There Is Life Beyond Bereavement With Annah Elizabeth

Thank you so much for joining me today and I'm so excited to have you on the show,

Not just as a fellow grief cruise presenter,

But as a fellow grief person,

A person in the grief sphere as well.

So Anne if you could,

We start every single show here on coming back off with a person's lost story.

I would love if you'd share that with our listeners today.

Hi,

Yes,

Thank you Shelby for having me on as a guest today,

I appreciate that and to all of our guests listening now and later,

Welcome and thank you for being here.

So my story obviously,

You know,

As humans we experience grief throughout our entire lives,

Big and little losses from the time we're children until the time we leave this earth.

But my first significant loss began on May 11th of 1990 when my firstborn died suddenly following unexpected delivery complications.

And over the next seven years I would go on to experience two miscarriages,

Three more complicated but successful pregnancies,

A six-week psychiatric stay for severe depression and six weeks before my youngest child was born I discovered that my husband and my best friend were having an affair.

So in that seven-year period there were many events that encompassed many forms of loss and I remember being in the hospital just days after my son died thinking that I did not want to spend a lifetime mourning him.

I didn't know what that meant,

What it looked on the other side or how I was ever going to get there but I knew what I didn't want.

And through all of those losses there was one question that just drove me and that was how is it that some people can go on to live happy fulfilled lives following tragedy,

Mishap or mayhem while others succumb to things like drugs,

Despair,

A life avoid or suicide.

And I just,

I knew that there was something on the other side and so I chased that question and as we do in life you know I would delve into those answers for a while and then life would come in and I would table that for a while and grieve and live and love and laugh and cry and then I would come back to that question.

And ultimately,

It was about a 20-year journey.

I ended up compiling all of the answers to that one question and obviously that question spawned more questions but I compiled all of those answers that I found into the program that I do call the five facets philosophy on healing.

That's such a story that's reflective of,

I'm harkening back to another guest we had on the podcast,

Her name was Harriet Cabeli and she had a daughter who was differently abled for her entire life and at first her story was why me but then throughout her journey she developed this fascination with the same as you,

What makes some people come back,

What makes people resilient,

What makes people able to live lives coinciding with their grief instead of you know kind of sinking into it and staying there permanently.

So I'm really fascinated to hear that in your voice as well because it seems like that curiosity,

That fascination is what drove you to start moving forward and I'm actually really,

I don't want to use the word surprised because we have a host of thoughts that fly in when grief happens but it's interesting to me that your insistence on I don't want this to define my life came so soon.

Yeah,

You know it really did and that's a sort of a whole nother side conversation but ultimately I think on a cellular level,

On a soul level I knew that my purpose here on life,

The service that I was to do for this planet and its people was to bring healing.

So without consciously knowing that I think on a soul level I did know that but I also have always been a staunch believer in hope.

I've always been a staunch believer that things can and will get better,

We just have to keep trying until we find what works for us which kind of leads me right into the five facets which ultimately what I discovered and it was quite by accident really when I wrote my memoir Digging for the Light,

I know you're working on a book right now so and for everyone out there that's listening that has written a book,

There's edits upon edits upon edits upon edits and there's as many if not more hours in editing as there are in the writing of the book and it was in one of the final edits that I was reading the passage where I wrote about the morning that I discovered my husband and my best friend having an affair and what I wrote was every piece of hope I'd ever held on to before had just been shredded,

My faith in people and trust and dignity and God,

Every spiritual,

Emotional,

Physical,

Social and academic part of me laid in a heap to be tossed out with the garbage.

It never made it to the garbage,

I recycled it instead and when I was reading that passage for the umpteenth time,

Those five things jumped off the page at me and ultimately they became the five facets which are the academic facets which we all have an ability to learn,

An individual capacity to learn,

The emotional facets we all have the ability to feel,

The physical facet we are all born into a body and into a physical environment,

The social facet we are all born with the ability to connect to the people and the planet around us whether it be you know,

Life and nature or people or pets or plants and then the spiritual facet is the essence of who we are,

It is that spirit or that soul that resides within,

It's the part of us that knows our hopes and dreams and it's what drives us and though I call them the five universal gifts,

We are all born with those gifts and what my work does and what I realized is the people who are successful in moving forward tap into their own facets and those facets exist in a hierarchy and the facet that's at the top of that hierarchy is enmeshed in everything that we do whether we're suffering or feeling successful that facet is somehow always in the mix and not that the others are any less important it's just they impact our day to day life differently and the people that I had seen who had healed and recovered or found resolution or whatever your word is for that,

They had as I said,

They had tapped into their facets,

Their strength,

They found what they needed to move them forward and so what I do is help people,

Myself included,

Get in touch with their own five facets,

You know,

The details are different which is what makes us all divinely unique and that eclectic nature that we all bring to the table is what makes the world such a magical place so tapping into those five facets and then learning how to put them to work for you so that you can live the life that you want,

That dream life regardless of what life throws at you.

