#1999 Navigating Grief - Rachel Pope

of decades now. I think no Undy Monday is like the lady equivalent for the girls in the netty anyway, anyway, probably Rachel Pipe didn't need to know any of that, high rage. Is it no Honday Monday for you? Or are you well and truly equipped? Well and truly equipped good? Just just checking tip hour? Is your weekend?

in Cessna's at seventeen. How on earth did you cope not with our phones, like knowing when I'm landed, when I you know, and my son's driving and you know he's got his car and just eighteenth, the year of eighteenth and things like that. Yes, yes, aliety is through the roof, you know, she said. I used to pace the floor. That's all we could do was paste the ploor. And it's just that next next season of parenting, you know, so not knowing where they are, what they're doing.

But I forgot you were a pilot. You were flying, You were flying when you were like seven a eighteen? Did you say like you were?

bean bag. It's over there by the typ pinball machine, next to the typ diet coke and the fridge that tip drinks. But in my ears, it sounds good like it sounds like the right distance. But this is this is the deception of headphones. For this, It's like, for you, I sound too close and too loud sometimes.

without doing a monologue of what's already been done. But just for those people who either didn't hear the first episode or our first chat or your story, who are unfamiliar with your story, which maybe they didn't hear it first time around, but also we've got a whole bunch of new listeners since then. Can you give us however long you want, doesn't matter if it's short or long, just your background, so when we start talking about what we're talking about, people have context.

An operation at ten paralyzed him from the waist down and so he could walk with calipers and different therapies up until then at the age of ten he was wheelchair bound. Wow, So that don't put a little perspective on my upbringing with incredible parents who gave him the most amazing, adventurous life breaking down those barriers around disability. So my brother Brett competed in games, he played table tennis, basketball, swim, lived in America, just did all the things and was very,

very independent. And I put that down to my parents. I can remember my mum talking about other people saying to her, why are you having all these other children and you've got a child with disability. And I feel that. You know, if you meet somebody who has had a sibling with a disability, or whether that be physical or a mental disability, they kind of got a different perspective from the get go. Growing upright as kids had things

to do with Bratt. My mum was up you know, a few times a night, and always his care and in hospital. One stage he was in hospital for a whole year in Melbourne and full halo traction. He's been in full body plaster on a trolley on the ground. This is in the sixties and seventies. Amazing man, and I write about him in my book as well. Sadly, he passed away in a car accident at the age

of thirty three. I was twenty wow, eight years prior to that when you lost my dad, so I was seventeen flying, had just stepped out into the world, graduate in high school. What's meant to be the most exciting time of your life? I had been flying. I had been accepted into the Royal Queensland Era Club and a bachelor program at Griffith, and I had always wanted to be a pilot. I had since about the age of twelve.

No one else in my family. Flew was very musical as well, and so much too, I think my parents investing so much money into music tuition. I auditioned for the Conservatorium, all the things, but I wanted to fly, and I got accepted and they were proud as punch, and so we had to start our flight training before YUNI started in the February. So right from just after Christmas January, I've got my private pilot's license. I was clocking up the hours, doing all the doing all the things.

It was only I think four of us females out of about one hundred guys doing the program. All the instructors were men. So that alone, you know, I learned a lot looking back on that time. Yeah, but there's a whole lot of stories around that, and females and flying in Australia is still about six percent the percentage at the moment, so that came with its own difficulties.

But three months after I started my flying, my dad was diagnosed with aggressive bowel cancer and he was basically sent home, no treatment, had an operation, basically sent home and he passed six weeks later. So it was very fast. Wow, and at seventeen, you are not equipped. I'm not how to deal with that. My dad was my king, you know,

being the youngest and only girl. I was princess with a very tight close family because of Brett as well, and he was forty seven and young, super young, So the only way I knew how to deal with that at the time, and I just remember a stream of people coming in and out of the house. His parents were still I came over from New Zealand, they're in their eighties to see him, and a stream of people coming in and out of house to see him, say he's goodbyes. I would get up in the morning, I'd

play him a piece on the piano. I'd get into my uniform and I would go out and I would fly, and I just, you know, I just I don't know. I do not know how I did that. I really really do not know. Head down, bum up. And then on the weekends I would go out and get trashed and drunk with all my UNI mats, because that's what you do when he's seventeen and eighteen in uniculture. And they didn't know how to support me. They didn't know one. They hadn't known anybody to pass maybe a grandparent. And

