A Zibby Summer Reads Pick— Loss and Grief: You Too? Lisa Keefauver, GRIEF IS A SNEAKY BITCH: An Uncensored Guide to Navigating Loss
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and I am the host of this podcast, Moms 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]I've 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
[0:25]at Zippy Owens or join the community at Zippy Readers.
[0:31]Lisa Keefover is the author of Grief is a sneaky bitch, an uncensored guide to navigating loss.
[0:38]She is a social worker, grief activist, and founder of Reimagining Grief. Lisa is an adjunct
[0:43]professor of loss and grief at the University of Texas at Austin, an organizational consultant,
[0:49]and a keynote speaker, including at TEDx. In 2019, she created the popular podcast,
[0:54]Grief is a sneaky bitch. Welcome, Lisa. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[1:00]Books to discuss. Grief is a sneaky bitch, an uncensored guide to navigating loss. Thank you.
[1:05]I'm having a little surreal out of body moment being on the side of the microphone and being
[1:09]in conversation with you. So thank you so much for inviting me. That's my pleasure.
[1:14]It's my pleasure. First of all, I feel like we should preface the episode with the same thing
[1:19]that you preface the book with, which is the sort of non-gendered bitch announcement that you're
[1:25]not saying, so maybe you should talk about that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I recognize that it has a
[1:31]gendered name in our culture. And as you mentioned in conversation with my publisher, I thought,
[1:36]we'll put a note up front. This is really about the ways in which I'm calling out our culture
[1:42]around our false narratives about what grief really is and the way it can be sneaky and sort of
[1:47]reclaiming it and owning it and so that we can understand a little bit better how to navigate
[1:53]so there's not a, this is not a gendered slam or slur. This is really a reclaiming of like,
[1:59]we're going to name what grief is really like and go from there. Yeah. Well, sad to say that your
[2:07]book comes from a very personal place, which you write about, obviously, in the book. And I'm so
[2:12]sorry for your loss. And I'm very grateful for you going deep into it and telling us sort of the
[2:18]moment by moment of what the experience of losing your husband was like. And I was hoping you could
[2:23]you could share a little bit about that. You know, I always hate to do this to people I talk to
[2:28]about grief for it's like a beautiful day out and whatever. And like I'd like to go to your deepest
[2:33]darkest or terrific moment of your entire life. Go there. So I'm sorry. Well, I appreciate the
[2:39]acknowledgement. But also, first of all, there's never a day it's been almost 13 years since
[2:44]Eric died that I don't relish an opportunity to talk about Eric. So I welcome that. And I think
[2:49]most grievers would say the same. Yes. And I do want to tell you a little bit about the book is
[2:53]definitely for grievers and educating grievers. It is not a memoir. But I, I knew very clearly from
[2:59]the beginning that I needed to weave in a little bit of not just my professional training as a
[3:03]social worker, but my personal narrative too to sort of like my bona fides if you were as it were.
[3:09]So yeah, 40 years old, I was married to the love of my life. We had a seven-year-old daughter
[3:15]and the year before he ended up dying in my arms, he began to become a completely different person.
[3:22]And I won't go into the details, but he went from being the most loving, most involved,
[3:27]co-parent, co-household manager, carry a spider outdoors, you know, instead of killing it kind of
[3:33]of guy to becoming and a geographer to becoming, getting lost, going places, physically looking
[3:39]unlike anything he had ever looked like before, becoming frankly quite dangerous and scary.
[3:45]And just our lives turn upside down for doctor to doctor to doctor. No answer is being dismissed,
[3:49]being told he had a mental health issue. Only to discover after a year of surviving, like living
[3:55]in a household with a stranger, making safety plans, you know, just trying to figure out what was
[4:00]was happening in our lives. I got a call to come into the ER because they had finally after a year
[4:05]managed to do a scan. And it turned out he had a grapefruit-sized brain tumor that had shifted
[4:11]his brain stem. And I can still remember to this day that ER doctor as neurologists had come down
[4:16]and looked at us both and said, I literally don't understand how you're walking or talking.