I'm so fascinated by this because frameworks for grief or kind of outlines for how grief works are just really interesting to me at first,

You know,

Of course it was the five stages of grief and learning about that and then the grief recovery method which has an eight week program that you can work through it with but people who are able to see structure within a process that is often feels so unstructured like just with no bottom to it with no support to it with no kind of netting or a path forward is just really cool and really fascinating to me and I wrote down what you said is that successful people tap into their five universal gifts.

There's this point where you recognize that you have these and have always had these and will continue to have them into the future and that you can use them to your advantage so I'm curious how your five facets manifested themselves or even maybe waited to manifest themselves during that seven year period for you when it seemed like everything was going awry.

Oh yeah,

So basically those so how did the five facets manifest themselves?

So at the top of my facets hierarchy once I started building this program and then testing this theory obviously on myself first,

I had the social facet and the academic facet in a dead heat,

Pardon the pun,

But and then I realized okay they can't be tied like one of them has to be at the top,

There's something that is more prevalent in day to day and in everything than others.

So for me the question that I asked was okay the reason I had the academic facet was because I'm the queen of questions and my kids and my husband will tell you that.

I am just incessant with my questions.

I have an innate curiosity for life and how things work and why things work the way they do and what makes people tick and what makes things work.

So I'm always asking questions but where the and I love people.

As I said I always wanted to help people,

I've always wanted to be a nurturer,

I've always wanted to be a healer,

I've always wanted to help end injustice.

So the question then for me was where do I derive my answers to all those questions and what I realized is I don't go to academia,

I don't go to textbooks,

I go to people.

So anytime that I'm looking for information I will go to people and I'll say Shelby have you experienced this or do you know of anybody that has experienced this,

What did you do or what resources come to your mind or what resources are you familiar with that I might not be.

And then I cull from the list of things that I curate from other people and their experiences and I just take what works for me and then I run with it.

So sometimes it will lead me to a particular doctor or a particular modality or a particular program.

So I get my information from people.

So coming back to how did the five facets sort of evolve during that seven years,

I tapped into people.

I grieved like the rest of us,

I was angry,

I was angry at myself,

I was angry at God,

I was scared out of my mind for my children,

Worried for a long time that I would never become a mom which was always my dream.

I thought I was losing my mind during my periods of depression and there were nights when I went to bed and I prayed to God in my suffering.

I said,

You know that I can't commit suicide and you know that I can't take anymore so please end my suffering.

And I would wake up in the morning and I remember a couple of times I was still alive and I thought,

Gosh,

I can't even get dying right.

Wow,

Yeah,

Wow.

I can't get living right.

And so I grieved just similarly to all of us that have grieved and are grieving.

As you know and our listeners know,

Each loss event will stimulate its own grief and some can be long lived and short lived and everything in between.

But what I did to get me through each and every day was tap into that social connection with people.

I tapped into people.

As much as I love people,

I also love nature and I love animals so sometimes I would just crawl into bed with my dog and sometimes I would just go sit in the woods and listen to the wind and the birds and we have a creek,

A stream that runs through our property and I've listened to that.

So really that social facet is during those seven significant years of grief is really what I called upon to just get me through minute by minute and day by day.

Do you ever have days still or thoughts still where you look at your life and you're still angry or grieving or this isn't what I thought this would look like?

So that's yes and no.

No to the grief conflicts that I've already found resolution in.

Like the death of my son,

I honestly can say and I say this to every group that I speak in front of,

I no longer mourn my son.

He just turned 28 on May 11th and I truly no longer mourn him.

I'm now able to appreciate value and celebrate the life that we did have together and the relationship that we continue to have in spirit.

There are loss events in my life that haven't been fully,

Fully resolved.

There are still some pieces of conflict that I'm trying to find what works for me.

So there's tendrils that show up every once in a while and I do think,

Okay,

How much longer is this going to last?