I just thought, I have to keep going. I have to make my day proud. I just have to keep going with this degree. I have to keep flying, keep and I was passing. I was, you know, I did defer some of the UNI component because I was a bit overwhelmed and I just head down, bump up, and just kept going. So it was very much to put it all under the carpet, don't talk about it. My friends are there for me when I had to cry,

and that was it. So then eight years later we lost Bratt in that car accident, and just to bring my grief story and what were the topic we're talking on today full circle. I gave up flying when my brother passed. That was a huge perspective moment for me on life. Career is what I really wanted to do. I looked on that conveyor belt of airline pilots. I had met my husband by then, and I thought, you know, I'm not too sure that's the lifestyle I want as a mum and wife. So that took a lot to

walk away from. And I ended up in early learning and bought a franchise after I had we got married, we had our kids, and I fell in love with early learning and neurological development and kids. I wanted to learn about my kids and their development, So we bought

a Gimbiree franchise for me. It was going to be an amazing, you know business for me, something that I love, something I could take my kids with they started school, we bought the franchise, and two weeks after we signed that paper and bought that business, a small business, my husband was diagnosed with the same cancer at the same age as.

and what was the prognosis ray your husband? Yes, what was his prognosis at that time?

information that's thrown at you. Now we did lots of things, and we had sixty months of him at home with the kids and he was amazing and handled you couldn't even actually tell he was He did a different series of chemo and things like that, He never lost his hair, was still riding his bike taking kids to school. Apart from you know, those downtimes in between and the week to look at he was a very fit, healthy. Mountain biking was his his outlet and he loved it. And yeah,

so right up until the very end. And then we spent a month in Sydney with a surgeon down there that was willing to operate on his liver because it's spread to his liver. When we were told that that wasn't going to happen because they found some more cancer up in the back of his neck. When he was told that, I think I saw the light kind of disappeared then, because he basically told, you know, we'll just do more treatment, prolonged quality of life, and that wasn't

for him. So we came home and he passed away two weeks later.

It is nice. It's like it's sad, it's trade, but it's nice and it's for a lot of people going to be very very relevant and very what's the word, very inspiring and very revealing, because I feel like, you know, we're not great at grief. I mean, you're the expert. I'm not the expert. But my second mom who is that's a weird thing. But my mum's best friend, who basically was my second mom, you know, growing up. She

died a couple of days after Christmas. And you might have heard me talk about this, but I sat with her, and she had about forty eight hours to live, and I sat in the hospital with her, just me and her, and I can remember nearly everything we said. And it was an hour and a half and it was profound and like I felt selfish, but I think she knew that I needed to be there to talk to her.

She probably didn't need I mean, she wanted to talk to me, but you know, it was self indulgent, but just spending that time with her and excuse me, saying all the things I needed to say or I wanted to say and vice versa was incredibly therapeutic. But I still think, you know, coming out of that and we've had even tiff. Have you thought about this? Sorry, Rach, we'll get back on, but we're still talking in the same space people that have been on this podcast, because

it's episode two thousand. In a few days, you know, Johnny Raffo, we had the beautiful Johnny Ruffo passed away, Danny Frawley, the amazing Danny Frawley, AFL player, AFL coach, a guy called Simon Hammond who was great. He written a couple of books. He was in marketing and branding. Simon and I were friends, and of course my friend Nima, who were very good friends. He passed away, and I

feel like there might be one more person. I'm just doing this Kerwin Ray of course of Kerwin, and I think, wow, it's like and that since we started this show, that's five people who sat here just like us, three now talking just like us three now, and they're gone, you know, they're gone. And I guess that's the thing is that there's no we've said this perform but there's no formula,

there's no three step plan. But back to you, Rate, you said that you've kind of like in the space of understanding grief and talking about grief and your awareness around it and how to help others, Like that's really developed and evolved in the last few years. Like what do you know now? What are you sharing now that you weren't a few years ago?

this grief all about? What's my future look like? So researching, reading, trying to find stuff online, googling, and coming across all these five stages. And that's something that I want to touch on because we touched on in the first episode.

