Full Transcript
[00:00:07] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Welcome to your guide to afterlife, your go to podcast for young widows. I'm your host, doctor Monika Wieliczko, a psychologist and your fellow widow. Each episode brings you insights from world renowned grief experts and authors discussing complex grief issues and their personal experiences of loss. My aim is to challenge the way you think, empower you to face your feelings, and help you develop resilient ways to grief. Move beyond surviving each day and visit guide to afterlife.com to take part in the grief MOT, your first aid program for grief.
[00:00:50] Rosalind Coon: Today's episode is about the challenges of sitting with the pain, whether that is the pain of loss of a loved one or another life challenge that you came across. And this conversation emerged organically through social media conversation I had with our guest, Rosalind, who is an educational or clinical psychologist. And we talked a little bit about one of the most difficult challenge and task of grief and life in general, which is how do we sit with uncomfortable feelings, with things that are really challenging. And I hope this conversation leaves you with some ideas about why this is so hard, why so many of us struggle with accepting and tolerating uncomfortable feelings, and how we can make room for them, and how this can transform our lives and improve the way we deal with life in general. So welcome, Ros. It's so good to have you here.
[00:01:52] Speaker 3: Thank you, Monika.
[00:01:54] Rosalind Coon: So if you could just please introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your professional career, and a little bit maybe about why you've decided to share your experiences with us today.
[00:02:06] Speaker 3: Yeah. I was an educational psychologist, qualified almost thirty years ago. Mhmm. And in the last twenty years, I've worked as a clinical psychologist, first of all in CAMS and now privately with adults and children.
[00:02:21] Rosalind Coon: Yeah. It's a long career. Yeah. Yeah. And why you've decided to share your story, your experiences with us today? Why was this important?
[00:02:30] Speaker 3: Six years ago, my husband of twenty five years left very suddenly, very unexpectedly. And I suspect on your podcast, that's a different story from maybe from many that you have. We often think of loss and grief as being about death. And this experience has been the most devastating thing that's ever happened in my life. It's been extremely difficult for me to come to terms with and adjust to. And I think kind of the ideas of grief and loss and also trauma, both have helped me. I'm kind of slightly hesitant, but stuff that we know as psychologists about grief and loss have helped. And the hesitancy is and also it's been incredibly hard, incredibly hard. And I suppose I've learned so much as everybody kept telling me at the time. You'll grow. You'll grow from this people would say, and I used to think, fuck off. I don't wanna grow. I don't wanna grow if this is what it involves. And, of course, now and during the whole process, I have reluctantly gained some wisdom, some compassion, some experiences that have been probably very helpful. Mhmm. You were asking about why I've come here. I think having been through this experience, it has really taught me a lot about being alive, living, suffering.
[00:03:56] Rosalind Coon: Yes. You can't have one without the other. You can't be fully alive if you don't make room for suffering. And I think there's something really important that we hear your story and your experiences because I think there's often this unspoken theory, but the sense of that kind of splitting of different forms of grief or loss. My experiences of losing my husband was through death. Yours were very different, but in many ways, the results were very similar. You know, you lose someone you you love, you're in a relationship with, and suddenly they're gone. And I think it's really important that we hear that other form of loss, which I think it's something about acknowledging similarities and differences and knowing how we can relate to each other coming from very different experiences. But as you're saying, you know, there's been six years for years since since he left. It's been much less than that for me. And I suppose I was thinking that this is such a tricky in some ways conversation to be had because we're talking about something very painful, but we're also talking about the growth and development that happens through those painful experiences. And and I think that is the kind of main point of having those conversations which is about how do you bring about change? How do you make room for something new to grow in your life when the initial reaction is, oh, I can't cope with this. This is horrendous. This is horrible. How could anyone ever be saying to anyone when they're struggling? Well, you will grow from it. You will you will get better. As he said, you know, that you just want to smack them across the face or just, you know, do something, hurt them for for saying these things. We're not trying to dismiss the pain is actually the opposite which I think is what the conversation is for today is to acknowledge that the more in touch we are with those painful aspects, the better our capacity to tolerate some of those experiences that we can't control. We can't control when someone dies or whether someone leaves us or whether we become ill, you know, all the all these things are obviously completely outside of our control. So I suppose I I would like to find out a bit more about your experiences of your loss, loss of a marriage, loss of the family as it used to be, and how that impacted you.