And I pull out that little hammer and I kind of beat myself up a little bit and then I go,

Okay,

So now you've honored your grief and so let's move on to the next thing.

Where can we look to hopefully find the next phrase or statement or person or assistance or just resolution,

Frame of mind,

Perspective that is going to help me then for lack of a better phrase,

Put that to bed once and for all.

Does that make sense?

Yes,

And I want to point out to everybody listening today that this is a reminder too that grief doesn't end after a year or six months or whatever the societally prescribed time is.

I still wrestle with grief,

With loss,

With new things that come up,

New losses that come up years after the fact.

And while the emotion and the action of mourning may be finished,

There's still things that linger.

You've said it very well.

There's still things that have not quite found a resolution and we spend the rest of our lives kind of trying to,

I'm doing a visual with my hands right now like knob turning or tweaking our lives and tweaking our mindsets and reframing our stories to find places where these losses do fit.

Right,

And I wish I could remember who said this and remember the exact quote,

But we are a culmination of every experience in our life,

Good,

Bad or indifferent.

So one of the things that I say is that as humans here,

Sort of our goal,

Our process from the time we become aware of ourselves to the time that we die is we're all about personal and soul growth or personal and spiritual growth,

Whatever resonates with you.

And so we will have certain experiences that we will grow through and then we'll sort of reach a new plateau in our understanding and our maturity and our wisdom.

And then we will experience some other type of loss then which what I like to say is loss is just an opportunity.

Loss or struggle is an opportunity for personal and soul growth.

So then we have all of those experiences that we bring to the table where we are now and when we experience a different challenge,

Some of those will resurrect themselves.

And again,

We do see repeating themes throughout our life and ultimately then we can use all of those experiences and say,

Okay,

This is what worked,

This is what didn't work,

This is what I want to know now,

This is what I do know to help me figure it out and then go take ourselves to the next level.

So,

But yeah,

It's a process and I would just like to add on,

Piggyback on what you said about grief isn't just a year or six months.

And we have what I call big and little losses and some losses in grief we will work through very quickly and some will take us a lot longer to work through and there is no comparison and there is no right or wrong but one of the things that I do encounter over and over and over again is people find that the second and third year in a significant loss event,

So the second and third year into their grief tends to feel the hardest.

And what I found is the first year we experience a significant loss in our life,

We have like this natural sort of anesthesia,

Our body is in shock,

Right?

We have that natural state of shock that protects us.

And then the second year is,

You know,

In that first year is also there is usually a lot of business that has to be taken care of,

Things that have to be settled,

Things that have to be done especially when there is the death of a loved one or a major relationship separation or division.

The second year is filled with firsts,

You know,

The first birthday or holiday without the first of many,

Right?

The second year we become aware of all those firsts and that natural shock is wearing off.

And then the third year we start to realize the finality,

You know,

The eternal nature of our new existence and then that natural shock has all worn off and so we are faced with the full reality and one of the expressions that I often hear and read,

You know,

In the grief world is the new normal.

And I really,

I do,

I like that expression,

You know,

I say it's not that what happened to a healing doesn't mean that what happened to us doesn't exist or is any less than,

It just means that,

You know,

Moving forward it's going to be different in my marriage.

I mean,

I'm still married to my husband.

We just celebrated our 29th anniversary and,

You know,

I had to realize that my marriage as I knew it died.

There was a death in my marriage as I knew it and I had to create a different,

A new,

You know,

A new look on that marriage and move forward and the same,

You know,

With my son,

Gavin,

Who died.

My expectations and visions of being his mom as I knew them to be no longer could be.

So I could either stay stuck in that or I could say,

Okay,

How can I continue to move forward in a new normal,

Having a new or different relationship than what I'd always expected or envisioned based on what society tells us is quote unquote normal or what we believe is going to be normal.

Does that make sense?

It does and yeah,

I've heard this before about the second and the third year and it was true for me.

I don't want to,

You know,

Blanket statement and tell everybody get ready because the second and third years are going to really suck.

But yeah,

The numbness,

That protective mechanism,

That has worn off and then you start edging into oh my god,

This is really my life now.

It's not a dream.

It's not,

You know,

I haven't just been going crazy for a year.

There's nothing really to occupy the mind and for me,

That was when a majority of this overhauling this re-inclusion or this expanding in the new inclusion of the new normal began happening because more or less,

We have no other choice but to move forward and to figure out how to negotiate life again in this new normal.

So yeah,

That resonated very,

Very strongly with me.

