There is no one way to experience grief and loss. Anna Lindberg Cedar MPA LCSW talks with Brie Pierquet LCSW about her experience counseling survivors through loss and making sense of grief. Brie shares simple self-care suggestions for coping with a loss, including ways that loved ones can play a supportive role. Anna interviews Brie about the many ways that “moving on” from grief can look so different from person to person. Listen in to learn about the diversity and beauty that grief can reveal. Personalize your own self-care activities as you listen to practical ways to make sense of a traumatic loss. This is not therapy. This is Real Life. Learn more about the Bay Area counseling practice and self-care resources: TherapyForRealLife.com .

Terrible, Thanks For Asking - Nora McInerny's amazing and award-winning podcast will make you feel less alone in your grief, and also remind you that it is OK to laugh!

Show Description: You know how when someone asks "How are you?" you just say "Fine,” even if you’re totally dying inside, so everyone can go about their day? “Terrible, Thanks For Asking” is the opposite of that. Nora McInerny asks real people to share their complicated and honest feelings about how they really are. It’s sometimes sad, sometimes funny, and often both.

It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand 

Megan Divine reminds us in this book that all feelings are OK after a loss, even the ones that don't feel "OK." 

Book Description: 

When a painful loss or life-shattering event upends your world, here is the first thing to know: there is nothing wrong with grief. "Grief is simply love in its most wild and painful form," says Megan Devine. "It is a natural and sane response to loss."  So, why does our culture treat grief like a disease to be cured as quickly as possible?

In It’s OK That You’re Not OK, Megan Devine offers a profound new approach to both the experience of grief and the way we try to help others who have endured tragedy. Amazon Affiliate sponsored link. 

Living With Grief  - Therapy For Real Life Self-Care Checklist 

Article Intro: "Living with grief…" For someone experiencing overwhelming grief, it can be challenging to figure out exactly how to do that. There are as many different ways to grieve as there are losses in this world. Even the same loss will be experienced many different ways because we each have a unique relationship with the person who has died. While there is no one way to grieve, there are things that you can do to cope with the process of grief. Find the way that works for you...

WhatsYourGrief.com - A website dedicated to grief and self-care resources.  

Website Intro: 

To put it simply, this website is about grief. That probably sounds oversimplified, but grief is a complex, heavy, frustrating, scary, enormous…ahem, big topic. It starts with a death and envelopes everyone from family to friends, to friends of family and friends. Not only is grief an emotional, logistical, and existential nightmare, but it is taxing. It requires us to navigate the world without someone important, deal with complex feelings and emotions, and figure out ways to move forward when everything seems kind of bleak.

PsyCom.net - A website dedicated to information and resources for a diversity of mental health conditions. 

Website Intro: 

Psycom publishes only high-quality editorial. Our content is fact-checked for accuracy and produced by mental health professionals, people living with mental illness, veteran writers, and editors.

-- (Please excuse any transcript typos. Transcribed by AI! ) --

Anna Lindberg Cedar, MPA, LCSW: 

What does self care look like when life does not go the way that you expected? Welcome back to the Therapy For Real Life Podcast. This is not therapy. This is Real Life. I'm your host Anna Lindberg Cedar, MPA, LCSW. And I'm very happy to have with me today Brie Pierquet, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and she's here to talk about her experience working with individuals in the grief process. Welcome to the show. Brie, would you tell our listeners just a little bit about yourself and the work that you do in grief? 

Brie Pierquet, LCSW
Sure. And Anna, thank you so much for having me. I think this is a very important and very under discussed topic. Before I was a therapist in private practice, I worked as an acute care social worker in a few different hospital settings, where much of our work was around grief and loss and adjustment to illness as well. But we did see a fair amount of trauma and grief and loss. And so through that work, it became a clinical interest to be working with people who are experiencing various types of grief.

Anna
And let's pause -- let's unpack that word 'grief' a little bit, because that seems like a really big concept. And you already just in that little intro about some of your experience, mentioned that people can experience grief in a number of different situations. I think most traditionally, we think of grief when someone has died. But you even get to the example of adjustment to illness. Can you talk a little bit about that word 'grief' and what that actually means? 

Brie
Sure, and you're absolutely right, that when we talk about grief, the first thing that most of us think about is death and dying. And that's probably one of the most common types but we really have grief in many different places. We might I'd be thinking about pet loss, which is a really significant form of grief that isn't talked about very much. We have traumatic material loss, which is an opportune time to talk about that, given the fires that are happening in Northern California, right now not far from where we are. We also have loss of a life that once was and that you might see in the loss of relationships, job loss, divorces, different things like that. So really, anytime that there is some kind of loss, you can have grief. 

