00:00:01.11 Fireheart Media Hello world and welcome to Jala Chan's place. I'm your host Jala Prendez, she, her. And today I'm joined by my good friend Desiree, she, her to talk about the subject of grief and science of grief. What is happening in your brain and your body when you are grieving? 00:00:19.79 Fireheart Media And as folks know, if you listened to the last episode, saw the post on coffee, listened to the level, ah any of those things, saw anything that I posted on social media, ah you are aware that my dad ah was was at home hospice for a long time. And also as of the this time of this recording, he passed away a couple of weeks ago. 00:00:43.54 Fireheart Media So, um, this episode was something that was actually on the docket way back when we did the death positivity episode. And, um, we just never got around to talking about that. Like I shifted focuses to, to something else. 00:00:58.82 Fireheart Media And, uh, so we're circling around now and yes, the precedent for doing so was the fact that I was, uh, you know, ah home health care taker for a while, for a few months and, um you know, like working through everything with my dad. And I will say that ah the science behind grieving, just knowing what's happening really helped me a ton through the process of just understanding what was going on with me. 00:01:26.75 Fireheart Media And, you know, even, even right now, understanding what's going on with me. as I continue to grieve, as I continue to work through things and kind of move forward with my new normal. 00:01:37.37 Fireheart Media So ah it was really important. And I know that a lot of other people ah out there in the podcast circles and the listenership, they have also been experiencing different types of loss. 00:01:49.26 Fireheart Media Desiree, you've experienced all different kinds of loss um in the last year or so as well yourself. 00:01:50.62 Desirée Oh, yes. 00:01:55.33 Fireheart Media So it just felt really important, really pertinent and um you know something that I wanted to put out there for folks. So ah yes, this is a heavy topic, but like... 00:02:06.19 Fireheart Media at And like with the death positivity episode, we're not going to be talking about it in like the super heavy way. Yes, we will have personal anecdotes about ways that we've been dealing with grief and things like that. But, um you know, this isn't going to be, you you know, like wrenching and and heavy and hard to listen to. 00:02:23.85 Fireheart Media This is just going to be like, what's going on? So all of that said, I'm exhausted. and we will get into why I'm exhausted later in the episode. Desiree. 00:02:35.93 Desirée Yes. 00:02:36.76 Fireheart Media I know from the green room, you are also exhausted. 00:02:40.70 Desirée Perpetually. 00:02:41.97 Fireheart Media Right, right. Perpetually exhausted pigeon, not the night owl or the early bird. 00:02:46.92 Desirée yes 00:02:46.98 Fireheart Media um For sure. Other than exhausted, how is the day going? 00:02:52.77 Desirée ah The day is relatively fine. Weather has finally kind of broken out here in Kansas. We're not having 90 degree highs anymore. It's in the 80s, which helps me feel not quite as perpetually exhausted if you're not swimming through heat and the horrific humidity and just having to exist in that is a full time job to get through the day. So Having a little bit of a break there will be very helpful overall. 00:03:24.89 Desirée um Other than that, just semester has started back up, so now I'm done with the majority of the PhD coursework, moving on to dissertation planning and all of that, which is its own realm of exhausting. 00:03:42.40 Desirée But here we go. 00:03:42.51 Fireheart Media hum Right, right. Well, I mean, like, this would be interesting to the listenership, if you don't mind talking about like what your dissertation topic is. i mean You mentioned it on the death positivity episode, if I am not mistaken. 00:03:56.18 Fireheart Media But if you you wouldn't mind mentioning it again, this is pretty cool. 00:03:59.95 Desirée Sure. ah So for librarians, the fancy term is anthropodermic bibliopagy. And that means books that have been bound in human skin. 00:04:13.40 Desirée It's not the full binding. It's typically just a quarter binding, which is the spine of the book or ah even just a section of the spine of the book. And i was inspired to look into that as a topic for my library science PhD because I had seen it discussed on the YouTube channel Ask a Mortician. 00:04:35.34 Desirée i also read a book called Dark Archives by Megan Rosenblum that talks about the history of these books, how they were made, when they were made, why they were made. And so for my dissertation, I want to look at the ethics of those books, not necessarily the making of them, though that could be a part of it because often consent was not involved in obtaining the pieces of skin that were used. They were skin from criminals or 00:05:06.37 Desirée people who had been left in what at the time were called insane asylums by their families and the bodies weren't claimed so the physicians who were in charge of managing those facilities would cut off a little piece of skin and then later use it to bind one of their favorite books with the intent of increasing the value of it so they're 00:05:27.78 Fireheart Media I was about to ask you, why were people binding books in human skin in specific, unless it was like, you know, the Necronomicon or something like that? Like, why why would they be just binding? And what the hell kind of content was in this book that they are binding it in human skin? I just needed to know a couple of things there. 00:05:45.48 Desirée Yeah, so it's ah physicians who think they're quite clever and are binding books on female anatomy in female skin. um They think that that was amusing to them at the time, or 00:05:59.11 Fireheart Media That sounds a real creeper to me, but I mean, like that sounds like ah horror video game, horror movie kind of stuff, but okay. Okay. Uh-huh. 00:06:07.23 Desirée Yeah, so there are 18 confirmed in existence that were tested by the Anthropodermic Book Project. And Megan Rosenblum, the Dark Archives author, was part of that project. And I just talked to her a few weeks ago as preparation for my dissertation and to be quite honest in defense of it, because my university does not want me studying it or publishing about it because they think it will bring them negative attention. 00:06:35.77 Desirée Um, however, my advisors like, well, you talk to the author of the book, so forget all of that. We're moving forward with this. This is important work. Megan told me that they're restarting the project to test more books because there's a big demand from other universities and institutions. 00:06:53.56 Desirée Um, that have them. There are more of these books coming into public domain all the time. Many of them, it's thought, are in private collections. And so what happens is a whole big bunch of books gets donated and the library, sometimes a public library, may not go through them all when they accept the donation as they're going through. 00:07:15.90 Desirée They'll uncover a slip of paper that says, by the way, this book was bound in the skin of a human being. And then they have potentially an ethical obligation to have that skin tested. 00:07:27.44 Desirée The place they can have that test is the Anthropodermic Book Project. 00:07:30.90 Fireheart Media Mm-hmm. 00:07:31.27 Desirée So it's... Kind of creepy, kind of morbid, kind of gross, depending on your take on it, but I sort of take the stance. The objects exist, regardless of how we feel about them. 00:07:44.54 Desirée So I think we need to figure out how to manage those collections from an ethical perspective. So that's what I want to do. Talk to the librarians that have books that were tested and potentially even a few that weren't tested or that were tested but weren't human skin and ask what went into your decision making. 00:08:02.16 Fireheart Media Right. 00:08:05.92 Desirée Were there ethics involved in deciding to have it tested? Had it been human skin or now that you know it is human skin? what are you going to do with it and how do ethics figure into your decision making there so it'll probably be a few years in the making doing the research doing the interviews and all of that but i think it's quite worthwhile work 00:08:19.22 Fireheart Media right 00:08:28.50 Fireheart Media Yeah. And it's something that like, there's very few people actually studying this thing. So, I mean, like you got to talk to the author of the book, you know, like, so ah that's, that's really exciting stuff. 00:08:33.36 Desirée oh yes yeah yep 00:08:40.13 Fireheart Media And definitely like not, not right at the moment. Like I wanted you to talk about it a little bit, but like later on when you're, you're maybe after you're done with your dissertation and then you are doctor and then I can call you Dr. Desiree. 00:08:54.08 Fireheart Media um you know, at that point perhaps, and then we'll have a super fancy interview about your, your work and see if you want to, if you're publishing it by that point or whatever, because at that point you probably should. 00:09:01.26 Desirée Sure. 00:09:06.83 Fireheart Media So, 00:09:08.39 Desirée Indeed. 00:09:08.69 Fireheart Media So yeah, yeah. Well, um, kind of shifting on a related to, you know, um people having passed and things kind of thing, we will talk about the subject at hand, which is the science of grief. 00:09:21.58 Fireheart Media This is, as is often the case, one of the book report episodes, most of the information that you hear actually, um Almost all of it except for the anecdotes that we we will tell about our own stuff. 00:09:32.86 Desirée Thank you. 00:09:34.12 Fireheart Media ah these are These are all sourced from The Grieving Brain and The Grieving Body, which are two different books, both by Mary Frances O'Connor. We will talk about it more in a bit later. 00:09:44.94 Fireheart Media But the bulk of this information is from The Grieving Brain. It's the better of the two books. ah The Grieving Body is rather redundant. There is not a lot of new information in that that was not already presented in The Grieving Brain. 00:09:59.75 Fireheart Media We will be discussing both and also kind of talking a bit about was the second book even like a necessary thing to add in after you already had this first book. But um Anyway, the focus is still the subject of grief. 00:10:14.15 Fireheart Media So we'll kick it off with an overview as usual, defining our term. 00:10:15.53 Desirée Yeah. 00:10:20.37 Fireheart Media So let's talk about what is grief. Grief emerges as distress caused by the absence of a specific person, or this could also be a pet or whatever, who filled one's attachment needs and therefore was part of one's identity and way of functioning in the world. 00:10:40.28 Fireheart Media This again, you can also grieve other things like the loss of a job, the loss of health, a breakup, a divorce, a pet passes. ah You move away from your best friend and like you're still able to keep in touch, but you're not next to each other anymore. Any kind of these major life shifting things that kind of alters your day to day on like the like the nuclear level, you know, these kinds of things. 00:11:06.73 Fireheart Media trigger the same response of grief because it calls into question, you know, your identity. Like you have to redefine yourself a little bit and redefine how you allocate your time according to these massive shifts that happen. They're like uprooting, upheaval. 00:11:26.28 Fireheart Media If you want to think about Tarot, this is like the tower card where it's lightning striking the tower. There's people falling out And they're like in free fall. That's what the sensation of grief can be like for some folks. 00:11:39.92 Fireheart Media ah It is a major form of stress, which can also develop for some people into trauma. And so it has a major impact on our brains and our bodies. 00:11:51.54 Fireheart Media So um Desiree, let's talk a little bit about this. 00:11:53.56 Desirée yeah 00:11:55.00 Fireheart Media what he When a loved one is die has died, or like our primary focus on this episode in terms of grief is on the loss of a person or a loss of a pet, some beloved entity that is no longer there. 00:12:10.38 Desirée Right. 00:12:10.42 Fireheart Media So when that happens, Des, tell us a little bit about what the brain is trying to do. 00:12:16.77 Desirée Yeah, so the brain essentially has a problem to solve. it acknowledges that we had this space where we had this loved one in the physical world, even if we didn't see them every single day, if it's a loved one who has moved away, something like that, we are still aware of their physical presence in the world. 00:12:38.32 Desirée But once they've died, you just have a corpse. And so our brain has this problem to solve of where do we go to look for them? How do we connect with them? How do we find them? 00:12:51.02 Fireheart Media Right. Because the wiring of the brain, this is like a survival mechanism from birth. Like the the book goes into it in great detail, but like we are programmed to look for our loved ones. 00:13:04.71 Fireheart Media And so like that's that's part of how we we are designed by design. We do that for survival purposes and for, you know, like community purposes and things. And um so we're wired to look for them, which means when they are no longer physically in the world able for us to to engage with, you know, our brain has to reconcile that this person who loves us and we love them isn't there. 00:13:32.73 Fireheart Media And the brain can't figure this out. It's like, where where do we go? where We have to find them, you know, because there's they're somewhere, you know, like the the death part is the part that um is is the struggle. That's the quandary because the brain doesn't compute that. 00:13:48.75 Fireheart Media you know like that ah in In terms of the brain itself, it doesn't it has to rewire itself after this kind of event happens because it doesn't have space to accept that reality. 00:14:03.71 Desirée Right. it You have to adapt, basically. um In other challenges, challenging situations, you might face a fight, flight, freeze kind of mentality. 00:14:17.39 Desirée All of those essentially could be present in grief as well. But the focus of these books is trying to help you with the adaptation part How do you process, how do you move forward or move through, or however you need to think about getting through grief, living alongside grief? 00:14:38.73 Desirée What is your process to be able to return just some form of normal while acknowledging that whatever your normal was before will not exist any longer? 00:14:49.57 Fireheart Media Right. 00:14:49.68 Desirée So in that way, it's also similar to other forms of acute stress or injury. Your body is functioning differently in ways that you may not be aware of consciously. 00:15:03.30 Desirée And so that's also what these books are trying to do, trying to help awaken that reflectiveness and getting you to connect with your physical being, with your brain and understand what it is experiencing. 00:15:20.60 Fireheart Media Right, right. So the biggest, biggest takeaway that we have overall from the books on grief that we we looked at for this episode is that grieving is it ultimately a type of learning. Your brain is learning something new and it's having to adapt to a changing environment and a changing reality. 00:15:44.17 Fireheart Media And it's An adaptation, like Desiree said, it's an adaptation to this new reality. And I believe it's the Grieving Body book that really goes into it in more detail. 00:15:55.99 Fireheart Media But grief has the effect physically on our body as well as mentally and emotionally of phantom limb syndrome where grief, 00:15:56.40 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:16:07.10 Fireheart Media You just, uh, feel like part of you is cut off and gone and you still feel that thing there because your brain registers it being there, even though it's not anymore because your brain hasn't, um, you know, like caught up to the fact that it's not there anymore. 00:16:24.46 Fireheart Media And, um, You know, as a result, you have actual physical pain that registers in your body as a result of your grief. And, you know, you have this, these sensations, like your brain is trying to send these, these um signals to say your arm, if it was an arm that was cut off or something. 00:16:45.63 Fireheart Media that it's no longer there and, you know, it's still trying to send those signals out. ah That kind of signal flashing stuff that happens is something that still happens, um you know, during the grieving process. Like, say, for example, with me, with having cared for my dad for three months in home hospice, ah waking up in the middle of the night at the times that he needed his medicine or needed medication various other types of care. 00:17:15.44 Fireheart Media And, you know, like waking up and thinking, oh, I need to do X, you know, for for my dad who um needed it for this length of time so long that it became an you know adaptation. This was part of my new routine was driven around him So once he no longer was there, my brain has been still firing like these, these signals, these, um you know, reminders, hey, you need to get up at two o'clock in the morning for this, you need to get up at 12 and at two and every two hours, you know, you need to be up for these things. And you need to be doing these things. And, and you have to consider him first and everything. 00:17:55.86 Desirée Uh-huh. Uh-huh. 00:17:56.07 Fireheart Media And, you know, like adjusting suddenly to, to the change that suddenly all at once, no, no, that I don't have that anymore. um You know, like that's been a process. So my sleep has been horrible um between that and then like the processing that happens. 00:18:12.58 Fireheart Media Something else that's interesting is that a lot of the grief processing happens subconsciously. It's not a conscious thing. Like as you're going through your day, and this is this is another thing I'll i'll talk from you know anecdotally here. 00:18:26.63 Fireheart Media So as you're going through your day, your brain is in the background doing its thing, and you're not consciously thinking about your loved one or anything like that. But then you will find that you are able to do stuff at a slower rate, like physically or mentally, like you're just not firing on all cylinders, right? 00:18:45.94 Fireheart Media You know, and ah part of that is because your brain is kind of like, you know, on a computer with you have too many back background processes going at once. 00:18:46.42 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:18:55.83 Fireheart Media ah you know, your computer slows down and the overall performance of that piece of equipment is is slower and slower because there's this drag. Right. 00:19:06.33 Fireheart Media And that's what happens. And so like if you go back and you look at the streams that I've done in the past several weeks, ah like, say, June, July and August of 2025, 00:19:19.90 Fireheart Media If you check any of those streams, several of those streams, I just slow down. 00:19:20.04 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:19:25.24 Fireheart Media And like, i'm I'm trying to think of a word and then it's just gone. And the way that I'm talking is a lot slower than even my normal presentation on a podcast kind of voice, which I use a slower cadence for that because I'm trying to explain stuff usually. 00:19:42.87 Fireheart Media um but like even slower than that. It's because my brain was not functioning. 00:19:46.54 Desirée ah 00:19:47.90 Fireheart Media I'm like, i wow, I can't find the word. I i don't know. Like I'm just, I don't know, man, it's, it's somewhere, you know, I, I swear I'm not drunk or high. 00:19:58.65 Fireheart Media I'm just grieving and my brain is just slow right now. 00:19:58.84 Desirée Yeah. 00:20:04.00 Fireheart Media Um, I'm not, I'm finding now, like it's two weeks after the fact, after he's passed and I'm not really having the brain slow down the way I was like ramping up to when he passed, uh, especially the last probably two weeks before he passed were really hard. 00:20:20.94 Fireheart Media But ah it does still happen a little bit, but the exhaustion is so real. 00:20:27.08 Desirée yeah 00:20:27.66 Fireheart Media So ah everybody's effects, this is another thing that's important to know from these books, everybody's different... effects and different ways of processing grief are different. So the way Desiree processes grief is going to be different than me. 00:20:42.02 Fireheart Media And my way is different than my mom, different than Dave. And every single loss that you go through is different. So it's going to hit you in a different way. And so you say, for example, I was talking um to Dave the other day when I lost Rami, my cockatiel, suddenly when my dad ah like opened the door and walked outside with Rami on his shoulder and forgot Rami was on his shoulder. And then Rami got scared and flew away. 00:21:10.28 Fireheart Media And like, then there was a storm that night. 00:21:10.28 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:21:12.43 Fireheart Media And so by the time I got home from across town, because I was at work that day, of course, um, I couldn't find him and I was searching for him for weeks and that was a sudden acute loss. 00:21:23.36 Fireheart Media And, you know, like it was heart wrenching. And I was like, I walked a hundred miles on foot that week, just looking for him before and during, you know, during lunch and then after work, all kinds of stuff. 00:21:34.87 Fireheart Media And like never found him. That loss hit me in a way different way than the loss of my dad, which again, like I've kind of been grieving for three months. 00:21:46.77 Desirée Yeah, it 00:21:47.65 Fireheart Media And then, you know, when it happened, it's not like I haven't felt things, but a lot of the hardest part of the grief was like that. but Really, that last two weeks leading up. 00:21:57.96 Fireheart Media But like all along, I was grieving. Desiree was there the whole time. So she knew ah all about that. 00:22:03.65 Desirée i It is a good point that it hits differently for everyone. And even situations that feel like they could be similar, it's going to hit you differently. 00:22:15.88 Fireheart Media Right. 00:22:15.92 Desirée So most of my grief is around pet death because I made many decisions to bring home animals in my 20s and now early forty s Most of them have passed away. 00:22:32.47 Desirée And several of them in little clumps because they were all about the same age. So just this you year, I lost the last of those pets who was an 18 and a half year old cat. 00:22:45.02 Desirée But the loss of that cat was very different from the loss of the 21-year-old cat who passed a few years ago, or the 18-and-a-half-year-old chinchilla who died last year. 00:22:51.86 Fireheart Media ah 00:22:56.43 Desirée I have very long-lived pets. But even all of those deaths are very different because my relationship with each of those individual animals was so distinct and unique. 00:23:09.22 Fireheart Media Absolutely. And so um for you, Desiree, like, I know the exhaustion is a mutual. 00:23:16.17 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:23:17.15 Fireheart Media um Have you had like the brain slowdown stuff at all? Or like what what kinds of of things have you noticed for your yourself since we're on that topic at the moment? 00:23:26.87 Desirée Yeah, so for me, I don't really think that I experience the brain fog quite as much, and that could be just because my brain processes things differently due to aphantasia or not being able to make mental pictures in my brain. 00:23:44.62 Fireheart Media Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:23:45.18 Desirée So I felt for a while that that has helped me with trauma processing because I literally cannot replay images. So even though I might be in my house and go to look for Atlas in the spots where he would be, where I can see that he's not laying on the arm of the chair next to me, those are not images that are coming and smacking me in my subconscious when I'm, say, at work or away from the house, grocery shopping, things like that. 00:24:13.68 Fireheart Media but 00:24:14.37 Desirée So I, in a sense, have to live in the present in a way that a lot of people either don't have to or can't because those images are just so present for them all of the time. And so a lot of her talking about navigating through grief and kind of like you have this map in your mind. 00:24:34.01 Desirée No, I don't. 00:24:35.17 Fireheart Media Yeah. Yeah. 00:24:35.47 Desirée I do in some ways, I'm sure, because i can't I can make it to the grocery store and back without getting lost. 00:24:35.98 Fireheart Media yeah 00:24:42.16 Desirée I have ways to navigate things, but for me, grief hits far more emotionally. I will cry at the drop of a hat, at something hat happy, at something sad, at just a random picture of a puppy. 