[00:06:46] Speaker 3: And it's interesting before talking to you, kind of being in another zone, busy life, and then suddenly talking to you and feeling my heart beating fast and emotions coming up. But in normal life now, I'm generally okay. Yeah. So you were asking what happened. We've been together twenty five years, and there was a huge amount of love, huge amount of love and respect and care and generosity between us. And also, twenty five years is a long time, difficulties, and he fell in love with somebody else. And he'd done it before. Previous time, he'd gone to the brink, I suppose, and come back and said, no, want to be with you and committed to us again and we'd carried on and it had felt very good. This time, he didn't. This time, he said, that's it. He didn't actually. That's not true. The night we had this conversation where he said he needed space was when it first started really. And I and I was thinking about when you you said that your loss was more recent, but actually, when is the end? I don't know when the end was for me because that night that he told me you need a space, that wasn't the end, but it was the start. That was the first. And I don't know when I knew that he was gone completely from my life, which he is now. He's gone completely from my life. And initially, I didn't I thought we could be friends. I was in denial. So he told me that that night and I had three months of intense terror. Absolutely.
[00:08:32] Rosalind Coon: Yeah. I think it gives us actually a really sets up the scene, meanwhile, just the terror you mentioned, but also the sense of being in denial about something coming to an end and and desperately trying to stop it in your mind, perhaps stop it from happening as if, you know, very similar way. You know, I can compare it in some ways to receiving a terminal diagnosis of cancer diagnosis initially with my husband and and thinking, how is that possible? What can I do to stop it from happening? And it is obviously very different in many ways, but that kind of sense of panic and terror, which I can very much relate to, how that starts, how that enters your life. This kind of wave of fear and and panic. That's something as if someone just completely shattered the sense of security or kind of continuity of life as you knew it. It's just it's such a profound disturbing experience. It's very difficult to describe that kind of moment, the shock of it and when it comes up. And I think that's what you're describing really well, which is that where do I ever stand? Like, what's happening? How do I grasp those moments or some kind of sense of identity? Who am I? What's going on? It's shattering what you've been describing.
[00:10:04] Speaker 3: Shattering. Yeah. And and my cognitive, my thoughtful mind was saying, I'm safe. I still exist. In my case, nobody has died. And yet, in a way, my being knew that I was losing everything. That this relationship, this man who I've been with for almost all my adult life, that all our our family, we had three children who were in their teens, that family life would end as we knew it. I I knew I would leave lose my home, which of course I did. I lost in the end, I lost a huge number of my friendships. I lost my sense of myself. Mhmm. It felt like I lost everything, my my my professional identity because instead of being a capable, competent woman, I lost my mental health. I couldn't cope. I lost the future I'd hoped for my children. I'd lost my future. It it it felt My body knew I was losing everything, I suppose, and the terror was in my body.
[00:11:16] Rosalind Coon: How old were you when this fall fell apart?
[00:11:20] Speaker 3: 49, which somehow was quite significant. I mean, I think in terms of menopause, it coincides with menopause. But I think I think that was not an accident. I know having read a lot more about menopause, a lot of marriages end around that time for various reasons, I think. And also, I had I set myself two goals. I I carried on working initially. So I had I kind of it was three months where my body, as I've said, was in absolute terror almost all of the time. And I carried on working. I was almost stunned that I could do for two months. And then after about eight weeks, I had some experiences of realizing I couldn't take in what a new client, existing clients, it was okay, but a new client, when they were telling me their trauma, I almost froze and I realised I had to take time off work. So I set myself a task by September, I need to be working again and by the following July, a year later, which is my fiftieth birthday, I was going to have a fiftieth birthday party. I thought by that stage I would have forgiven my husband and the woman he went off with and I was going to invite them. I now am quite stunned at my naivety, but that is what I hoped. And and when we're talking about the early stages of grief, denial, I really thought that I could desperately want to go with everything else and maintain a friendship with him to give the woman he went away with. In fact, I've now come to terms with I don't need to forgive him or have anything more to do with him or the woman he's now with, which was a huge relief, but that took me four years to come to that realization I didn't need to forgive.