[4:21]It has shifted your brain stem in such a way that that's like impossible. And a few days at home,
[4:28]passing our nine-year-in of wedding anniversary, he had a 13-hour surgery. The goal was,
[4:36]he's probably not going to survive this, but we're going to have some time. We're going to
[4:38]reduce this tumor. We're going to figure out what's next kind of, and after a 13-hour surgery,
[4:43]and thank God, they let me into post-op, seeing him went home at 3 in the morning to check on my
[4:49]daughter, friends, family were there, came back to the hospital three hours later, no sleep. And he
[4:55]had slipped into a coma. And another 14-hour surgery, and all kinds of interventions for the next
[5:01]week, and they discerned that he had a series of catastrophic strokes that were, you know, he was
[5:08]meant he was never going to wake up. And so I found myself calling in everybody, including bringing
[5:12]my daughter into the hospital to say goodbye to her dad. At seven years old, I had them take out
[5:17]all the leads and, you know, he has faced everything with swollen, obviously, from brain surgery,
[5:23]tried to make him look the least scary version of himself he could. And then laid in bed with him
[5:29]for about nine hours until he died in my arms. And then he took his last breath, and I somehow
[5:35]took my first breath without him, and I stood up, and I went home, and I told our seven-year-old
[5:40]daughter that her dad was dead. Still, like I said, it'll be 13 years this August, and I've
[5:46]experienced other losses since, and obviously been witness to so many other people's losses in my
[5:52]work. And it still sometimes feels like I'm telling a story of somebody else's life, if that makes
[5:59]sense. Yeah. Yeah. So that's how I arrived. That's one of the ways in which I arrived here to be doing
[6:07]this work, and so passionate about my work as a grief activist. Yeah. I'm so sorry for everything
[6:13]you went through. You know, when you wrote about it in the book, you described sort of the moment
[6:18]of being in bed with him. I feel like he said you were there for nine hours. Yeah. Yeah. I think
[6:23]they took his life, you know, they took him off life support around eight, nine in the evening,
[6:28]and he died around six in the morning. So I just laid there, and yeah, absorbed every
[6:33]freckle, and relived the 12 years we had together, and told the sneaky thing. So many sneaky
[6:41]things about grief and losses. Eric was our memory keeper. He had the memory of a vault, and I
[6:46]have the memory of a sieve. And so I really spent that time trying to record everything about his
[6:52]physical experience about what he, I mean, he didn't smoke great. We're in the hospital, but like,
[6:56]what he felt like telling the stories to just try to like lock it in my brain, because I knew I
[7:02]wouldn't like he was, he's always the person I went to to be like, where do we travel and what was
[7:07]that restaurant and what movie did we watch? And so that was that experience. I tried to write a little
[7:12]detail about that. Yeah. Oh, so terrible. I'm so sorry. I also find it a crime that nobody
[7:18]diagnosed it earlier when he was clearly synthetic, and he's the healthcare system is so broken
[7:24]for that to have happened. So I just finished treatment for breast cancer, thankfully, and I'm
[7:29]so grateful to see that I'm clear. And I was misdiagnosed for a year. I went from Dr. Doctor with
[7:33]a lump, had mammograms, had exams, was told it was nothing. How is this possible? What is
[7:39]triple positive breast cancer? I was like, did I do something in a past life? Like, what is happening?
[7:45]Oh, my God. I'm okay. And I'm so grateful to say at this moment, I'm cancer free. And it's,
[7:50]I mean, there's, I just have so much gratitude for this moment, but that everybody's loss is
[7:55]profound and complex in their own way. I do think, and I was just saying this to somebody else,
[8:01]the ambiguous loss that I experienced in that year when Eric was physically present, but he wasn't
[8:06]him, but we didn't know why. That took me years to really come to process. Like, I was processing
[8:14]as death loss, as well as can be expected in a grateful that are at world and and all the things
[8:20]that I was having to do. But I think it really took me a couple of years into my grief when I really
[8:24]had to like own and name and process the ambiguous loss that it means. And for folks listening,
[8:30]if you have somebody in your life, it's a mentor or Alzheimer's or addiction where someone is
[8:34]physically present, but not themselves. That's such a profound loss that we don't name. And then
[8:40]yeah. So could he tell that he was changing or not? No. And that was what made things really
[8:47]sticky. I would say something to you and you get really aggravated and just talk about like this is
[8:51]really who I am. And you know, he would sort of write when in that small window of time. So July
[8:57]29th was when we were in the ER and August 16th was when he died in my arms. So I'm literally
[9:02]two and a half weeks. In the four days or five, like in the week, basically, we ended up after
[9:08]they've discharged him to come home for a couple of days before he went in for that first surgery.