00:24:59.90 Desirée it really results in and manifests in those emotional tears and just sort of spending time reflecting and trying to appreciate what I had rather than focusing on what I now have lost. 00:25:20.07 Fireheart Media Yeah. 00:25:20.35 Desirée So I'm pretty appreciative for not having the brain fog. 00:25:24.91 Fireheart Media yeah 00:25:25.22 Desirée um But I do also notice a lot more tension in my body. So like upper back and shoulders, having to do more stretches to kind of work that out. 00:25:37.20 Desirée So it really feels much more physically manifested for me in that way. 00:25:41.25 Fireheart Media Right. Right. Yeah. So I will say too, that the brain fog, this is the first time I've ever had the brain fog. I've lost people. um I've lost various pets and things. I've had lots of changes. I've gone through a divorce. I've had, 00:25:56.58 Fireheart Media uh, cancer twice. I've had lots of other things. I have never had brain fog until this, but, um, as anybody who's listened to me for any length of time knows my family is important to me. 00:26:02.44 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:26:07.44 Fireheart Media My dad, uh, we, we had lots of struggles. He, he was a difficult man. um but he ultimately loved us very much. And, um, you know, 00:26:18.82 Fireheart Media It's so like the relationship, even though it was fraught, that meant that there were a lot of emotions tied up in this, this person. Right. So, um, that means that like, there's way more processing that I've had to do for him than for somebody that's just like a friend of mine, for example, you know, like, uh, when I lost a friend to suicide, um, you know, like, 00:26:36.41 Desirée Yeah. Mm-hmm. 00:26:42.39 Fireheart Media one of the various times that I've lost a friend to suicide, but like ah a very close friend, for example. 00:26:45.37 Desirée yeah 00:26:47.74 Fireheart Media And when I lost that person, ah it was different because there weren't fraught emotions to work through as well. And also not an entire lifetime like it is with your parents. 00:27:02.14 Fireheart Media So, you know, like um the processing has been, been, um, a lot harder in that way. But again, because he was on home hospice, I was very actively grieving. Like I used, um, my server to just like talk to, 00:27:21.31 Fireheart Media people that I care about and people who care about me, you know, in the day to day, just updates about what was going on. And, you know, in that way, I was able to actively process as things were going on, as, you know, he lost autonomy and as these different things were happening and the nurses were telling us what came next, you know, I was able to kind of actively process all of that over a course of time. And, um, 00:27:49.41 Fireheart Media When he did finally pass, other people would break down like just hardcore. And it ah felt weird to me because like there was a distance because for me, i had already done all of that. It wasn't, it wasn't new. 00:28:03.26 Desirée Uh-huh. 00:28:03.39 Fireheart Media It wasn't a shock to see, you know, the, the changes that had gone on with him because I live with him every day. So, you know, like that, that changed my ah way of of dealing with it. Right. 00:28:18.01 Fireheart Media And then like afterwards, I will say too, the first, like when it happened, the day that he passed and then the day after, which was my parents' anniversary. And he had set up with two different people to send my mom flowers for their 52nd wedding anniversary. 00:28:34.95 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:28:35.13 Fireheart Media And, um you know, like with this message and it was the exact same message both times. And it was a very sweet message. sweet message and like he had set that up like weeks in advance before he got to the point where he couldn't use his limbs anymore and so like that was super sweet that he was thinking about her and wanting to make sure that she got something from him and you know all of that on their anniversary even if he wasn't able to do it himself so I mean like amazing stuff really 00:29:05.20 Desirée Yeah. 00:29:10.24 Fireheart Media But like those days i was, ooh, those were hard days. Those were hard days. 00:29:16.07 Desirée yeah 00:29:17.05 Fireheart Media But like, ah then I was just busy, really, really busy for the rest of that week, going through everything when I was on bereavement leave, um you know, cleaning out everything, overhauling everything, 00:29:30.15 Fireheart Media trying to take care of all the phone calls that needed to be made, all of the the practical concerns that you have to deal with in the middle of your anxieties. 00:29:38.81 Desirée Uh-huh. 00:29:38.89 Fireheart Media And um then the week after that, my sister and her family came down. They had actually planned that trip before he ended up in hospice. So um they they just couldn't change the dates of the trip to come any earlier. So ah they still came this last week. 00:29:55.68 Fireheart Media um And that was all over with. Today is Sunday. I've had one day kind of breathe. And then tomorrow I go back to work and start a new normal. 00:30:08.16 Fireheart Media So um like it hasn't really gotten to the point, like, you know, it's been in that flux period. So I haven't gotten to that point of having, um you know, like the the getting back to normal and retraining your brain stuff that we'll be talking about. 00:30:24.77 Fireheart Media But um as you were saying, Desiree, so in The Grieving Brain, the book kicks off talking about your brain map and how, for an example, when you're walking in the dark through your house, you know about where your kitchen table is, for example, so you can move around it and... 00:30:31.64 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:30:42.10 Fireheart Media provided that you have some kind of spatial awareness in the dark, you can maneuver around where that table is without hitting it. And even if like, so, so when somebody passes, it's like somebody has stolen that table. 00:30:55.82 Fireheart Media So like you go and then in the middle of the night, you're trying to walk around this table and you don't even realize that it's not there. You're still going about your day doing, you know, your or your night rather doing the things that you would do, trying to go get a drink of water or whatever you're doing in the kitchen. 00:31:11.73 Fireheart Media but the table's not there and you only realize it like later. And it's like a slow realization process. And then you have to remap your, your mental picture so that you can ah now update that information and say, oh, actually, because for you know a while after somebody steals your coffee table and it's no longer there, ah you'll still kind of out of habit, you will still move out of the way of that coffee table and your brain is still trying to register, oh, right. 00:31:42.81 Fireheart Media ah you know And in every single time that you go through that area in the dark and have to maneuver through that space, your brain is going, oh, right, I don't have to move out of the way. That coffee table is not there anymore. 00:31:54.44 Fireheart Media so I can just go straight through. And that's what is happening. 00:31:56.49 Desirée Uh-huh. 00:31:57.99 Fireheart Media Like your brain is learning that space again. And the same thing happens when someone passes, your brain is learning ah that this person's not there and that your relationship with this person has to you know inherently change. 00:32:13.71 Fireheart Media as a result. So um yeah, and this is this is the same kind of knowing that we have about our loved ones and we have routines built around them and upon them. 00:32:24.96 Fireheart Media And so the brain continues including those in that mind map even though they pass. So ah when you walk through this space, you feel like you're, you feel the table. Like if you've ever run into the table in the dark, you know what that feels like. And sometimes you can anticipate that and you can feel it before you even touch it. 00:32:45.14 Fireheart Media And then 00:32:45.49 Desirée Oh, I'm hitting the table every damn time. 00:32:48.16 Fireheart Media That's because you don't have a mind map. You don't have a mind map. 00:32:51.48 Desirée Very true. but 00:32:52.65 Fireheart Media That's why. So, but anyway, then you notice the difference between the the sensation of the table actually hitting you and then the sensation of just walking past and not hitting anything. 00:33:04.31 Fireheart Media So, right. And in this is, mm-hmm. 00:33:07.17 Desirée Yeah. And the caretaking piece too, I think is... An extra layer, right? I have an entire cabinet in the kitchen devoted to pet medications. 00:33:19.42 Fireheart Media Right. 00:33:20.06 Desirée And when pet is in the final few years of its life, if they're as long lived as mine tend to be, they accumulate a lot of different medications. 00:33:31.30 Fireheart Media Right. 00:33:31.88 Desirée And so i in the last couple times, have tried to pack up their medications the day that we know we have the euthanasia appointment, pack up all of their prescription foods, and take those to the vet during the appointment because our vet does sort of a food and medicine pantry Since they can't resell those things, but they could give them to people who also need them, maybe can't afford the expensive joint medications or things like that. 00:33:57.63 Fireheart Media ah 00:34:04.03 Desirée So I know that they're thankfully and kindly taking on that burden of distributing these things and I get them out of my house. But I still reach and open the cabinet and go to grab the litany of medications the Atlas was on and then have to realize over and over again Nope, that is not part of my routine any longer. 00:34:25.33 Fireheart Media Right, right. And you know, your, your brain is trying to catch up with the fact that like, you still remember your loved one and you still love your loved one. 00:34:36.28 Fireheart Media And so they're, they're still with you, but they're also not there. And that's, that's something that your brain is having to struggle through because your brain expects them to be there constantly. And this is something that happens for every living being. A study was done on rats about how the brain fires in response to an object being in their cage. 00:34:57.27 Fireheart Media And once the rats were accustomed to that object being there, certain neurons in the brain fired only around that object. And then when they took that object out, those neurons were still firing every time they went there and expected that thing to be there. 00:35:14.00 Fireheart Media So, um, that means that if somebody close to us dies, then based on what we know about object trace cells, our neurons are still firing every time we expect our loved one to be in the room. 00:35:14.13 Desirée Uh-huh. Uh-huh. 00:35:24.69 Fireheart Media And this neural trace persists until we can learn that they're not, you know, like this, this new normal, they're not there, you know? And, um, this is something that I have found happening and found being something that I think about, um, just in terms of after work every day. 00:35:44.00 Fireheart Media ah because I work remotely, i would go inside and my dad would be sitting in his recliner in the living room at that time. And he would always say, the moment I walked in the door, you made it, you know, you' you're done. 00:35:57.26 Fireheart Media Or like if I walked in, you know, within the last hour or two before work was over, you're almost there, you've almost made it, you know, and he'd just be there. 00:35:58.57 Desirée yeah 00:36:05.65 Fireheart Media And he would say that. And now this week, I will be returning to work. And then when I come in, He won't be in the recliner. The recliner is actually gone. We we've gotten rid of it. 00:36:18.11 Fireheart Media ah We donated that um because none of us wanted to keep it. It was his, it felt very weird and wrong for us to be sitting in it. So we are, we have rearranged everything in the living room and donated that piece of furniture. 00:36:31.50 Fireheart Media But um so, so there's no recliner, there's no poppy. So walking in, I'm not going to hear that, but I will think about it every time, you know, for a while. 00:36:38.62 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. yeah 00:36:43.81 Fireheart Media So, and that's because my brain is going to be trying to, you know, update itself that when I walk in, nobody's there, you know? 00:36:56.92 Desirée Well, and so to the study on rats, one of my major problems with both books, the author continually refers to human grief. 00:37:08.70 Desirée Grief as a human. 00:37:08.81 Fireheart Media Uh-huh. 00:37:10.05 Desirée And as you wisely pointed out, all living things grieve. 00:37:10.91 Fireheart Media Right. 00:37:15.29 Fireheart Media Yes. 00:37:15.62 Desirée If they didn't, they wouldn't be able to study grief on rats or monkeys, things like that. 00:37:19.08 Fireheart Media Exactly. 00:37:21.19 Desirée And i haven't had the experience of having two animals that were bonded, but I was very, very surprised when Atlas died. 00:37:33.24 Desirée Corvo, our two-year-old kitten, has not stopped looking for him. 00:37:38.75 Fireheart Media Right. 00:37:39.20 Desirée They weren't necessarily especially close, I didn't think, but they would both sleep on my pillow every night. 00:37:45.70 Fireheart Media Mm-hmm. 00:37:46.92 Desirée And so that was one of the first times that one of the animals who was still with me has actively gone and tried to look, tried to find one of the others. So grief is present in all living things. 00:38:01.05 Desirée And i appreciate that. 00:38:01.44 Fireheart Media Oh, yeah. Yeah. Poodle. Yeah. ah So our dog, our 15 and a half year old schnoodle, Pooh Bear, she she already kind of did her grieving in the last several months because my dad like. 00:38:16.56 Fireheart Media slowly but surely stopped interacting with her as much as he was in more pain and and it was harder for him to get around he stopped doing stuff so she just kind of and you know was grieving during that period of time but she still slept by him every night and still sleeps on his side of the bed even now um you know like on her little bed on his side of the bed in my parents room um 00:38:23.54 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:38:40.67 Fireheart Media But when we lost Rami, for example, every single time I watch a video of a cute cockatiel or if I play a video of Rami, Poodle will come running and she is looking for him because she loved him and he loved her and... 00:38:52.92 Desirée ah 00:38:56.20 Fireheart Media she would just you know she looks for him all the time every time she hears a cockatiel she thinks it's him and so you know like that's that's definitely been a thing where she'll just get anxious and so so i can't i can't play anything with cockatiel noises on it uh you know in the house where she can hear it because uh then she will be like looking for him immediately so 00:39:11.54 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:39:20.22 Fireheart Media So yeah, but every living thing does grieve ah in in their own ways, in different ways. um Like I said, Poodle mostly was grieving beforehand. She's been really like right pasted to us ah the entire time after my dad passed. 00:39:32.83 Desirée Uh-huh. Uh-huh. 00:39:36.01 Fireheart Media So, you know, like she's she's known that he's gone And, you know, she's clung to us because she used to follow him like a shadow. So, you know, ah she's she's finding her new normal as well. And that's going to be hard for her this week because so for two weeks I've been home and now I'm i'm going to be going back to work. 00:39:57.16 Fireheart Media And I mean, granted, I'm still working remotely out in my office, but I'm going to be out in my office for a lot of the day. So. 00:40:03.32 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:40:04.17 Fireheart Media But yeah, ah studies have shown that the same hardware that helps triggering, finding, and continuing to return to places where food is found also triggers when we experience a state of emergency and want to get back to our loved ones. 00:40:17.91 Fireheart Media So this is the basis for psychiatrist John Bowlby's attachment bond theory. And one way to make sure our loved ones are predictable is through our bonds. The likelihood of finding them increases if they feel motivated to seek us out also. 00:40:34.42 Fireheart Media or to wait for us to come home. So when someone dies, you're told that they're no longer in this world and your brain can't really compute this because it goes against your lived experience heretofore. 00:40:46.36 Fireheart Media So for example, my lived experience is that when I come home from work, my dad is there and he has a certain thing he says. And you know, that like certain routines again are kind of built around these people who aren't there now. 00:40:59.48 Fireheart Media So there ist there is a need to look for them, a need to find them, however it is that we can. If that's, you know, calling out to them, trying to text them or call them, get their attention. 00:41:11.32 Fireheart Media We look at photos and videos, we write to them. Sometimes, you know, um we we go to say goodnight and we don't remember until we're halfway down the hall. 00:41:21.72 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:41:21.76 Fireheart Media oh oh, actually, you know, I don't need to do that anymore, you know, because there is a ah disconnect from what we expect on a fundamental like base level of, of our brains. 00:41:35.12 Fireheart Media So, um, our loved ones are the ones that we want to go to when we are feeling bad. So it's harder because these are the people we would go to, ah in, in times where we want comfort, um, 00:41:49.15 Fireheart Media So, um you know, there's there's heartbreak involved in that because there's this loss of this access, this closeness to like physical contact with them, ah you know? 00:42:01.32 Desirée Right. Mm-hmm. 00:42:01.61 Fireheart Media So yeah, there's also the fact that sometimes we swear that we hear them or that we catch a glimpse of them. 00:42:01.68 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:42:10.82 Fireheart Media And that's because our brain is predicting that they're gonna be there. Like I've heard my dad talking in the other room a couple of times. And it's because my brain expects at a certain time of night that my dad is talking to my mom in the other room. 00:42:26.48 Fireheart Media So, you know, like it's filling in that information and I go in there and there's just the TV and there's my mom and she's like, yeah, you know, and that's it. But there's because my brain is filling in those, those gaps. 00:42:39.76 Fireheart Media So 00:42:41.15 Desirée Right, yeah, the the brain is phenomenal at that. Being able to fill in those things with where you're expecting to see someone. When I look in the corner in a bed that Atlas was always in, sometimes I imagine that I'm seeing him in that spot, but consciously I know that he cannot be there. 00:43:01.53 Fireheart Media Mm-hmm. 00:43:01.60 Desirée And so it's the brain trying to do that work of, no, there was always a little Firepoint Siamese over here. Why isn't it there any longer? So even, you know, still now he died in April, several months later, Brain is still trying to process that and figure out what to put in that spot. 00:43:19.83 Fireheart Media Right. And part of the reason why this is, is because abstract knowledge, for example, the knowledge that everybody is going to die someday, that's not treated in the same way as lived experience in terms of brain wiring. 00:43:34.11 Fireheart Media And our brain trusts and makes predictions based on our lived experience. 00:43:34.14 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:43:39.15 Fireheart Media So when you wake up one morning and your loved one is not in the bed next to you, the idea that they've died is just not true in terms of probability in terms of your brain. 00:43:49.94 Fireheart Media So for your brain, it's not true for a long time. you know it It requires enough new lived experiences for our brain to develop new predictions, and that takes time. 00:44:03.62 Fireheart Media Not only does it take time, again, it takes different amounts of time for different people, and that depends on a lot of different factors. 00:44:07.84 Desirée Okay. 00:44:11.96 Fireheart Media The closeness that you have, the type of bond, the length of time, a bunch of other different things. um Also, how well-equipped you are to be resilient in the face of loss, 00:44:23.89 Fireheart Media And a lot of other factors like all play into this phenomenon of how much time it takes you. And, you know, there's a certain extent to which you will always somewhere in your brain be kind of always looking for them. 00:44:39.44 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:44:39.51 Fireheart Media But like the incidence rate of that drops after a while, but you just have to have enough confirmation. 00:44:39.58 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:44:47.74 Fireheart Media Oh, no, that's not the case. Oh, no, that's not the case. Oh, no, that's not the case before your brain gets it so 00:44:55.03 Desirée for For most people, right? For some people, as discussed a bit later on there are those folks who have this extreme, prolonged experience of grief where their brain is not doing that work to acknowledge grief. 00:44:59.81 Fireheart Media Right, right. 00:45:12.18 Desirée that they've encountered this number of false positives. So I thought something was there. It's not. And learn to rewire itself to accept that reality. There are some folks that that's just not the case. 00:45:27.36 Fireheart Media Right. And actually, um the, what is it? Death in the Afternoon, the podcast by Caitlin Doughty and the Order of the Good Death. 00:45:33.06 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:45:36.20 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:45:36.56 Fireheart Media um So like that podcast, one of the seasons of the podcast was just dedicated to these wild stories of people who are having that, that prolonged grief and like to the point that they refuse to accept the death and then like the wild shit that people do when they are grieving slash not accepting the death like they're in denial phase so hard that they do some wild things you want to hear something interesting that would be a recommend from me would be to listen to that that's some hard hard grief right there but like um a whole different level of grief than most even most complicated grief situations i think 00:46:19.98 Desirée Right. 00:46:20.25 Fireheart Media So, ah but that's, that's all a matter of like how plastic your brain is in terms of like neuroplasticity, for example, like how malleable, how, how adaptable is your brain? And it's harder the older you get ah because your brain is less plastic. 00:46:38.49 Fireheart Media ah malleable in that way. Like in some of the science books that I've read, they basically say that the brain more or less calcifies, you know, it's not actual calcification happening, but like in terms of ah the kind of rigidity and the kind of fixed mindset, that kind of it tends to be a mode that people settle into as they get older. 00:46:49.03 Desirée Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. yeah 00:47:03.47 Fireheart Media And so the older you are, the harder it is to bounce back from grief and except in the case of the people who are very resilient, who just kind of accept with grace and those people kind of continue into old age being able to adapt well. 00:47:20.98 Fireheart Media But the incidence rate of, you know, say one partner passes and then the other partner who is also, you know, like is also very old, uh, passes pretty quick afterwards that heartbreak, uh, 00:47:34.03 Fireheart Media kind of phenomenon, that's pretty common. And part of the reason for that is that, that, you know, basically lack of resilience, they can't bounce back as well at that point. 