[00:13:09] Rosalind Coon: I was listening and thinking, you know, doing the kind of like a checkbox exercise, you know, and you checked all the boxes that I could relate to as well, but it just shows that when you were saying, well, he didn't die. I was thinking, yeah, his body didn't die, but the picture of him and you as a couple did die. And the image of your life, your future, your family has been shattered as you said. And and that is a form of death even though the body carries on in a strange way. I wouldn't say one or the other is easier, but in some ways it's it's more confusing because if someone I don't know. If someone dies, it's it's a bit like, well, you might be angry with them for a while that they died, but eventually you kind of reach, I suppose, this kind of place or many people do that you you kind of realize, well, it was completely outside of your control and their control. And in some instances, that's the case. In others, it's not, especially if it's an act of self harm or some kind of you you might be thinking, oh, may maybe something could have been done to prevent it. But but in general, I think the tendency is to think that death is something that's completely inside of our control. As a failed marriage, in some ways, it it has its own challenges, and it's a different form of loss, but it's equally devastating in terms of the consequences for your future, for your life, the loss of home, the loss of hopes, and you can obviously start building your life again. But I think that the loss is profound, and I think that that often somehow gets missed as if in your forties, your life after so many years of being with someone, your life concentrates so much around that one person or the family that I think it's it's a real challenge to to think about how do you then pick up those pieces and start to think about the future. It is a form of grief. It's not I don't think it's that different, actually.
[00:15:30] Speaker 3: Maybe there's more space in my situation for for bargaining and trying to and in my head, I can do something. Only I can find the key to keep him and stop him going and stop this grief. So which I think everybody does. I I don't know about everybody Mhmm. But it's obviously clearly very common in in in all sorts of bereavements is not accepting it. And I spent a long long long time hoping somehow he would change his mind. And I had
[00:16:03] Rosalind Coon: That he would come
[00:16:04] Speaker 3: back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and that seemed possible. So I could and I had a a couple of friends. Friends were very lots of people wanted to help and they would suggest things. Have you thought of this? Have you thought of that? Have you tried this? What you should do is which infuriated me. It was like I think about this twenty four hours a day constantly, constantly. I think if there was a solution, would have come up with it. But but but certainly one front person said, you need to cut ties completely, not have any contact. He's made his decision. If he goes, he's gone and let go. Maybe some wisdom, and I absolutely was unable in my trauma, in my distress. The one person that I wanted was the person who'd always been there for me, who I loved and trusted to love everybody else. So pain and the trauma was caused by him, but my body, my heart, my mind wanted him because he was the person who was my safety and my rock. So I wasn't able to recognize that this was the end, that this was death. And I know that that did happen two years ago, and that was quite a powerful point for me to say, actually, I'm not gonna keep trying to ring him. I'm not gonna keep trying to get connection and comfort and resolution from him. For four years, it took me to do to get to that point. And I suppose in my case, that was a choice. In your case, that wasn't a choice.
[00:17:34] Rosalind Coon: But that bond continues whether the person is there or not because you're talking about attachment and, you know, attachment is not a logical bond. It's not like we cut the cord and and suddenly we don't think about that person or the person is no longer important because they no longer present in our life physically. That is not exactly possible. And this is saying it's about the letting go which, you know, took me a while to I think in my case, it it it kind of started before my husband died because of his illness. So this process of letting go was kind of, you know, started the moment we received the diagnosis in the same way when you found out that he needed some space. And then they kind of progressively you you get for me, it was kind of progressive loss of, you know, different bits of him. But yes, there is that element of first denial and terror and trying to do everything to keep him alive, you know, and whether that's the physical body we're talking about or whether that's the mental image and the relationship we're trying to maintain. Actually, the the outcome is very similar that we just struggle to let go. If you care about someone, if you invest in the relationship so much, you know, it's not like you suddenly someone tells you, okay. I'm I'm I've decided I'm gonna end this relationship and you say, okay. Sure. Yeah. That's that's what's gonna happen. Of course, you know, if you don't wanna be with me, then then you just we're not gonna be together. Like, it it doesn't happen this way. It's I think what you're describing is just how much you've invested in marriage, how much was located in that person, and how much stability you had from some the broken trust and hopes and dreams and, you know, identity. I mean, when you take away your identity as a married woman or a a wife of this this man or who do you become? I remember struggling a lot with this idea of being a widow. I really hated it, and and I until now, I just feel like it was something that's been prescribed to me when you receive a death certificate and someone tells you, well, well, you're entitled to state benefits or, you know, you you can register for a single occupancy discount for your council tax. We have to prove that you're a widow. You have to have a certain status in the society. And I often described it as this kind of you're no longer married, but you're not exactly single. And I wonder whether that somehow relates to your experiences too. I mean, I don't know how you would I don't know if there is a a label as such that you could kind of relate to, but I was thinking about that space in between being with someone and not being with someone, which is the state of grief.