I'm curious now,

I'm looking into your involvement with the bereavement cruise and I'm kind of wondering how you came to the bereavement cruise,

How you got involved with it and then the workshop that you're presenting which is called Finding Wellness Amid Grief.

How did I come to the bereavement cruise?

So I did an interview with the Open to Hope Foundation in Tucson,

Arizona.

They have a cable TV segment and Glen Lord was there.

Glen is one of the founders of the grief cruise with Linda Finley and Glen was there and I just overheard a conversation with him.

And then Sharon Ellers who is a good friend of mine out on the west coast,

She just mentioned in a conversation that they were accepting presenters and that she had applied and so I looked it up and applied and here I am.

And the workshop that I'm going to be presenting is Finding Healing in Grief and Beyond.

So my work is kind of twofold,

This five passage program that I created.

All of my focus is on how we heal.

There are so many wonderful,

Beautiful specialists who focus on grief and helping people in grief.

My focus is on how we heal.

And so the program was initially geared toward helping people move beyond bereavement,

Understanding that there is life beyond bereavement and how do you find that resolution,

How do you tap into your five facets,

All of that.

But then I found there's a great need.

I had many people asking me how do I find healing in grief?

And so I offer workshops and simple strategies to help people find healing and peace in the moment while they're in active grief.

So if they're in the grocery store and all of a sudden a song comes on or they see somebody with a baby in a stroller or they see an X or whatever and they feel like they're going to come unglued or they wake up at three o'clock in the morning and their support team isn't available,

How can you help yourself in that moment to just find peace,

To get you through,

To find little bits of healing?

So in the workshop for the cruise,

We'll kind of be just touching on both of those elements and I'll be offering some simple strategies and tools for people to take away.

That's perfect and I think there are so many of these instances,

Especially in the first moments of our grief where we're like everything is a trigger,

Everything is really raw and feels very exposed and yes,

A trip to the grocery store,

Going to the mechanic or for me going back to school,

Going to college was huge for me and then things like going to concerts or even being out to dinner with friends and the types of conversations that come up,

Being able to shift that panicked energy of oh,

This is the first time I'm having to deal with this since the loss happened or this is all new to me or really overwhelming to me and being able to shift that to this is something I know how to handle,

I think is really,

Really powerful.

Right,

It is.

I mean so many of us don't look at the fact that we are healing walks right alongside our grief and we tend to think okay,

Healing is just going to happen or healing is what happens at the end of the grief process but it doesn't.

Yeah,

There's a perception that it happens later.

It actually,

So healing is a process and what I like to say is there's a dance between grief and healing and ultimately healing doesn't mean what happened to us is okay,

It just simply means that we can be okay in the face of whatever our adversity is and once we find resolution and all those little conflict pieces that comprise our grief and that happens bit by bit.

We grieve,

We heal,

We grieve,

We heal,

We grieve,

We heal and then all of a sudden we're no longer impacted on a day to day basis by whatever it was and ultimately for people whose goal is to one day,

Whether they know it or not,

One day be able to celebrate their loved ones life or find appreciation or gratitude in what was before,

Whether it's a relationship or a job or a home or a pet,

To be able to celebrate that and have gratitude without the lingering pain or sadness.

It is possible and if you had told me that 26 years ago,

25 years ago,

I would have said no way,

No how but ultimately when I,

I think I said this in the beginning but when I got to the other side following my son's death,

I realized that that very,

Or in those early days when I said I didn't want to spend a lifetime mourning him,

Ultimately what I wanted once I got there was to be able to celebrate his life and so I didn't know that going in.

It wasn't until I had done all of the work and some people know that going in.

They know what they want and it will guide them and there's no right or wrong.

Grief Growers,

I'm just taking a minute to absorb this idea that healing and coming back sometimes looks like us being in a state of disbelief about whether or not it's actually going to happen.

You telling yourself 26,

28 years ago that I'm going to be able to come out of this,

No I don't,

Why would you believe that to be true and the same is true in my own lost story too.

People that dropped off grief recovery books and inspirational books at our house just weeks after my mom died,

I said there's no way that I can believe that this is going to be true for my life and so much of coming back.

I'm just really picking up on this from you today,

I'm getting chills as I'm saying this,

So it's a divine download happening right now that much of our healing,

Much of our growth,

Much of our progress occurs in a state where we still believe that that's not what's happening and that's not because we're stupid or incapable or can't see the bigger picture but it's because we're grieving,

We're in the midst of grief.