00:47:42.91 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:47:44.77 Fireheart Media So But yeah, um the Canadian neuroscience, Donald Hebb was famously paraphrased as saying neurons that fire together wire together. So we have years of experience causing our brain to expect our loved one to be there. So it takes years, like years sometimes, sometimes it's several months. Again, it just kind of depends on the person. 00:48:05.70 Fireheart Media It takes a lot of time. We'll just put it like that. to truly learn that they're not there the same way anymore. And the key to overcoming grief is those new situations that assist in the rewiring process. So continuing to live our lives every day ah adds another drop to the bucket of lived experience, counterbalancing our pain So um talking about the closeness of your bond with somebody, the psychologist Arthur Aaron created an inclusion of other in self scale, which is basically like a Venn diagram where the self and the other are two circles. 00:48:30.10 Desirée Yeah. 00:48:46.22 Fireheart Media And then they just kind of increasingly are totally separate and just slightly touching and then increasingly overlapping until like you know, if say, for example, this is your, your one true love that you married when you were 18 or something, and you've been with them forever. 00:49:03.35 Fireheart Media And like now you're 90 and they pass. There's so much of you and that person that overlaps at that point that, you know, like it's really hard to overcome that. And that's part of what I was mentioning earlier. 00:49:17.48 Fireheart Media So. 00:49:17.68 Desirée well it's also a piece and she doesn't talk as much about the loss of an identity and how didn't losing an identity is like losing ah piece of yourself and it's also its own grief i i worked at a university for 10 years and an enormous amount of my identity was connected to being an educator 00:49:23.82 Fireheart Media hmm. 00:49:30.91 Fireheart Media Right. 00:49:41.06 Desirée And she does mention in one of the books how she's not looking forward to retirement because she identifies as a professor. 00:49:49.95 Fireheart Media right 00:49:50.21 Desirée yeah And what am I going to do when that identity is gone? For me, I'm trying to, I think, cope with it in a healthier way and acknowledge that educator does not have to be contained to sage on the stage teaching in a classroom. 00:50:06.96 Fireheart Media Right. 00:50:07.19 Desirée I can educate people every day in the line of work that I do now or in other situations. And so finding ways to morph that identity to focusing on what an educator means to me now, but it doesn't mean that I don't grieve the loss of my students, right? 00:50:28.32 Fireheart Media right Right. Well, I mean, um folks who know from the 11 years, 11 years right now of podcasting that I've done, ah folks who've been listening to me for long enough know that, you know, like I've, I've gone through a lot of self um evolutions. 00:50:36.94 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:50:47.97 Fireheart Media You know, I, I've been through phases of being deep and and heavy into doing art as my identity. um doing different types of training as my identity, different types of being an athlete, athlete myself, or um being a trainer, a personal trainer and and training other people and doing that. 00:51:07.78 Fireheart Media And those are different parts of my identity. And when I had cancer, a lot of things had to swerve. Like when I got back into art really heavy, it was because I had some, you know I had cancer, but then I also had 00:51:14.72 Desirée Yeah. 00:51:21.09 Fireheart Media spinal stenosis acute onset of spinal stenosis at the same time and I couldn't look down or to the side or do any fitness stuff and I and whatever else and so like there were certain things I couldn't do and so I had to swerve so guess what I was doing I was doing art you know so um 00:51:28.57 Desirée no 00:51:37.39 Desirée yeah 00:51:39.92 Fireheart Media You know, and then at some point I swerved away from that because I got burned out on on doing some of that stuff and swerved again. But then, you know, nowadays people don't identify me as the ultra marathon runner or, you know, the fine arts painter. 00:51:55.81 Fireheart Media or the you know personal trainer sometimes or whatever. like people People don't know all of the different selves that I am and have been. 00:52:00.07 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:52:05.11 Fireheart Media And so every time those things change, it's been kind of hard. you know like i'm I'm letting go of my personal training certification come this next May, May 2026th, 00:52:09.74 Desirée ah 00:52:16.07 Fireheart Media Because I'm not actively training people. Like i lost my last online client due to Trump administration stuff. and You know, like making things harder and, um you know, economy going the way it is. 00:52:29.77 Fireheart Media So I don't need to pay lots of money to maintain a certification that I am not actively using. So, you know, the money and the time tax is real to maintain that. 00:52:36.87 Desirée Right. 00:52:40.64 Fireheart Media So I'm letting that go. But I have to also let go of part of my identity as actively a trainer, you know. 00:52:47.37 Desirée right 00:52:48.33 Fireheart Media So, yeah. So another aspect of grief though is anger. Sometimes we're sad or angry at ourselves because we've failed to keep our loved ones close on the closeness dimension. 00:53:00.42 Fireheart Media Um, or because we think to ourselves, this is something that definitely like the magical thinking of if I had only done X, things could have been different. 00:53:10.30 Desirée Yeah. 00:53:11.94 Fireheart Media Like, uh, the friend of mine that committed suicide, for example, um, we were, Supposed to go out to go see a movie and we were talking about going out to go see a movie, but he had asked me to go um on the same day that would have been my six year anniversary or seven year anniversary, I think seven year anniversary with um some you know like the person I was dating whom we just broke up like a few weeks ago. 00:53:37.91 Fireheart Media You know, as of that point. And so I was like, I really can't. 00:53:39.52 Desirée yeah 00:53:41.44 Fireheart Media I don't feel like it. I don't feel up to it. I'm i'm in a mess right now. You know, and then like when I tried to text him later to go and say, hey, rain check, you want to go this next weekend? 00:53:53.27 Fireheart Media I got a call back from his dad saying he had committed suicide the night before. And that was hard. That was hard. 00:53:58.97 Desirée Yeah. 00:53:59.05 Fireheart Media And then this was like, man, if I had only gone, I wonder if and of course, that's not going to change anything. 00:53:59.07 Desirée Right. Mm-hmm. 00:54:03.61 Fireheart Media That would have been a bandaid at best. 00:54:05.85 Desirée right 00:54:06.09 Fireheart Media But, you know, like those kinds of thoughts, and this is this back when I was in my 20s that this happened, um you know, and and like those kinds of thoughts, they're hard to deal with, but there are things that occur naturally because we're trying to problem solve, right? 00:54:20.36 Fireheart Media That's the thing that the brain is doing. It's like, well, if if this happened, then maybe this, you know, maybe we could have fixed this, you know, but there isn't any fixing it, you know. 00:54:29.91 Desirée Well, and your brain also essentially views their absence a betrayal in a way, because if they cared about you this much, they would be responding to your text messages instead of your friend's dad having to call you. 00:54:35.98 Fireheart Media Right. 00:54:41.89 Fireheart Media Right. 00:54:45.56 Fireheart Media Right. 00:54:45.97 Desirée Your brain isn't always able to make that they would if they could, but they can't. So it's just interpreting... that lack of contact as a betrayal. 00:54:57.34 Desirée So that can also lead to anger or anger might manifest in different ways. It might be frustration or other aspects that you might not normally associate with grief. 00:55:10.82 Fireheart Media Right. Or, and, and it might be, you know, that that your anger is because you never got resolution about something, you know, like maybe you didn't get to resolve this dispute that you had, or in the case of, I had a rain check to go to a movie, right. 00:55:18.91 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:55:26.90 Desirée Yeah. huh 00:55:27.37 Fireheart Media And we were going to go, go to a movie like the next weekend. And then like that never happened. You know, there's other things that, you know, with other people who've passed in my life that, you know, were supposed to happen and didn't happen. 00:55:32.97 Desirée right 00:55:39.77 Fireheart Media And so those are like engagements, promises that couldn't be kept, you know? And so those are things that could possibly trigger anger. That's not one of my reactions, at least so so here to date about anybody passing, but like that is a response. 00:55:51.68 Desirée yeah 00:55:55.21 Fireheart Media Another thing that was um mentioned in the book briefly was that sometimes people respond by really wanting to have sex, which sounds, you know, like on the outside sounds weird, but like sex is a stress reliever, but physiologically speaking. 00:56:03.60 Desirée Sure. 00:56:12.78 Fireheart Media So it makes sense because grief is a big stressor. So if somebody suddenly just really needs to have sex and that' like that's like, that's a stress relief for them. That's like a way of coping for them. 00:56:24.40 Fireheart Media um I can't say that's been me, but like, you know, ah you know, that that's that is another response that people don't talk about usually, but is actually part of this whole like finding coping mechanisms kind of thing. 00:56:28.15 Desirée sure 00:56:33.59 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:56:39.56 Fireheart Media So um there's lots of information in this book about the different parts of the brain that do different things related to processing your closeness and what closeness means in definitive terms. 00:56:52.96 Fireheart Media And in the book, they talk about how like your closeness to a person or a loved one in general, be it a pet or otherwise, it's it's It's registered in the brain both in terms of actual physical proximities, but also in terms of like emotional engagement and and fulfilling your needs and all of these other different various complex ways of categorizing it. and Just be aware that overall, yourre your entire brain is basically involved in the process of registering your relationship with other people. And so all parts of your brain are going into overdrive when somebody is not there. 00:57:32.94 Fireheart Media And they are all trying to fire and figure out what's going on and doing different things. So your body is just like going haywire and trying to figure out what to do. 00:57:43.94 Fireheart Media Because like there's tracking of where someone is in terms of a social space in terms of how close you are with this other person. You know, ah there are things that track ah the here and the now close in time, like what, you know, the time that something happened as being, you know, recently versus a long time ago. Yeah. 00:58:06.13 Fireheart Media The amount of closeness, like the amount of closeness between people. Is this your bosom buddy that you have to talk to every single day about everything? 00:58:10.49 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:58:14.27 Fireheart Media This is the first person you contact. Or is this somebody like down the list, you know, kind of thing? ah Spatial, is the spatial navigation, the hippocampus that tracks Spatial navigation also tracks aspects of closeness. So it it the whole brain is firing constantly. 00:58:33.97 Fireheart Media So grief, is a psychiatrist named Kathy Shear quoted to say, grief is the form love takes when someone we love dies. 00:58:46.68 Fireheart Media So the amount of grief that you have, the way that you process grief, all of that stuff, um that is the form that your love takes when someone passes because you're you're having to kind of like make your own closure, you know, like. 00:59:04.64 Fireheart Media you You have to close the book on this yourself. So you have to wrap up any loose ends in this storybook, you know, or if you are, and this this will be a topic for a later episode. 00:59:15.74 Fireheart Media um If you are transforming your relationship with the person who has passed and maintaining a connection to them, then you are tying up these loose ends, not so that you can close the book, but so you can begin a new book with this new relationship that you have with them. 00:59:27.84 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:59:34.99 Fireheart Media And um we will in the future, Desiree and I have already been talking about um doing an episode about the ways that different cultures around the world have um of keeping connection to people who have passed because there's so many beautiful ways that societies other than our own. 00:59:54.75 Fireheart Media ah really deal with this that we don't know about in in our society. You know, and there are ways that people in our society also have beautiful ways of engaging and keeping connections and things like that as well. 01:00:07.75 Fireheart Media I'm not trying to denigrate that, but like there's there's lots of ways that we don't really know about that aren't really talked about in our society because our society doesn't address grief very much that, um you know, I would like to talk about and Des would like to talk about to bring that to the fore. 01:00:25.24 Desirée So I will add the the idea that grief is the form love takes when someone dies. 01:00:25.29 Fireheart Media So, yeah. 01:00:31.11 Fireheart Media Uh-huh. 01:00:31.22 Desirée That has never set well with me. 01:00:34.41 Fireheart Media Uh-huh. 01:00:34.77 Desirée Because to me, that feels like saying grief is just taking over what love was. And it can lead to people, i think, feeling... 01:00:45.94 Fireheart Media Feeling obligated or feeling like they they aren't measuring up, perhaps. 01:00:49.80 Desirée Or they're not doing enough, right? 01:00:51.17 Fireheart Media Right, right. 01:00:51.62 Desirée Like their grief isn't big enough. This person was the person in their life and they're not performing grief correctly. And so I think if that's a sentiment that resonates with folks, like that's great. 01:01:05.96 Desirée But if it's also not landing with you, that doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you or that you're not loving the people and pets and identities and things in your life enough. 01:01:18.39 Desirée It... To me, grief is meant to be a temporary sort of passing through phase, and love is eternal. 01:01:24.36 Fireheart Media Right. 01:01:28.66 Fireheart Media Right. 01:01:28.81 Desirée And so grief might always kind of be attached to that love after they die, but to me grief is additive, not in place of. 01:01:37.20 Fireheart Media Right. And that's a really important point to have. um And also ah when you love somebody. ah So so something that's also said a lot is that when you grieve, you're grieving for yourself, not for the person because they're out of pain or whatever. 01:01:55.32 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:01:55.93 Fireheart Media And that while that is true, i also feel that it's reductive as a statement because you're not just grieving, you know, ah your loss. You're also grieving the whole situational change, like your entire world, your identity has changed, your, your day to day life has been uprooted and up, you know, there's a lot of upheaval and you have to redefine everything in so many different ways. 01:02:12.03 Desirée hu 01:02:22.74 Fireheart Media Yes, you are grieving for yourself. And for other people who loved this person. But at the same time, you know, you're, there's so much more to it than just, oh, you're just grieving your own loss. 01:02:35.64 Fireheart Media You know what I mean? Like that sounds, that doesn't sound adequate to me. 01:02:37.13 Desirée Yeah. 01:02:40.12 Fireheart Media Kind of like how you're saying, like saying grief is the form love takes. 01:02:40.19 Desirée Also, yeah 01:02:43.82 Fireheart Media Then, you know, maybe you're not doing, doing grief right or something. And that, that's also reductive, right? 01:02:49.85 Desirée Right. And also viewing grief as inherently negative. 01:02:50.47 Fireheart Media So 01:02:54.82 Fireheart Media Right. 01:02:55.53 Desirée There are so many things that are positive that occur alongside grief that would not have necessarily come without the loss. So... 01:03:05.10 Fireheart Media hmm. 01:03:06.43 Desirée Would I have done absolutely anything and everything for all of my pets? Yes, there were subcutaneous fluids. There were very expensive medications. There were trips out to K-State Veterinary Hospital or one of the cats we took to the University of Missouri and had brain surgery done on her. She lived and was a fantastic outcome. But all of the financial costs, all of the emotional weight, all of the time, 01:03:36.59 Desirée it's okay to have a little bit of relief at, okay, that chapter has closed now. 01:03:42.02 Fireheart Media Right. 01:03:43.13 Desirée And now I have time, more time for myself, or now I have a little bit more breathing room in my budget. Or yes, I might still reflexively wake up at 3am to give medications, but I don't have to anymore. And it's also okay to have those experiences and feelings of relief and appreciate that there is a way to move forward. 01:04:08.35 Fireheart Media Well, and that's an important thing to say as well. um Because again, like when my dad passed, I, I was able to spot it the night before. 01:04:19.18 Fireheart Media And, you know, because of the signs that I was told to look for by the nurse and I let my mom and I let Dave know, and you know, I kissed my dad good night and I told him I loved him and that's all. 01:04:23.59 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:04:32.21 Fireheart Media I didn't spend a long time, know, you know, doing anything different. I mean, I had spent so much time for the last three months with him, telling him and letting him know he was loved and caring for him as carefully as I could. 01:04:38.80 Desirée Sure. 01:04:41.13 Desirée yep 01:04:46.18 Fireheart Media All the nurses said we did such a great job. They've been, you know, basically, you know, seemed surprised by how well we were taking care of him. 01:04:56.04 Desirée sure 01:04:56.29 Fireheart Media you you know, all of that. And we had said so much and spent a lot of time. And so, you know, knowing that he was going to pass in within a matter of hours, you know, I i was just like, you know, I love you. 01:05:13.32 Fireheart Media Gave him a kiss, went to bed. 01:05:13.47 Desirée Right. 01:05:16.17 Fireheart Media When I woke up, I went and I checked and I was the one who found him and he had passed. And at first I was just like, 01:05:27.25 Fireheart Media I'm glad he's not in pain. 01:05:29.29 Desirée Right. 01:05:30.31 Fireheart Media And that day, a lot of it was feeling relief because, you know, the quality of life wasn't there. 01:05:34.90 Desirée 01:05:39.69 Fireheart Media And not only that, but like just not having him having to just lay there and be medicated, you know, ah having him be able to go wherever it is that spirits go. 01:05:39.76 Desirée Right. 01:05:49.81 Desirée right Yeah. 01:05:56.95 Fireheart Media You know, whatever it is you believe about that. And, you know, that was a relief. And there were waves grief where I was crying. But there were also times where I'm like, 01:06:10.71 Fireheart Media ah The great like unclenching, because every two hours, no matter where I was, if I was sleeping, if I was, you know, working, no matter what it was, I had to get up, I had to go, we needed to check usually more often than that I had to keep coming in like 45 minutes, you know, every 45 constantly constantly checking. 01:06:11.93 Desirée Yeah. Yep. 01:06:27.51 Desirée Right. 01:06:31.48 Fireheart Media ah constantly making sure everything was okay and, and all of that. And like suddenly not having that after having, you know, having it ramp up for so long, you know, it was a relief. 01:06:44.88 Fireheart Media And, you know, like a relief on us because we were all exhausted. We still persist in being exhausted just in a different way. And, you know, like relief, most of all for him, most of all for him. 01:06:56.33 Desirée right 01:06:57.77 Fireheart Media And, you know, that's not something that is talked about or or considered to be appropriate in our society. 01:07:04.62 Desirée Right. 01:07:04.75 Fireheart Media ah People like say, you know, oh, well, that's that's wrong to feel relief that, you know, you don't have to deal with the, you know, caretaking or, 01:07:04.74 Desirée Yeah. 01:07:10.08 Desirée right 01:07:13.94 Fireheart Media whatever And it's like, no, no, no, It's also for that person. I'm so glad that they don't have to be in that situation anymore. 01:07:17.92 Desirée yeah 01:07:22.15 Fireheart Media You know? And, you know, like, mm-hmm. 01:07:23.23 Desirée Sure, and even if they're not necessarily aware, or we don't think that they're conscious, so my grandma, when she passed, had had a stroke and was unconscious, and then medical professionals decided to, quote, end nutrition. 01:07:25.05 Fireheart Media Right. 01:07:27.40 Fireheart Media Right. 01:07:41.22 Desirée So just, they weren't going to give her any more information. food or water, and she continued her existence for almost a week, just lying in a bed, unconscious, in a hospital, 110% not what she would have wanted. 01:07:50.69 Fireheart Media Yeah. 01:07:58.49 Fireheart Media Right. 01:07:59.40 Desirée And so saying that, you know, oh, well, that relief is selfish because it's only for you. No, I had immense relief when she passed that I knew she would not have wanted to be in that state. 01:08:13.09 Fireheart Media Right. and And also, ah this is way more personal, but i'll I'll say it just for context on the relief part to kind of underline that. Before my dad, like when when my dad started to get to the point where he couldn't use his limbs, but he could still talk, he begged me to end his life. 01:08:33.83 Fireheart Media And I obviously couldn't do that. But he was trying to find, he's like, I'll write a note or you can write a note because I can't write, but I can sign it with, and I can sign my name with an X the way they used to do in the old days. 01:08:47.04 Desirée Yeah. 01:08:47.70 Fireheart Media And that kind of thing, because he was trying, because I was like, they will call me a murderer. i can't do that. You know, like there isn't an ethical way in our society that is deemed ethical by our society to allow people the grace to choose the way that they pass. 01:08:53.39 Desirée Right. 01:09:03.27 Fireheart Media And my dad in the last week of his life could not eat because he couldn't swallow. 01:09:08.87 Desirée yeah. 01:09:08.94 Fireheart Media And we had to grind up his pills and put them in his cheek. 01:09:08.97 Desirée Right. 01:09:12.53 Fireheart Media And so, you know, and we had to to, you know, give him water with a sponge and stuff like that because he he couldn't really swallow very well. 01:09:12.69 Desirée yeah 01:09:21.13 Fireheart Media And so, yeah, I mean, that's horrible. And yeah, that's so it's essentially the same as what happened with your grandmother, except I also got him asking me to do stuff that nobody should ever have to be asked. 01:09:28.69 Desirée yeah 01:09:35.72 Desirée right 01:09:36.95 Fireheart Media So, you know. 01:09:37.02 Desirée Well, or there should be able to be a plan for that. And the idea of assisted death is something that could be a whole episode in of itself. 01:09:40.55 Fireheart Media Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. 01:09:45.76 Fireheart Media Oh yes. 01:09:46.51 Desirée And it is absolutely something I advocate for because I very much appreciate when my pets are suffering and at the point of no return, no quality of life. 01:09:46.81 Fireheart Media Yes. 01:09:59.82 Desirée I get to give them that gift of a choice of before you get so far gone that you can't stand up or whatever. 01:10:03.31 Fireheart Media Right. 01:10:10.00 Desirée i get to make that choice for them to say, okay, goodbye, my friend. 