[00:20:47] Speaker 3: Yeah. And, my solicitor and, again, some more helpful friends said you need to divorce him as quickly as you can. It could be easier to do it quickly. And the idea of not being married felt unbearable somehow. And and I think somehow it kind of resonates with a bit with your what you're saying. There was some sense within me that I couldn't let it go. I wasn't ready to let that even though he'd gone. Yeah. I still had hope or I still yeah. I wasn't able to make that next move to initiate the divorce to not be married. Some some sense of self and not being ready yet to let go even though it was just words in a way. One one the things that also came to me as we were talking you were talking about, you know, our head, our minds, and and something that really is important to me in a way, my first degree was biology, is is just reading about physiologically our bodies when we are in a pair relationship, pair bond. How our our bodies regulate with each other. How our systems are attached to that other human being in so many different ways and when it's ripped apart that it's almost like coming off a drug, withdrawal from a drug, what happens in our body. Mhmm. And I think that really helped me to read that and and to make sense of of this awful terror, which on one hand for me didn't make sense because actually he was going to be alive. And I thought we could be friends and do some kind of wonderful, amicable grown up separation and co parenting. So I couldn't quite understand the terror. But, yeah, our bodies go through immense physiological trauma when we're separated from our our mate. And also our bodies heal that that grief, the terror subsides. The, I kind of feel like I went through so many stages and also my mind body created protection at various points. There was a point six months in where I used to describe it as almost like a metal armored plating came down in front of me and it protected me from the feeling and I I felt less connected to him. I felt able to acknowledge that it wasn't good for me. But it was something. It was something, and it almost felt like a physiological protection. Yeah. And it allowed me to move on to the next stage. So that that point at the beginning which felt so unbearable, I felt I could not exist without him. Uh-huh. And I didn't want to exist.
[00:23:44] Rosalind Coon: Yeah. And I wonder whether what you're describing, I don't I don't know. It's just a thought that came through my mind. It's almost like a realization that you survived without him, that you can almost like sustain yourself without needing to keep that bond, almost like keeping it alive in you? Or because I was just thinking you you described that kind of like a physical separation, like something kind of been was like cut off or obviously not completely, but there's some kind of level of okay. You're you're there over there on the other end, and I'm here. And and there's something about I don't know if it's something about realizing that you have survived those six months and you're still okay. And, actually, it takes time to to get that experience of continuity almost of life. No. I don't mean, like, surviving because surviving is not really living. It's a different form of life, I suppose, but I don't think it's it's a living form. It's almost like you're just sustaining the basic mechanisms that kind of sustain life, like breathing and heart rates, you know, and maybe sometimes not even sleeping, but, like, the basics of, you know, the minimum, the bare minimum to kind of just get through. But there's there's something there that you were describing. It's almost felt like a part of you needed to step away and notice, okay, you have survived this. It doesn't mean that it's all okay, but something shifts that is the kind of mental shift that allows you to now have a different perspective.
[00:25:29] Speaker 3: Yeah. And that specific thing, I saw something that just happened and I I suppose people talk about dissociation as a as a way that as humans we protect ourselves from the unbearable psychologically we're able to do it and it felt like a similar thing
[00:25:45] Rosalind Coon: Mhmm.
[00:25:45] Speaker 3: That just happened and I was so immensely grateful. It is hard to explain what it was, but but also at that time, pain changed from terror to unbearable grief and sadness in my stomach, my solar plexus. Just noticing those the body goes through cycles and then times as we as we talk about the kind of the grief cycle, kind of times when the acceptance would come and and for minutes, then hours, then days, there would be sub equanimity and and acceptance. And I would be thrilled and joyful Mhmm. And, like, full of hope, then it would come down again, come back again. We'd go back through this whole cycle.