I've learned so much more since then, and you know, different therapies that I'd had over the years that just really didn't work for me because of that lack of maybe empathy or lived experience on the other side of the table and textbook stuff and really wasn't talking about what I was actually feeling. So I started writing, started journaling and went to your retreat with Melissa, and my book was born and wrote that. Then after that, I thought, you know, how else can I help people? And I

need to do more. So I studied a bit more with the Grief Recovery Institute WA with amazing psychologists named Amanda Ambros and she taught me about action steps and the Grief Recovery method and this evidence based program that actually gives people tools to process any kind of unresolved grief. And I was like unresolved grief and also debunking that myth around the five stages, so if I can enlighten

because I know I didn't in the first episode. Those five stages of grief were written by Elizabeth Koobler Ross in her book on Death and Dying in the sixties, and what a lot of people don't know is that those stages were written at The paper was written for somebody with a terminal diagnosis who was faced with a terminal diagnosis on death and dying, someone who knows that

they're going to pass away. And so she studied and wrote about these common emotions that these people would move through in her amazing work in Prospice and things like that, so you can understand that denial, anger, acceptance if you know you're going to pass. And what happened after that is that these stages within misused, spread in different books and therapies as just the stages of grief, not the stages of someone who has been given a terminal diagnosis.

And yes we do experience some of those things, but it's not a linear train. It's not something that you know, we can experience as a griever. And we'll talk about all different types of griefs as well that we you know, go on. Because I can remember being told that and I'm like, well, it says depression is coming up next. I don't want to. I don't want to depression station.

You know, I'm a positive person. I have had gratitude with the perspective growing up with my brother Bred and having experienced those things and my resilience from just from flying, that teaches you so much as al you have to learn so much resilience. And I didn't want that to be told that. I'm like, no, I'm not going through these stages. Yes I feel angry sometimes, Yes I feel this sometimes, but that could all be in one day. And so when I learned this, it was just like, Wow,

what a light bulb. And how often people are told that, and how often then it can cause this mistreatment or also misunderstanding, And then they can withdraw, they can isolate because they're reading these things around grief and what their people are putting on them expected to be experiencing.

this condition, Craig's got the same condition. Therefore they both need the same pill or the same potion, and they need the same dose and they need it at the same time every day, and well, we know that's done

because we know that that doesn't work. But also, you know, with medicine for the mind for want of a better term, or healing for the mind, or healing for the soul or emotions or all three, or the body, it's like, well, even what you said there where you explained that the five stages of grief in inverted commas were she was actually talking about the person who was sick, not the people around the person who was sick or dying. Well,

that's an insight, that's a revelation there. But I think there's I think therapists and psychologists and psychiatrists and doctors in general, and I put not that I'm in that space, but even me who talks about this all the time, we need to be really careful what we say, because when you plan to seed in somebody's mind and they respect you and listen to you and look up to you, and you go, all right, well you know, Rachel, this is what's coming. Well how about we just let Rachel

be Rachel and see what evolves. And as she goes through the different things support her, love or encourage her rather than saying, well, you're at step two and step three is coming. I feel like that is the opposite of helpful and the opposite of aware. I feel like

that could actually do more damage than good. And you think about plus ebos and no cebos, you know, where we tell someone oh, you're actually this is going to make your lean, or this is going to make you less nauseous, or this is going to and then people take it and they believe it and it happens, you know. And then on the opposite of that, people tell you something negative and it isn't going to happen and it

isn't real, but it's something you create this experience yourself. Yeah, so it's it's precarious.

and health. And you will say that you will never give the same exercise, diet, nutrition plan to people standing side by side who could be physically look, you know, exactly the same or whatever, but want different, have different goals, have different body composition, makeup and everything and what you eat, and a day you will never go and say you need to eat what I eat in a day, and you'll get the same results and grief all relationships. You know.

In my work, I will empowering women to move beyond grief and loss. I will never tell a widow I know how you feel, because even though we've experienced the same eventship with my husband completely different to her relationship with her husband, her relationship with her in laws, her relationship with his brother, her relationship with their children. Whether they're being together or somebody who's widowed and they're being divorced, it's another whole grief scenario. He's still the father to

their children, but she's grieving their loss. So I will never tell another wind I know how you feel, because at best I know how I felt when the same event happened to me.