01:10:14.38 Fireheart Media Yeah. 01:10:14.63 Desirée And I think that is a gift. 01:10:16.71 Fireheart Media It is. It is. So, and and again, like that's, that's something that I wanted to say only for the people who might be railing at the idea of the relief part. 01:10:28.01 Fireheart Media Understand there are so many circumstances where that relief is so warranted beyond measure. 01:10:31.47 Desirée Yeah. Yes. yes 01:10:34.82 Fireheart Media So how about you tell us a little bit about parasocial grief, because that's something that we experience, especially in our very interconnected society, the way that we are these days. 01:10:47.16 Desirée Right. So parasocial grief, it can also be very real. It goes beyond kind of anecdotal evidence. um So people may be bereft at a celebrity's death for the millennial generation. Robin Williams passing was devastating. Right. 01:11:07.73 Desirée right maybe for different people they might have a different celebrity that came to mind but robin williams was a very formative figure for me and yet seeing his daughter zelda share her experiences on social media of people telling her oh your dad meant more to me than he did to you clearly or things like that being absolutely horrible to her 01:11:08.51 Fireheart Media Right. 01:11:29.27 Fireheart Media Oh, good Lord. 01:11:34.84 Desirée Because of their experience of this parasocial grief. 01:11:38.53 Fireheart Media Mm-hmm. 01:11:38.74 Desirée Robin Williams meant so much to to them that they cannot imagine anyone else experiencing grief at the level that they had for him. 01:11:49.59 Desirée So um that person not being available when they need someone in their darkest hour, maybe, you know, going and watching a Robin Williams movie was their comfort. 01:12:03.18 Desirée You can absolutely still do that even after the person passes. Maybe it hurts. and you know, maybe that taints the experience for them and they don't want to watch this thing that used to be so comforting to them anymore. 01:12:19.24 Desirée But that's just one of those aspects of grief. So it's it's also all still bound up in attachment, right? You are attached to that person, you're attached to that idea. 01:12:26.62 Fireheart Media Right. 01:12:29.89 Desirée it requires another aspect of Finding a different way that that person could be there for us. So they might be special to us in whatever way. 01:12:41.30 Desirée That them being there has to then take a different form. Mm-hmm. 01:12:45.56 Fireheart Media Right. And, and, you know, um I've mentioned so many times different pieces of media or different, you know musicians, especially that have meant a lot to me. 01:12:58.15 Fireheart Media Like, say, for example, ah you know, the book talks about the the parasocial relationship thing, the the person that you have this parasocial grief for is somebody who was available when we needed them to turn to them in our darkest hour. 01:13:12.77 Fireheart Media And for some of mine, it's been like Lunar Eternal Blue. 01:13:12.79 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:13:18.28 Fireheart Media And literally one of the advertisements for it is a picture of Lucia, one of the main characters and on a black black's background. And it says, in the darkest hour, hope springs eternal. 01:13:29.66 Fireheart Media And that's a quote from the ad for the thing. And like we were in a lot of flux. We moved from Florida to ah Houston, Florida. And, you know, my family was split up at the time because, you know, of selling the house back there and trying to move over here and trying to get everything all worked out. It was a mess. 01:13:49.02 Fireheart Media And i I was uprooted from all of my friends and everything and had had the situation. So like Lunar Eternal Blue was there for me during all of this flux. 01:13:58.62 Desirée Yeah. 01:13:58.92 Fireheart Media And because that's not a person per se, like that's several people, lots of people were tied into that, but like the thing is still there and I can go back and play that anytime I want to. 01:13:58.95 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:14:01.99 Desirée right 01:14:10.81 Fireheart Media As for like musicians or something, like GACT as a musician was there for me when I had that breakup of that long relationship I mentioned before, like the seven year relationship or whatever. um And then, you know, that helped me a lot. Certain other albums from other artists were also ones that were there, but that Gakt was specifically ah the musician I listened to and he was super important. He was so important I went to Japan to see him. 01:14:37.45 Fireheart Media He was so important because Gakt Dave said he was listening to Gakt on Twitter to do his workout at lifting. I was like, I love you. 01:14:47.94 Fireheart Media And but I didn't know him yet. 01:14:48.13 Desirée yeah 01:14:50.09 Fireheart Media And then I married him. So like, you know, Gakt has brought me to a lot of different things. So like, I don't know how I'm going to feel when Gakt dies, but I feel like there's going to be some kind of response when that happens. 01:15:00.30 Fireheart Media You know, I will have a parasocial response to that situation because Gakt specifically is a musician that I have this 01:15:00.91 Desirée yeah 01:15:07.28 Fireheart Media thing too. And, you know, one of the things that the book says is that we feel close to musicians. We feel we can trust them because they say things that really resonate with us in their lyrics. 01:15:20.43 Fireheart Media And there's like a particular album, Gax Love Songs album, which that album is the one that I first listened to. And it was like, everything on there was just like, oh my God, it's exactly what I'm feeling. 01:15:33.54 Fireheart Media you know, all of this is exactly what I'm feeling. 01:15:33.64 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:15:36.66 Fireheart Media And, um you know, because of that, it resonated so much with me that it felt, you know, special and unique in a way that no other musician stuff could. And nobody else understood me, quote unquote, the way that Gap did, you know. 01:15:50.10 Fireheart Media So, you know, this is this is ah ah a person who 01:15:50.58 Desirée yeah. 01:15:54.61 Fireheart Media Gak's music defines part of my life, part of who I am. They are part of my identity. And so for a lot of people, Robin Williams, to circle back to your example, Robin Williams was there for us when we were growing up. He was a part of all of these movies that we love. 01:16:12.96 Fireheart Media that, you know, helped define like the comedy of an era, like at the family-friendly comedy. 01:16:13.03 Desirée yeah 01:16:17.95 Fireheart Media And then depending upon if you were watching the comedy specials, not so family-friendly, you know, comedy of an era that has a sensibility that maybe we brought forward with us. 01:16:28.99 Fireheart Media I mean, I know that other people, for for example, when George Carlin passed, that was a real big blow for a lot of people for the same reason as something like a Robin Williams, you know? 01:16:33.34 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:16:39.03 Desirée Well, and it's tied to your identity. 01:16:41.73 Fireheart Media Right. 01:16:42.43 Desirée So for me, it was musician wise, it was Jimmy Buffett, my gamer tag, my discord handle, all of those things are some iteration of Ms. 01:16:46.98 Fireheart Media Right. 01:16:53.77 Desirée Margaritaville. So that, and I don't live on an island. I live in Kansas. I couldn't be further from palm trees. 01:17:02.03 Fireheart Media right 01:17:02.34 Desirée Right. But yeah, To me, I connected with the lyrics of his music because not being able to make those mental pictures and play the music videos in my head, i have to listen to the words very intently to see what the song is about. 01:17:18.70 Desirée Jimmy Buffett was a storyteller, just like your Willie Nelson's, your Dolly Pardons. And their lyrics have meaning to them. They're telling that story. So, so much of my identity in my online presence is connected to Jimmy Buffett. 01:17:35.04 Fireheart Media Mm-hmm. 01:17:35.38 Desirée And so acknowledging that that's a piece of my identity that has now died... can be really painful, but i can still go back and listen to his albums. 01:17:47.06 Desirée So many of his songs are on my Spotify playlists, and over time it has shifted to a fond remembrance as opposed to, okay need to skip that one right now. 01:17:58.10 Fireheart Media Right, right. And, you know, part of it is because they're no longer going to be able to make more, right? So like, what you have is what you have. 01:18:08.93 Fireheart Media And that's it. It's kind of the same when it comes to any of our our situations where we come into grief, right? 01:18:15.87 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:18:16.16 Fireheart Media So ah like, say, for example, today, I was looking because I'm I'm now going to be training myself at home. oh i I discontinued my gym membership because we're going to overhaul the garage to make it our home gym as part of our new normal. 01:18:30.87 Fireheart Media And Because that space used to be my dad's sanctuary. And so while he was still alive, I was cleaning through and cleaning out and overhauling. And it was very hard during that caretaking period before it got to too hard, you know, to to do other things other than caretake. 01:18:47.97 Fireheart Media I was doing that because I knew that if I waited until he passed and then I tried to clean the garage, I was not going to be able to do it anymore. 01:18:53.52 Desirée Right. Mm-hmm. 01:18:56.17 Fireheart Media You know, it would be too hard. 01:18:56.46 Desirée right 01:18:58.31 Fireheart Media So I've already done a lot of overhaul in the garage, but we are still going to, we're going to put down epoxy on the floor um and we're going to do some other things to make it into a gym space. Well, part of that, part of the caretaking for the past three months, we haven't been able to train. so Instead of trying to go back to the gym and just lift weights, which that's, you know, that already would be hard enough. I'm actually, we're, we're taking it back to the basics and we're going to be doing body weight stuff. 01:19:23.93 Fireheart Media We're going to be doing plyometrics. We're going to be doing circuits. I'm going to be doing pole conditioning and, you know, doing some running, doing some spin, also doing the martial arts stuff and build up from there, 01:19:37.17 Fireheart Media while we're waiting for it to cool down enough for us to actually put epoxy on the floor so that we can get the actual weightlifting section done. 01:19:45.03 Desirée Right. 01:19:45.10 Fireheart Media So um we have a plan in place. It'll be like a building up from nothing, but because of that, ah and because I'm letting go of my training certification, i don't have my trainer platform anymore. So all of the workouts I had designed for the past, i don't know how many years that I've been doing personal training online, all gone. 01:20:03.05 Fireheart Media So um I was looking back through old notebooks. I found my notebook from when I was teaching bootcamps and it was this wild thing where like for a long time, I couldn't look at it because it was hurting me so bad that I i couldn't do the bootcamp. I couldn't continue to do the bootcamp training, ah teaching people and at the bootcamps with that organization. 01:20:21.10 Fireheart Media But going back to it now, I'm like, yes, now I can do all of these horribly terrible workouts that I put everybody through. And this is going to be so fun to go back to these and be able to do these again and, and, you know, whatever. 01:20:27.60 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:20:33.27 Fireheart Media But like, um, You know, I, it the all of all of this to say, like, i part of my new normal is kind of rediscovering old selves and being able to use those with joy, you know, in in this space. Like, the stuff that I grieved before is actually there for me now as I move forward with my new normal. 01:20:55.57 Fireheart Media And yes, I'm going to think about my dad every time I go out to the garage for a while, right? 01:21:00.02 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:21:00.58 Fireheart Media Until I start thinking about, oh my God, I'm going to die. It'll be great. You know? i 01:21:05.35 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:21:06.63 Fireheart Media you know ah the the thoughts will change over time everything will change over time as we continue um but like i've been trying to be so conscious of of what's going on with me be present in my body every moment and you know give myself some grace and everything and uh 01:21:24.29 Desirée Well, and that's why i also think the idea of grief existing alongside love allows for those feelings of joy to come a little bit easier because you don't feel like you're setting aside 01:21:35.07 Fireheart Media Right. 01:21:40.60 Desirée love and then grief takes its place and then oh i'm a terrible person i've now experienced joy at something nope the love is that continuous thread all throughout all these other things are additive 01:21:54.72 Fireheart Media Right. And, you know, now that the the caretaking is over, another thing that I can be happy about is the fact that Dave and I can now do all of the remodeling work that needs to be done on the house, ah that some of the stuff we learned how to do from my dad and then some of the stuff that he couldn't teach us, unfortunately, before he passed, we can learn it on our so our own. 01:22:07.19 Desirée mm-hmm 01:22:17.64 Fireheart Media And then when we do it, I can say he would be proud. 01:22:21.63 Desirée Right. 01:22:24.21 Fireheart Media So let's move on to the empathy. What do you do when somebody is grieving? Desiree, I figure you should go ahead and kick this off. 01:22:29.45 Desirée Yeah. 01:22:32.02 Fireheart Media You were also on my empathy episode. 01:22:32.74 Desirée hey 01:22:33.74 Fireheart Media So 01:22:35.09 Desirée I was? 01:22:36.87 Fireheart Media yeah, you were on the empathy episode. 01:22:37.09 Desirée Question mark? Yeah. No. 01:22:39.95 Fireheart Media Yeah. 01:22:39.95 Desirée I don't remember things. 01:22:40.33 Fireheart Media Question mark. Yeah. I think you were. Yes. Yes. You were on the empathy episode. 01:22:43.10 Desirée Yeah, I think it was. 01:22:44.82 Fireheart Media Yeah. 01:22:45.05 Desirée um But yeah, so empathy is so crucial, I think, in just existing and being a good human. So when a friend is grieving, i never met your dad doesn't mean I wasn't grieving right alongside you, or at least in some way. 01:23:03.24 Fireheart Media Right. 01:23:05.20 Desirée Because it does impact your day-to-day when a friend is grieving. So you mentioned the Discord. One of the first things I did every morning was go and check and see, okay, what can I say? 01:23:16.13 Fireheart Media Yeah. 01:23:20.35 Desirée is today a send a cute cat picture to get a small giggle? Or is today just a send a hug? 01:23:27.66 Fireheart Media Right. 01:23:27.72 Desirée So it it can, if you are in tune with your friends, if they are part of your day-to-day, have a pretty big impact on you when they're grieving. 01:23:38.95 Desirée So they're learning to adapt to that feeling that a part of them is missing, and it's going to have that impact that ripples out to those who care about them. 01:23:50.03 Desirée So a study was done to test the perception of sadness and other emotions that might be present. And not surprising to me, turns out that those feelings can be contagious. 01:24:02.10 Desirée We are hardwired to echo what we see others experiencing. And so i know I am the most empathetic person in a room. If I see someone else crying, tears are going to come. 01:24:23.74 Desirée Whether or not I'm sad or upset about anything, if I see somebody else crying, I'm going to be crying right along with you. 01:24:31.26 Fireheart Media Oh, here, can I make you cry real quick? 01:24:31.53 Desirée and Oh, please. Please do. 01:24:34.83 Fireheart Media No, please do. Please don't. You you were like, I don't know what to say to that, actually. 01:24:37.47 Desirée Please do. 01:24:40.07 Desirée Yeah. 01:24:40.23 Fireheart Media So um one of the things that I posted on Blue Sky here recently was ah one like equals one hyper-safixation, right? 01:24:46.85 Desirée Oh, yes. 01:24:46.94 Fireheart Media And i one of the things that I have noticed to be true about me, and this is is part of part of me also exploring the fact that I am neurodiverse in some way. Like I've talked about it on the neurodiversity episode. I think I'm neurotypical, question mark, but I also exhibit signs, question mark. 01:25:02.90 Fireheart Media um I have not been tested. Question, question, question. You know, ah that that kind of thing that I did like a year ago. ah Well, I am probably i'm probably neurodiverse. I just don't have a diagnosis. um i'm I have suspicions of what it might be, but I'm not going to entertain that on podcast because I would prefer a professional tell me. 01:25:20.19 Desirée Sure. 01:25:22.88 Fireheart Media all of that information. So that'll be like in the future, we'll talk about that. But, but hyper fixations though, ah the through line is that anything that I am fixated on is a thing that continues to exist in my life for years. 01:25:36.97 Fireheart Media And like, I've, I've changed my life and my life goals around hyper fixations as they come over and over again. 01:25:44.32 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:25:46.39 Fireheart Media And like anybody who knows me for any length of time is aware that this happens all the damn time. you know You know, it's my personality. i I go in this direction hardcore, whatever direction it is. 01:25:53.98 Desirée Yeah. 01:25:58.15 Fireheart Media Well, one of those things, and this is something that I think we both share. 01:26:00.33 Desirée um 01:26:02.53 Fireheart Media ah So one of these things, when I was talking about hyperfixations, I was thinking about it and I'm like, you know you know, back when I was a kid, they said about the pavement that step on a crack and you break your mother's back. 01:26:15.80 Fireheart Media And I, as a little kid, knew that that was just a saying, just a thing, right? 01:26:15.80 Desirée Yep. 01:26:21.66 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:26:22.81 Fireheart Media But like, I would studiously avoid stepping on cracks, go out of my way to not be on cracked pavement, to not step on cracks, just because I didn't like the idea that that could be a thing that could happen. 01:26:31.60 Desirée Yep. 01:26:34.97 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:26:35.13 Fireheart Media Like it's so like also the same thing happened with like I had animal shaped erasers. 01:26:36.91 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:26:42.73 Fireheart Media I would never use them because I didn't want to quote unquote kill the animal. It's an animal shaped eraser. I know it's an eraser and then that it's not alive. It doesn't matter. I don't want to do anything to harm it. 01:26:57.34 Fireheart Media Not surprising that I turned out vegan. 01:26:59.59 Desirée Yeah. 01:27:00.94 Fireheart Media Like surprising no one really. um 01:27:03.81 Desirée Yeah. 01:27:04.60 Fireheart Media So like the concept of something will send me into like this empathetic, I don't want to do this thing. So I am right. A hundred percent with you desk about like the empathy thing. 01:27:15.52 Fireheart Media So yeah. 01:27:15.66 Desirée yeah 01:27:16.64 Fireheart Media A neuroscientist, John or Jean, ah I cannot pronounce it. I'm sorry. That's that's probably butchered. ah From the University of Chicago says there are three aspects to empathy. There's cognitive perception, perceptive taking, emotional empathy and compassion. So the cognitive aspect is the ability to see or imagine another person's perspective. 01:27:42.26 Fireheart Media And it has nothing to do with their feelings. It's just a walk a mile in their shoes, right? 01:27:46.86 Desirée Right. 01:27:46.92 Fireheart Media That's what that is. Can you project empathy? that situation that you see this other person dealing with and then like understand what that would be like for you like what would I do if this was me like this this reflective part here is exactly how I read every fictional book as a child so like I was constantly learning new information about myself because I was bouncing everything off and immediately thinking about if I was in this situation what would I do 01:28:01.01 Desirée yeah 01:28:14.08 Desirée right 01:28:14.61 Fireheart Media So emotional empathy is when you're feeling the way another person is feeling. So that would be, you see the person crying and you can tell that they are tears of joy or they are tears of sadness and you know what that what's going on there. 01:28:29.81 Fireheart Media Then you are also crying, but you're crying and you're feeling that pain with them. You're feeling that joy with them. You know, how many times have I called you desk with no prompting and just been like, I have to tell you a story about something stupid. 01:28:36.50 Desirée Yeah. Yep. 01:28:41.90 Fireheart Media And you're like, okay, I'm ready. Make me laugh, you know, and I just tell you something about some nonsense. 01:28:45.84 Desirée ye 01:28:47.44 Fireheart Media And then we're just both giggling uncontrollably. And then, you know, usually it's on speaker and everybody else is there, you know, like, uh, John and Dave are there and whoever else happens to be around and everybody is laughing because it's silly, you know? 01:29:00.02 Desirée yeah. yeah. 01:29:01.26 Fireheart Media Contagious. And then compassion or caring. that's It goes beyond empathy. That is the part where you are motivated to help or comfort that person when you can take their perspective and know how they're feeling. 01:29:13.30 Fireheart Media I would even say, um would to extend it and say, you can be compassionate without knowing what they're feeling or without feeling what they're feeling. You can be compassionate without having those other aspects of empathy. 01:29:25.56 Desirée yeah 01:29:26.70 Fireheart Media So, um and that that compassion without actually having to feel is part of mindfulness. 01:29:33.60 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:29:33.79 Fireheart Media And mindfulness is a thing that is brought up in both of these books quite a bit as a way to both stay in the present with yourself and to make your new normal conscious consciously and actively in your day to day and to help you through when you have deep waves of grief. 01:29:50.58 Fireheart Media Having that mindfulness to just kind of breathe, accept in the moment and let it go. Like let the thing wash over you and then let it go. Don't ruminate, just let it be. 01:30:01.86 Fireheart Media You know, just that acceptance. And also that being mindful, not just of your surroundings, not just of other people, but also of yourself. Mindfulness is so important to resilience. 01:30:15.50 Fireheart Media and And so like compassion is part of that, that practice of mindfulness. So you can be mindful without being able to take, take your perspective of somebody else and without feeling what they're feeling, you can still have that compassion piece. 01:30:32.30 Desirée Right. Like, people... that I know who have no connection to animals, don't have pets, can't fathom someone thinking of a cat as a furry little child that they are the steward or caretaker for, could still say, you know, coffee's on me today. 01:30:52.21 Desirée I see you're going through something. 01:30:52.74 Fireheart Media Right. Right. Right. And you can be, you know, you can have as essentially what you might consider professional courtesy. 01:31:02.87 Fireheart Media Like, you know, my, my office boss checked up on me several times and, you know, um I call her the office boss. 01:31:03.40 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:31:12.01 Fireheart Media It sounds like she's a dark souls boss. um But anyway, you'd like the, the, the person who manages the office um that I am office out of, in my work from home situation, checked up on me several times just to, to see how I was doing. 01:31:28.00 Fireheart Media And, um, you know, like, I don't know, like, I know that she, she had lost her mother, um some number of years ago. And, you know, like I had drawn a design for her at her request for a tattoo. She wanted to get in memoriam. 