Anna 
I think that's really important to name and describe because I find as a therapist, when people often come through my doors, they're saying things to me, like, "I don't know why this feels like such a big deal. Other people have moved on, and I haven't...", and sometimes we really have to put more words to what was actually lost. Do you find that to be true that some people will come to and they're initially talking about a grief or a loss. But then you have to define a little bit further with them what was lost? You know...  say a certain kind of childhood that they wish they could have had ? Or perhaps the opportunity to say something to a loved one that was lost? What has your experience been with that? 

Brie
Oh, for sure. And grief is so incredibly complicated. And unfortunately, I think in modern American society, we don't do very well at addressing the negative emotions that often comes with grief. I think most of us can remember a time where we were told as children that if somebody asked us how we were doing, the acceptable responses ranged from "I'm doing well" to "I'm doing fantastic." And if you said something like, "Oh, I'm really sad or I don't feel good, you were told you were being rude." So that's just an example of part of the way that our American culture doesn't acknowledge some of these negative feelings and grief is complex. And everybody's experience with it is very, very different. So somebody may lose a grandparent, for example to death and one person might be able to process that as it's okay. They had a good life. They were, you know, maybe over 100 years old, where somebody else might experience the death of the grandparent who perhaps raised them. And it's a much closer relationship. So the grief takes a different form.

Anna 
Isn't that often the case that when you talk about someone coming to terms with their own grief, a lot of times it is very present focused and actually wrapped up in the relationships with the other survivors? So you talked about how, you know in multi generational families, it might be very typical to process grief in one way, and then another person, it might present a totally different way. What has your experience been working with family members as they have had to negotiate that in terms of how they express or sometimes it feels like a performance as they perform their, their grief in, in the larger community?

Brie
Well, it's been an interesting, both as a social worker and a medical setting as an individual therapist and just experiencing grief personally, the very different ways that people experience it and talk about it. And something that I hear often is that people will avoid talking about it because they think it makes others feel uncomfortable. And to an extent, it probably does, it's an uncomfortable topic! It can be, you know, difficult and sad to see other people expression expressing difficult emotions. But something what is so important is that those people aren't looking for it to be fixed. They're not looking for someone to say I understand because the fact of the matter is, they don't understand that specific person's grief even if they've experienced a similar loss. There are looking for somebody to say, "I hear you, I see you and I know that this loss matters for you."

Anna 
And I'm wondering how have you helped those folks integrate what they're learning in therapy about processing that grief back home in their communities and families? 

Brie
Yeah, that's a great question. There's a couple of different models that I think most of us are familiar with for grief processing. The most common one that we all learned in Social Work school was the five stages of grief, from Elisabeth Kubler Ross. And just for people who may not be familiar, those are denial, which is the "This can't be happening" belief that life no longer makes sense and almost like a depersonalization of what has happened. There's anger, where you might be saying "Why me? Life is so fair or so unfair." You might be wondering if you're a spiritual person, "Why God would do this to you and your family?" There's also bargaining. An example of that is, you know, "Please God, if you can make my husband better, I promise to live a certain way of life for the rest of my life." Depression, which is that emptiness that hopelessness you feel when you realize that somebody that you care about, or something that you cared about is gone forever. And then finally, acceptance, where you might say, "I'm going to be okay, even though this change has happened." 

And there's a very common misconception that Kubler Ross intended these stages to be linear, and they they're not. But what has happened, I think, and what I've experienced with with clients and patients that I've worked with in the past, is that they really grappled with trying to understand how can I be acceptance if I haven't been angry, and I'm not angry? And so that model tends to be a little bit more difficult for people, I think because it feels very linear, even though that wasn't the intention to begin with. 

Anna 
What do you tell people when you explain that model to them about that to help them understand what might feel useful to them? And is it a kind of a permission giving that you give them to take the parts that feel most relevant to them? Or is there anything else that you try to help them understand when you share some of these tools around grief? 