And just to put it really in a simple example, someone who loses somebody and the last conversation they had with them was an argument, you can imagine that their recovery and their set of tools that they need are going to be completely different to someone like you who sat bedside and had an amazing conversation with somebody that

you remember and was really profound. A child who loses a pet, if they were the one that left the gate open and that pet got out and was killed in that in a car accident, do you think that child is going to grieve differently to the sibling who didn't do that, because that child is going to have a whole set of other unresolved grief. And that's the power in you know, the work that I do with

helping people is understanding where resolved grief lies. And for the most part, when fond memories turn painful, there's usually some kind of unresolved grief there. And unresolved grief is almost always about things that we wish we could have said or done differently, or things we wish somebody else

could have it or done differently. And so you know, with the strange relationships and abuse and all that, the grief which we can touch on intangible losses, loss, loss of safety, loss of faith, loss of control, they're all

grief experiences. But yeah, just going back to that uniqueness and that no two people are saying it's therefore we cannot put grief in a box and give somebody a set of stages and say this is this is grief, and this is what and if you don't you know, if you don't move through these stages and both six months, one year, you're not feeling better. You haven't you moved on. It's been two years, it's been three years, it's been

ten years, it's been twenty years. Whatever I'm frame is for that person, if they you know, if they're feeling that way, then then that's whether isolation comes in, that withdrawal or maybe lead down to some you know, elements of depression because they think something's wrong with them.

and grieved differently. But then then on top of that, I think then there's personality, like the way people are wired, you know, for want of better for one of a more scientifically accurate term, like some people will go through the exact same or what appears to be a very similar experience, putting aside all of the other variables and

one and they'll both react completely differently. I wonder when you think about grief as an outcome of an event, someone passing away or somebody having you know, somebody finding out they're dying, or finding out they've just lost all their dough or as Tiff had to a couple of years ago, lose precious coaching, which how was coached like only four or five, six, six, And that totally out

of the blue, like totally healthy. Fine, and we won't replay that, but you know, just and I remember talking to her just after it happened, and I'm like, I'm pretty good at this shit. I'm like, I don't even know what to say. I mean, you know, you say what you're going to say, but nothing can undo it,

of course, and nothing can fix it, you know. I just think that, like, there are so many variables around the grief, around the way people grieve and for how long and what that looks like from the outside that you know. I think I told you a friend of mine was grieving. I think I said this last time

we were here. Maybe not, but anyway, his dad passed away and he was the oldest and the dude, like the oldest son, like five kids, and he was very stoic and like six months later and he was devastated, but just fucking coped, you know, just fucking batting down the hatches and suck it up. And Andy, six months later, still hadn't cried. And some of his family are like, what the fuck is wrong with you? What is wrong with you? Why are you not grieving properly? You know,

why you're not grieving like us? And he spoke to me about that, and yeah, I was just I'm like, dude, it's like, you're going to grieve how you're going to grieve.

You loved your dad, you miss your dad, You're sad as fuck, but you just you know, you can't get it wrong like this is not a test, you know, so I guess there's So how do you then know as a counselor or coach or advisor or you know whatever, you just when you're connecting, how do you know where to go in the conversation, where to go with advice or support?

our upbringing as well and our environment. Watch which generation was it of pushing stuff under the carpet, showing no emotions, never talking and having these conversations if that was modeled to us as well too. And I'll bust some myths around here as well with grief and what we're taught and what we're modeled the be strong, grieve alone, you know, don't don't be sad, don't be sad as a kid, don't be sad. Come and have a cookie, you know, replace the lost or something that might feel make you

feel good. In an instant, you hurt yourself or your bullied, or you know, don't feel sad, come and have some ice cream. Let's just just push that down with a bit of a sweet treat and we won't talk about the cause or why are you're feeling that way. Keep is another one, but you know, busting that myth, you've got to just keep.

you've got a business or whatever. You know. Also you've got to feed them, clothe them, and you can't walk around crying twenty four to seven, Like what about that? Broken people trying to support other broken people. That's got to be almost impossible.

you can remarry. And women in mind, it's around with pregnancy loss and child losses, you know, such a taboo topic, and those women feel so isolated in society because it's not talked about. Who wants to see a photo of a ultrasound on a mantlepiece for their memory, you know, and have these conversations, and so they get told that you know, at least you can try again, at least you know you can feel pregnant, at least you can have another child. Of all that, I educate people on

that one in particular. If there's anything that can come away from today and people not knowing what to say, is just never ever start something with at least.