01:31:41.53 Fireheart Media And she's like, how much do I owe you? And I'm like, I am not taking your money for this. No, like this is, this is, you know, for you, this is fine, you know? 01:31:45.68 Desirée Yeah. Mm-hmm. 01:31:49.39 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:31:49.95 Fireheart Media and um, Anyway, so like, I don't know if she was remembering that and extending compassion for that, but we're obviously not close because I don't work in the office. I don't, I don't, you know, like I don't see her on the day to day, but she extended compassion by checking in and trying to send supportive messages here and there, you know, while I was on bereavement leave and everything. 01:31:59.19 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:32:10.92 Fireheart Media So, um, you know, like you can have that compassion anyway, even if you don't have the connection. So, but, um, mm-hmm. 01:32:19.66 Desirée And doing things that are meaningful to the person. 01:32:24.13 Fireheart Media Yes. 01:32:24.52 Desirée So going a step beyond even what would I want in a time like this and ask, what does this person need? So being able to, like for me, food is not especially a motivating factor in my life at all. So maybe someone saying, oh, hey, I'll buy you dinner. 01:32:45.77 Desirée Might not mean a lot because I'm not going to eat it when I'm in the deepest part of grief. 01:32:49.49 Fireheart Media yeah 01:32:53.17 Desirée But somebody saying, you know, coffee is always going to be a yes, please. So someone being able to say, here's a coffee gift card or asking, what can I do? 01:33:06.88 Fireheart Media Right. 01:33:07.36 Desirée Do you need advice? Do you need support? Asking those questions to truly give them what they're going to need in that moment. 01:33:15.32 Fireheart Media Right. And so like talking about the the food thing for me, again, the hardest part of my grief where I dropped several pounds of weight and so did everybody else in the house, um you know, was during like that declining to the the point of 100% relying on us that my dad ended up in. 01:33:36.92 Fireheart Media And so it wasn't when he passed that was the hardest for us. 01:33:37.01 Desirée Yeah. Yeah. 01:33:41.06 Fireheart Media It was really the couple of days leading up, but then also just like the the last couple of weeks, underlining the last couple of days before he did pass. 01:33:47.53 Desirée yeah 01:33:50.53 Fireheart Media Those were the hardest in terms of, you know, um we barely ate anything. We barely drank any water. Like I was, I was doing the bare minimum and I was consciously making a point to tell, you you know, like I, I couldn't, I didn't have spoons to tell every individual individually. 01:33:58.60 Desirée yeah 01:34:05.99 Fireheart Media So, which is, this is why in the server either was just like a channel and I put the thing in there, everybody could see it in the one spot. And I'm like, okay, that's where it is. This is how I'm doing. 01:34:14.74 Desirée Yep. yep 01:34:15.91 Fireheart Media And that's the update. But like, By doing that, I had several people who, you know, ah did check up on me fairly regularly and just but let me know that they were thinking of me and stuff. Desiree included in all of that, of course. 01:34:29.75 Fireheart Media And like that meant so much. And that literally like ah one one person, Juliet specifically, would message every single day. Is there something I can do for you? Is there something I can do for you? And, you know, I told her several times. I'm like, 01:34:43.81 Fireheart Media legit reading what I'm putting in there, witnessing, bearing witness as I'm dealing with these things and just letting me know you're there, that's enough. 01:34:49.08 Desirée Yeah. 01:34:54.28 Fireheart Media Like that is so much to me in this moment. 01:34:54.42 Desirée Yeah. 01:34:57.55 Fireheart Media That's what I need right now. you know But after my dad passed, we were so busy, so busy that we needed food. but 01:35:06.23 Desirée Yeah. 01:35:06.50 Fireheart Media Blue Valkyrie needs food badly. And um we had no time or no energy to go get food. And my office boss, again, office boss, ah you know solid sent food. 01:35:17.40 Fireheart Media solid burst and ah sent us a DoorDash gift card so that we could get a couple of meals and just have some stuff for later to eat. 01:35:22.53 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:35:27.14 Fireheart Media And that was like a lifesaver that first week because, you know, um everybody else kind of says, oh, well, you know, at funerals, people will make you food and then they'll just send it home with you and this, the other. 01:35:38.56 Fireheart Media Well, my dad donated his body to science and there wasn't a memorial service or anything. Um, He wanted, you know, to, to be donated. he is going to be cremated and his remains will be spread at sea whenever the school is done with him, which will be a couple of years. 01:35:56.42 Fireheart Media So, um, you know, we won't even really know like that. 01:35:56.45 Desirée Yeah. 01:36:00.02 Fireheart Media That'll just happen at some point in the future when, when, they're done. And so we didn't have a funeral. We didn't have a memorial. There weren't the droves of people flying in and and coming to to see you know this this last last memorial, this last celebration of life or anything like that. 01:36:18.77 Fireheart Media So as a result, no, we didn't have any support, no support at all. 01:36:22.71 Desirée yeah 01:36:23.54 Fireheart Media It was just us. It was me and my mom. And Dave was at work full time because he got one day off for bereavement. That was it. And then he had to go back to work. So it was me, primarily me and my mom just going through everything. 01:36:38.01 Fireheart Media And there was only so much of me to go around and my mom physically cannot make the food. So yeah she physically cannot leave to go get food. 01:36:43.06 Desirée Yeah. Yeah. 01:36:45.94 Fireheart Media She is disabled. So, you know, ah that that was all on me, all on me by myself. so Yeah, the food was really appreciated at that point because I would have not eaten. 01:36:56.48 Fireheart Media We would have not eaten. 01:36:57.10 Desirée yeah 01:36:57.60 Fireheart Media We would have just been, you know, like lightheaded and dizzy and wondering what was going on and and being like, man, I really need some food. But there's not enough of me to go around to do that. 01:37:07.80 Desirée yeah 01:37:09.75 Fireheart Media So so, yeah, um it it just depends. And like my office boss had asked, is there something we can do for you? And I said, honestly, food Honestly, food. 01:37:18.46 Desirée Yeah. 01:37:18.90 Fireheart Media If, if, if there's, if, if this is, you know, a thing you want to do food, you know? 01:37:23.45 Desirée Yeah. 01:37:24.50 Fireheart Media So, um, but not everybody is like that. Like for you, Des, you, you don't need the food. 01:37:28.59 Desirée Yeah. 01:37:29.21 Fireheart Media You don't want the food that actually stresses you out if somebody insists. 01:37:33.98 Desirée Yes. 01:37:34.30 Fireheart Media So, um, you know, just talking about what do you do when somebody is grieving and how do you deal with that? I mean, like, uh, there, there's a longer section we'll go to later full of that, but like, basically, 01:37:48.58 Fireheart Media Bearing witness, being there for that person, being with them, just just with them. Checking in with them, being with them is the best thing that you can do. And listening to them, really listening. 01:37:58.35 Desirée Right. Mm-hmm. 01:37:59.75 Fireheart Media If they say they don't want food, don't push food on them. 01:38:00.59 Desirée right 01:38:03.62 Fireheart Media Let them be. If they say something about what they want or need, great. If they don't and they just keep talking, listen. That's it. 01:38:12.50 Desirée Right. 01:38:13.05 Fireheart Media like That's it. 01:38:13.31 Desirée And in the talking, if you are truly listening, you might pick up cues for what you could do, and then you can use that to check in 01:38:14.27 Fireheart Media Yeah. Yeah. 01:38:21.27 Fireheart Media Right. 01:38:23.90 Fireheart Media Yeah. 01:38:24.09 Desirée So, you know, if someone were not as self-aware Jala, but rambling and rambling and saying, you know, man, I don't have any groceries or whatever, that could be a cue you could pick up on to say, would it be helpful for me to send you a DoorDash gift card so you don't even have to worry about cooking it 01:38:42.46 Fireheart Media yeah 01:38:42.94 Desirée And then that might trigger something in them to go, oh, yes, that would be amazing because that's not a thing they maybe be thought to ask for or knew that they could ask for because it's not a traditional display of what you give to someone who's grieving. 01:38:59.04 Desirée So same thing with funerals and memorials. 01:38:59.44 Fireheart Media Right. 01:39:01.53 Desirée That's sort of our generally American Christian majority, how you demonstrate that you're honoring someone's existence in the world and the fact that they've left. 01:39:16.10 Desirée If there is no funeral, nowhere to send flowers, no memorial tree to donate to, you might ask, is there a cause that was very important to them that I could make a donation in their name? 01:39:30.88 Desirée Something like that. 01:39:32.00 Fireheart Media Right, right. So let's move on to talk about some issues that bereaved people deal with. So there's ah the brain fog or the difficulty concentrating, which I told you already several times, like that's something that is new for me, but happened during this, this bout of grief for this fatigue. 01:39:49.02 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:39:49.86 Fireheart Media Yes. Nausea off and on headaches. 01:39:53.26 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:39:54.14 Fireheart Media Yes. Off and on restlessness. Yes. Heart palpitations, ah not so much, but increased heart rate, like having a higher blood pressure overall and increased heart rate um around times of stress, especially like when we had to call for for help ah to get like, you know, what do what do we do in this case kind of scenarios from the hospice nurses. 01:40:14.74 Desirée no 01:40:17.90 Fireheart Media You know, that was that was stressful and that that caused that joint pain. I can't say I had that tightness in the chest or throat. Well, the tightness in the throat happens anytime like I'm i'm going through a lot of emotion, ah loss of appetite or dramatically increased appetite. 01:40:29.96 Desirée Yeah. 01:40:33.47 Fireheart Media Um, both at different times. 01:40:35.44 Desirée Sure. Yeah. Right. sir 01:40:36.57 Fireheart Media Uh, and then insomnia or sleeping too much. I can't, I wish I slept too much. 01:40:41.56 Desirée yeah 01:40:41.72 Fireheart Media Uh, not really, but like, I wish I could catch up on sleep and feel rested. the insomnia and actually only a couple of times, really, it's just like trouble falling asleep or actually staying asleep. 01:40:52.29 Fireheart Media One of those two things, mostly because of the caretaking routines. Um, you know, ah for sure. 01:40:56.32 Desirée right 01:40:57.60 Fireheart Media So those are some things that happen to bereaved people. Grief is a messy jumbled up trajectory. um so So something I did want to also say, the five stages of grief, everybody's heard about this. 01:41:03.80 Desirée Yeah. Mm-hmm. 01:41:10.03 Fireheart Media Everybody knows about this at some level. It was taken out of context and popularized basically as a prescription for how to grieve, and that's not what it is. It's managed to become a kind of monomyth, and it's totally an error. um These five stages of grief just kind of, you know, those are stages that happen, yes, during grief, but not every person goes through every stage and it's not a clean cut. You go from this to this to this, and then you're done. 01:41:38.63 Fireheart Media It's more of a a scribbly line going all over the page. 01:41:38.75 Desirée Right. Great. 01:41:42.07 Fireheart Media Like you gave three-year-old crayon and told him to color, know, and you know, that kind of thing. 01:41:47.94 Desirée ray 01:41:49.62 Fireheart Media That's, that's what it looks like. And um there's, there's a whole model, a scientific model The dual process model of coping with bereavement ah by Strobe and Schutt from 1999. 01:42:04.79 Fireheart Media This is really recent to have this come out. Everyday life experience is this oscillation between loss-oriented activities and restoration-oriented activities. 01:42:15.59 Fireheart Media So loss-oriented would be the intrusion of the grief thoughts and letting the the needing to let go, ah relocating your boundaries, denial or avoidance of of restoration, trying to stay in the state that is no longer present. 01:42:26.92 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:42:34.11 Fireheart Media the The grief work, that's all the loss-oriented stuff. The restoration-oriented stuff is attending to these changes in life, making adjustments, doing new things, distracting yourself from grief, or denial or avoidance of grief is a restoration-oriented activity. 01:42:54.06 Fireheart Media Like you're trying to get away from it. You're taking a break for a while. 01:42:57.36 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:42:57.88 Fireheart Media ah New roles, new identities, new relationships. These are restoration-oriented things. So ah the key to coping well after you lose someone is flexibility, attending to what is happening day to day day to day, but also being able to focus on coping with whatever stressor currently is rearing its ugly head. 01:43:17.58 Fireheart Media So bereaved people also have times when they're not consumed by grief, which is a big misunderstanding. there's this expectation that you're just grieving constantly and there is no breath. in between. 01:43:28.18 Desirée yeah. yeah. 01:43:29.04 Fireheart Media That's not real. I mean, it's, yes, it could be real for certain people if they were in that intensive a stress, but like most people are not all consumed by grief. 01:43:40.14 Fireheart Media There are times where they are just engaged in everyday activities. And as every day passes, they're more and more engaged in everyday life and less and less in the middle of the throes of everything, you know? 01:43:54.63 Desirée Right. 01:43:54.88 Fireheart Media So 01:43:54.87 Desirée And so thinking through like different stages, different models, different whatever interpretation of grief scientists have built... 01:44:06.91 Desirée can also feel a bit overwhelming to some people or it can feel comforting right even the kubler ross model those was the five stages that like jealous that was taken out of context but when i was going to undergrad in the early 2000s taking psych 101 you were taught know you had to memorize denial anger bargaining depression acceptance um what those stages were. 01:44:32.29 Desirée And you can kind of see those reflected in this everyday life experience model as well. But maybe taking none of them too seriously, none of them as a guide, is the key. 01:44:43.34 Fireheart Media Right. 01:44:44.57 Desirée This is not a how-to of grief, this is a potential reflection of what you might experience. to in a way help normalize it. Just like death positivity talking about it, grief is also something that is largely stigmatized. 01:45:01.60 Desirée Particularly if you are experiencing it in a way that's not what we see in TV and movies and other media. If you are not all consumed by it, being able to have these models to reflect on to say, hey, I do see myself in that model. 01:45:18.44 Fireheart Media Right, right. And the most reliable predictor of good mental health and dealing with grief in a positive, as positive a way as you can, is some having a large toolkit of different strategies to deal with what's going on, and then deploying those strategies at the right time for the right thing, like knowing what tool goes to what what problem, right? 01:45:44.25 Desirée Right. 01:45:44.59 Fireheart Media And so a lot of this, again, is kind of mindfulness driven. 01:45:44.59 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:45:48.27 Fireheart Media You need to either be able yourself to identify this or have someone else near you help you identify what's going on so that you can then find the solution to the problem you're experiencing. 01:45:57.48 Desirée the 01:46:01.58 Fireheart Media And um it's important to understand that denial and distraction have usefulness because you're giving the body and the brain a break. And sometimes you're giving a break to the people around you who care for you, who are like, I cannot handle another post from Jala talking about what's going on with her dad, you know, and then you get cute animals instead that day, because that's what's going on today. 01:46:21.16 Desirée yeah 01:46:25.93 Fireheart Media Today is a ah calm day and we're going to, we're going to look at animals and talk about other things. 01:46:30.89 Desirée yeah 01:46:30.95 Fireheart Media and that's it, you know. And um strategies, even things that are considered quote-unquote unhealthy, ah such as, you know, distraction, denial, et cetera, have their place. It's just knowing when to use them and not sticking to anything that's unhealthy past the point of its usefulness, you know. 01:46:51.01 Fireheart Media So um when it's counterproductive, 01:46:51.27 Desirée Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. 01:46:56.04 Fireheart Media that's when you have a problem. Or if it creates something like, say you become addicted to substances, you know, like then that's a problem, obviously. 01:47:01.79 Desirée yeah 01:47:03.56 Fireheart Media But like having a growth mindset ah of trying new strategies, being open to trying different things when you you are finding that any of the solutions, any of the tools you have in your toolkit aren't working properly, being open and receptive to trying something else you know, can also be very, very important to that healing process. 01:47:29.39 Fireheart Media So. 01:47:30.80 Desirée And knowing yourself and knowing what is abnormal for you. 01:47:35.36 Fireheart Media You. Mm-hmm. 01:47:36.65 Desirée So that you were talking earlier about neurodivergence and the need to have ah professional do an evaluation, which wholeheartedly agree with because so many of these things are on a spectrum. 01:47:50.01 Fireheart Media Mm-hmm. 01:47:50.17 Desirée And where you fall on that spectrum and what your normal is might be considered incredibly maladaptive for someone else, which that maladaptive piece is where you're reaching that clinical diagnosis. 01:47:58.66 Fireheart Media Right. 01:48:04.81 Desirée So for me, I pretty much exist in a state of being sad all the time. It's not especially maladaptive, but for someone else that might reach a threshold of chronic depression, 01:48:19.01 Desirée say 01:48:19.05 Fireheart Media Right. Right. 01:48:20.35 Desirée um but for me to be excited at level that's normal for other people would maybe put me in a mania diagnosis. 01:48:29.69 Fireheart Media Mm-hmm exactly. 01:48:30.65 Desirée So it just that reflection on yourself and knowing what's normal for you knowing your normal thresholds, and then being able to accept when you've reached that threshold and gone past it. 01:48:45.43 Desirée And then maybe it's time to start seeking some of that professional aid. 01:48:49.41 Fireheart Media Right. So when it comes to bereavement and how people deal with it, there's a lot of different ways, lot of different trajectories and scientific studies and things done on it. 01:49:00.36 Fireheart Media ah The most typical pattern of grieving is resilient. Most people who experience the death of a loved one do not experience depression at any time point. 01:49:12.85 Fireheart Media Uh, that's depression and and grief sometimes seem the same on the outside, but they're not, there's differences between those. So, uh, chronic grieving, for example, is depression that begins after the death of a loved one and is prolonged afterwards. 01:49:20.66 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:49:28.23 Fireheart Media That's when you're in a state of chronic grief. If you are just grieving, yes, you have sadness that happens when you think about the loved one But sometimes there's also joy when you think about happy memories and this, that, and the other. 01:49:42.70 Fireheart Media But there's a point where like that, that lessens and it's not like all pervasive where like nothing in life is okay again after that. You know, there is a ah point at in time where you are okay again and you have that grief. 01:49:50.50 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:49:55.64 Fireheart Media You carry that with you. You always will for that person to an extent. But, you know, like you can move forward from there. ah Depression, though, is like when you have that that ah depression that happened before the death of a loved one and continues or worsens after the death of a loved one, that is chronic depression. 01:50:16.68 Fireheart Media You know, you've already had the condition before the death occurred and the death might have exacerbated that condition, but it's still, you know, ah not the cause, the root cause of the thing, you know. 01:50:22.73 Desirée Yeah. 01:50:28.19 Desirée yeah 01:50:29.30 Fireheart Media So, uh, but yeah, like also about resilience, uh, the brains of non-bereaved and resilient bereaved groups are indistinguishable in terms of brain volume, but elderly bereaved people who ah you know, like have a prolonged grief have smaller brain volume. Now this is like a kind of chicken and the egg question of is the brain shrinkage and the brain volume, you know, decreasing, 01:50:55.75 Fireheart Media because of the grief or is the grief because of the shrunk brain situation? 01:51:01.29 Desirée Yeah. 01:51:01.74 Fireheart Media We don't know. But, you know, like there is a connection, there is a correlation between those two things. so How about you tell us a little bit about the difference between ah depression and chronic grief? 01:51:13.19 Fireheart Media I know I briefly mentioned it, but there's some more to talk about it. 01:51:14.27 Desirée yeah 01:51:17.02 Desirée Yeah, so depression and grief, so even severe grief that might look like depression for other folks can be distinguished from depression. So for example, depression tends to be pervasive in every aspect depression. 01:51:33.89 Desirée of your life people who have that depression diagnosis feel like every facet of their life is awful have overwhelming feelings that things are terrible and that they're just at a loss and they're constantly struggling so if a deceased one were alive um if the deceased loved one were once again alive, the person with depression might be glad they're still going to have depression, right? So that depression is that diagnosis. 01:52:11.36 Desirée They would still be depressed even if the person were here, but for a person with chronic grieving, The feelings, the dis distress, the difficulties are all tied into that absence of the person. 01:52:24.33 Desirée So that's one way to distinguish depression from chronic grief. They were not depressed before the loss of the loved one and all of this feelings of perhaps hopelessness, feeling awful, feeling unable to be happy again. That's chronic grief if it's due to that absence of a person. 01:52:46.26 Fireheart Media Yeah. 01:52:46.40 Desirée So the primary symptoms for chronic grieving might be a preoccupation for yearning for the deceased person. They might look like trauma symptoms. 01:52:59.50 Desirée So mirroring a lot of that. So traumatic symptoms of loss, um, 01:53:04.67 Fireheart Media yeah 01:53:04.83 Desirée It's estimated that one in 10 bereaved people are going to suffer from this prolonged grief disorder. So again, for something to be the disorder, it has to reach that clinical threshold of impairment on your daily life being maladaptive. 01:53:22.80 Fireheart Media Right, and that's like unable to accept the loss or disbelieving of that loss, difficulty engaging in activities or making plans, ah part of yourself has been lost. 01:53:35.54 Fireheart Media ah These symptoms occur for a minimum of six months in order to be clinically diagnosed. They interfere with the ability to fulfill your job, school, or family responsibilities. They're in excess of what is expected in the normal cultural and social context of your life. 01:53:54.08 Fireheart Media And um the author of the book, terms this complicated grief. Even years later, if you have a broken bone from an x-ray, a doctor can still tell it was broken. Grief is similar in that anyone's life is forever changed because of loss, even when they have adjusted well. However, there can be complications with healing a bone fracture like an infection or a second second injury, and I think of prolonged and severe grieving in the same way. 01:54:21.25 Fireheart Media So, um, People with complicated grief tend to have mild cognitive impairment, but again, chicken and the egg, we don't know which one came first. 