Claire Bidwell Smith, CONSCIOUS GRIEVING: A Transformative Approach to Healing from Loss
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and I am the host of this podcast, Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:08]I am also a newly minted USA Today best-selling author of The Novel, Blake,
[0:14]and created a whole community of book lovers around this podcast, a publishing company,
[0:19]reading retreats, a bookstore, and more. Learn more at ZippyMedia.com or follow me on social at Zippy Owens
[0:26]or join the community at ZippyReaders.
[0:31]Claire Bedwell-Smith is back on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books after, I think, a four or five-year hiatus.
[0:36]She is the author of conscious grieving, a transformative approach to healing from loss.
[0:41]She is a therapist specializing in their grief, which is an understatement because she is like one of the leaders in the grief fields.
[0:47]She is the author of the Rules of Inheritance, a memoir which is really one of my favorite memoirs.
[0:52]A book for a better life award nominee.
[0:54]She also wrote, After This, When Life is Overward, We Go, and Anxiety, the missing stage of grief.
[0:59]An expert in her field, she has spoken on countless news, outlets, radio and podcast shows, and consults, companies like Twitter,
[1:06]GoodRx, Dimani for Grief, and the National funeral home association, and sits on the board of Endwell.
[1:11]Her writing has been featured in many national publications, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Scientific American, Psychology Today, and Oprah Magazine,
[1:19]and she is hopefully writing a memoir for Zippy Books.
[1:24]Welcome Claire, thank you so much for coming. On Moms, don't have time to read books to discuss conscious grieving, a transformative approach to healing from loss.
[1:31]Thank you Zippy, it's always good to see you.
[1:33]So, so much has happened between us since our last podcast on the show.
[1:38]If listeners want to Google or search our past, our last episode was Forever A Go, and I had read your book.
[1:46]I was such a massive fan.
[1:48]I could not believe I got to see you in LA, and that you were coming to my house, and then you showed up with your baby.
[1:55]Who is, we've passed between us the whole time.
[1:58]And I was like, oh my gosh, Claire Fiddle Smith is like in my dining room with her baby, this is so cool.
[2:04]It was one of those like, you know, mom moments where I suddenly like lost childcare, and I was like, well, the podcast is called Moms, don't have time to read books,
[2:13]so I'm sure she'll be fine if I bring my baby because there's no other choice.
[2:17]I was totally fine, and oh my gosh, I couldn't believe now he's so big.
[2:22]So how old is he?
[2:23]That'll tell us.
[2:24]He's five.
[2:25]Oh my gosh, well, that tells us how long ago was.
[2:28]So, oh my goodness. And then you became a Zippy books author along the way.
[2:33]So, eventually you'll write that book.
[2:37]And along the way, Kyle's production company option, the rules of inheritance.
[2:41]So hopefully that will be a show soon, which is really cool.
[2:44]Yes, I know so much and you became like a media mogul.
[2:49]And like, you know, you're just changing the face of publishing day by day.
[2:54]It's amazing. I'm so proud of you.
[2:56]We've both like a lot has happened in the last five years.
[2:59]And you lived in like every place in the entire United States.
[3:02]But anyway.
[3:05]Yes, a lot of first little changes.
[3:07]Anyway, so it's great to have you back.
[3:10]This time we are talking about conscious grieving, which is not a memoir like your last book, but much more of a,
[3:17]well, not a workbook, but a, like, why don't you describe it?
[3:21]What is the, what's the word?
[3:22]Ported piece like a help.
[3:25]Thank you. Oh my gosh.
[3:28]I don't usually do podcast this late in the afternoon when my brain like shuts off.
[3:32]So anyway, it's my fault.
[3:34]Okay, talk about yourself, help book and your approach and your whole experience as a grief counselor for so long and what you learned and why you wrote the book.
[3:42]Yeah.
[3:43]This is really like my letter to people who are grieving.
[3:45]It's actually written in the second person.
[3:47]I just recorded the audio recently and it struck me that if you listen to the audio version, it's like, I'm just talking directly to you, which is what I wanted the book to feel like.
[3:56]This is this book's a kind of synthesis of everything I've learned in the past 20 years of being a grieving person and also someone who's been sitting with thousands of people along their journeys of loss.
[4:09]I've been a therapist for like 15 years now and private practice, hospice, retreats and support groups and every day I'm sitting with somebody who's going through immense loss.
[4:22]I went into this work because I lost both of my parents when I was young and I went into this work thinking I knew a lot about grief and I only knew my grief.