We don't,

Disbelief I think is part of the process.

Yeah and you know our,

One of the things that I've learned is that our,

The level of our grief is not about what we've lost but it's about our attachment to what has gone missing from our life.

And so the more important and involved something is in our day to day life,

The more complex that grief can be and that disbelief is as you say,

I mean that's the beginning of trying to process what just happened because we're human and we have expectations and beliefs and a pattern that typically plays itself out but it doesn't always happen that way and it is,

It's kind of mind blowing you know and I remember all the books that I received,

I'll be honest with you,

I didn't read them.

No,

I mean why would you in that moment?

Yeah,

I couldn't,

It was all I could do most days just to get out of bed you know and some days I wasn't even successful in that as I'm sure many,

You know you can probably relate,

Many of our listeners can relate too but it's so,

We're talking about super significant loss events and very complex and complicated grief so for the listeners that we have you know who are listening and their grief might not be as complex but it's still grief.

One of the things,

So part of my program has a component called the five steps of healing and the first of the five steps is to choose grief and it's just important and I'd like to add this if I may,

It's important to recognize that there is no comparison in grief,

We do that to each other and to ourselves and you know I see it in child loss,

There tends to be a comparison of well,

Yours was miscarriage or infertility or still birth or you had your child for two days or 20 years and I just encourage everybody to,

There is no comparison if we can have compassion for each individual person's experience and each person can be kind to themselves when they're grieving and just say I'm grieving,

I'm sad about this,

I'm suffering over this,

I don't care what it is you know,

Whatever your loss is,

If it feels significant to you,

It is a significant loss and honor that because that is the first step to healing and finding resolution in that grief conflict.

I just love those two words,

Choose grief.

So often we try to push it away,

We want to believe that it's not happening and we tell ourselves that we shouldn't be having it but to look at it to,

I mean for lack of better phrasing to behold grief and then to reach out for it and say okay yeah you do belong to me,

I am choosing you,

It's really significant.

That gives me chills when you say that.

I'm like it's not a coming back interview unless we've both gotten chills.

Beautiful to behold,

Yes,

Yeah I mean let's just face it,

It doesn't,

An ugly cry doesn't feel beautiful,

Being scared out of your mind doesn't feel beautiful but it really is and you know in so many day-to-day situations,

We've got to get back to work in three to five days,

We've got spouses or children or in-laws or friends that we have to get back to,

Things that we have to do,

Our lawns have to be mowed and dishes have to be washed and so it's like okay get over it,

Get over it but you know just it is,

It's so important,

There are so many things in life saying don't grieve and again I just love that expression,

Now tell me if I'm getting this right,

You said you know grief is beautiful to behold,

Is that what you said?

You know what's funny is I didn't say the word beautiful at all but I like that you inserted it in there,

I said that to behold grief and to actually look at it but I love that because grief,

When we do look at it,

It's not the threatening,

Menacing,

Life-ruining force that you know movies,

TV,

Even other people can make it out to be,

It's something that in a way at least in my world and my grief experience,

It's almost acted like an invitation,

It's how else can I see my life,

How else can I go forward,

Who else am I surrounded by that can help?

Right and one of the things that I found in my own experiences and through the people that I've worked with is,

I love your word imitation,

I say opportunity but it is an invitation for so much more and when we are able to choose grief,

Do the grief process,

Allow healing to walk alongside it and seek out what we need as individuals because it's different for all of us,

Once we can find those resolution pieces,

Our lives are so much more enriched by the experience which began with grief but getting there can be hard,

It can be ugly and it can be hard but what is it they say,

Hindsight is 20-20 you know and once we get to that other side,

Whatever quote unquote that other side is for us,

We can see the value in everything that has happened and we can use it as fuel again to just live that best life,

That dream life,

We all deserve that right?

Every single one of us deserves to be able to live the life we dream of.

So for somebody who's in a state of that disbelief right now thinking there's no way that my dream life is even attainable,

What is maybe one thing that you would tell them today?

I would tell them to have hope and to hold on,

Just have hope and hold on and I love the tagline that Open to Hope uses,

They say if you are having a hard time finding hope and I don't think I'm getting this exactly right but if you've lost hope or don't have hope,

Lean on ours until you find your own,

I think that's what they say.

So that would be sort of my nugget is just keep hoping and holding on and knowing that things can and will get better if you just keep choosing it.

Choose grief and choose healing and allow the two to be a part of your life.

That is just a perfect note to end on.