[9:13]They gave him some medications that helped reduce the swelling and brandon's brain. And in that
[9:18]little window, he was, you know, we recognize what had been going on. We made amends with each other.
[9:24]We talked about what thank God we've had some advanced care directive conversations.
[9:29]So that I wasn't making a decision that I didn't know. So there was that little window where he
[9:35]was well enough and medicated enough where I think he could understand. I don't think he understood
[9:40]fully the impact, but he got. Yeah. So I mean, there's some relief for me a little that he
[9:47]could come to grips with why things had become the way they had. It had just become a very scary,
[9:54]you know, I mean, I was making like safety plans, you know, it was just like a
[9:57]just a surreal.
[10:00]Well, 360, I don't know what the description is there.
[10:03]But he did, no, I think in the end.
[10:06]And we made, we had a little pocket of window
[10:08]to tell each other we love each other and to make amends
[10:12]and to begin to grapple with why our lives
[10:15]had been the way they had been.
[10:17]So, yeah.
[10:18]My goodness.
[10:19]Well, in the book, you do a really painful,
[10:22]great, emotional job of describing grief.
[10:25]And the passage that resonated with me kind of the most
[10:29]is this confusion after, in the immediate aftermath
[10:32]of the loss, where like, how is the world still going on?
[10:37]Like, how is, I don't think I dug your effect.
[10:39]I think it's the world still spinning.
[10:41]Yeah.
[10:41]And like, how is the key still opening the door?
[10:44]And how is someone worried about, you know, a line?
[10:47]Or what, it's just like all the things
[10:49]that people talk about and do in life.
[10:50]And you're just like, but the world, to me,
[10:52]the universe must have changed
[10:54]because my universe changed so much.
[10:56]And yet, it doesn't.
[10:58]So, tell me about it.
[10:59]And I also feel like when people are grieving
[11:02]and when they are feeling like that,
[11:04]there's nothing that will change or make that better.
[11:07]Like, you can't anticipate how crazy it will feel, right?
[11:10]And you can't, when you're in it,
[11:12]reassure someone that it will pass
[11:14]because it feels like it will never pass.
[11:16]So, it's just sort of awareness
[11:18]and making sure that you know also
[11:21]that other people are going through those feelings
[11:23]at the beginning as well.
[11:25]Yeah, I think normalizing it,
[11:26]which is what I try to do throughout the book,
[11:28]particularly when I explore the chapter around
[11:31]what happens to our grieving brain,
[11:32]which is part of why we feel crazy,
[11:34]but also just, you know, this is a shock.
[11:37]Our body is going to shock.
[11:38]And we basically are in a chronic stressor state.
[11:41]And so, of course, everything feels crazy and overwhelming.
[11:44]And our, you know, I offer this manuscript.
[11:46]Our lives are built by the stories we tell
[11:48]of our experiences and a death loss
[11:50]or some other catastrophic loss
[11:52]is akin to the manuscript of our lives being torn to shreds.
[11:55]And then handed back to us with no instructions
[11:58]on how to live our lives.
[12:00]So, of course, we feel lost and disoriented
[12:03]of there's physiological, neurological effects
[12:06]going on our brain.
[12:07]And to your point, you know, yes, to an early grieve
[12:10]or you can't necessarily convince them,
[12:12]but I didn't have anyone in my life.
[12:14]And remember, I was a clinical social worker,
[12:17]no one around me knew anything about grief.
[12:20]Like we didn't talk about it, we didn't understand it.
[12:23]And so, while I may not,
[12:25]the book may not be able to convince a griever
[12:27]that it will end or that it's normal, they're happening.
[12:29]I try to do in the book,
[12:31]walking through different examples of why it's happening,
[12:35]why it's temporary, the things that you can do
[12:38]to help sort of mitigate against the brain fog
[12:42]and the grief brand and all those things.
[12:44]But yeah, the world is still spinning
[12:46]and people are still complaining about traffic
[12:48]and their husbands.
[12:49]And, you know, I mean, literally,
[12:51]like planes are flying overhead.
[12:52]I was like, how are planes flying overhead, you know?
[12:55]And how does the door, yes, as you said,
[12:58]how does the key unlock the door
[12:59]that Eric's never gonna walk through again?