how we deal with it. Or we go and get drunk alcohol or substance abuse, or we go shopping. It's called you know, it's called retail therapy. There's all these replacements, these short term energy relieving behaviors that we're modeled to. This is what happens when you feel bad, So we've got to push it down. We can't be sad. We definitely can't be sad in public. And then because we have this kettle of emotions and grief and things bubbling up inside of us, we don't know what to deal

with it. We substitute it with something else, and it's just so common. We all do it when we're feeling bad or feeling sad, or feeling guilty or feeling whatever it is. And so the key here is with me back to your question of how do you recognize where there's unresolved grief different personalities or where to start or how to help a grieving person is to see how they're actually emotionally regulating. Are they are they? Are they allowing their emotions to flow. It's okay to be sad.

You do not have to be strong. You have to be human, And you're right for me as a young widow, you know, a share and a sandwich was a good day, and I just knew I had no choice. I had to get up the books together my children and I write about my book. They saved my life dozens of times over literally under the cover of darkness, on my knees beside their bed, just I don't want I'm out like I was in survival mode and not surviving, not thriving. And it was one of those nights that I wrote

rak line in the sand here. I can't continue this way. I had my b strong mask on for three years and I sold my business and I knew that that was, you know, the first step to me regaining myself and

my identity back. And what that looked like for me, and because I was jumping in front of all these parents and kids, running back to back classes, singing on the top of my lungs the Hello song, and then running out of the back at lunchtime and you know, bailing eyes out, putting it all back together, coming back in being that happy. Be strong. You do not have to be strong. And as women especially were taught that

you just got to be strong for your kids. You've got to be this that, keep busy, do all these things. It's not helpful. And what happens if we do all this when as the years pass and we haven't taken any others of action, small action steps towards grief recovery and processing those emotions, looking at where there's forgiveness needed

or apologies in those relationship graphs around what was my relationship? Like, is there guilt there the kid with the gate or the argument that you had with somebody who dies suddenly, and you need to write that down, You need to process that because you're in control of that forgiveness. It's something you need to take action for yourself. And the reason for that is because what do we all want in life? We want more joy? We want more happiness, We want to invite joy into our life. We want

to experience wholehearted living. And if we have so much with this unresolved grief, carrying it around in our bodies physically as well as emotionally, then we're blocking that capacity for more joy. And then that was me for many years, with that victim mentality and attaching myself to widow pen and living that life of I can't see it. I can't you know, how am I going to experience joy again? I did not know what that would look like?

I would that that was my way of like, oh, by the way, so if I if I short for myself, my you know, and what you teach, and if I am not reaching my full potential and giving myself the best opportunity, Yeah, was this kind of crutch for me and so and you know when you meet people who are in so much pain, and I'm in groups and those groups have widow groups, and that's where I started was looking and finding and some of them were just I can't stay here because I can't see any progression.

I can't see any I see a safe spaced event, and that's needed. And I'm not taking away from these amazing you know, Facebook groups and things I'm talking about.

not actually a positive. It's like they just re open the wound every Tuesday at two thirty and then they feel shitit for four days, then they start to feel good. Then they come back and they reopen the wound next Tuesday. I'm not saying it's good or bad. I'm saying that's how some people respond to it. One of my mates did it for six months and swears that it's just made him worse right now. I don't think that's the fault of the therapist. I think that's just his personal interaction.

Do you feel like you need to be around be around people who drag you up? Not that that's their job to elevate you, but you know, there's a point

where talking about your stuff becomes destructive not productive. Whether or not that scree for whether or not that's the business that you lost, or whether or not that's your body, or like, how often are you going to talk about you know, your body, Brian, just fucking get in the gym and train, Like we've had a million conversations about your food in your like literally some of my friends go.