01:54:29.79 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:54:31.28 Fireheart Media Um, What's interesting is that there is complicated grief treatment or CGT that was developed by psychiatrist Kathy Shear of Columbia University, who was mentioned earlier. 01:54:42.84 Fireheart Media ah So even in older adults, 70% who received CGT therapy recovered recovered compared who received another type of therapy therapy Therapy in this trial lasted for 16 weeks. 01:54:58.65 Fireheart Media And the initial sessions focused on explaining how grief works. And then um the therapist communicated many people feel stuck in grief and that that's their own fault and, you know, all of this other stuff. So like this is kind of like a cognitive behavioral therapy that also includes the science of grief episode from Jala Chan's place, ah you know, where we're talking about what, how grief works first and introducing that as the, the basis upon which the cognitive behavioral therapy is then applied to help these people kind of move forward. 01:55:35.50 Fireheart Media So So yeah, um the book kind of goes on from there to talk about the permanent epigenetic changes that happen when we form an attachment bond with someone because it's a physical and psychological response. 01:55:49.59 Fireheart Media And this is very akin to like basic needs of our lives as a result because it creates actual problems. genetic changes in our bodies, because of the hormones, because of the attachment bonds, because of different things, there is a need for attachment, like there is for hunger and thirst. 01:56:10.43 Fireheart Media So it's deeply encoded in our brains that we have to, so you know, brains and bodies to to seek out these kinds of connection. And because these changes are so deep, it also means that when you leave, you know, when you have this situation where your loved one has passed, you have the situation where if you like, say, say it was, ah you know, you were in a relationship with this person for years and years and years, 20 years past, you married them, 20 years have passed, and then they die. 01:56:42.37 Fireheart Media And then now you're stuck with this feeling of of being, you know, adrift in all of this. Well, once you get your bearings, if you try to have another relationship with someone new, which is important for moving forward with your life, ah if you so desire that, if you have not fulfilled your attachment needs in other fashions, if you have another relationship of similar kind, like a romantic relationship, you want to get married again, that kind of thing, that relationship that you form with the new person is not going to feel... 01:57:16.93 Fireheart Media anywhere near as deep because it isn't. You haven't had enough time to build the relationship. 01:57:19.79 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:57:23.07 Fireheart Media So, um, you know, it's, it's a situation where, you know, you have to give it time and you have to ah relearn and, and build everything anew because this is a different person. You're not going to have the same situation you did before with the person who both of you genetically merged basically. 01:57:41.77 Fireheart Media And, you know, like that's like a big kind of through line of part of the book too, when it talks about attachment bonds, like you have to give it time. You have to be open and receptive to having new people fill the spots that you had occupied, you know, by this this person that was in your life previously. 01:57:59.40 Fireheart Media You know, like maybe that's not another lover. Maybe that's not a new new relationship like that. Maybe it's a friend. Maybe you are, you know, adopting a child or whatever, whatever, you know, whatever the situation is. 01:58:06.57 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:58:12.13 Fireheart Media And you've got these other situations that around you where you can develop or deepen your bonds with other people. 01:58:12.39 Desirée i 01:58:19.33 Fireheart Media And as you had mentioned earlier about like um grief has lots of positive effects, including the ability to like open people up to be more receptive. 01:58:29.46 Fireheart Media And I've noticed that even in my own experience. situation. My sister came down, um like the weekend before my dad passed and she was here and, you know, she was here for a little bit to see him before he passed. 01:58:42.52 Fireheart Media And I'm glad she did. But also one of the positive effects was in the time when he was asleep and she wasn't in there with him. 01:58:45.84 Desirée Okay. 01:58:50.65 Fireheart Media ah she and I were talking and communicating and, you know, we, we had lots of heart hearts about, how our relationship had been over a number of years. And, you know, there were a lot of misunderstandings or, or you know, incorrect assumptions or or things that were suddenly brought to light because we were like, oh, neurodiversity exists. 01:59:04.32 Desirée okay 01:59:12.24 Fireheart Media And we have words for how we were responding in these times that we didn't have before. And now we can put words to them and address them and and find ways to move forward and, you know, reclaim our closeness and, you know, like build a new relationship as a result of this grief that we are sharing right now. 01:59:21.87 Desirée Right. 01:59:33.23 Fireheart Media You know, this grief opened us up to talk about these things and to have this space because I wouldn't have been able to talk to her about this stuff when she's out of state and, you know, busy with all of her life and her family and everything. 01:59:47.14 Fireheart Media Her being here in this moment to see my dad before he passed and being there in this moment, sharing the grief with me and talking through it together allowed us that opportunity. 01:59:58.98 Fireheart Media so 01:59:59.23 Desirée Well, and that is, again, i think why it's important to know yourself and know what you need and be open to possibilities of things changing, of relationships changing and shifting and potentially not in a good way, not in a bad way, just acknowledgement that a change will happen. It's also why it's important to ask people what they need 02:00:27.74 Fireheart Media Right. 02:00:28.16 Desirée So last year when my dog Nero passed away, my mom immediately wanted nothing more than to find a way to get a puppy and somehow ship it to Kansas. 02:00:40.20 Desirée And I did not want a puppy. I still do not want a puppy. i would love to have a dog to fill that hole, but having to acknowledge that any dog that comes after will not be nero 02:00:54.59 Fireheart Media Right. 02:00:55.06 Desirée Just like the three cats I currently have are not Atlas. They might do behaviors that he did. When I got Atticus, a big part of why I wanted to get him was because I knew Atlas was getting older and Atticus needed to learn how to drink from the sink because that was an Atlas original. 02:01:17.38 Fireheart Media Right. 02:01:18.03 Desirée And Corvo and Astrid had both learned that from Atlas. And could Atticus have learned from the two of them? Sure. But that just felt really important to me. So some people, you know, I could never be without a pet of some kind because that's just a huge part of who I am. 02:01:36.86 Desirée but other people have a pet and say, i can never go through that heartbreak again after this dog. I am done. 02:01:44.36 Fireheart Media right 02:01:44.88 Desirée doesn't make my way of processing any less valid or theirs any less valid. 02:01:49.85 Fireheart Media Right. 02:01:49.94 Desirée But if someone falls into that latter camp and their pet just passed away, you don't want to be the person that shows up on their door with a little kitten in a box. 02:01:59.25 Fireheart Media Right. 02:01:59.98 Desirée So asking what they need. 02:02:00.02 Fireheart Media but Right. and And so like after Rami, the whole Rami situation, I was heartbroken. And my dad was like, you can get another bird. We can get you another bird. And I didn't want one for a really long time. 02:02:12.27 Fireheart Media I really, really didn't for years and years, in part because I was worried that my dad was going to walk outside with the next bird, you know, because like we we let them free fly in the house, which they should be able to. 02:02:19.79 Desirée Yeah. Mm-hmm. 02:02:23.49 Fireheart Media You don't want a bird stuck in a cage and that's the only place they exist. They should be able to fly and have free roam as long as they're monitored. And, you know, like, that's fine. But then he would just walk outside with the the bird on his shoulder. And he did that multiple times with Rami. So I was worried about getting another bird and then having the same thing happen. I didn't want to do that at that time. 02:02:43.62 Fireheart Media He's passed away now, my dad, but like, I also like at this point in time, a bird needs a lot more care and attention than I have time to give. 02:02:54.60 Fireheart Media um So like right at this time, I also still don't want one. 02:02:54.65 Desirée Great. 02:02:58.04 Fireheart Media um At this moment, I would probably in the future like to get another bird, but that's down the line. And insofar as like talking about ah Poodle Bear, our our Pooh Bear and how old she is and everything. 02:03:05.01 Desirée right 02:03:11.68 Fireheart Media and And, you know, all of us were worried that she might pass after my dad passed just out of grief and everything, but she's been doing okay. We had a little scare in there for a little bit, but she's doing better. 02:03:23.47 Fireheart Media But, um you know, she's getting up there in age. So we've been talking about it and we can't get another pet while she's here because she's the baby 100% and she's never shared space. 02:03:32.94 Desirée Right. 02:03:33.02 Fireheart Media Um, but Dave has already made it very clear to me that he cannot, he's, he's like you, Desiree, he's flat out said so. He's like, I, I can't be without a a dog. I need to have another dog. If we have a dog now, we need to have a dog after she passes. I'm going to want to get another dog and I want to get a couple of dogs, you know, like basically he and I both get one. 02:03:54.82 Desirée right 02:03:55.02 Fireheart Media So that way they have each other to be companions with while we're away. And so he's already made that clear. Now, i I don't know if I'm going to actually honestly want another dog at that point. 02:04:07.79 Fireheart Media um It might be a thing where, you know, we are at odds with what we need in that moment. And we'll have to navigate that when we get to that. I can't tell because every loss is different. 02:04:18.37 Fireheart Media So I don't know if I'm going to respond in that moment that way, you know. 02:04:20.30 Desirée Yep. 02:04:23.79 Desirée yeah 02:04:24.01 Fireheart Media So... But um circling back to to the different things that happen with grief. So something that everyone who's had grief understands is that you have intrusive thoughts. so You are doing something else entirely and out of nowhere you have a thought about this loved one who has passed. 02:04:42.69 Fireheart Media And that's normal, 100% normal. That is a thing that happens because as I mentioned before, your brain is kind of constantly processing in the background all the time about the loss, even though you might not be consciously aware of it. So your intrusive thoughts are basically the notifications that your brain is giving you about this person. 02:05:03.02 Fireheart Media And um that just means that you are healthily processing things. it that's, that's part of healthy processing. 02:05:08.40 Desirée Yeah. 02:05:10.14 Fireheart Media That's not abnormal at all. Um, i I, I don't remember if I said this on the actual recording or if this was just in the green room, but like, I will wake up and, I will wake up in the morning on the weekend when I don't have an alarm and I will just be thinking of something having to do with my dad. Like when I found him and how, you know, details of, of what happened, uh, after he passed away um, 02:05:37.91 Fireheart Media You know, like how his his color changed and different things like that. um Those details and and different details about his changes over time as he worsened. 02:05:49.44 Fireheart Media And, you know, other things like that will will intrude on my brain and I will just wake up and have that in my head. And it's not that I was trying to think about that. That's what I was processing when I was asleep. 02:06:01.21 Fireheart Media And so when I wake up, that's why I feel exhausted. And that's why I'm like, oh, I can't go back to sleep now because I have these thoughts that are just going to keep me awake now. So I have to get up and go. 02:06:10.60 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 02:06:13.37 Fireheart Media And that's normal. And eventually that will decline over time. But, you know, that's a thing. And um it's because your brain is trying to understand what happened, trying to process what happened. 02:06:27.70 Fireheart Media um I will actually mention it kind of because this is again, this is a learning process. I'll mention it in terms of like a bird. Okay. So when a bird like Alex, the parrot, which everyone knows that Alex, the parrot or Apollo, who is like the African gray, that's all over social media now, who is an African gray learning a bunch of words and is in the Guinness book of records and whatever, um, and these parrots, 02:06:48.50 Desirée you 02:06:51.84 Fireheart Media when they learn new words, they practice them in and out of context on their own when they are not being drilled by their owners. And that is basically what's happening with your brain when you are grieving. 02:07:06.61 Fireheart Media Your brain is practicing And trying to run through everything and troubleshoot everything. It's practicing, you know, ah like understanding what happened and then trying to try on the new existence, try on the old patterns and go, wait, why isn't this? 02:07:23.61 Fireheart Media Why isn't this working? Why isn't this working? Why isn't this working until it it course corrects? and that takes time. So like these things keep on running through your head and you know, like that reduces over time and that's part of normal breathing. 02:07:39.59 Fireheart Media So, um, these are basically what the author considers push notifications. Um, you know, whenever our mind is wandering, that just is our reminders about that person. 02:07:50.19 Fireheart Media So, um, Yeah, and then how to grieve. There's a lot of misguided ideas about this. 02:07:55.30 Desirée All right. 02:07:56.97 Fireheart Media So let's say that you know four bereaved people. 02:07:57.18 Desirée right 02:07:59.09 Fireheart Media One of them chooses to go to a party with friends. One decides to stay home. A third spends some time with family telling stories about the loved one who died. And the fourth one writes in a journal about their grief. 02:08:11.15 Fireheart Media So the last two activities, which involve confronting negative emotions in response to the death of loved one, are often called grief work. And in the Western world, this is what is considered to be the most appropriate and effective ways to cope. 02:08:24.87 Fireheart Media However... 02:08:26.05 Desirée Right. 02:08:26.31 Fireheart Media Engaging in activities that typically raise positive emotions, such as going to a party or watching some form of entertainment, are actually more effective at reducing sadness and grief than the negative grief work is, like going over memories and and writing in a journal and stuff. 02:08:46.01 Fireheart Media the undoing of negative emotions with positive emotions works because positive emotions change cognitive and physiological states. Positive emotions broaden people's attention, encourages creative thinking, and expands people's coping toolkit. 02:09:04.76 Fireheart Media Part of the reason we get stuck in a rut in any kind of way, be it burnout, be it a creative rut, or anything like that, is because we get stuck in these pathways where our brain isn't finding new directions to go in. 02:09:19.63 Fireheart Media And that's when we get stuck in a rut, when we're not growing, you know, we're stuck. 02:09:23.68 Desirée Thank you. 02:09:24.08 Fireheart Media So ah how do you get out of this fixed mindset? You need to get positive stuff going somehow. And, you know, in terms of burnout, we we talked about on the burnout episodes, how tricky that is and how so how hard it is in today's day and age to get that that kind of positive corner eked out for us. 02:09:43.43 Fireheart Media that That form of resistance that we can have to the capitalist hellscape we live in can be in trying to find moments of rest however we can, for example. 02:09:54.67 Desirée Well, and that's where I think the idea of positive and negative emotions can actually be detrimental, right? 02:09:54.78 Fireheart Media So. 02:10:01.88 Desirée Because grief is frequently categorized as negative because it's associated with things that we don't like. 02:10:02.12 Fireheart Media Mm-hmm. 02:10:10.08 Desirée It's associated with loss. It's associated with death. And not that we have to be cheerful and joyful and excited for those things to happen, but realizing that that binary of positive and negative is entirely fictional and it's entirely something that we put upon it. 02:10:29.89 Desirée So the thinking through... An experience and accepting the feelings that you have and being able to put an appreciative spin on it, perhaps. 02:10:43.13 Desirée So not death associated necessarily or grief. But today, John and I were talking about a haunted train ride that we went on one year. 02:10:51.33 Fireheart Media uh-huh mm-hmm 02:10:52.80 Desirée And it was really fun and we enjoyed it. And we haven't been able to go back since because they stopped doing it during the pandemic and the train was kind of run down. So they've probably let it go. And, 02:11:07.31 Desirée likely it's a thing we're not ever going to get to experience again. But instead of having sadness over knowing that that can never happen again, I try to say, well, you know what? It was really fun that year that we got to do it and appreciate that we did have that experience rather than, o darn, now the haunted train ride doesn't exist anymore and we're never going to get to do it. 02:11:31.35 Desirée I try to appreciate that it was an experience that I got to have, and now I still get to have that memory of doing it. 02:11:38.27 Fireheart Media Right. And you know, something that I mentioned in server and to you individually, Des, that I haven't said on here yet, is that with the home hospice situation, I know a lot of people were like, oh my God, Jala, that sounds so hard. And yes, it is fucking hard. It's fucking hard. 02:11:56.05 Desirée Yeah. 02:11:56.10 Fireheart Media I'm not going to pretend that it's not. But I will say that it was a privilege and an honor to be able to be there for him 02:12:04.13 Desirée Mm-hmm. 02:12:04.24 Fireheart Media in his time of need and be able to ah give to him what he needed in that moment to where, you know, the nurses said, you guys did a phenomenal job, a phenomenal job. 02:12:04.31 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. 02:12:15.32 Desirée yeah 02:12:15.97 Fireheart Media And he passed in his sleep, peacefully in his sleep. And I couldn't wish I was so worried about him waking up and not being able to breathe and what, what you know, all these different things about, you know, like what possibly could happen. 02:12:28.63 Desirée yeah 02:12:30.28 Fireheart Media Right. 02:12:30.96 Desirée hu 02:12:31.56 Fireheart Media for his passing, but he passed in as as nice a way, as good a way, comfortably at home, you know, with his loved ones around him, caring for him, you know, and granted in the last couple of days or so, he wasn't able to say anything anymore, but, you know, he knew 02:12:42.77 Desirée Right. 02:12:51.43 Fireheart Media We loved him. We knew he loved us. We were able to say everything we needed to say and care for him and show him not just say it, but do it, live it every day, you know? 02:13:02.26 Desirée right 02:13:04.35 Fireheart Media And that's a ah real deep closure that, for example, my sister doesn't have because she has her own life and family elsewhere. And she couldn't be there to do that. 02:13:13.46 Desirée Yep. Right. 02:13:15.86 Fireheart Media And That's just because her situation didn't allow for that kind of situation, not because of a lack of willingness on her part. 02:13:23.44 Desirée right 02:13:23.50 Fireheart Media And, you know, that makes it harder for her in a lot of ways than it does for me, as much as it was hard in the moment for us. And as much as I carry memories that are, you know, um my brain is still trying to work through every day. 02:13:36.17 Desirée right 02:13:36.59 Fireheart Media But like there was joy. There were funny things that happened. I shared them when they happened. I'm like, oh my God, guys, this thing was so hilarious. 02:13:42.40 Desirée yeah 02:13:45.69 Fireheart Media Like there was a point where um we were, we had to change my dad's underpants. 02:13:45.78 Desirée Yep. 02:13:50.73 Fireheart Media And so Dave was, was trying to tell my dad what was going on. And so he's like, oh, we've got to do, you know, we've got to move this real quick because your bits is, because this is how Dave talks. 02:14:04.27 Fireheart Media And then, Poppy turns to him and says, my bitches. And like, we were just like, what? Cause he was cracking. He was cracking jokes as long as he was able to, you know, cognizant, you know, be cognizant and be able to crack jokes because he knew it was hard on us. 02:14:18.81 Desirée Sure. Right. 02:14:21.95 Fireheart Media And he was worried for us as much as we were worried for him. And he was trying to make it, you know, as in all of us were cracking jokes and things. And there were moments of beauty and closeness that are fantastic. 02:14:34.63 Fireheart Media And we got those moments because he chose home hospice and we chose to show up for that, you know, and we luckily with me working remotely and with Dave working just a few miles away and working earlier in the day, we're able to take it in shifts, you know, where each of us, you know, including my mom had a shift and we would, you know, help each other out and, and, 02:14:42.29 Desirée right 02:14:59.21 Fireheart Media You know, there at the end, it was all hands on deck all the time. But like, you know, um as much as we were able, we were able to each be there and each carry some of the load. And God, it would not have worked with just one of us or even just two of us. 02:15:13.15 Desirée Right. Yeah. 02:15:14.85 Fireheart Media It took all of us. It took every one of us to be on on hand. But like there were moments of beauty and joy. And I shared those as much as I could whenever they happened. 02:15:23.07 Desirée her 02:15:25.67 Fireheart Media And I'm like, OK. And some of the stuff was funny to me. 02:15:29.26 Desirée Right. 02:15:29.55 Fireheart Media Or funny to us, but like maybe not funny to anybody else because you're like, oh my God, that's that's horrible actually. like 02:15:35.76 Desirée Yeah. 02:15:36.21 Fireheart Media you know ah but But that's okay. like That's because the you know the sense of humor you have when you're actually in the situation is going to be a little different than the sense of humor. And and what I say is ah there was a point where my dad was asking Dave to do like these certain tasks and stuff. And this was one of the points where he was also kind of out of it. 02:15:54.36 Fireheart Media And then he basically asked Dave to get him drugs. And Dave's like, Dave's just like, where am I supposed to get drugs from? i don't take drugs. And then he's like from mom, because mom, mom is the one that controlled all the pills on the shelf, right? 02:16:09.55 Fireheart Media Yeah. And so he's like, okay. So then he went and he got like a naproxen sodium from the other room. And then like, um like my sister had sent some, some hemp derived legal THC gummies and stuff. 