[13:01]I've never met a griever in my entire career
[13:04]who hasn't had that experience of disorientation
[13:09]and the world being sort of ripped out from underneath them.
[13:13]And good news.
[13:14]I've never met a griever over time
[13:16]who haven't found their bearings again
[13:19]and who hasn't found some stability underneath them
[13:21]and found that the world does not feel like
[13:23]such a spinning top-seater V place.
[13:26]And it just takes time.
[13:28]It's almost a reluctant stability.
[13:30]Like, you don't want the new world.
[13:32]You don't want the new normal.
[13:33]Exactly.
[13:34]Exactly.
[13:35]That's a weird thing.
[13:36]You know, this happens and fits and starts
[13:38]for people in different ways.
[13:40]It's like, when you have that first moment of laughter,
[13:42]which I remember having,
[13:43]or that first moment of normal or stability,
[13:46]it's like a good news, bad news scenario.
[13:49]It's like, thank God, because how can you sustain,
[13:52]withstand a life that feels so upside down
[13:55]and guilt or shame or I don't want to be happy with a life
[13:59]without my person, you know,
[14:00]if we're talking about a death loss.
[14:02]It's that both end of those moments.
[14:05]And we have that so much in life
[14:07]and especially in grief.
[14:10]I think I've referred in the book to smiling, right?
[14:12]Like when you're smiling cause something amazing happens
[14:15]but crying cause your person isn't here to tell them about it.
[14:18]That feels to me the ultimate reminder of the ways
[14:22]in which when the world stops spinning,
[14:24]we are grateful and yet sorrowful
[14:26]all at the same time that it's not spinning
[14:28]in that way anymore.
[14:30]Yeah.
[14:32]What do you tell patients, or you call them patients, right?
[14:35]Clients, clients, clients, clients, yeah, yeah,
[14:37]you know, didn't sound right now.
[14:38]No, that's okay.
[14:39]What do you tell clients about sort of police-based grief
[14:44]or like places that trigger your grief
[14:47]or that some like, if you were to go into that same hospital
[14:50]again or a car ride or just something,
[14:54]like we all have those moments.
[14:55]Like how do you sort of clear the air
[14:58]barring, you know, crystals or smelling?
[15:00]So you know what I mean, how can you do it?
[15:03]If you have rituals that you believe in,
[15:05]spirit and rituals or religious rituals,
[15:06]I really am a big believer in rituals just as a side note
[15:09]and really wish that I had grown up in a family
[15:11]that had more in a group
[15:13]and a non-religious, non-spiritual family
[15:16]that I had more of those to rely on
[15:18]cause I think they are meaningful in the way
[15:20]that they ground us when the world feels so spinny.
[15:24]But when we're thinking about,
[15:26]and this will depend on how far we are away from the loss
[15:29]but when we're talking about what you're calling
[15:31]of triggers, like place-based triggers,
[15:33]it's the car or the hospital.
[15:34]Sometimes by the way, the triggers are smells, songs,
[15:39]sounds, movies, I mean, the thing is they're part
[15:42]of my grief as a sneaky bitch is, you know,
[15:44]they can pop up anywhere.
[15:46]You know, to the degree that we know,
[15:48]we're gonna having to be going to a family reunion
[15:51]at the house or, you know, to the degree we know,
[15:55]you might be encountering a trigger,
[15:57]I would say sort of make a plan,
[15:59]sort of remind yourself that you might be triggered,
[16:02]what is your escape plan?
[16:03]Can you same what they call it is?
[16:05]Can you find a buddy to call?
[16:07]You know, like what kind of space can you allow yourself?
[16:10]Can you notify somebody?
[16:11]I might just need to, you know, peace out
[16:13]and that's what's gonna happen.
[16:14]So gifting yourself the permission
[16:17]or finding a friend who's say like,
[16:19]you're gonna have to just hold me
[16:20]because I'm probably gonna cry, right?
[16:22]And just, and also making space for that
[16:25]and not trying to put on a happy face.
[16:27]For the things that pop up when you're in a coffee shop
[16:30]and a song comes on that was never played on the radio
[16:32]but is your song and somehow is playing
[16:34]which has happened to me so many times
[16:37]over these last 13 years, you give yourself grace and space.
