Transcription of podcast with Marv Weidner
00:00 Russell
00:02 Russell
Good afternoon, everybody. It's Dr. Russell Thackeray here and welcome to another episode of Resilience Unravelled. Today I've got someone from Colorado. I know that because looking at him, I can see the Colorado view, the Colorado vibe and also because he just told me. So welcome today to Marv Weidner
00:34 Marv
That's a good try.
00:35 Russell
Yeah, you know what they say about good tries, just wrong. So ,you said you're in Colorado. Tell me more. Where? In Colorado. Because it’s big place, I'm guessing.
00:46 Marv
I'm out in what's called the Western Slope. The town I live in is Gunnison, and it's about 7700ft of elevation. We're surrounded by mountains and right now a lot of snow.
01:01 Russell
Fantastic.
01:04 Russell
I say fantastic because when we have half a centimetre over here, we get very excited.
01:08 Marv
We have a couple of feet on the ground at the moment. Yeah, it's very much winter scene here.
01:14 Russell
And I bet you can drive in it and I bet you can walk in it and do normal things in the snow. But we tend to fall apart, as I said, with a little bit of snow.
01:23 Marv
It's just what you're used to, for sure.
01:26 Russell
Well, it's a joy to spend some time with you today. So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
01:31 Marv
Thanks. Probably the reason that Dr. Thackeray and I are talking today is because of a life experience I had in 2016. My late wife was diagnosed with stage four cancer. We went through all of the cancer treatments. We went through everything imaginable, really, to save her life. That was her. Her desire is to get to have every day of life that she could possibly have. She passed away from the cancer nine short months later in July of 2017. And it was from that experience that I began to really focus on resilience. My own resilience was, of course, very tapped by the grief process and the loss of my beloved wife. And during that process, I learned a fair amount about my own resilience that I've tried to share with others since that time. So, I'm very pleased to be here with you, Dr. Thackeray.
02:46 Russell
Well, it's a pleasure and honour that you've joined us. Grief is a difficult process, and it's.
quite peculiar in the sense that it's a very natural process, something we're probably all going to experience at some point in our lives in varying degrees, some of us, with massive grief processes to deal with and some smaller things. So how do you sort of characterise grief? What does it you mean when you talk about that subject?
03:14 Marv
Well, it's really coming face to face with the impermanence of life when we are in love with our fellow human beings. And one of them who's particularly if they're very close to us, it's this wrenching experience of deep emotion for me, my grief was not complicated with shame or guilt or regrets. My grief was really almost exclusively about sadness. And that process is so intense that it's very much like initially like the person that you love is really torn from your body. Because I think they're really with us at a cellular level. And I don't mean that in any kind of spooky way. I mean that in a very physical way. So ,it's a very physical experience to lose someone that you love very much. And then, of course, it's also very emotional experience and in a way, spiritual experience, too. And we come face to face with our own mortality.
04:27 Marv
And in so doing, we have to. For me, it was also very much about rediscovering a sense of purpose. My purpose had been to be the best husband to Marty that I could possibly be. And that purpose was literally wiped away. So very much a journey that I think is very individualised. I don't think there's any time frame that people experience. Everyone's grief is different. It's a very organic and very individualised process.
05:02 Russell
Okay, let's pick a few of those things apart, if we may. So, the first thing you talk about is the nature of law. I totally agree with you. That sort of chemistry between people, that sense of being a part of being ripped away. And it doesn't matter if it's a child or a partner or whatever family member it is. There is a visceral sense of loss often. And there are two different types of this, isn't there? The long, slow, lingering death when you're living with someone who's ill and then that horrible sudden death where someone just goes but actually, would you contend I know you have experience of one, but would you contend the processes are similar?
05:40 Marv
I think the process, the initial shock is perhaps different if you lose someone suddenly through an accident versus a disease that takes them over a period of time. But the after effect of losing them I think is quite similar because often people talk about the after effect of a long, lingering death because sometimes there's two different things, aren't there? You've had the chance to say goodbye.
06:08 Russell
And you do get that guilt thing out of the way, don't you? Because you don't have that. Or the last thing I was talking about was how much efficient shifts have cost them. We haven't settled up. You don't get that sort of unfinished business. But often you get that sort of perspective that comes from the relief of death and the fact that in order to do what's best for your partner, you have to let them go. Because you have a lot of people who are in a situation as caregivers where they can sort of prolong someone's life because they want it, not because of what's right for the other party. And I think you're right in that sense of you get to know yourself very well during the process.