02:16:24.81 Fireheart Media Right. And so he got, he got him some of the THC snacks, like a THC snack and then a, a naproxen sodium. And he's like, yeah, I got you a painkiller. 02:16:35.06 Fireheart Media And here's, you know, here's the, 02:16:36.56 Desirée Yep. 02:16:37.29 Fireheart Media the the goods you know these will help you out and they must have worked because he stopped stop asking him for anything after that but like you know that it was just very funny in the moment that he was just like Dave you know mom is the dealer you okay whatever you know just because she she controlled all the the pills that the nurse had instructed her about and 02:16:39.11 Desirée h 02:16:53.70 Desirée ye 02:16:58.94 Fireheart Media You know, like it was funny to us and to people outside the situation. 02:17:01.09 Desirée Right. 02:17:02.84 Fireheart Media Maybe it's not funny to them because they're like, oh, that's actually sad. But no, like in the moment, it really was funny. It was funny for us. And I mean, like, you know, you find joy in in whatever it is that you've got, whatever, whatever moments you've got. 02:17:17.50 Fireheart Media And, um you know, those things are beautiful. And it's it's not like ah ah i'm I'm just stuck in in the sad parts. You know, that's why I'm able to be on podcast. 02:17:28.03 Desirée right 02:17:29.52 Fireheart Media And that's another thing. I was streaming. i was streaming when I could. And I was on podcast when I could. around everything and people are like are you sure you're up for this and it's like you don't understand this is like me being able to take a break from constantly being absorbed in this um this is important that I keep doing this as long as I can and at the end you know for the past few weeks I couldn't 02:17:35.93 Desirée Right. 02:17:43.04 Desirée Yeah. 02:17:46.06 Desirée Mm-hmm. 02:17:52.95 Fireheart Media Because there wasn't enough time or enough of me to go around to do that. But like, that was my break time. That was me being able to like, you you know, engage with folks and have fun and funny things happen ah that don't have to do with the caretaking, right? 02:17:59.36 Desirée Yeah. 02:18:07.96 Desirée Right. 02:18:08.10 Fireheart Media And, you know, and and so now, like, it's it's been a couple of weeks, and I'm just past all of the the duties that I had to do ah postmortem. And now what am I doing? I'm i'm talking about stuff doing, you know having to do with grief as, as I wanted to talk about this. 02:18:25.45 Fireheart Media I didn't really care if it was before or after my dad passed. I just wanted to to have this information out in the world because knowing this stuff, knowing about all of the the science of what's going on in my brain was super important to me to be able to navigate through. 02:18:39.61 Fireheart Media yeah. 02:18:40.54 Desirée Right. Yeah. Right. 02:18:41.52 Fireheart Media But yeah, a lot of times people feel guilty about having fun when, you know, ah they're both supposed to be grieving or whatever, um you know, and and that's just because of social expectations, social norms or whatever, which are misguided. 02:18:49.96 Desirée yeah 02:18:58.06 Fireheart Media Like the positivity is important to the experience of grief, actually. And um yeah, like talking about positivity in the experience of grief, when you're supporting a grieving friend, we've talked about it before, but cheering them up is not the goal. 02:19:04.12 Desirée right 02:19:13.64 Fireheart Media Cheering them up is not the goal. Being there with them is the goal. And I will say a lot of people after my dad passed, they would say, I'm sorry for your loss. And then radio silence, like nothing. 02:19:24.83 Desirée Yeah. 02:19:25.69 Fireheart Media Meanwhile, for like, for me, like a lot of times when people said, hey, you know, this somebody passed away, i would check up on them like a lot, a lot, a lot, you know, like, not, yeah like, like, not, not every single day, necessarily, depending upon the relationship with that person, but so every several days, and then, you know, every every week or so, like I did for a long time for a lot of people. 02:19:33.74 Desirée Oh, yes, you did. Sure. 02:19:47.81 Fireheart Media And I'm like, wow, you know, you really find out who the real ones are. when something happens uh because like those are the people who are still reaching out to you you know what i mean and i'm i'm lucky i'm blessed to say that uh i do have a lot of real ones around me so uh thanks to all of y'all you know who you are including you of course does but um yeah but uh 02:19:56.82 Desirée yeah 02:20:06.94 Desirée Sure. look Knowing when to ask about these things and it's going to be dependent on your relationship, 02:20:12.90 Fireheart Media yeah yes yes 02:20:16.12 Desirée So a woman I work with, her brother got a pretty catastrophic diagnosis and she just hung a sign up on her cubicle that said, please do not ask how I'm doing. 02:20:27.69 Fireheart Media right 02:20:28.46 Desirée Feel free to talk to me about other things, just not that question. And that is very much how I felt when Atlas died and when other pets have died I did not tell people that I worked with unless I had a very close relationship with them or i told my supervisor I'm not coming in today, the day before, and then the day that we had to euthanize him. i was like, nope, not coming into the office, not going to be there. 02:20:58.99 Desirée and that was all I said. And so knowing the people who are you are close to and knowing how much they want you to ask, 02:21:08.75 Fireheart Media Right. 02:21:09.25 Desirée can be very helpful in those times. And just that, what can I do? Would this insert X activity be helpful to you? 02:21:20.38 Desirée And also being open and accepting of the fact that what would be helpful or normal to you is not universal and not judging people. So, you know, I did get that you were maybe a little frustrated with folks who kept saying, oh, you don't have to stream today. We we understand. And you were, no, I need to. I need this normalcy. I need this levity. I need this brief disconnect. 02:21:49.31 Fireheart Media Right. 02:21:49.81 Desirée And some people have an easier time understanding and accepting that than others. Yeah. 02:21:55.31 Fireheart Media Right. I mean, I have podcast when I have been ah lying in bed, shivering and sweating with COVID and bronchitis while my mom was in the hospital and everybody was freaking out because they thought that she was not going to come out of the anesthesia, that she was going You know, going to have the same kind of situation with dementia that my grandmother who had Alzheimer's did and everybody who was panicking and everything was riding on me and I was bedridden and I was also trying to work part day partial days in the middle of all this and advocate for my mom. 02:22:31.38 Fireheart Media And I was podcasting. and shivering and sweating while I was doing so. I was also podcasting on another day when my dad went to ER and there wasn't anything for me to do except exist in the world. 02:22:43.62 Fireheart Media So, you know, talking on podcast about something unrelated is very helpful for me. 02:22:47.69 Desirée Yeah. 02:22:48.62 Fireheart Media This is good stuff for me. This is good for me. 02:22:50.45 Desirée Mm-hmm. 02:22:50.74 Fireheart Media I mean, maybe for you, this is the weirdest shit, but really it helps. It helps so much to just be talking about something else for a little bit. And it's not me ah being irresponsible. 02:23:02.98 Fireheart Media It's not me avoiding the situation. 02:23:04.62 Desirée huh 02:23:05.39 Fireheart Media It's me taking a break is what it is for a minute, you know, because I've got so much else going on, you know. 02:23:08.08 Desirée Right. 02:23:11.83 Fireheart Media And yeah, so for sure. and Like, I have to say too, after the fact, people said, you know, ah all their condolences and stuff. 02:23:22.86 Fireheart Media That was the hardest thing. That made me cry so much. 02:23:24.57 Desirée Yeah. 02:23:26.10 Fireheart Media Like not like the stuff. I was the one who found him. We had to call the funeral home. We had to call the willed body program. 02:23:31.83 Desirée Mm-hmm. 02:23:33.65 Fireheart Media We had to talk to the nurse. We had all these other things had to happen. 02:23:35.66 Desirée Yeah. 02:23:37.58 Fireheart Media I was all right. I was crying a little bit here and there. ah The next day with with my parents' anniversary and my dad's very, very sweet last anniversary gift to my mom. Oh my God, that was so fucking beautiful. 02:23:49.65 Desirée yeah 02:23:50.09 Fireheart Media I'm going to carry that for the rest of my life. You know, this beautiful, beautiful show of love. and all of that. But like the the condolences were the worst. Oh my God, I felt so bad. 02:24:01.61 Fireheart Media And then not only that, but if I was having an okay day and then somebody hit me with a condolence, oh my God, that just threw me off. 02:24:06.04 Desirée Yeah. Yep. 02:24:08.31 Fireheart Media It was the worst. Other people need that. For me in that moment, like I understand it's the social norm, it's the custom, it's the thing that has to happen. Everybody needs to do their thing. 02:24:20.73 Fireheart Media But like, boy, was that, that was the hardest for me was the condolences. And then after that, like people ah messaging me and going, how are you holding up? 02:24:24.62 Desirée Yeah. 02:24:28.19 Fireheart Media And I was just like, I don't want you to ask me that. I feel weird now. 02:24:31.91 Desirée Yeah. 02:24:32.59 Fireheart Media Like, I just want you to talk to me like a normal person. 02:24:32.94 Desirée Yeah. 02:24:35.11 Fireheart Media If I'm having a bad day, you'll know. Cause I'll tell you about, you know, the field, the, the, the stuff running through my head or whatever. And I'll, I'll tell you, but if I'm, if I'm not having a bad day, just, just treat me like normal, please. 02:24:43.68 Desirée Right. Yeah. 02:24:48.25 Fireheart Media That's what I want. You know? 02:24:49.50 Desirée yeah 02:24:49.98 Fireheart Media um And yeah, like that would, that was the hardest thing for me was just like the responses from other people was that was the hard thing. 02:24:57.81 Desirée yeah 02:24:58.11 Fireheart Media So, uh, but let's sidle into the magical thinking we mentioned a little while ago. ah so magical thinking, counterfactual thinking, uh, this is when we are thinking about what could have happened, you know, 02:25:12.71 Fireheart Media ah This is the thing where it's like, if I did this, he wouldn't have died. Or even if we don't have fill in the rest of that, but if I did this, then maybe things would have been a little bit different. 02:25:17.45 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 02:25:25.01 Fireheart Media You know, um, that the, the reason why these counterfactuals happen is because our brain is problem solving. It's trying to figure out what happened and why. And it's also trying to say, okay, how could we have fixed this? 02:25:38.91 Fireheart Media And it's not helpful in adapting at all to what is happening because the lie be by being focused on the past and being focused on the the the bad thing that happened, right, ah we are not moving forward. 02:25:52.99 Fireheart Media We're stuck. We're stuck just hovering on this one thing and there is no solution. 02:25:54.78 Desirée Right. 02:25:58.74 Fireheart Media There's no way to know what if this happened because that's not what happened. So those counterfactuals, they're normal and, you know, they can be healthy as long as they they happen for their little amount of time and then they go away. But if you keep ruminating on those, and we'll we'll talk about worrying and ruminating in a second, that's when it gets to be a big trouble ah where you turn into being in a rut rather than being part of the different processes of grief. 02:26:27.02 Fireheart Media So how about you tell us about worrying and ruminating? 02:26:30.10 Desirée Sure. And so to quickly add to the counterfactual thinking, part of it is also I think it's evolutionary, right? 02:26:34.60 Fireheart Media Oh, yes, yes. 02:26:39.42 Desirée We have to learn from our past experiences so that women when we encounter something similar in the future, i put my hand on the hot stove and I got burned. 02:26:41.71 Fireheart Media Right, right. 02:26:49.78 Fireheart Media Right. 02:26:49.80 Desirée The next time I encounter a hot stove, I'm not going to just put my hand on it. our brain is trying to do that same sort of mathematics to figure out, okay, well, the next time I encounter ah cat with chronic kidney disease, how do I do x Y, or Z? 02:27:06.33 Fireheart Media Right. 02:27:07.16 Desirée So it can be helpful. It can be productive to think through, but it becomes maladaptive when we get to that ruminating. So ruminating versus worrying versus just thinking through possibilities. 02:27:15.62 Fireheart Media Right. 02:27:21.58 Desirée So in worrying and ruminating, we're imagining this alternative reality. We're creating all of these what ifs and ruminating is that stage where it is counterproductive. 02:27:33.71 Desirée So rumination is ah way of coping. We're trying to narrow down our attention to just what the author calls negative feelings in an attempt to understand them. So again, 02:27:47.05 Desirée Reflection can be a great coping mechanism. We're trying to parse, why am I feeling this way? What is going on with me internally? But when it becomes those intrusive thoughts that we mentioned earlier, they're popping up. 02:28:03.92 Desirée We can't go to sleep because we're spinning the same thing over and over again in our mind. 02:28:09.38 Fireheart Media Right. 02:28:09.68 Desirée We can't relax. We can't enjoy things. We can't focus on our day-to-day activities. Someone, you know, a spouse, a partner, a child is talking to us and asking us questions and we're so disconnected from the conversation because we're caught up ruminating on these thoughts. 02:28:29.27 Desirée That's not productive. 02:28:30.83 Fireheart Media right 02:28:31.61 Desirée So rumination can be divided into two aspects of It can be the reflection piece and brooding. So an example of reflection is writing down what you're thinking. 02:28:44.37 Desirée Maybe doing that journaling several days in a row, just some free form. What's going on with me in this moment? And then looking back and analyzing those thoughts to see if you can identify a pattern. 02:28:59.73 Desirée Reflection is sort of internally examining things, engaging in problem solving. to try the goal being to alleviate those feelings. 02:29:11.30 Fireheart Media Right. 02:29:11.95 Desirée So on the other hand, brooding is really more of a passive state. Brooding is finding yourself thinking about your mood, even when you did not have the intention to do that. 02:29:25.48 Desirée So reflection is connected to intentionality. You decided I'm going to write my thoughts down. I'm going to reflect on this. Brooding is passively, intrusively, these things are just coming up and you don't seem to be able to have control. 02:29:43.80 Desirée over 02:29:44.89 Fireheart Media Right. You're passively wondering why you feel down or comparing your current situation with how you think things should be. And, you know, like that's that's a difference there. 02:29:56.82 Fireheart Media And also ah worrying. So so when you are doing the ruminating, you are looking at this past situation. When you are worrying, you're thinking about the future. 02:30:07.63 Fireheart Media You're thinking through worst case scenarios and having anxious thoughts about the future. Right. And, um you know, worrying is part of that. Usually worry is connected to ah insecurity that has to do with a lack of control over a situation or the perceived lack of control over a situation. Sometimes it is something you can control. Sometimes it's not. 02:30:32.06 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 02:30:32.31 Fireheart Media And when you worry a lot, it's usually because, you know, there's instability, which of course comes up in grief. And that's that's where you you feel these feelings. 02:30:44.02 Fireheart Media So, um The thing about it that researchers are actively grappling with is the paradox that you can't learn about what has happened and therefore why you feel terrible grief without focusing on yourself and your sad and angry feelings. You can't fully understand what has happened without letting your mind wander through the territory of rumination. 02:31:04.29 Fireheart Media But at the same time, these ruminative thoughts can develop a life of their own. So like I've mentioned, I've done a couple of things that I've already mentioned that are ruminations. So one of those is writing every day in the channel in the Discord server about what's going on and how I'm feeling and what I'm thinking. 02:31:24.59 Fireheart Media And that's basically journaling. I went back to those and I wrote down the last, you know, a little bit of of the updates that I had written. I put those, I transferred those into a journal after my dad passed, like um last weekend, I think. 02:31:39.75 Fireheart Media And, um, that was something that I did to just kind of keep that, to be able to refer back to it and, you know, maybe look at it in the future and understand and and remember some of that stuff just, um, because I, I feel like I might possibly want to look back at that, you know, and know, know some of the little good and bad things again in the future. 02:31:56.26 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 02:32:01.05 Fireheart Media yeah. So ah that was a process of me writing down what was going on and keeping everyone else updated, right? ah But also working through those things and talking about how I was feeling in the moment while I was feeling it, being mindful and checking in with myself, with other people, talking about sometimes how Dave was doing or how my mom was doing or how my dad was doing during all of these different things. 02:32:26.62 Fireheart Media And, you know, just kind of working through it. And, um you know, so I did that, that reflection part, the brooding part comes in when, you know, my subconscious is doing its thing. 02:32:37.82 Fireheart Media And then suddenly I wake up and then I can't get it out of my head. And then I have to wake up because I can't go back to sleep. 02:32:41.82 Desirée Right. 02:32:44.65 Fireheart Media But, um you know, like that's part of the normal parts of grief, you you will ruminate some, you will probably brood a little bit, you will worry, all of those things are normal, you know, 02:32:56.56 Fireheart Media It's just everything in moderation, you know, like in their time in moderation. 02:33:00.03 Desirée right 02:33:01.78 Fireheart Media And then at some point, you know, they, they kind of dissipate over time is the idea here. So if they stick around, then you might be, you know, finding yourself in chronic grief or complicated grief situations. 02:33:15.07 Fireheart Media So ah grief-related ruminations tend to center on five different topics. One's negative emotional reactions to the loss, the unfairness of the death, the meaning and consequences of this loss, the reactions of others to one's grief, and the counterfactual thoughts about the events leading up to the death, the what-ifs. 02:33:36.13 Desirée Mm-hmm. 02:33:36.27 Fireheart Media So what's interesting about this is that Most of this I can't I can't say most of this was really in in my head on any of the times I was doing ruminations. 02:33:48.74 Fireheart Media You know, I've been ruminating so far. um They're like. the meaning and the consequences of the loss maybe, but ah that's it. And then mostly just kind of reflecting on what happened. And that's, that's again, that's my brain trying to figure out and and troubleshoot and then at some point accept and move forward, you know. 02:34:11.48 Desirée Right. 02:34:11.61 Fireheart Media But the weird thing is you can't like force your subconscious mind to accept something even if you consciously accept it. 02:34:11.60 Desirée Yeah. 02:34:18.46 Fireheart Media So you just have to like give it time, you know. 02:34:18.49 Desirée yeah 02:34:23.18 Fireheart Media So, ah but the problem with rumination is that a lot of the questions are things that can't be answered. That's why they can persist indefinitely. And that's why they can end up being a rut that you're cycling through. 02:34:35.24 Fireheart Media And the sneaky thing is that rumination feels as though you're seeking out the truth of the matter, but really what you're doing is just, you know, um cycling through the same thing and you're not going to find an answer because there is no answer. 02:34:42.23 Desirée Right. 02:34:51.04 Desirée right 02:34:51.20 Fireheart Media And so, so why do we ruminate? It's a form of avoidance of the loss. You know, like you were. 02:34:57.78 Desirée Right. And that feels counter, right? 02:34:59.00 Fireheart Media if 02:35:00.34 Desirée Because you are spending so much time being consumed by it. 02:35:05.07 Fireheart Media Right. 02:35:05.93 Desirée You don't feel like you can avoid it at all because it's so ever present in every aspect of your life. But that is the root of it. 02:35:14.83 Fireheart Media Mm hmm. 02:35:17.19 Desirée You're trying to avoid the actual moving forward with the grief. 02:35:22.28 Fireheart Media Right. And there are ways to stop rumination, mostly found through cognitive behavioral therapy, whether or not you are officially studying that in terms of grief or whether you are um just without actually studying anything, kind of doing it on yourself anyway, to understanding, for example, the difference whether those thoughts are helpful, not whether they're true, but are they helpful? 02:35:45.24 Desirée Right. Mm-hmm. right 02:35:47.14 Fireheart Media Are these thoughts helpful? repeatedly returning to aspects of the loss of one's grief that cannot be changed does not help us learn to tolerate the pain painful reality over the long term you need to accept that that you feel the way you do and the reality is what it is and kind of just like adapt you have to adapt you have to learn to do that and being present in the moment helps you to recover from that grief that mindfulness again So the present ah moment offers us possibility, which is something the past doesn't provide. 02:36:23.53 Fireheart Media You can only experience joy and comfort in the past or the future. 02:36:23.76 Desirée Right. 02:36:27.76 Fireheart Media only or You can't um like experience joy and comfort in the past or the future. You can only experience those things in the present moment. You can remember times you felt joy or comfort, but that feeling, actually feeling it, that's only in the moment that you feel that. 02:36:44.36 Fireheart Media Then it's just a memory moment. or it's an anticipation. So ah meditation might help you if you are a person who can meditate who who is in that practice, but um overall, just being aware of stuff, mindfulness practice is is very, very, very helpful. 02:36:48.89 Desirée right 02:37:03.76 Fireheart Media This is also, we mentioned, mentioned it during the burnout episode as well. Mindfulness helps with burnout too. 02:37:08.66 Desirée Sure. 02:37:11.03 Fireheart Media And 02:37:11.07 Desirée Yeah, mindfulness and therapy is amazing. However, because of capitalist hellscape, folks might not be able to afford it. They might have health plans that don't include it. 02:37:24.34 Desirée And so building up your own flexibility, your own resiliency in any way that you can can be helpful down the line when you are eventually confronted by grief because painful. 02:37:40.80 Desirée the universal lived experience of all living things. And so at some point, even if you have not experienced the loss of a loved one, you will at some point in your life. And so being mindful, being present, and building these strategies now. 02:37:59.56 Desirée So for example, the rumination and what do you do with that? As instructor, if things were going off the rail a bit too much with students, we would say, you know, we're going to put this in the parking lot. 02:38:11.88 Desirée And it would be a big square on a chalkboard. And we would write whatever topic was over there that they really wanted to talk about. And if we had time, once we got through all of the content that we needed to do, we could revisit that. 02:38:26.29 Desirée That might be something that you can do if you can are a person who can visualize that, have your chalkboard in your head, or have that be your journal and give yourself permission to release that for now and come back to it later when you have capacity. 