[16:41]I think the most, the best thing I can say to somebody
[16:44]so much of our harm and grief
[16:46]or what is all the shooting we do all of ourselves.
[16:49]You know, the ways we should and shouldn't ourselves.
[16:51]So when those triggers come up
[16:53]and you're in, if you're driving, pull over,
[16:55]be safe, right?
[16:56]If you're in a coffee shop
[16:57]and you don't wanna cry in front of people,
[16:59]although I say cry in front of people,
[17:00]if that's what comes up for you,
[17:01]go to the bathroom, excuse yourself,
[17:04]do your best to name it.
[17:06]This is a trigger, this is what's happening.
[17:09]It's gonna pass because no feeling in the history
[17:12]of the world has ever lasted.
[17:14]Not the ones we want, not joy and delight
[17:18]and amazement, gosh darn it, I wish we could hold on
[17:21]and not sorrow or despair or shame.
[17:23]And so the more we grip or resist the longer it's gonna stay.
[17:27]So when those triggers come
[17:29]and you maybe can't avoid it
[17:30]because you can't not go to those places
[17:32]or hear that music or see that movie,
[17:35]do your best to release that resistance
[17:37]and allow it to pass through because it will.
[17:40]And the more we do that,
[17:42]that's how we metabolize our grief.
[17:44]The more we resist or shove it down,
[17:46]the more it lingers and hangs around
[17:49]and it's sort of raw and unprocessed form
[17:51]and the more it sort of harms us over time.
[17:55]I also just wanna name, like sometimes you're at work,
[17:57]like I got called back to work two weeks
[17:58]after my husband died.
[18:00]You know, which, and that was luxurious
[18:02]for a lot of people to have less time.
[18:05]So sometimes you can't be with the trigger,
[18:08]you gotta you're in a meeting or you don't have that luxury.
[18:11]So just make sure that if you have to hold it together
[18:14]and you pinch your cheeks or do whatever you have to do
[18:17]to get back in the room that later on you make space
[18:21]later on in the day, later on the next week,
[18:23]let that out discharge that experience.
[18:27]So I just wanna name, like we can't all just be like,
[18:30]you might be interviewing somebody on a podcast
[18:32]or you might be doing something official
[18:35]or you can't be with it, but just make sure.
[18:38]You process that trigger at some point.
[18:41]Yeah.
[18:42]As your own podcast, Grief is a sneaky bitch,
[18:45]helped you with the processing.
[18:46]And I know you've had on such amazing guests
[18:49]and you know, what have you sort of taken away
[18:52]from their experiences?
[18:54]I really have.
[18:55]I know you get this because you do this.
[18:57]Like every time I have a guest on I learn one or two
[19:00]or 12 things just sort of at the intellectual level
[19:04]but also at my about my own grief
[19:06]about how I show up for other people's.
[19:08]I mean, I mean, I don't have as many episodes as you
[19:10]but 90 something guests.
[19:12]It's hard to pick them all out.
[19:14]I mean, one that's been standing out to me recently
[19:16]this from last season was my conversation
[19:18]with Colin Campbell, who you've probably met
[19:20]who wrote Finding the Words.
[19:22]In part because his reliance on ritual
[19:27]was so profoundly important to his own
[19:30]and his wife's own experience of Grief,
[19:33]it really, again, almost 12, 13 years after my Eric's death
[19:36]got me thinking differently about how I might incorporate
[19:40]ritual in my own grief,
[19:42]especially because I've been going through new ways
[19:44]of grief through my own cancer diagnosis
[19:46]and everything that has come as a result of that.
[19:49]So I think that is a guest.
[19:51]But everybody's wisdom, their shared stories,
[19:56]their vulnerability, the connection that we gain
[19:59]when we are vulnerable.
[20:00]with one another. It's all been, I don't know,
[20:03]what a weird metaphor popping in my mind, like fertile soil
[20:06]for my own grief and the metabolizing of my own grief,
[20:09]but also fertile soil for how I show up for other people.
[20:12]Yeah. Amazing. So how often do you do it weekly?
[20:16]All right. Yeah. This last season I did it weekly,
[20:18]and I actually recorded my podcast all the way through my cancer
[20:21]treatment. So I was showing up on video bald with
[20:24]swords on my head. There was a week I had no eyebrows and no
[20:26]eyelashes and it was a real circus, but the reason I did it is
[20:30]I these conversations are so important about grief.