[00:26:32] Rosalind Coon: Yes. And and a sense of, as you're saying, being able to come in and out of it, which is some kind of mental capacity to separate yourself from that kind of almost like a mortal state. I don't know. Like, for me, for a while, after he died, it was this kind of state of I was convinced that I was going to die with him. And and I think for a while, I just felt like I had to take myself out of the situation I was in, like, physically. I I went went away for several months when traveling to Southeast Asia because, like, I physically needed to recover my body because it's been a very long time when I was in that kind of survival mode for, almost two years, I suppose. Before that, it was COVID, so it was another kind of survival state. And then as we were coming out of COVID, everything was opening up. We were shutting down even more because of his illness. But then when he died in in a strange way, I think my survival strategy was to kind of to leave that to one side in terms of the space that the the surroundings and kind of take myself out there somewhat to to recover my body. I almost like the the eating, the sleeping, you know, massage, yoga, these kind of bodily oriented therapies. So what you were describing just made me think about that moment when I came back and there was that kind of moment of confronting myself with, okay, I don't have to run away from it. It really happened. He's still gone. And it took another, I would say, six months when I realized that he wasn't coming back, that he was actually gone forever in that physical form. And I think it was after I've went to a hospice, I think around the first anniversary of his death when the receptionist asked me a very simple question, which really pissed me off. She said, why are you here? And and it was done in a very normal kind of way, like, you a visitor? You know, who are you visiting? And I got really angry. I remember saying, because she I I thought to myself, how dare you ask me this question? Don't you know? Like, it it was obviously completely surreal because, you know, she was confronting me with the fact that he died, that I wasn't coming to visit him in the hospice like I did before he died, that he was gone. And and I think that was really quite a substantial shift that happened for me, similar to what you were describing that suddenly, yes, he wasn't he wasn't coming back. He wasn't it wasn't that I was necessarily in agreement or something got resolved, but that kind of realization that something has ceased, some kind of fantasy of mine stopped existing and I think that that is almost like I've decided to put him in a different box in my mind. I don't know how how to describe it in another way, but he he found a different place. He was still there but in a different form, in a different shape, and that felt very different.
[00:29:53] Speaker 3: Yeah. I've had lots of different kinds of therapy over the last six years and, you know, I often think what what was it? What is it that's made a difference? I I also do a lot of dancing, lot of creative. I've done lots and lots of things to try and heal and recover and I don't know what's made a difference, and I don't know whether in some ways, our bodies, our minds do what they need to do when they're ready. So that that shift that you described there, maybe it just happened when you were ready for it. Does that make sense? We as as therapists, we have this idea we're helping people to adjust and to to cope, and maybe it happens when we're ready for it to happen.
[00:30:41] Rosalind Coon: Mhmm.
[00:30:41] Speaker 3: And our bodies do actually know how to heal from horrendous grief, loss, trauma.
[00:30:52] Rosalind Coon: Yes. I I think it can't be forced. That's for sure. And I remember times where I felt like in my own psychoanalysis when I was I was in that treatment for before my husband got ill and then carried on throughout his illness and after it carries on until now. But there were times when I thought that, yeah, certain things felt a bit forced upon me, like I had to address them or kind of and that wasn't helpful. I didn't know in the moments where I actually needed a break. I needed to come out of it. I couldn't just sit with it all the time. And as you're saying, I think there has to be the right time to let go. But also, I think we often hear those messages that you are the grieving, you're not grieving enough, or you're kind of escaping from it, or that you're not letting go of something. And either way, it's wrong, so you can never get it right because there's always someone who has a different idea about how you should grieve or how you should manage your situation. It's and it's not to say that I don't wanna send a message as if there is there isn't a point at which these things become problematic. But I think it's the this idea that something has to happen in a prescribed way even when we talk about stages of grief as if there's a prescribed way how you should grieve, I mean, which is obviously not true. Those different stages are important, but, you know, in my mind, it wasn't like I've reached a stage of acceptance. And the you know, I was just accepting that he died, you know, eventually, after those, you know, several other stages that I go through. It's kind of one you you you you're in denial, then you're angry. You know, there's a lot of resentment, and then you might go back to denial, and then you go forward to something else. And you might feel a bit more accepting of what happened, and then the next hour, you're back into being really angry. And it doesn't really look like there is a path that is very kind of cyclical. You eventually reach a point and it's all done and dusted and you can move on. It's not as clean as it seems.
[00:33:12] Speaker 3: I'm I'm just thinking, I think we touched last time on a psychologist, the idea that our job is to help treat people and fix people and help people recover. And I mean, I I I said about friends and family who who had all sorts of ideas about how I could manage it and how I could get better. And I think what I really needed was to be heard. My mind and my body was working so hard to try and make sense and heal and recover, and I needed somebody to sit with me and hear that and sit with it. And I think my sense of isolation and feeling so alone, my experience was different in that he chose to go. So I had a lot of stories about friends who didn't appear to be available had also chosen to leave me and there must be because there was something wrong with me. And and I think a lot of people couldn't sit with me in my pain and distress and anger and confusion, and and that that was one of the hardest things I found was feeling lonely and feeling that my emotions were too much. I mean, now, I think the explanation is my emotions were too much for many people.