06:48 Marv
Yes, you really do. I think those are great points. After you lose a loved one, your life really is never quite the same, because in the same way that the love that you have for them is always with you. So, is the grief really always with you? I likened it or my analogy was it was like waves, like those behind you, actually, in the in the film behind you initially, the waves are really large. They're like 100-foot waves crashing in on you, one right after the other in rapid succession. And as you work through the grief process, they become perhaps less intense or less frequent, but they can still be there. You can be triggered by a memory or a picture. And the process of grief is also a process of recovery, of rediscovering a sense of purpose for your life, rediscovering who you are now that this has happened to you.
07:51 Russell
And that's interesting, isn't it? Because you mentioned that before and you can often go into a form of limbo, can't you, on a long death, because you become all absorbed by it and all consumed by that process. And then you lose part of you, and as you say, part of you disappears. And someone once said to me that the echoes of grief, it's not about forgetting the person, it's learning how to surround the sort of memory of grief in your own body. So, you can, because it's a visceral process, you do feel it in your body and you never lose it, but then why would you want to? And I think people spend a lot of time pushing it away rather than actually what's owning the grief, in a funny sort of way, because it's a natural thing, isn't it? And I think pushing grief away is a very dangerous thing for us to do.
08:40 Marv
I agree completely. Part of the rebuilding of what was my reservoir of resilience was very much tied to my ability or willingness to embrace the feelings as they came up. What I found is if I felt the sadness coming and I pushed it away or I tried to defer it to a later time, it really just sort of stuck to me. That way it didn't get released so that I could continue to move forward. So, resilience for me, was very much tied to my willingness to face and embrace the grief as you're talking about, and really allow those feelings to be expressed. And sometimes it might come at a time when I was back to work, right, as a consultant, standing with a group of people, helping them decide what their purpose was. And the grief would come up within me, and I would tell them ahead of time that may happen and then I would excuse myself for 20 minutes, allow those feelings to come and be expressed, usually by myself outside. And then I'd come back and reengage. But I think that in really engaging and embracing the feelings and the experience of grief is a way to rebuild, resilience and also heal yourself.
10:08 Russell
So talk to me more about then this sense of purpose and what you mean by that.
10:14 Marv
Well, the sense of purpose, as I mentioned for me had been in a 19 year relationship to be the best husband I could be to Marty. And that, as I mentioned, vanished of course when she passed away. And I found myself very much adrift not really having a sense of purpose in life. From my experience, having a sense of purpose about your life is really fundamental to who we are as human beings. It feeds our sense of energy; it feeds our drive. And for me it's core to my sense of living a full life and a happy one. So, I really wondered what I would do with my life, what would I do, who would I be? And it's more about who I would be rather than what I would do. I define a sense of purpose not by necessarily the work I do or the fishing, or the hiking that I do or even the friends I have, but more about who I am. And for me it took about six months to really recover a sense of purpose. And I was actually in Tanzania when it really occurred to me, and yes, for me it was living with an open heart has become my sense of purpose. And that really is immersed in everything, all the things that I do and how I approach life. To live with an open heart. And that was part of embracing degree.
11:58 Russell
What does that mean?
11:59 Marv
That's a great question. Right? So, what it means to me is being open to the people in my life, being compassionate, using my grief experience to become, perhaps a more compassionate human being. Being open to the experiences that life brings to me and living with a sense of, I guess, being supported by life. Feeling that my life has importance and purpose. And that's really the outcome of living with an open heart. And I think it manifests itself mostly in my relationships with people, whether it's someone I meet on a journey or someone close to me in my family.
12:56 Russell
So you talked about the open-heart idea and the purpose thing, but it sounds like you've removed that judgment thing and you're just accepting people as they are and as you find them. And it sounds like you are doing the same for yourself. Is that too simplistic?
13:10 Marv
No, it's really not too simplistic. I think that for me, the way an open-heart manifests itself is that you do suspend judgment. It doesn't mean that you stop observing what's actually happening or being honest about it. It's that you accept people for who they are and who they're trying to be.