[4:31]And since then I have learned so much.
[4:33]I learned something new from every single person I said with about grief.
[4:37]It's so universal and yet also so deeply individual, our relationships, the way we lose people, our personalities.
[4:45]So I tried to really like, this is the book where I summed up everything I know about grief.
[4:50]And the really big thing I know about it is that we have to lean into it in order to heal.
[4:55]And that when we do lean into it, there's a lot of hope and transformation possible even in like the deepest anguish and sorrow of some losses.
[5:04]And so that's why it's called conscious grieving.
[5:06]Just about being intentional, you know, I say in the book, loss is something that happens to us, but how we grief is up to us.
[5:14]It's just about really kind of leaning into this process with intention and consciousness.
[5:19]It doesn't feel like it's up to us.
[5:22]It feels like it's taking over your body and your life and everything and you're like on this roller coaster of unfamiliar, this unfamiliar ride.
[5:34]It does feel like that, especially in the beginning, it just feels like you your whole life has been up ended and you've been hit with a sledgehammer and you everything feels unpredictable.
[5:42]And then I think we can really make choices about how we engage with it, how we seek support for it, how we learn to talk about it, how we learn to carry our grief.
[5:51]But because it's so overwhelming like that in the beginning, I think we often try to run away from it, or we try to like,
[5:57]down or we try to deflect or distract.
[6:00]And so this book is really about like, let's not do that.
[6:03]Let's do the opposite of that.
[6:05]Like let's someone what's told me about anxiety, which I also talk and think a lot about and experience a lot.
[6:11]Someone once told me that it's like, you know that that advice when you're on an icy road and your cars getting you're supposed to lean into the curve and so that you can get control of the steering wheel.
[6:22]I feel like it's like that anxiety is like that grief is like that life's kind of like that right like lean into it so that you can actually engage.
[6:30]So I took that to mean when your car is skidding, you should turn the way the car is skidding.
[6:38]But that's actually not right because I got in car accident when I was like a deep and I just kept turning and turning the wheel.
[6:46]And so that I ended up like doing front back front into the bumper in the middle of the highway because I just I kept twisting my own car.
[6:53]The point is you're supposed to like get it back straight.
[6:57]I need lean into it in order to start to get that control and then you can take it in your own directions.
[7:02]Yeah.
[7:03]So maybe don't take it too too literally.
[7:07]I feel like there's something similar about grief and pregnancy where you don't know how your body and your emotions are going to respond to being pregnant.
[7:16]But once you've been pregnant a few times you realize like oh this is what my body does and this is how I kind of feel when I'm pregnant.
[7:22]And then once you've had grief like hit you or you've had losses hit you like then you're like oh this is this is my grief response like what's going on here this is how I grieve.
[7:34]So I feel like they're like you don't know like you don't know if you're going to be like a cute pregnant person or like a hideous pregnant person.
[7:41]It's like you just have to wait and find out you don't know if you're going to be an ice creaver or what it just like happens.
[7:48]No it's true it really can change so much about us.
[7:51]I think you know you don't know if you're going to be an extroverted greaver or an introvert like maybe you're going to be someone who writes and talks a lot about it or maybe you just like get really private about your grief and that's something that you really may not know until it happens.
[8:04]But I think you're right about you know your our grief does show up in kind of certain inherent ways and the more you get to know it through each loss you start to recognize it and it becomes kind of familiar.
[8:14]Yeah.
[8:15]I feel like sometimes you realize it's applying to things that are not necessarily deaths which of course you talk about it you know losses and you talk about things like you know loss of like loss of a home or loss of a career loss of a marriage or loss of you know there are other ways to lose things that are not life and death situations that can still completely elicit a grief response.
[8:38]We I think we grieve throughout our lifetimes and I think we start really young you know we grieve like teachers we say goodbye to you and homes we move from and pets and parents getting divorced or all kinds of things not getting on a team that we were trying out for you know that's grief.
[8:53]I traded in one of our cars, my daughter at the time, who was like I don't know four was like sobbing outside, she could not bear to part with this car.
[9:01]And I was like you don't even like this car, what does she do it's the same car we're just getting the new model of the car.
[9:07]Yeah, grief can hit you at any eight really candid, I remember we had my parents cut down a tree in our yard when I was like in fourth grade and I was bereft sobbing saying goodbye to the tree wrote a poem about it, you know.
[9:22]Such emotional souls here, you know like.