Don't ask me any more things about your body, you diet, your health, your fitness, you're training, because you don't do anything. I love you, but just start, you know, like, when does that talking become redundant?

name that's hard to pronounce. And I found her and she was just five years down the road from me, and she was a positive person, but she was also very raw and talking about blended family and this and the struggles were real and all of this, but she had turned her pain into purpose and was encouraging and had this amazing community, and I just it was just like,

oh wow. And she was a similar age and I could just see, you know, when you see someone that's just that little bit further down the road from you on the same path, and that gives you hope. And that's all I needed to switch that light was just hope that okay, she's doing okay. She looks like she's doing okay, her kids look like they're doing okay. And it was just that five years further down that I and all of a sudden, I thought, Okay, you know

that's positive. That's something I can hold on to. I can check into that space and it can give me a bit of hope, and she can give me some ideas. And she'd written a book, so I ordered her book. And so surrounding yourself with people that drag you up, obviously, yes, that's a positive for everyone. Similar to when you touched on about having that same conversation with people you have to want to. I call it the emotional jail. You know,

we can hold ourselves. I know I've been there in fitness as well, where they give you all the tools, they give you all the things. It's the programs, they're just do it. Here's the nutrition. But what I've found a lot too with pts is they don't address the emotional. They don't address that have that lived experience. They don't address why you're falling off the wagon every weekend, like everybody says, you know, and they're like, well, I've given you this, it's easy, just do it. Just given it

to you one hundred times. But they never ever have the skills to address the emotional reason why, which is often unresolved grief and where they're not feeling that and they're storing it. They're feeling safe. They could be an abusive relationship, that could be you know, have just lost all these things. They are an emotional eating or not

even doing that. They're doing all the nutrition things, but their nervous system is so wired for protection literally will not release from their body and then well in menopause, which is, you know, something else I've had to learn all about in the last you know, a couple of years. I turned fifty last year, and so stored grief in the body is a physical thing. Grief attacks. I've had several where I've ended up in hospital with severe pain

in my side. I thought I had appendicitis. Three months after they passed and I ended up in hospital and I'd had some I can't remember the medical term. Literally my stomach was in knots like nerve things, omnial infarcation or something. It's the apron of your tummy and it presented as a pendicitis and in the corner of that muscle group there was my stomach was literally not physically and there was no treatment other than it wasn't an infection or anything. It was just to let it itself

and some I don't know, pain relief. I was in there for a couple of days, so you know that was a grief attack and my body was just like three months in. This is impossible. And so unless we address all these emotional issues around everything in life, in our why we're stuck in business, why we're stuck in health, why we can't lose the weight, it's often an emotional response, right, or something that.

and the emotion of getting in shape. Even though I'm an excise scientist, I go, hey, I can tell you how to lift and how to run, and how to stretch, and how to eat and how to adapt your muscles to progressive overload night and talk about biomechanics, anatomy and physiology, and I know all that shit, right, But what we really need to figure out is why you keep eating shit food why. What we really need to figure out is how come you keep joining gyms and not following through.

We need to think about your relationship with your body. We need to think about your relationship between your body and your mind and your emotions and your habits and behaviors over time. We need to figure out why you eat food that you don't need and you know you don't need it, while simultaneously wanting to be leaner or healthy or fitter like it's trying to understand all the psychology and emotion that underlies the behaviors that fuck us up and.

you've got to manage your mind. But no, I actually think your mind and all the byproducts of your mind, which is actions and behaviors and rules and habits and rituals and good shit and bad shit, like, all of those behaviors are byproducts of your thinking and your choices. And the consequence is, oh, now I'm out of shape, Oh now I've got disease on now I'm living in a body that doesn't work. Well, they're the consequences, right, They're the symptoms of the underlying shit. We don't deal

with the underlying shit. We deal with the obvious consequences rather than going, oh, you need to eat more or eat less or run more. Well, maybe, but maybe we need to figure out why the fuck you keep self sabotaging and killing yourself. Let's figure that out. So I think that's that intersection of all of that.

this therapy it's not counseling. Was because in her practice she found, for the most part of people coming in, no matter what they were talking about the problems in their life, the most common underlying cause or you know, way that they were feeling that way or not moving forward was unresolved grief. And I just want to touch on you know, if I was to ask you, what do you think of the top five grief events in

someone's life? You know, what would you say they are? Like, give five common things when somebody says I'm grieving or its grief, what I think that would be?