13:32 Russell
Well it's interesting, I know you've written the book did you write the book as part of your purpose resilience grieving process, or was there some other reason?
13:43 Marv
No, the book really grew out of the journaling that I did during the grief process. I engaged a grief counsellor for I guess the better part of two years following Marty's passing. And it was out of all that writing about my experiences, asking myself questions about how I was feeling and what my purpose is as an example, that all of that journey journaling then manifests itself in a book.
14:18 Russell
And has the process of writing been cathartic in its sense, or has it made you think differently about the process you experienced?
14:27 Marv
It's been both. It's been cathartic. And as you can imagine, some of the chapters were difficult to write because I was recalling and sharing the experiences that Marty had and I had during the cancer experience, which was really a tough experience. So, it was both cathartic and difficult. But it also changed as I began writing about it. It really deepened my own understanding of resilience and really brought out, I think, for me, a lot of perspective on what it means to be with someone else who is grieving.
15:12 Russell
Who's it written for. Is it meant to be a perspective? Is it meant to be something that helps people through a time? Because you come through that point. Is it meant to be a guidebook, a handbook? What was the intention behind it?
15:22 Marv
It's really that it's a guidebook and a handbook for people who have experienced loss. It's also for those who care for them, and it's also written for those who counsel them. At the end of each chapter, my own grief counsellor wrote something from a grief counsellor’s perspective and provides suggestions given whatever the topic happens to be for that chapter.
15:48 Russell
That's very clever. So, actually, that's a very interesting idea. And why the title? Because the title is When the Rocks Sing. And why that title?
15:56 Marv
Well, thank you for asking. It was several months, perhaps seven or eight months after Marty had passed, that I was walking on the beach in Greymouth, New Zealand, on the South Island. This is a very rocky beach where the rocks are pounded into disc shape through all the waves and the rushing tides and so forth. And I walked the beach for about three days, and it was midpoint in the second day that I was actually able to hear the rocks chattering against each other as the waves flowed out over the top of them. And what was happening at the time, Dr. Thackeray, was that my heart was calm enough and my mind clear enough to be able to hear something that subtle in nature. And my hope is, for everyone who's lost a loved one or experienced a deep loss that they too, will come to a point in their grief process when their heart can be calm, and their mind can be clear enough to hear those subtle sounds in nature.
17:08 Russell
Brilliant. And that's quite an aspiration. And I'm guessing you're going to say there's no target, there's no right time that takes. It takes the time it takes. You have to do the work almost, don't you?
17:23 Marv
You really do. It's about putting yourself in a position to experience the peace and the quiet of nature. But it's also doing the work, as you say, of really allowing yourself to hear what's going on, to hear your own heart and to listen to your own body and to your own mind enough so that you can actually engage your own grief process.
17:55 Russell
Yeah. You've talked very eloquently about it. You better tell us how to get one. How to get one of these books.
18:03 Marv
Thank you. It's quite easy. The publisher is Ballast. B-A-L-L-A-S-T books. If you look on Ballastbooks.com at the bookstore, on their website, it's available, but it's also available through Barnes and Noble, Amazon and all the other booksellers both in the US and in UK.
18:28 Russell
Good. Yes, I just found it. Now, I always check Amazon just in case that it's here, but it is over here as well, so that's brilliant. Well, thank you. It's been absolutely lovely. And if it reads as you talk, it'll be extremely eloquent and very compelling and hopefully quite deep as well. I'm going to buy myself a copy, so I'm going to have it on my holiday with me. So that'd be great
18:48 Marv.
Wonderful. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.
18:53 Russell
Absolutely. Thank you so much. And so, let's just recap on the bookshop and the reminders of the title, Where the Rocks Are.
19:01 Marv
When the rocks Sing There, you see?
19:04 Russell
That's why it's best for you to say the title. And can people get in touch with you directly? I mean, do you have a website of your own?
19:12 Marv
I'm on Facebook.
19:16 Russell
Great.
19:16 Marv
Just Facebook. Marv Weidner is spelled weidner and feel free to message me.
19:25 Russell
Brilliant. Thank you so much, Marv, and have a great rest of the day. Hopefully we've not got you up too early.
19:33Marv
Thank you.
19:33 Russell
You take care.