

I'm laying on the bathroom floor having just finished dry heaving for the last 20 minutes and I can't stop staring at his bottle of shampoo knowing he will never need shampoo again.

And to have those people say yes,

He will never need shampoo again.

Right?

The landscape of what you will find online for grief support just nine years later is orders of magnitude different.

It's not good yet.

I can kind of be lulled into thinking that things have changed.

No one needs me anymore.

It's all good.

We did our work.

Everything's good now.

And then I get a new grieving person into either my writing course or in one of my in-person courses or somebody sends me an email like this is the way my baby died at 40 weeks and died the day before his due date.

There's no known cause and everybody is treating me like shit.

And my therapist is already telling me to get over it.

And I'm like,

Oh,

Nothing's changed.

Damn it.

We still have work to do.

But this is why I often tell my students that writers change the world.

Like telling your story changes the world.

If we go back to what I just said about those really early days for me and how hard I looked for someone who sounded like me and what a lifeline it was to find them.

I mean,

Our survival is in companionship.

And if everybody around you and the wider culture is saying it's not that bad,

You just need to move on.

You need to get over it.

Did you try this patented TM approach to grief because this helped my cousin's sister stepfather?

If everybody's trying to correct you,

But nobody's trying to hear you,

That makes this way more difficult than it needs to be.

So the Grief Love Stories campaign that we have going on Instagram started really because I teach a writing course called Writing Your Grief.

It happens roughly every month,

30 days of prompts and a private online community.

And it's amazing.

I've been running it pretty much every month for five years.

So that's a lot of stories.

And I wanted people to know some of these stories,

That outside wider world.

I really do believe that,

You know,

In any kind of media,

In any kind of storytelling,

We're looking for something that resonates with us.

We sort of loop back to what you and I were talking about in the beginning,

About how memory works and how the mind works.

We're looking for relatedness.

And I wanted to share some of these stories and also wanted to share the book and what the book has meant to my students and my readers and what the community that they have found inside what we've built means.

And one of the neat things that's been happening as we share more and more of these stories is I look on the Instagram page and see some of the comments.

And the comments are like,

These stories are so hard to hear.

And I keep coming back because I need to hear them.

And this is usually from people who haven't had a universe rearranging loss,

Right?

But that they want to know.

They want to know what this really feels like and what this looks like because it makes them want to be better at showing up and responding for themselves and for others.

And I love that.

And this is what stories do,

Right?

Because we don't talk about grief very much in this culture still,

We don't know what's normal,

Right?

If somebody finds themselves like losing chunks of time or putting their keys in the freezer because we don't talk about that sort of stuff,

Nobody thinks they're normal.

So if we start sharing these stories about what our experience is,

Somebody else can see that and go,

Oh,

I'm not going crazy.

I'm in pain.

We look at students and communities of color and the trans community and look at their expressions of grief that is so full of rage at the injustice and the invisibility.

We're learning another expression of grief and knowing that it's healthy and normal and strong,

Right?

But we know that because people are being willing to speak,

Right?

So stories really do change the world and we need them.

The work that I do is really,

I say this in the book too,

It's like time travel.

For me,

It's creating the world that I most needed nine years ago.

It wasn't there.

I don't want that for you.

When your life explodes like that,

I don't want it to be hard for you to find people who hear you.

I want it to be easy because what you're living is not easy.

Megan,

This is magnificent.

And I'm having a moment over here because this is the work I do.

This is the work that all of us who are down here in the trenches do is this work of I need space because I needed space to be seen,

To be heard,

To be validated,

To share and not be called crazy or not be told how to fix it and not be judged or analyzed or criticized or told to go get some religion.

These are the spaces that we're creating.

And you're right that sometimes,

I mean,

Because of all the people I follow on Facebook and Instagram and through email,

I'm like,

Oh,

We're doing great.

We're done.

And then some other person comes up to me and starts comparing their loss to mine.

Or I get another email in my inbox saying I'm so terrified that I'm going to die the same way my father did because that's what my mom tells me every single day.

And like,

Oh,

Just this other bullshit that people can still throw into grief.

And I'm like,

Are we not done?

Are we not done using these yet?

And we're definitely not done.

And I'm just getting chills because this conversation has been so cool.

It's gone into so many different,

Unplanned,

Unforeseen directions.

And this is so cool.

This is just so cool.

And I so love that the listeners have asked you on and that we were able to get in touch and just,

I feel kind of like an echo coming back.

And that's really neat.

And feeling that especially in relationship to grief is is wild and humbling.

And as Rob Bell would say on his podcast,

Very holy,

But in the ancient meaning of the word holy,

Not so much the religious.

I'm doing the Catholic cross in a joking way.

Yes.