[20:36]And we never know what gifts and connections and sensible longing we're going to
[20:40]have when we're in conversation in general, but particularly around
[20:44]the hard things that we tend not to talk about.
[20:47]And everything about who I was, which happens in all kinds of losses.
[20:51]We lose not just our person if it's a death loss, but we lose
[20:54]our own identity and who we are in the world.
[20:58]And with cancer and breast cancer in particular, I mean losing up
[21:01]breast and hair and all the things and chemo brain is real.
[21:06]Let me tell you, the podcast and those into my conversations
[21:10]were about the only thing that made me feel like me.
[21:14]And I could anchor back to that where we started with the spinning world.
[21:17]Like I could anchor myself in the world in a way because it was like,
[21:21]oh, this is what I meant to be doing.
[21:23]This is where I get to show up as the Lisa.
[21:26]I've always known even if all these, you know, external things don't look
[21:29]at all like the Lisa that I knew.
[21:31]And that's been, I mean, the show is just one of the biggest gifts in my life.
[21:37]Yeah, for sure. Amazing.
[21:39]Yeah, I love it. I love it.
[21:41]Good for you for not stopping.
[21:43]As you were talking, I was like, if I was going through cancer treatment, would I stop
[21:48]probably not?
[21:48]Do you know, like, right?
[21:50]I mean, it's, it's so you have to keep your job.
[21:53]Like you have to do your, you know, to the extent that you can keep anything the same
[21:56]when something terrible is going on, you know, that's always helpful.
[22:00]And I want to give permission because I do think and I talk about this a lot in the book,
[22:03]sort of our cultural baggage that we take into our grief, productivity and capitalism and
[22:08]all the crap that makes grief even harder and causes us to suffer unnecessary.
[22:13]So I don't want to, you know, sort of be braggy about like, I kept working and doing the
[22:18]pattern.
[22:19]No, no, no, I didn't take it.
[22:20]And I didn't like, there are plenty of other things I sat down, but I really had to take like,
[22:24]and this is a, I talk about this a lot in the book too. And this is an invitation to anybody
[22:28]listening who's grieving is like, it's an invitation periodically sometimes hourly, sometimes
[22:34]weekly, sometimes monthly when you're in the depths of despair of grief to like evaluate what
[22:40]resources me and what drains me. And the answer to those questions are going to vary sometimes
[22:45]hour by hour or minute by minute, you're especially in your in the early phase of grief and
[22:49]for me. And so, you know, early on in my treatment course, I mean, I went and gave a TED talk between
[22:55]diagnosis and and starting the surgery. But as I was, you know, going through, I just kept
[23:00]booking guests, but I had to check in, you know, weekly with myself, like, can I really do this?
[23:07]I turn, you know, I stopped teaching my university course, the following semester, there were other
[23:11]things I sat down, but I really had, we all, this is the invitation I talk about throughout the book,
[23:17]and I really tried to offer institutional languages when we're laid low by something like loss,
[23:22]a profound loss. I'm not going to use the word gift, but it is an opportunity or a reminder
[23:28]to really realign with our values, to check in with our needs, to figure out where we resource
[23:33]ourselves and what are the resources, and to give ourselves the permission that that can change
[23:38]over time. And that isn't a sign of failure or weakness. And actually, the more we resource ourselves
[23:44]in the way we need to, which sometimes means doing the work and sometimes it means not doing the
[23:48]work, the more capacity and agency we have and the more bandwidth that we have to do the hard work
[23:57]of metabolizing loss. And yeah, so for me, it was the right answer this time around,
[24:05]you know, and that particular piece of my work, but there was plenty, believe me, that I sat down.
[24:10]Yeah, no, and I didn't mean to say, like, old productivity ahead, I meant because like you,
[24:17]I get so much joy and I get so much out of the conversation, it's purely selfish, you know, I would
[24:21]hate to give it up. Exactly. I was like, no, I need to be. And cancer journey, much like grief
[24:28]is a very inherently isolating experience. And so being in conversation on the podcast was like one
[24:36]of the ways I felt not just tethered to my own identity, but tethered to the world. Yeah,
[24:41]because my whole life is just doctor's appointments and chemo chairs and radiation appointments,
[24:44]you know, other than that. I feel like you have joined there is like this grief
[24:50]expert community, right? You're all, I don't think people understand how close different grief
[24:58]counselors are and that there is this whole group of you who is lifting each other up. And yes,
[25:03]many of you have books and many of you have podcasts, but you are all in service to everybody else.