Brie
So there's actually a model that I prefer and that I use with my clients, called the Dual Process Grief Model. And that was developed by Margaret Stoebe and Henk Schut in 1999 (editor's correction: 1995). They presented this paper actually as a direct criticism of some of the traditional frameworks and this idea that grief is a linear process. 
The idea behind the dual process grief model is that we do what we call restoration oriented activities and loss oriented activities. And the skill is not being just in restoration, or just in loss. It's the idea of being able to flexibly go back and forth between the two. So for example, when you're in loss oriented, that's where you might feel your denial, your anger, the bargaining, all of those things that come with the stages of grief from cooler Ross. That's where we have funerals, we might be in a period of mourning. Some cultures have official periods of mourning. And then restoration oriented activities are the parts where that's where acceptance comes in. And you might be able to say, "Okay, I can do this, I can move forward." You might be rebuilding your life. 

In cases of material loss, you might be rebuilding a house, you might be, you know, rebuilding some other kind of infrastructure and supports. And the idea is that you're not going to go from loss and then stay in restoration. You're going to have periods of time where you go back and forth. 

Anna 
Hmm, I really like that way. Is Thinking about grief and for listeners of the podcast who are following along and interested in Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which we've talked a lot about on the show that includes a core dialectic. And basically a dialectic is is just saying that two seemingly opposite truths can exist at the same time. And with Dialectical Behavior Therapy the the core dialectic that we're balancing is that sometimes in life, you do need to change situations for the better and use problem solving skills. And there are other occasions where you actually have to sit in acceptance. And so when you talk about that dialectic of restoration, and change versus really sitting with the loss that you're confronting, that resonates with me when I think about the dialectics that we have to balance in life more broadly, and doesn't it make sense that the dialectics would show up in grief You're balancing a lot of different complicated feelings at once.

Brie

For sure. And something that I also really appreciate this model is that it without necessarily saying so eliminates the idea of a timeline brief. And it really encompasses the idea that you might be in one area now, but later, you know, down the road, you could go back to the other. And you're not striving to get to the next level, so to speak, your understanding how to navigate these two very important pieces. And there's actually fewer of them to think about when you when you think of it as a dual process because all the other things fall into either restoration or loss oriented. And, again, your goal is not necessarily to get to one and not stay in the other. It's the ability to understand that you'll go back and forth and that grief is not something that you overcome. Or recover, you can recover from it in the sense that you learn how to go back and forth more effectively. But this is something grief stays with you. You know, grief often comes with trauma, you know, the intersection of grief and trauma is significant as well. 
And so one of the things I talked about with clients is the idea that you can coexist with grief, you're not going to beat it necessarily, but you can still be grieving the loss of something, you know, kind of getting back to your dialectic while you're moving forward with your life. 

Anna
And it's that very balance. That's the thing that you're here doing. I like that it almost it gives you a new focus, doesn't it? 

Well, I'm the name is escaping me now who came up with the another model of grief that I find really useful when I'm working with clients. It's the Four Tasks of Grief (editor's note: developed by William Worden), and I really liked that one. I think it overlaps a lot with the store model that you're talking about. And it agrees and says that grief is a very active process rather than the sum of the stages of grief that you might flow through. 

This model of the four tasks of grief makes grieving a very active process. And so it encourages you to think about, you know, your responsibilities as you manage that grief. So let me see if I can remember, all for in order: 1) is to accept the reality of the loss. So we're seeing that acceptance is showing up all over the place. And we are talking about reality acceptance here not "I like it," "I approve of it." or "I'm happy that it happened this way." We're just talking about what is the reality here. 

Okay. 2) is processing the pain of the loss. So not only did it happen, but here's exactly how it was painful and we talked about that notion of grief. That's going to contain a lot of the experiences and things that we didn't have a chance to have. 

3) or third job was grief is to accept the reality of this world without that person in it. So this is that old saying life, "life goes on." And we have to come to terms with that. 

4), is maintaining a connection with the person who was lost. So this is it's a combo, you're going to do tasks one, two, and three, but you're also going to make room in your life for that, that your connection with that person to go on or when we talk about non death, losses and grief. Sometimes it's maintaining a connection to a hope or an idea. So we could talk about relationships, relationship, grief or breakup. I've seen a lot of people go through the divorces, and try to figure out what their worldview is going to be after the fact. Sometimes they're tempted to think something along the lines of, well, you know, there's no one out there for me and I may as well not trust anyone. For them, that last task of grief might be reinvigorating hope of finding someone to trust again, and to even fall in love with. It's not to saying it'll happen right away, but you are maintaining a connection with yourself that was exercised through that relationship. Have you ever used that model before? Some of those ideas indirectly?