I had an injury and they can no longer do that activity. But yeah, that's all in there. And the top five divorces is oneviously there in the top five loss of a loved one, But there are over forty three other losses that we address, and some of them are tangible like that still death, divorce, pet loss, moving,

moving state, moving house. Wow, And consider a kid growing up who moves twenty times because of their dads in the military or something, or they move house twenty times, and that child is told every time, don't be sad. New friends. It's all logical and true. But he's grieving the old friends. He's grieving. She grieving, or child grieving the bedroom or that favorite house that they love, safe, the neighborhood. And then all of a sudden, I got to pick up and start again, new school again, make

new friends again, experience whatever there is around that. Or you know, as an adult, moving and moving away from your support network and you don't have family and friends around you. Empty nest is another one, right one, Oh yeah about face. And my son's going to travel overseas next year, and and my daughter's already moved out of home.

And it's just that role. It's that that that grieving, that role as a mother, as a parent, that you're the caregiver, you're cooking for them, you're doing things, and then suddenly you're sitting there you're not And for a couple of couples, I'm doing it solo. But for couples, they're all of a sudden, they're sat there looking at each other. What do we do now we don't have all these kids to run around and look after and

drive and all of that. And then the intangible ones that Tiff just touched on, which I think is really important. Loss of safety, loss of trust when it comes to abuse or childhood abuse, things like that, loss of control of their situation. Somebody who's in and out of foster homes or whatever has experienced sexual abuse as a child, or parental abuse, things like that, or just even in unhealthy upbringing relationships, domestic violent situations. Loss of fertility is

another intangible one. Somebody who can't have children and they find that out. Pregnancy loss is a big one people don't talk about. So there's so many things that as

a society we don't see as a grief event. And also in the last year I've become an ambassador for Griefine Australia and one of their major programs is brief literacy in the workplace and supporting workplaces because we're not taught how to support a colleague and we might not recognize, you know, they lost they lost a baby in early stages or something, and they're like, oh, you know, that's I feel sad for them, but it's that may not be you know, what I'd consider a grief event, will

give them a day off work. You know they need to recover physactly, but to that person. But you know, imagine what's behind that scenario. And so in the workplaces, you know, we're given one day off for a funeral and then we're told to come back and pretend nothink's happened and able to have those conversations supporting each other. So there's this whole, you know, list of grief and

loss events that we experience all throughout our life. Put that into compounded loss like I, you know, I had compounded loss in anticipatory grief where you may be caring for a parent with dementia Alzheimer's and that goes on for years and years and years, and you're grieving the loss of what the person that they were to you beforehand, that you know that's a vibrant your mum or your dad, and all of a sudden they're not that person anymore.

And there's also anticipatory loss of illness caring for somebody where you know that that's imminent and you have to grieve pre grief the event, knowing that it's going to happen and how to deal with that. So it's so complicated and so layd and I guess for the most important thing is to recognize other events in our life. For us. When I do my workshops, I get people to write down. They might come into my workshop because they just lost their mum and they think to address

this or whatever. And then when we say, well, let's look at some other losses here up on the board, and let's has anyone experienced any of these, and they're yes, oh yeah, and oh yeah, I forgot about that as a child, because often we push all that stuff away from our memories. And so when they experience a new grief event like a death, which is what everyone recognizes is grief, they wonder why there's all this other underlying stuff bubbling up. And it's often because we haven't. It's

stuff from childhood. And almost everyone who comes to me as a client with a recent loss, they will ninety nine point nine percent end up working on something else. Yeah, los, something else.

don't get it like we think. And I've said, I've spoken about this had nause in but you know, there's this idea or this construct in psychology called the false consensus effect, and it just means that we think that other people think like us, or they should think like us, right, And I might go through something that I go through a thing and it devastates me for a week or two, and somebody else looks at me and the thing that I went through and they're like, I understand that you're sad,

but that's just way disproportionate, you know what I mean. It's like looking through their eyes or their window of what is they wouldn't or they tell themselves, they would not respond like I do, which are not good or bad. It's just different. And I think that, like you know, the human experience is that we are always looking at other people and their experiences and their situation and the context of what they're going through and their behavior and

their response. But we're always looking through our window, you know. I'm always looking through the Craig window at what Rachel's doing. So it's very much in my interest and your interests, especially with your job and TIFF's job, to try to understand others, not necessarily to judge them or to agree with them, but just trying to understand how do they think, what is this moment like now for them? Not how

would I respond? Wtter give fuck out? You would respond, it's not about you for the moment, like how are they feeling?