[25:10]You're like the grief angels or something. I appreciate that. I feel so grateful to have that
[25:14]community because I didn't have that in the early years of my loss. I didn't know another widow
[25:18]for a long time, you know, my age. But yeah, we lift each other up and of course support our work,
[25:24]but you know, Megan of course and Claire Goodwell Smith and all those folks. I think we just also
[25:28]show up for each other in a way, a knowing way. Like I see you. I got you whether it's like an
[25:34]anniversary or whatever is happening. It's I'm beyond grateful for my community of grievers and
[25:41]grief experts and to be a part of that is kind of a pinch me moment to be honest.
[25:47]To switch gears to clothes here. Yeah, because you have written an actual book in addition to
[25:52]all of the advice. I haven't written an actual book. So on the right-ing side of things,
[25:59]what advice do you have for aspiring authors? Well, this is my first book. It won't be my last.
[26:05]And I actually had to finish it between diagnosis and turning it into my my publisher, which was a
[26:10]real doozy, woozy situation. I think my experience was a couple of things. I gave myself time,
[26:17]I set time. I made it a rich, that's where I brought ritual in my life. I created ritual,
[26:23]turned off the noise, had a couple of, you know, I had a certain ritual that I had when I was
[26:26]really in the depths of writing that was sort of about the writing process for me that was really
[26:31]helpful. The other thing is I had been collecting this data for years. You know, I had had
[26:37]word documents and social media graphics that I had just been trying out all of this over time.
[26:44]So it wasn't like I sat down to write from scratch. And none of us really do. We just sometimes
[26:47]don't have physical representations. So I gave myself permission to sort of call all that I had put
[26:53]out in the world or put down in my own journals and things that I learned. And then the third
[26:59]for me, and this might not apply to all kinds of books, but I even when I write my next books,
[27:05]I think it will show up in the way was every time I caught myself trying to speak in a voice
[27:09]that wasn't mine, speak in a like quote unquote professional voice, although I very much bring
[27:15]my professional lens or speak in a research or voice or an expert voice, instead of my voice,
[27:21]which is my authentic voice, I'm showing up as your wise best friend is sort of the mantra I kept
[27:27]thinking about. And that was really important to me. I just, I would call myself because I would
[27:33]get stuck when I was trying to be somebody else, when I was trying to be a different kind of writer.
[27:38]And I would just be like, that's not the book that I'm writing. I just can't write that book.
[27:43]That's for somebody else to write. So coming back over and over again to like, is this something
[27:49]Lisa would say, is this a Lisa voice? And that took some courage because there was definitely some
[27:54]imposter syndrome as every author has ever had in the history of writing probably. But it was a
[28:00]meaningful. And when I narrated my book, because it's an audiobook as well, and could read it
[28:05]and really read it out loud for the first time after reading a million iterations of the book over
[28:10]time, I felt so proud and reminded that I really was able to bring my in that case literal, but
[28:19]you know, metaphorical voice. And for me, that was most important because really
[28:25]this book in particular, I wanted, if you don't have somebody in your life who's grief literate,
[28:31]who knows how to support you, I wanted you to feel like you have me. And you can come back to
[28:37]these pages over and over again and feel like somebody gets you wherever you're at. And that
[28:43]as a writer was, yeah, just such a gift and such a profound thing to do. Yeah.
[28:48]That's so nice. So comforting. And I just know that there's somebody out there who just
[28:53]took a deep breath knowing that you're out there for them. I mean, it's it's really a gift.
[28:58]Anyway, Lisa, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your experiences. I know we didn't even
[29:03]get to a lot of your subsequent losses and all the things that might happen since. But you know,
[29:10]we just have to read the book or maybe just have another conversation another day.
[29:15]Well, thank you so much for being just of service to so many other people.
[29:19]Thank you so much for having me and for this conversation. It was wonderful.
[29:22]All right. Have a great week. Okay. Bye bye.
[29:27]Thanks for listening to momstone have time to read books. If you love it, please leave a review
[29:31]and follow us on social at city Owens and at city readers.