Brie
You know, because again, I think that the the dual process model that I tend to lean towards encompasses a lot of those, but what's really interesting also with some of the idea of acceptance is again, like you said, you're not saying that this is okay and that you agree with what has happened or that you are fond of what has happened, it's merely saying that you acknowledge that it did happen. And from a cognitive behavioral standpoint, one of the things that we often do using your example is maybe the automatic thought of, I'm never going to fall in love again, nobody will ever want to be with me, that is something as therapist that is a little bit more tangible that we can work on with clients is sort of unpacking some of those negative automatic thoughts that as we know, influence, behavior and emotion. 

Anna
And this is where we can draw from the age old art of storytelling, right. So that whole theory behind cognitive behavioral therapy says that the way we feel is based on how we think about a certain situation. So you can in fact, train your brain to make sense and make meaning even of a painful loss. And this is where we might look to cultural narratives. I've heard you know, people talk about what it means to have a quote unquote, good death. And you as a survivor of someone who's died, you might choose to focus on those parts of what that person did have or how they found comfort, or in the case of painful losses, you might choose to focus on the memories that are most comforting and soothing from from the past. And that's interesting to think about the narratives that folks bring when they when they think about grief. 

Brie
And oftentimes, when I'm starting a grief work with people, you know, one of the first things I want to acknowledge is that there are no platitudes that are going to make the person feel better. It's also important that we remember that it usually when somebody experiences some kind of loss, they do want to talk about it. When it's in the context of a loved one that they have lost to death -- One of the biggest fears most people have is that that person's going to be forgotten. And one of the things that really comes up for me, and this is when we're talking about infant and pregnancy loss, one of the fears that expectant parents often have is that nobody's going to remember their child. 
And it's incredibly important that we remember that when talking to folks, not only is us talking to them about it, not going to "remind them of the pain," they will never forget the pain. But it's also acknowledging that their child existed and that their child mattered and that their child isn't going to be forgotten. And that's a topic that's extremely difficult in our culture, because it's something that most people are so afraid of, that they really would rather not broach the topic. 

Anna 

Yeah, yeah, I think that's definitely true. And so when we go back to that relationship frame, and remember the fact that, you know, we are as human beings we are her animals and we feel comforted in groups of people, especially during times of pain and loss. And, of course, there's going to be a balance there between things that you do on your own for self care and things that you do as part of relationship care with grief. What advice would you give to people who are looking for a way to process their grief and pain? Knowing that loved ones may have the best intentions, but might not always know what to say? Or how to be supportive? How do you coach individuals who are going through a grief to help them get the support that they need from loved ones? What do you encourage them to say or do or ask that helps them get their needs met in relationship to others?

Brie
Well, something I think is really important, really, in any kind of crisis. Is that your first job, you know, first and foremost is to survive and in order to survive any kind of pressure We need to be attending toward basic needs such as food, shelter, lodging, hydration, all of those things to keep us actually living. And sometimes when you're dealing with a significant loss, and that can be the termination from a job from a lifelong career, we can be talking about retirement, we could be talking about kids moving out of the house, one of the hardest things to do is to just put one step in front of the other and move forward or even move sideways. So addressing those basic needs first and thinking if I do nothing else today, besides eat and drink, and breathe, I've been successful, because each day that you do that, other things will eventually follow. So that's the first I think the most important thing... 

and let's just say folks may even want to put reminders in their phone to eat or maybe even tell other people. "It's okay if you ask me if I've eaten or bring me a plate of food " because we say that as if it is a really simple and obvious thing and yet, during a grief, a lot of those basics go right out the window. 

I think another thing with that that's also really important is that it is okay that you're not okay. And it is okay for your family members and friends to address you in such a way and to to say to you, it is okay that you're not okay. We don't expect you to be right now. And that you know how not okay, somebody is may vary depending on how difficult loss was, you know, thinking about there's been a few recent situations in the media that I've seen of young people losing a spouse to traumatic accidents. And the idea of being widowed in your 30s is absolutely absurd. Nobody is prepared for that. That is a very different kind of grief than perhaps a different kind of loss.

Anna 

That is what we call an out of order life event. Right? Maybe you knew it would be coming someday. You just didn't know what's going to happen in this decade. 