[9:25]Well, the book is great and that you chop it into little digestible bits right almost like okay today you know the physicality of grief right like let me go to that section because why am I having I don't know headaches or stomachache or why can I or you know all these different things that are part of the journey so to speak.
[9:46]Tell me about the way you structured the book and kind of the way you address these things and did you do this because this is sort of the attention span of a greaver to begin with.
[9:57]Yeah, exactly I just like you don't need one more overwhelming thing.
[10:00]when you're grieving, right?
[10:01]So I just wanted to make it really palatable and bite-sized.
[10:04]And just you can flip through it.
[10:06]You can open it anywhere.
[10:07]Some of the little chapters and sections
[10:09]are like a half a page, you know?
[10:12]Maybe it's that's what you can handle today
[10:13]or that's what you need today.
[10:15]And I just wanted to make it something
[10:18]that you can kind of come back to whenever I was here.
[10:20]People tell me that they bought like every grief book
[10:23]on the market when they first go through a loss.
[10:25]And then they don't remember any of them later.
[10:27]And they start going back to them
[10:28]like a year or two later and being like, oh,
[10:31]which one really speaks to me now, you know?
[10:33]So just kind of thinking about that.
[10:35]I was thinking a lot about what people
[10:37]are looking for when they're first grieving
[10:39]and trying to, it's like you're trying to orient yourself
[10:42]to a new landscape, right?
[10:43]And you're like trying to get your bearings.
[10:45]And it's hard to figure out.
[10:46]And there's a lot of stuff out there around grief now.
[10:49]The pandemic really bloomed so much about grief.
[10:54]And so there's a lot to pick and choose from,
[10:55]which I think is amazing, you know,
[10:57]27 years ago when my mother died,
[10:59]there was like nothing out there.
[11:01]And people were just like, you'll be fine, you know?
[11:04]You're 18.
[11:05]And you've got your whole life ahead of you.
[11:06]Just sold her on.
[11:08]And I remember getting grief books after 9-11,
[11:11]not for me, but which I should have done,
[11:14]which is stupid, but anyway.
[11:16]But for the people around me who I didn't think
[11:19]knew how to handle how I was feeling the right way.
[11:22]So I was like, I'm going to give you a book.
[11:26]Maybe not that.
[11:27]Maybe this will help you.
[11:29]I still have those books like I know where they are,
[11:33]where they live, and they still hop around.
[11:35]I don't know.
[11:36]I must have gotten copies from myself too or something.
[11:38]Anyway, really weird thing where we end up,
[11:40]the people who are grieving and that being the ones
[11:42]educating others about grief, like how to talk with us,
[11:45]how to speak for us, how to think about it, you know?
[11:48]And I think that it's like we have to take on one more thing
[11:52]or that's a big thing to also have to take on.
[11:54]But I hear it all day long from people.
[11:56]You have a section on complicated grief.
[11:58]So you're like, don't judge yourself, grief is grief.
[12:02]And then you had something like, well, what if,
[12:04]what if nobody likes the person you've died?
[12:07]Like, how do you feel about that?
[12:09]Or what if you have a really unhappy,
[12:11]really, what if you're glad the person died?
[12:13]I mean, this speaks to, you know,
[12:15]Jeanette McCurdy's by great, and I'm glad my mom died.
[12:17]Talk about that for a minute.
[12:19]I have so many people that had complicated relationships
[12:22]with the people they lost.
[12:23]Maybe you had an abusive spouse,
[12:25]maybe your person suffered from mental illness or addiction
[12:28]or you'd been estranged from them for many years
[12:31]or they were just harmful to you in some way
[12:33]and you'd set up boundaries and then they die.
[12:36]And there's still grief there.
[12:37]It might not be the same kind of grief.
[12:39]Someone who had a loving relationship is experiencing
[12:42]but there is still grief.
[12:43]And so then you're sorting through not only your grief,
[12:45]but this like a complicated relationship
[12:47]or the complicated layers or judgment from people saying,
[12:50]but you're grieving that person.
[12:52]Yeah, you're grieving maybe the relationship
[12:54]you never got to have.
[12:56]There's such a finality when they die
[12:58]that you suddenly get really hit with like,
[13:00]oh my God, we never ever got to prepare that
[13:03]or we never got to have this fantasy version
[13:05]I've been holding onto in my head.
[13:08]And so there's a lot of layers
[13:09]and I think that that can just make grief very complicated.
[13:13]It's interesting.
[13:14]When do you know when you need to see a grief counselor
[13:18]versus you're just grieving?
[13:19]Like you say, you see people all day
[13:20]and you've been seeing people for so long.