02:38:43.39 Fireheart Media Right, right. And so I will say, too, a lot of people were telling me, Jala, you need to go get therapy for this because of all this caretaking stuff. 02:38:53.83 Fireheart Media And so first off, my health insurance doesn't pay for that, it doesn't doesn't allow for that. 02:38:58.04 Desirée yeah 02:38:59.60 Fireheart Media I did pursue the ah different... quote unquote mental health care stuff that they have, which is bullshit. A lot of AI driven bullshit, by the way, I did look. 02:39:10.54 Fireheart Media I did look for free resources online. 02:39:10.80 Desirée yeah 02:39:13.10 Fireheart Media There's basically just grief groups. um 02:39:15.46 Desirée yep 02:39:15.77 Fireheart Media But honestly, ah when I was going through and I was reading this book, I was like, you know, my grief, my my, you know, what I'm doing right now, how conscious I am of everything, how I'm able to put things to words. 02:39:27.37 Fireheart Media I think I'm doing pretty fucking fine. i don't think I need 02:39:30.10 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 02:39:31.09 Fireheart Media to to go through the hoops and and all of that stuff to try to pay out of pocket for this thing. I don't feel that it would be in about this subject to be, you know, so particularly beneficial. 02:39:41.86 Fireheart Media Like, I don't feel like I have any maladaptive, you know, issues or things halting me from being able to move forward. 02:39:42.73 Desirée not 02:39:48.07 Fireheart Media And I feel like, I mean, therapy is something that I've, i've you know, thought about off and on at at different points. And I always feel like it's something that I would, if I wanted to have it, I would only have it for like, 02:40:00.17 Fireheart Media ah temporary states of being when I've needed it. 02:40:03.19 Desirée Mm-hmm. 02:40:03.35 Fireheart Media And once I work through whatever that thing is, then I'd be good to go. Because like, I do a lot of active self work. So I'm already kind of constantly receptive to feedback and, you know, interrogating what's going on with me and open to new possibilities and looking into solutions that might better my life. 02:40:27.79 Fireheart Media And I mean, should I have a health plan that offers therapy in it at some point in time, then I would probably try it out at that point. But like, I will say having God and everybody try to shove it down my throat ah has not been helpful. 02:40:45.27 Fireheart Media So I will say, folks, don't don't think that because a solution, whatever that solution might be for you, ah works for you, that it's going to be the fit for everybody. 02:40:47.51 Desirée Yeah. Sure. Mm-hmm. 02:40:57.02 Fireheart Media um You know, like there are people for whom, say for example, Dave has a lot of anxiety, social anxiety. 02:40:58.12 Desirée sure 02:41:04.60 Fireheart Media Trying to talk to a stranger about the things going on with him would be counterproductive for him. So he is not interested in therapy because for him that actually would cause more stress than it would alleviate. 02:41:18.12 Fireheart Media ah He doesn't have a rapport with this person to be able to just gush and open up his soul. 02:41:18.15 Desirée Sure. 02:41:22.80 Fireheart Media And that's not everyone's concern, but that is the case for him. you know, and so like, that's, that's kind of like the reality of where he's at. And like, for me, like to know the the how does the thing work? 02:41:35.77 Fireheart Media And if I know that, then i'm I can reflect on that. I can apply it to myself and, you know kind of go from there and, you know, work through it. And I've always been very DIY about literally everything in my life. 02:41:49.88 Fireheart Media So um if I need to defer to a professional because I see that the thing is beyond my grasp, beyond my ken, say for example, in the, uh, I, to have a diagnosis of some sort for neurodiversity, then yes, that would be a thing I would go to a doctor for and, you know, like go from there. 02:42:08.31 Fireheart Media But like, if I feel like I'm, I'm not having like, Oh God, I've got dread every day or anything like that. I I'm fine. I don't, I don't, I don't, uh, have a particular need for that thing. 02:42:21.61 Desirée Sure. And there are... 02:42:22.18 Fireheart Media So, 02:42:22.98 Desirée you know our certain people for whom therapy is an absolute necessity. So if you did seek the diagnosis and needed medication of some kind, that should come from a trained professional. 02:42:28.69 Fireheart Media Right, right. 02:42:34.21 Fireheart Media Uh-huh. Exactly. 02:42:36.56 Desirée And... 02:42:36.94 Fireheart Media And that would need some talk therapy to work through and get words for things, right? 02:42:37.25 Desirée Mm-hmm. 02:42:41.50 Fireheart Media And, and you know, a lot of a lot of what I do on my podcasting and a lot of what I do when I'm i'm talking to people is I'm finding those words. And that's what a lot of people do when they go to therapy, they find words for things. 02:42:52.42 Fireheart Media And a lot of times that, for me, that's what I need to be able to then apply to myself, whatever it is that I need for that improvement. 02:42:57.25 Desirée Right. 02:42:59.87 Fireheart Media And if I can find those words, you know, that's that's bottom line, the thing that needs to happen. However, that happens. But yeah, in the case of if I had some kind of a diagnosis, I would 100% if it was something that was recommended by the doctor as a thing that I should go try out, then yes, absolutely. 02:43:18.83 Fireheart Media You know. 02:43:18.94 Desirée And it can also be helpful because it is that distanced perspective and someone to call out things that maybe you have sectioned off or would not notice or would not be aware of. 02:43:24.82 Fireheart Media Right. 02:43:35.21 Desirée They can draw your attention to and say, well, what about X, y or Z? 02:43:39.59 Fireheart Media Mm-hmm. 02:43:39.77 Desirée And so it it can be a helpful tool, but not always economically viable for everybody. If you have a really good rapport with your therapist, that can be an amazing connection that can be that external person. 02:43:54.79 Desirée um i have a friend who at one point had two therapists simultaneously. And for her, she felt it was very helpful because she was worried she'd been dumping so much of her emotions and trauma and things onto me. 02:44:10.07 Desirée And she didn't want it to damage our friendship. 02:44:10.15 Fireheart Media ah 02:44:11.99 Desirée So she had this other person that she could go and talk to. 02:44:14.03 Fireheart Media Right. Well, and that's also another important use for a therapist, for people who have the ability to go see one, you know, for for economic reasons or whatever, is, some you know, if you're somebody who is open and communicative with your people, but then like the thing that you're tackling is so big that there you feel like there's too much to to burden your people with. 02:44:35.57 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 02:44:37.52 Fireheart Media You know, then that's when professional health becomes basically a necessity at that point. And, you know those are situations where, you know, definitely, you know, you would want to to seek out that therapy. 02:44:48.89 Fireheart Media um 02:44:49.33 Desirée right 02:44:50.00 Fireheart Media and With grief, sometimes people are talking people about grief and sometimes they're not. ah For me, like I've talked out my grief. I've already talked out everything that happened when, when my dad was in his state. 02:45:02.12 Fireheart Media I don't feel I have anything else new to add other than just presenting this information in this episode and then moving on down the road. 02:45:08.11 Desirée Yeah. Right. Mm-hmm. 02:45:09.41 Fireheart Media Cause like nothing else I've got going on related to that situation is new, is different. You know, it'll just be, Hey, this is a hard day for me. I'm thinking about my dad and that's it. 02:45:20.63 Desirée right 02:45:21.07 Fireheart Media And then moving forward, you know, but But for other people, they struggle to find those words. They don't, you know, like they they ah don't have the same kind of um and default settings. 02:45:33.32 Fireheart Media You know, their settings are different. So they they respond differently. And that's, you know, part of the beauty of life is that everybody is different. 02:45:42.04 Desirée Yeah. 02:45:42.17 Fireheart Media So the solutions are going to be different. 02:45:42.24 Desirée Right. 02:45:44.13 Fireheart Media But one thing that won't work, I'll tell you, is sleeping pills. 02:45:47.99 Desirée yeah 02:45:48.21 Fireheart Media So ah sleeping pills don't help with insomnia. They actually worsen your sleep. This is scientifically proven. ah They are prescribed very commonly to bereave people, but science doesn't back their use. When you come off of the sleeping pills, your body has to cope with both the reality of your loss and the loss of the drug it has come to rely on to get you to sleep in the first place. 02:46:09.29 Desirée right 02:46:09.55 Fireheart Media So actually the most helpful thing to do when you have insomnia is to get up at the same time every day, when even though we're tired, get up at the same time every day, and that helps to reset the circadian cycle. 02:46:26.12 Fireheart Media And that improves sleep hygiene. um But also like improve sleep, sleep hygiene by like shutting off your electronic devices, no screens after whatever within within an hour of bed, don't eat anything heavy, you know, don't drink any more liquids, so you don't have to wake up to go to the bathroom and whatever after a certain point. 02:46:46.16 Fireheart Media Doing some stretching, using the bedroom only for sleeping, blah, blah, blah. All of these things that we've kind of talked about in like the the burnout episode and other self-care episodes. 02:46:58.50 Fireheart Media All of those things all can ah be helpful here. 02:46:59.87 Desirée Right. 02:47:02.27 Fireheart Media But waking up at the same time every day, i was doing that in the last couple of weeks. I was waking up at the same time every single day, set the alarm, got up at four o'clock in the morning so I could do all the stuff all day. Exhausted every day, but I woke up at the same time. So when I go back to work this week, it won't be the worst because I've already been waking up. 02:47:22.94 Fireheart Media ah I've continued to wake up at the same time. And, and you know, like granted, i am still exhausted, but that's because my brain is in overdrive when I'm asleep. So ah anyway, but yeah, sleeping pills, not great. 02:47:35.96 Fireheart Media um 02:47:36.28 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 02:47:36.90 Fireheart Media You know, ah definitely look into some other things. I believe I've read something about cognitive behavioral therapy also being helpful for insomnia stuff. But some the insomnia is hard because there's so many different triggers for insomnia. 02:47:52.35 Fireheart Media ah You know, very much stress and trauma related, sometimes neurodivergent related, a lot of different factors. in that. So like if that's something that you deal with, and that would be something to talk to your doctor about for sure. 02:48:06.70 Fireheart Media But yeah, we don't need to always be engaged in grief work or deliberately focusing on the loss because the brain is learning and adapting even when we're not aware of it. 02:48:06.83 Desirée Right. Mm-hmm. 02:48:16.71 Fireheart Media And again, you know, your brain slows down. And, you know, what's interesting is that that brain slowdown, that brain fog, you know, that I mentioned was linked to reports of fewer and less intense grief symptoms, which tracks to my experience like, 02:48:33.28 Fireheart Media I haven't had massive bouts of, of you know, ah world-ending grief, let's say, with my brain doing what it's doing. ah More neural fingerprints of this unconscious incubation were linked to better adaptations. 02:48:49.23 Fireheart Media So being able to move forward with your new normal. So um if you have that brain fog, or even if you don't have that brain fog, if you have like that kind of slow down where things... 02:49:01.77 Fireheart Media are are maybe not moving as fast, like you're not moving as fast. Other things are not moving as fast. um You know, like everything's kind of a little bit underwater. ah That's actually kind of a good thing. That's actually an indication that you will probably be pretty well resilient. 02:49:18.33 Fireheart Media So the primary thing that you need to focus on after you just feel your feelings, right, is creating your meaningful life post loss and creating 02:49:18.39 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 02:49:29.90 Fireheart Media The important thing to note is that in order to be able to make a meaningful life moving forward is that we have to be able to imagine that life. And that is but difficult when you have especially a traumatic loss because trauma shuts down as, as we talked about on the trauma episode, trauma shuts down the ability to imagine life moving forward. 02:49:59.40 Fireheart Media You know, you are in a rut with that. Grief is is very much, you know, a type, it can be a trauma, but it also has a lot of hallmarks that look like trauma. 02:50:10.96 Fireheart Media So. 02:50:12.38 Desirée Well, and to the point of restoring a meaningful life, that sort of implies that you fully embraced the idea that you had a meaningful life before and had examined it and had found that meaning so that there is something to return to. 02:50:24.33 Fireheart Media Right, right. 02:50:27.90 Fireheart Media right 02:50:31.27 Desirée So that's why it can be helpful to think about what gives you meaning What is your identity built upon? How much of your identity is caught up in each of the identities that you hold? 02:50:46.02 Desirée Because we do you have many, many different identities that build up the sum of who we are. so thinking intersectionally, that was an exercise i would have my students do. We'd have three different circles and the first one would be dividing it up into percentages how how you spend your time based on your identity. So 50% of my time is spent as a student. 02:51:11.67 Desirée ah Then the second one would be your ideal. Like, okay, well, you know, how would I devise my time? Well, I'd only really like to spend 30% of it as a student. So I could spend 30% as a friend or whatever. 02:51:25.00 Fireheart Media Right. 02:51:27.09 Desirée acknowledging how much of your identities are connected to how you see yourself as a whole, what that ideal is, and then being able to find a resolution. All of that's part of defining meaning, meaning of who you are, meaning of the impact that you want to have on yourself, meaning of the legacy you want to leave behind when you eventually die. 02:51:51.58 Desirée Thinking about all of that now so that you can have something as a goal to return to after a loss. 02:51:58.93 Fireheart Media Right. And something that, again, anybody who's known me long enough has seen is that anytime I encounter a great loss, whatever that loss is, something that I'm grieving with, you know, that could be when I lost the identity of being an artist, when I had cancer, or when I had whatever, all the various things that have happened in my life. 02:52:19.88 Fireheart Media Um, anytime any of these big things happen, there's, that's usually one of those times where I have the great makeover, you know, like, uh, you know, my, my symbol for this podcast, my symbol for everything overall, the fire heart, it's a Phoenix in the shape of a heart in flames. 02:52:19.97 Desirée Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 02:52:35.30 Fireheart Media And, you know, the phoenix rises anew from the ashes of the old. And that's every single time something happens. So I've been feeling like I'm on the cusp of another revolution, self-revolution for a while. 02:52:49.55 Fireheart Media And I have said that a few times, ah just intermittently here and there in the past year or so. And I've you know, with my dad having passed and my situation having changed, it's probably going to be the launching point of a new iteration of me. 02:53:04.57 Fireheart Media You know, there's going to be another overhaul. 02:53:04.61 Desirée Yeah. Right. 02:53:06.13 Fireheart Media There's going to be a new, ah new version. And, you know, it's not like everything about me is burned away or anything. It's still me, but you know, there, there'll be some new things happening in the future. 02:53:16.62 Desirée right 02:53:17.24 Fireheart Media And, uh, you know, like a reset button was just pushed and, um, That's kind of like a ah constant you know through line through all of the different times that I've experienced grief is, you know, I do kind of have a reset and then ah shift a little bit in some way. 02:53:35.54 Fireheart Media And that's something that's normal. ah Death has a way of clarifying to us what is meaningful. 02:53:38.23 Desirée Yeah. 02:53:41.84 Fireheart Media And especially if part of our identity was tied up in whatever it is that we've lost, right? ah Then that means that We have to redefine ourselves without that moving forward, right? 02:53:56.91 Fireheart Media Because now we don't have any more input if it's a person, right? There's no input from my dad anymore. 02:54:00.48 Desirée yeah 02:54:02.26 Fireheart Media So I'm not a daughter who has a dad in the world, you know? So ah what does that mean for me? 02:54:09.22 Desirée Mm-hmm. 02:54:09.57 Fireheart Media you know, well, for one, it actually, you know, frees me up more with my gender identity being gender fluid because now I don't have underscore the daughter because my dad very much, you know, ah gendered me constantly, which I've talked about many, many times on the gender episodes. 02:54:25.02 Fireheart Media um So there's a little bit more free roam when it comes to gender expression in that way. That's one thing I can say off the top of my head. And that that helps align more with who I am as person. 02:54:38.69 Fireheart Media But like, there's a lot of other things, you know, like there's, there's a lot of ways in which my day-to-day life had to consider my dad because, you know, we all live together in the same house. Now it's just my mom, my mom and Dave and I and Pooh Bear. 02:54:49.00 Desirée Yeah. 02:54:52.95 Fireheart Media And so that shift means there's, there's more freedom to do other things that I was, you know i haven't been able to do in a long time, for example. So Y'all going to see a a return of of some parts of me that haven't been around for a while that I love that I haven't been able to do. So ah that'll be fun, actually. 02:55:13.49 Desirée yeah 02:55:14.02 Fireheart Media But yeah, like ah overhauling ourselves, that's that's pretty normal. And the thing is, there's there's a sensation that sometimes people have. I can't say that I really profess to have this myself, but a feeling of of insecurity and and fear with these changes that happen when you realize, oh shit, my life is not what I actually want it to be. It doesn't align properly. 02:55:35.99 Fireheart Media And now I'm going to overhaul things and now it's scary and new. 02:55:40.56 Desirée Mm-hmm. 02:55:41.05 Fireheart Media And I mean like my, I thrive in an environment that is like has turnover and is constantly trying to renew and you know, ah refresh and do something different and change directions to constantly keep growing. So for me, that's like exactly where I'm comfortable, but for other people, I hear tell that this is scary. 02:56:03.57 Fireheart Media especially if you are a person for whom, like, you know, you have a lot of stability in your life. And so, um you know, this can be earth shattering and you can feel guilty. You can feel, 02:56:15.48 Fireheart Media you know, insecure, you can feel like maybe even like you're betraying this person who's passed on, but you're not, you're not. ah That person is still with you is still part of you. It's just that you're living your life a little differently now because your reality is different. 02:56:32.79 Fireheart Media So 02:56:33.03 Desirée Right. And I mean, that's something I think we'll get into more potentially on a second episode talking about the coping and the emotions and everything. 02:56:41.82 Fireheart Media right. 02:56:42.60 Desirée um That idea that that person is still with you may not resonate for someone who has atheist alignment or even agnostic, which is where I fall most of the time. 02:56:51.11 Fireheart Media right 02:56:55.70 Fireheart Media Oh! 02:56:56.26 Desirée so the idea that, oh, well, there's always this spirit with you. Is there? i can't see it. I can't touch it. I can't scientifically verify it. So I can't say with certainty that they are, but I also can't say they're not. 02:57:07.56 Fireheart Media oh 02:57:10.17 Fireheart Media Well, the way that I was meaning it in that moment was that you carry the moment, you you carry the memories and the love that you have, the the memories that you share with this person. 02:57:13.58 Desirée Sure. Mm-hmm. 02:57:19.95 Desirée Yeah. 02:57:20.25 Fireheart Media That's what I was referring to. But yes, there's also, right, there's also the whole concept of like the spirit and after death. 02:57:22.07 Desirée Sure. 02:57:27.24 Fireheart Media And like my dad told, for for example, told my sister that he was going to be her guardian angel. um 02:57:33.14 Desirée Mm-hmm. 02:57:33.78 Fireheart Media because she was wrought and she was crying and everything. And for me, i did not really cry around him in the time that he was, you know, declining because I didn't want him to feel like, oh my God, everybody's just mourning me constantly. 02:57:40.56 Desirée Right. 02:57:47.43 Fireheart Media You know, like that, that did not serve me. 02:57:48.30 Desirée Yeah. 02:57:50.07 Fireheart Media That did not serve him. i i wanted to be able to joke and be, you know, loving and care for him and give him the most peaceful and happy, you know, part of me that I could. 02:58:02.69 Fireheart Media So, you know, like at one point he even asked me, he was like, how are you even sad? 02:58:02.91 Desirée Right. 02:58:07.95 Fireheart Media and I was like, I cry every day. 02:58:08.73 Desirée Yeah. 02:58:10.45 Fireheart Media i broke down at that point. And I'm like, I cry every day in my office for hours. 02:58:12.86 Desirée Yeah. 02:58:15.18 Fireheart Media And there are times where I can't focus at all. Yes, I cry for you all the damn time, Pop. 02:58:18.27 Desirée Right. 02:58:20.99 Fireheart Media I'm just not crying in front of you, you know? 02:58:23.24 Desirée great 02:58:23.79 Fireheart Media Yes, I he had asked several times he was worried about that. But he also knew that, you know, i was there taking care of him and trying to take care of each other with Dave and my mom and for Poodle. 02:58:35.18 Fireheart Media And, you know, all of that. And he one of the last things that he had said to me and Dave was that we were his heroes because, you know, we were there doing everything we could for him. 02:58:47.02 Fireheart Media So, you know, my sister gets a guardian angel, but we're the heroes, yeah you know? 02:58:47.07 Desirée ah 02:58:50.72 Desirée Yeah. 02:58:52.14 Fireheart Media And I mean, like he knew that we'd be okay, you know? 02:58:55.35 Desirée Right. 02:58:56.02 Fireheart Media You know, so, but yeah, like ah we'll, we'll talk about all of that kind of stuff. 02:59:01.23 Desirée Oh yeah. 02:59:01.28 Fireheart Media Like the, the, you know, it was a relationship or not question mark ah with a person after they are gone. When we talk about the ways that people have continuing relationships or not question mark, um you know, a different episode for sure. 02:59:13.46 Desirée Yeah. 02:59:16.05 Fireheart Media Like, ah we're we're already at three hours, but there's a little bit more to talk about in terms of The Grieving Body. So all the stuff we've been talking about so far has all been The Grieving Brain. 02:59:26.91 Desirée Yep. 02:59:27.03 Fireheart Media This is The Grieving Body. Was this book even needed? No, not really. 02:59:31.49 Desirée No. 02:59:31.58 Fireheart Media ah There's not a lot. Like, it's ah it's really like an addendum. There could have been, like... a few pages, maybe one chapter that could have been added to like a second iteration of the grieving brain, like a second edition. 02:59:45.77 Fireheart Media And that would have been fine in my opinion.