Brie
And something else with that there's this idea of disenfranchised grief. And those are the losses that, for one reason or another don't necessarily feel widely accepted by society. Or really good example of this that I can think of an hour mark modern culture is how most companies will give us three to five bereavement days off of work. Now, if you are somebody who just lost their spouse, you're not going to be ready to return to work in five days. If you've lost a pet, there's a very good chance five days is not going to be enough. And so what will often do is hold things in and try to pretend that we're okay and try to move forward and function in a in a society that hasn't accepted that these are quote unquote, real losses. And there's cultural factors, you know, that play into that I've worked with cultures where pets are not considered part of the family, and so they don't grief pets the same way other cultures do. But those are some examples of sort of the disenfranchised grief. Now I think we can also unintentionally make a grief disenfranchised by how we respond to somebody else's. 

Anna 
How would you, what would you say to people who are trying to be supportive to someone during their grief? What could they say, to leave space for whatever experience that person is having? 

Brie
For those folks, I would say, you know, there's no expectation at all to understand. There's nothing that is going to fix it. There's nothing that will make it better for the person other than knowing that they're not alone. And that whatever it is that has happened to them is normal. No grief is one of the emotions in life that every single one of us at one point or another are going to deal with and It's one thing to say I hear you. I don't you know, I don't blame you for how you're feeling right now. But understanding is very different. And you don't have to say you understand. And I do think that's why some people avoid the topic, because they don't want to tell the person "I don't understand." 

Anna 

That can even be triggering for some people to hear. I know where you're going through I understand even if that person has been through a loss of their own grief is really like an individual snowflake. Each one is totally different and unique to that relationship. 

Brie

For sure. And it this is something that I've had many people tell me is one of the hardest things that they've had to deal with is either telling someone "Well, actually, this is not the same thing. And in cases of some more rare types of losses, I think you see that a little bit more, you know, trauma, traumatic events, things that don't happen very often. You hear that a little bit more, and just the idea that well, and I think thinking of us as clinicians to understand that we have to kind of keep our own experience with grief and check and understand what somebody else's grief may bring to us. For example, if you are a therapist that has dealt with a specific kind of lost even recently, hearing that from a client may trigger emotions in you, and we want to avoid a situation where a client is trying to console us.

Anna 
Oh yeah, yeah, you don't want to. And that's true, I would say for family members too that, oftentimes for the person going through grief, it's hard for them to open up and be really vulnerable for fear that then the person they're talking to is going to break down and and they will have to take care of them. And actually one of the questions that I ask when I'm working with someone who's going through grief, and I use this question in my personal life as well, just to signal to the other person, you know, "I'm here and available to be supportive," just to signal to them. "Yeah, it's okay, I can handle this, I can hear about it." I'll ask them, you know, "What's the most painful part of this grief for you? What's the absolute worst part of it?" It's kind of going back to that idea of, "it's okay to not be okay". And in fact, I do want to hear about the most painful part of it. A lot of times what comes out of that is really surprising. So, you know, there might be the loss of a specific person, but sometimes the most painful part of it is, you know, I never got a chance to say this important thing that I wanted to say to them, or that person will never get to see me become a parent. That is actually the most painful part of it. So there are ways that when we're talking to someone and supporting someone through a grief that we can actually signal to them look, "It's okay we can we can actually have this conversation." 

Brie
And you know, piggybacking on that as well, you know, we we don't know how each of us are going to respond to certain losses until they happen. And you may be talking with someone who is experiencing anger, and may react to things that are, you know, very well intentioned examples of that, that come up that I hear from clients are when somebody tells me, "This person's in a better place," or "I'm better off." "It wouldn't have worked out anyway." You know, things that are intended to be helpful are actually extremely painful. And many people will say that they just want to feel heard, and to know that people are going to be there.

Anna 
I think that's really important. And this is where we can, even in times of grief, we can get really assertive and ask for the things that we need or want. So people will be triggered by different things during agree But I would just encourage listeners to think about, you know, if there's something that you really need or do not need to hear, just know that it's okay to tell the people around you, and know that they will even be comforted if you give them a little cheat sheet of how to support you. So it's not uncommon. You know, I have clients say the same thing. Maybe someone is trying to say something comforting to them, they might say something, it's very common to say "This happened for a reason." or "This was part of God's plan." You know, not everyone necessarily feels that way. And they might have a really strong reaction to that. So as a survivor going through grief, just know that people want to help you, but they don't always know how. So it's okay to tell them hey, you know what, "I want to just kind of talk about the person that was lost for 10 minutes. Do you mind just sitting and listening to me while I just go on and on? That would feel so great." Or actually, "I just want to sit and be alone with my thoughts and I don't want to talk to anybody. So could you kind of check back with me in two days?" It's okay to be really specific with the people around us of how they can support us. 