[13:22]And so many grief counselors do.
[13:24]How does a person know when it's like, how do you know?
[13:28]How do you know when to take that step?
[13:30]I don't think everyone needs to see a grief counselor
[13:34]or go to a support group.
[13:35]I think that you know when you maybe
[13:38]are really having trouble functioning in your day to day life.
[13:40]The grief is really consuming you
[13:42]or you don't have any support around you.
[13:44]You don't have anybody who can understand
[13:46]or is willing to listen.
[13:48]A lot of people experience anxiety in their grief and loss
[13:51]if that's something that's overtaking you
[13:54]or some of these complicated relationships
[13:56]that I'm talking about
[13:57]or you experienced a traumatic loss, you know?
[13:59]I work with people who have lost a loved one
[14:02]to gun violence, you know, mass shootings
[14:04]or various things like that.
[14:06]There's so much that you have to process
[14:08]and sit through and unpack, you know,
[14:10]and that should not be done on your own.
[14:12]It's just too much, it's too much to sort through.
[14:15]One on one, you know, coaches, counselors therapists
[14:18]are amazing, also support groups.
[14:20]I lead a bunch of support groups
[14:22]and they're so beautiful to watch people connect.
[14:24]I have a support group from moms who have lost kids
[14:28]and it's so heartbreaking
[14:29]but it's also like some of the most beautiful
[14:32]and real conversations I have all week
[14:34]are is in that group, you know?
[14:36]And I think that just being able to go into a space
[14:40]where other people really get what you're going through
[14:42]and you can say things that nobody else really understands
[14:45]or is able to hear that could be really helpful
[14:47]and healing.
[14:48]And then there's like a light level, right?
[14:50]Where you just like listen to podcasts and read books
[14:52]and like look at some grief stuff on Instagram
[14:54]and maybe that's like totally enough
[14:56]and helpful and that's fine too.
[14:58]Wow.
[14:59]There is this whole community of grief experts
[15:03]who are really fun, awesome.
[15:05]You're great, people who love to have a good time.
[15:08]Exhibited by the party that you threw
[15:10]from Megan Reardon Jarvis where I was like,
[15:12]oh my gosh, I can't believe all these grief experts
[15:15]are in the same photo.
[15:16]Like the photos from that event,
[15:18]I don't usually like spend a lot of time
[15:22]looking at other people's party pictures.
[15:24]Oh my gosh.
[15:25]Megan made me this fuck.
[15:27]Oh, okay, for people listening.
[15:30]It's literally like everyone from Steve Flutter
[15:33]to Tembee Log, it's like every grief expert in the world
[15:37]and they're in these like,
[15:37]it's like a bar mitzvah album or something.
[15:39]Anyway, is it the knowledge that you all
[15:42]have in particular each and every day?
[15:46]Like this is it.
[15:47]Let's live it up or is it that such a nice kind
[15:52]people become grief counselors to begin with?
[15:55]What do you think it is?
[15:56]Yeah, I think it's all of that.
[15:58]I think all of us have been like broken down
[16:00]to our depths, you know, with our losses
[16:03]and then we've rebuilt ourselves
[16:06]and income is so much compassion and empathy
[16:08]and just this like desire to be in the world
[16:12]as so good up as much as we can.
[16:14]Everyone I know who's really immersed in this space all the time.
[16:17]They're also the most fun people I know.
[16:19]They really know how to live.
[16:21]They know how to seek meaning and just enjoy every moment
[16:25]and treasure and cherish friendships and relationships
[16:29]and experiences and they're pretty amazing.
[16:32]I mean, you know, the same was true when I worked in hospice.
[16:35]I felt like every single doctor, nurse, social worker,
[16:39]everyone who worked in hospice,
[16:40]even just doing paperwork, admin,
[16:42]we're just incredible people.
[16:44]And I think it's when you really face an embraced death
[16:48]and it makes you value life so much more.
[16:51]It's a weird trait.
[16:52]No, I mean, you said in the book,
[16:56]like no one sets out to become a grief counselor.
[16:58]No one knows this will be their life path
[17:00]until something happens usually to them or whatever.
[17:04]When did you know that this was something that you had to do?
[17:08]You know, I grew up wanting to be a writer,
[17:09]which I am my fifth book, Six Coming For You.
[17:13]Yeah.
[17:14]Josh, I just wanted to be a writer
[17:16]and then my parents died and I really like hit rock bottom
[17:19]in so many ways that I outlined in that first memoir
[17:22]that you read for your mother read and loved too.