And so I'm sitting there on my fucking high horse at Craig Central, going well, I think that's a little bit, you know, over the crop, But I think that that kind of situacial and emotional intelligence and awareness that I talk about quite a lot, and probably because it was something I needed to get and still need to get better at. But there's not a lot of that going on sometimes, no.

have lost their grandparents, their grandmother. One person has met their grandmother twice in their life because they live in Italy and they come over twice on a holiday and they met them and they've just lost their grandmother. And the other person, the grandmother has lived in their house their whole life. Yes, and so immediately we think, you know of that, Oh you lost your grandma. Yeah, I

did two last year, you know. And those two situations chalk and cheese completely at the different ends of the spectrum when it comes down to relationships. And it's all about relationships. So let's ask some more situational where questions, what sort of relationship did you have with your grandma, like you know, did you see her lots or what was her name or and let's just get some context before then we jump in with that. Yeah that idea, like you said, in your mind, well, okay, that's your

she lived a good life and whatever. I lost my grandma last year too, and whatever. And so being situationally aware, how is how where does this sit in their life? Like you said, be present, be listening and listening about how they're feeling about this situation before we could judge the scale of what we would think it would be for us. Exactly right. And yeah, if we don't know what to say or we don't know how to help because we have been experienced, I don't know what to say.

I say that when people share with me about pet and and you know, the loss that tip had is that because I've never experienced that I had a pet, you know, one dog when I was little girl. I had a pet since. So I do not understand the complexities. I can, at my best imagine and be in people's lives to understand how much that pet is a part

of their family. So I will never say to somebody, you know, oh, gosh, I know how you feel with that, you know, I lost this life because and so it's just gosh, I don't know what to say, you know, but what can I do? And maybe we can touch

on those things. So having those conversations around what can we do to support colleagues, what can we do to support family members when they're going through something like that of any one of those losses, and to not open our minds as to it's not just death, it's not just divorce that people are experiencing grief and loss in

a number of ways. Is to acknowledge, just acknowledge it first of all, to not ignore it as something or dismiss it or compare like you said, because comparing Rob's dignity of a person's loss, and to not jump in so I acknowledge it, you know, listen, look for cues as to how they're coping with the situation, where are they at, and then being present for them, and just to keep showing up and saying, I don't know what

to say, but I'm here for you, you know. Is there something on your list that I can do for you in these coming weeks? Is there something I can take care or for you depending what your relationship is with this person, and then we need to educate in workplaces, we need to have those people in place. We need to have somebody that is a kind of a grief

gatekeeper for that person. That's experience that can be for the workplace because they can buy all buy them flowers or whatever on one day and then the next day, but that gatekeeper can then maybe check in with that person, and that's part of their role in the workplace and in an office or whatever to go, I'm just going to go and check in on this person and maybe they're not doing so well. They can recognize that, and then then they can because that person also doesn't want

to come into work. They're trying to, you know, get back to normal, they're trying to put on a smile, they're trying to do all these things. So they don't want to have these conversations in a workplace scenario because they know it's not a you know, it might not be appropriate. But if there's that gatekeeper, then they can say actually, and then that person then can go talk to people. And so we need to put some more

things in place. Maybe they need a half day, maybe they need to be able to just leave whenever they want to have some time, or they might need a support phone call with somebody. So yeah, it's just about having those conversations and being, like you said, situationally aware.

on the grass with the dog. I'm fucking the dog's loving me. I'm looking the dog, the dog's looking me. It's all going on. There's fucking dopamine central, right, And then I'm like, what is my apprehension? And I realized it. I don't want to lose the dog. Like before I get the dog, I'm worried about losing the dog. I'm already going I don't want to be sad. I don't want to go through grief. I'm not going to love

that dog. Fuck that dog. That dog's not coming because I know how much I'm going to love the dog. And then from day three, all I'm going to it's not but you know, like it kind of it is a bit it. As we were going through this, I was thinking, when, especially when we spoke about Tiff losing coach, I'm like, oh God, anyway, on that uplifting note, we'll say goodbye our fair but Tiff, Rach thank you so much. Appreciate you both and we'll catch up again soon.