Brie
And with those people around us to if somebody hasn't come to you and said, I need X, Y, or Z, it's okay to say, you know, what has anybody is anybody making dinner for you for the next couple of days? Can I have something sent? Or can I make something to bring to you and offerings of things that kind of contribute to that that really immediate self care can be really helpful? Do you want me to sit with you will you have dinner we have dinner together, things like that those offerings of support that aren't You trying to say that you understand where a person is that more that you empathize with, it can be really, really helpful. 

Anna
I also love that all of those examples that you point out are really specific offers of support you, you take some of the guesswork out of it by offering your specific superpower. And that is such a support to someone who is overwhelmed and perhaps even having to make funeral plans to not have to think or even anticipate one of those needs is is such a gift. So I think that's really great. You don't have to give exactly the same gift that somebody else does. You can give your, your specific superpower I think that's great. 

Brie
Yeah, and one of the things that we're conditioned to say, you know, in our society is "If you need anything, let me know," and people don't know what they need if they suddenly lose the job that they've had for 30 years, or they lose a child or if they lose a sibling. Or, have a house fire and have lost all of their belongings, they aren't going to know what they need. And so kind of going back to the job at that point is to just survive each day. food, shelter, water, you know, basic needs connection with with with people that they love and care about are often some of the most important things early on. 

Anna
I think that's right. People don't know how to meet that need. And we can also offer gentle choices, right? So I'm going to go pick up some food, do you want me to just drop it at your door or allow me to hang out and do dishes for 20 minutes? Because I could go either way. When we say, oh, is there anything I can do, we still put the other person in the position of having to ask for help, which is probably the last thing the last skill they want to practice when they're so overwhelmed by by reality in that moment. The other thing I'll just add that probably you've seen this as well, but also Oftentimes right after a loss, there's an immediate outpouring of support. And it's really good to keep in mind, maybe just put on your Google Calendar set a little reminder to check in more with that person, maybe six weeks out after a lot of that initial hubbub. Because interest starts to wane and people go back to their everyday lives and not everyone does have that familiarity with grief to know that grief shows up in the day to day and not in just the immediate aftermath. 

Brie
And that may be something that continues for years. I think grief much like like an anxiety and depression can go into remission. And years later, you know, somebody quote unquote, is over it, so to speak, or might seem like they've reached a point where it's not bothering them on a day to day basis, but then have something happen or an anniversary or birthday or something passes and they really have hard time. And so keeping that in mind also can be helpful. And something that will help do that is to continue to talk about it. If somebody has lost a person close to them or a child or somebody in their life that's really important. Talking about it is going to help the people around them know where they're at on a particular day.

Anna 
I appreciate that, Brie. So you really woven into this conversation, a lot of things that individuals and family members can do to take care of themselves during a grief or a loss. Before we end for today, is there anything else that you wish people understood about grief and the grief process or things that they should do or consider to take care of themselves after a loss? 

Brie
For sure, I think there's a couple of different things in the age of social media. I think we are so fortunate, because it's able to connect people with similar experiences. Thinking about the idea of widowhood at a young age, there used to be a time if you were in your 30s and lost a spouse, you didn't know anybody else that had ever been through that. But there are social media groups. And there's there's ways to connect with people who have had this shared experience. And there are times that I think that sometimes that's the only thing that's going to be helpful is being able to talk to somebody who has lived at this exact same grief path that you are living. And that also doesn't mean that the other people in your life aren't helpful. And for those friends and family members, it doesn't mean that you're failing just because you can't offer the same level of support. I think that both of these things are extremely important for a person to have.

The other thing that I think can be helpful is to talk to a therapist, sometimes that that grief processing might just be processing and telling a story. You know, you might feel like you're being a burden to others, but you're not. But it can be very helpful to be talking to somebody outside of your immediate circle. And to be able to sit and tell a story. 

That's actually something I do encourage clients to do when I talk to them. Tell me a story about your loved one. Tell me about something that made you laugh. You know, when we will actually continuously talk about the person's life and their existence as a way to make it known that you know, we remember this person existed and live and lived a life. 