[17:25]And then we're laughing because I had an event
[17:31]for Claire along with an author named Sarah McCall,
[17:33]who I live totally lost such with.
[17:35]But anyway, our home in LA and my mom happened
[17:38]to be there and was asking or making lots of comments.
[17:40]It was so proud of me for having like made such a mess
[17:43]of myself and then come back together.
[17:44]That's right.
[17:45]She couldn't believe it.
[17:46]Look at you.
[17:49]You're so put together.
[17:50]You're okay.
[17:51]I don't know what she thought.
[17:52]She would like pull up and see like you
[17:53]on my living room floors, but gosh, what was I saying?
[17:59]So I was trying to continue as a writer
[18:02]after my parents died and it just I was, you know,
[18:04]writing for magazines and doing various things.
[18:07]And it just kind of felt meaningless.
[18:09]And I decided I went into therapy finally
[18:12]and I found it really illuminating and fascinating.
[18:15]I think there's a lot of threads that cross over
[18:17]between therapy and writing, you know,
[18:19]being a therapist all I do all day
[18:21]is help people explore their narratives
[18:23]and look at the stories they carry
[18:25]and look at the way they tell a story,
[18:27]the way they hold it.
[18:29]And so often it's about helping them rewrite it, you know,
[18:32]taking out pieces that don't serve them
[18:34]really looking at certain parts of the story
[18:36]that maybe aren't accurate,
[18:38]but they've been holding on to it for certain reason
[18:41]or bringing in other pieces of the story
[18:42]that they were unwilling or afraid to acknowledge.
[18:45]So there's a lot there around storytelling.
[18:48]I mean, I think as humans, we're innate storytellers
[18:50]and when we go through grief and loss becomes a story
[18:53]about that loss and that person and that relationship.
[18:56]So anyway, I went back to get my masters
[18:58]in clinical psychology and I remember there was one class
[19:02]that was an elective.
[19:03]I was kind of about like aging and dying
[19:06]and nobody wanted to take it.
[19:07]And I was like, one of like five people in there.
[19:10]And everyone I knew, all of my fellow classmates,
[19:13]they were like, oh grief, I would never work in that space.
[19:15]And I was like, oh, I'm happy to talk about it all day.
[19:18]So I think I should do that because nobody else wants to.
[19:21]And I went straight into hospice after that.
[19:25]I remember getting to college and being like,
[19:27]I thought I wanted to be an English major.
[19:29]And I was like, I'm going to be a writer.
[19:30]I'm going to be an English major.
[19:32]And I was like, I don't want to take any
[19:33]of these English classes.
[19:34]It's like terrible.
[19:35]And then I was like, every single psychology class looks amazing.
[19:39]Like how did these not look amazing to everybody else?
[19:42]Like don't they?
[19:42]And everyone people were like, no, I'm heading to like,
[19:45]I'm not going to do history.
[19:47]And I'm like, but look at these.
[19:50]Every single class was so fascinating.
[19:52]Even like the law and ethics because every law was built
[19:55]upon like something really messed up that had happened
[19:57]to like a therapeutic practice.
[20:00]It was a bad thing, yeah.
[20:01]Like neurobiology, like chemicals,
[20:03]like that was so cool.
[20:04]Like all this stuff, it's, I don't know.
[20:07]I guess for people interested in people,
[20:08]you know, it sounds so obvious.
[20:13]But anyway, we find our paths somehow.
[20:17]You have four main buckets in this book
[20:20]in your approach to conscious grieving.
[20:22]Can you just like quickly run through what those are
[20:23]and, you know, why they're important?
[20:25]Yeah, they're entering into grief,
[20:27]which is kind of that initial thing
[20:29]that we talked about where it's like,
[20:30]it doesn't feel like a choice.
[20:31]You're just entering into this thing that's happening to you.
[20:34]So how to orient in that place in time,
[20:37]how to take care of yourself,
[20:38]and then engaging with it.
[20:39]So really choosing to start making conscious decisions
[20:42]about how you're gonna move through it
[20:44]and carry it and take care of yourself.
[20:46]And then kind of surrendering to it.
[20:48]You know, I think it takes time for us to really accept
[20:51]that this is our life now.
[20:54]It's nice we can accept the reality of the loss,
[20:56]but we haven't accepted that like,
[20:58]God, I'm gonna have to go my whole life.
[21:00]Like, this is what's happening from here on
[21:02]with this person gone.