Anna
The way you explain that really resonates with me. And you and I have had this conversation off mic before of what a privilege it is to be able to do grief work, because in a lot of ways, it looks totally different than other forms of therapy. Because it turns out that we as human beings have a natural kind of course correct and self soothing mechanism that happens after grief we in our families and our culture's have a lot of practices that teaches how to deal with grief. But you do have to spend the time sitting in that space to be able to access that, that natural intuition that we all have. So a lot of times the therapy process is it's one of inquiry and storytelling and asking about and thinking about. It's, it's really drawing upon those, those natural instincts that we have to recuperate after a loss. I really liked the way that you described that process. 

Brie
And as a therapist, something else that I really hold on to is that it really truly is, is awful as this may sound, but it's a blessing to be able to sit with someone in their moment of grief or their moments of grief. Through my career. I've had the privilege of being with somebody at the time of their death and sitting with their family members. Well that's happening and then immediately after and personal life I think you know, the older we get, the more likely we are to have experienced grief, either ourselves or with people very close to us. And one thing that I often will do that I think is unique with it with the grief process is when I'm hearing stories about someone's loss, if there's something later on that reminds me of that, I will say to them, you know, I saw this this news article or as I was reading this book, or, you know, I was outside and saw this flower and it really made me think of the person that you were talking about because they are acutely aware of the fact that other people aren't going to meet their loved one. Other people aren't going to know that they had this career or they built this life. And I think hearing that other people still think of that is something that can be helpful, but what it means to me as a clinician and I'm getting to know someone, you know, and their their legacy is that they are continuing to affect people even long after it's gone.

Anna 
That really sticks with me and and reminds me when go back to the tasks of grieving and that last task of maintaining a connection to the person who was lost. And we are really reminded of how bittersweet These feelings are. So, when you describe the beauty and loss, it reminds me of all those different emotions that are actually dialectical. They are both and so when you talk about grief, the reason it's so painful is because it's also connected to feelings of love and affection and appreciation. Just like if you're doing a daily gratitude practice, you you only experience gratitude when there is an awareness of what what it feels like to not have something. Grief is the counterpart example to gratitude and what we're looking for when we process that grief. We are also looking Looking for moments of, of gratitude. And I think the way that we can all do that I love the example of the flower is to think about during difficult moments in our life. What would that person say to us? What would their advice be? What would their reaction be? Sometimes they'd have a reaction that we might not even like and we can just even kind of smile to ourselves knowing that, that that we can hold that person in that experience, even when their physical body is is not there. 

Brie
And I think it's also really important that it's okay to express joy. It's okay to laugh. You know, having something last doesn't mean that suddenly the absurdity of some of their some of your interactions or experiences is also you know, no longer appropriate to share. When we lose someone. We can talk about things that they did that made us laugh and laughter can also be really cathartic. I think I hear a lot of times people feel good If they feel happy, or they try to do something that brings them some relief, and at the end of the day, I think that's what we would all want is to know that our loved ones are people that we care about could still do that and understand that it's not disrespecting us or forgetting that we're no longer here. 

Anna
We're actually holding that person in in our life and all of the different expressions of that group.

If you are looking for more self care resources for grief and loss, you might want to check out a couple of the following resources. One that I'll mention is another really great podcast called terrible things for asking that's by a pod caster Nora McInerney out of Minnesota (editor's note: Anna misprounounced Nora's name on the show, but has the correct spelling here). She's gone through some incredible, really inspiring losses herself and shares that quite open And has created a really amazing supportive community of listeners who have also gone through their losses. Brie, what self care resources would you recommend for our listeners? 

Brie
Sure, there's a phenomenal book called It's Okay That You're Not Okay: Grief and Loss in a Culture that Doesn't Understand by Megan Divine. And that book is available on Amazon or wherever you purchase books from. And I do believe it's an E book as well. Another couple of websites I use are, whatsyourgrief.com and psycom.net. I think those are really well written resources and kind of devoid of any of the psycho-speak that we use and written in everyday language that I think is really great and educational. 

Anna 
And stay tuned on Medium if you follow Brie Pierquet, LCSW, you will see upcoming article coming out about grief and you can also follow the Therapy For Real Life blog where you'll see a grief check self care checklist. Well Brie Pierquet, LCSW thank you so much for joining me on the Therapy For Real Life Podcast. 

If you are interested in learning more about self care resources or more information about therapy and grief or loss, feel free to look me up on the TherapyForRealLife.com website, and you will also find Brie's contact information in the show notes.