[21:04]So there's a surrendering to the process
[21:06]of the way that grief transforms our lives
[21:09]and transforms us.
[21:10]And that final piece is the transforming through grief.
[21:13]And that's about like post-loss growth.
[21:16]And that's about all the ways that we really can grow
[21:18]as people and learn so much from going through loss.
[21:23]And when in the grieving process is the right time,
[21:26]do you think to read this book?
[21:28]Oh, anytime you can read it in the first week,
[21:31]you can read it in the fifth year, you know,
[21:33]whatever works and that it's really something
[21:35]you can kind of come back to over and over
[21:37]and skim through and pick up different pieces of.
[21:39]Awesome.
[21:40]Well, this is also a really great,
[21:42]I mean, gift, I don't mean to say like,
[21:44]if you're looking for a gift,
[21:45]but for someone when you don't know what to do
[21:48]and someone you love is really struggling,
[21:50]this is a great tool to hand over.
[21:53]I would say maybe not in like that first week
[21:56]where everything is like a funeral and the chaos,
[22:00]maybe give it like two weeks,
[22:02]even like at the month anniversary,
[22:04]put it in your calendar for somebody
[22:06]you're really close to or something.
[22:08]Then like when the chaos dies down
[22:11]and they're left with like the life that they thought
[22:14]that they were gonna live, but it's totally different
[22:16]and they have to like get back on their feet.
[22:18]I feel like that's a really good time for the book to come.
[22:21]I think so too.
[22:22]Yeah, people get really scared of what to do and say after
[22:25]someone they know has gone through a big loss.
[22:28]And I think just showing up
[22:30]and just also like you just said like
[22:32]it doesn't have to be right in the beginning.
[22:34]Like keep remembering, keep acknowledging
[22:37]that they're going through that so many of my clients
[22:39]are like, oh, it's been six months
[22:41]and nobody talks to me anymore.
[22:42]No one brings it up anymore.
[22:44]And it's like everybody's forgotten
[22:45]that I'm going through this.
[22:47]I think the biggest misconception is you're not supposed
[22:49]to bring up the loss because you're worried
[22:52]about upsetting the person who was obviously
[22:54]just thinking about their loss anyway.
[22:56]So and that they like hearing that you shouldn't avoid
[22:59]saying the person's name has passed away.
[23:01]Like in general, you love that person so much
[23:04]that it's nice when people bring it up
[23:05]or share a memory.
[23:06]Do you agree with that?
[23:07]Yeah, totally.
[23:08]Stephen Colbert talks about it too.
[23:09]He said something like people will tell me
[23:11]they didn't want to bring it up
[23:12]because they didn't want me to make me think about it.
[23:14]He's like, I'm already thinking about it all the time.
[23:17]Like please bring them up.
[23:18]Yeah, yeah, just saying.
[23:20]Okay, you want to tell us about your next memoir project?
[23:23]Yeah.
[23:25]I will tell you more at some point.
[23:27]Okay, I'm just joking.
[23:29]And I don't mean for this episode to be flip
[23:31]because I'm sure people are listening
[23:33]who really do need help and are grieving.
[23:36]But I think that there is also the necessity.
[23:39]I think there is a need and a requirement
[23:42]for the combination of humor in loss
[23:44]and finding any sort of joy or any sort of you know,
[23:50]it evokes such extreme reactions.
[23:52]So I don't know.
[23:53]Yeah, I think we have to have that balance
[23:56]of light and laughter too sometimes with grief.
[23:58]And yeah, I like when I'm saying something
[24:01]that's not making any sense
[24:02]and you just repeat it back in a way
[24:04]that's completely clear and articulate.
[24:08]That's my job that's at therapist.
[24:10]That's how I do it all day.
[24:12]I'm gonna just start forwarding you some of my emails
[24:14]and you can just like rephrase them
[24:16]and make everything sound better.
[24:19]Oh my goodness.
[24:20]All right, well Claire, thank you so much.
[24:22]Conscious grieving, a transformative approach
[24:24]to healing from loss, everything that you've learned
[24:27]in one book.
[24:28]So thank you very much.
[24:31]You're welcome.
[24:31]Thank you, Zippy.
[24:32]Thanks for everything you're doing for authors and grievers
[24:35]and mamas and everybody.
[24:37]Thank you.
[24:37]Yeah.
[24:38]Okay, bye.
[24:41]Thanks for listening to moms don't have time to read books.
[24:44]If you love it, please leave a review and follow us
[24:46]on social at city Owens and at Zippy readers.