[00:34:35] Rosalind Coon: Which I think often can be translated into I am too much. No one can handle me. It kind of I think for a lot of people taps into something very fundamentally personal and childlike kind of wound that, you know, I'm too much. You know, my pain is too much. My sadness is too much. My anger and hostility often comes with loss. And, you know, as you're describing, that is the hardest thing is to just sit with it and not trying to fix it, not trying to rush it or making that space. It's this time for making changes, but I think what you're saying is that what really fundamentally was needed for you and for me and for everybody else who's going through life transition or loss is to have another person to sit with it, and that is incredibly hard because it makes us connect with our own vulnerability. If you're sitting with another person in that state and there's absolutely nothing you can do, It's the hardest thing in the world and something we desperately need, which is why it becomes such an isolating experience, like you said, in this kind of division. And I remember we had this conversation how even in psychology world, you get this kind of very almost like split off image of personal grief, personal experiences. We're talking about having a separate group for psychologists who are experiencing grief. And then there's this more personal group, I mean, many groups. I'm I'm just giving this example of, you know, how that kind of division takes place. So there are certain things you cannot or there's no not that much room or space for for those kind of more private parts to be explored because, you know, it very quickly gets pushed into what kind of treatment model can you apply to this or how can you navigate those challenges. And it's not to say that there isn't space for that, but it very quickly gets pushed into let's try to fix it. Let's try to do something with it. And I think what you're saying is that, well, the one thing that we all need is just someone to be able to take it, to hold it with us. And I
[00:37:02] Speaker 3: think we suppose maybe you asked this question at the beginning. During the last six years, particularly in the early phase, I carried on working and I did training as we do. And I think back to a lot of the training I did, you know, a two day training on DBT. It went in one year and out the other. I I I couldn't cognitively, I couldn't take on new information. I couldn't integrate it with what I knew. It was really tough. And yet, I used to think that what I am learning is so much. I was reading so much about grief, so much about life, spiritual the Buddhist readings about life and death, what it is to be human being, how we continue to live after such loss. And I used to imagine explaining to our regulatory body what my CPD, what CP cognitive development was, it was life experience. It was being there, was sitting with pain, it was reading about other people's experiences of of overcoming loss. Yeah. And I think the quality of my work improved dramatically in terms of being able to sit with somebody in their distress and feel it in my body. I mean, as we talk, there's been times in this conversation where I well up listening to you, partly by remembering some of my experience, but hearing and feeling what you say.
[00:38:37] Rosalind Coon: Mhmm.
[00:38:38] Speaker 3: And maybe my capacity to hear that and sit with that and not try and close it down in me and therefore close it down in you is really important. And also, I now know that we recover. Mhmm. So I think when I meet people who have been through something that I would have found unbearable in my early career, working with some clients who experienced grief, I I know that I couldn't bear it. Actually, now I I know that people recover. Yeah. So perhaps that gives me hope.
[00:39:14] Rosalind Coon: Yes. But that's really beautiful what you just said, Ros, because you're you're tapping into such a fundamentally crucial element of the internal capacity to take things in because you have that room in you already to connect with and that it resonates in some ways that even though our experiences were, you know, someone would say very different, but we can relate to one another on so many different levels that, you know, I think that is the the key point of of this conversation in some ways that it it is about those connections, those kind of openings in us that allow those feelings to flow and to be shared across. And and that it doesn't become a burden. It becomes a way of bringing us closer rather than create, oh gosh, and now you've got this terrible thing that happened and what we're gonna do? Like, a lot of people feel really responsible for fixing it or or as you're saying, they're so afraid that they wouldn't have survived taking it in because they've never survived such an experience in one way or another that they can't bear it. So so it's the the kind of the the fear that we both been describing about we're not gonna be able to survive the divorce or the death and that it would kill us, and it would be the end of us. And it's through living through that nightmare, you come out on the other end and you realize that, yes, it it's been tough. It's been overwhelming, traumatizing, life changing, life altering, but there is still life at the end of it. And you continue to grow and develop, and you grow good bits from it as well, which is, I think, fundamentally one of the hardest thing to acknowledge is that through death of my husband, I've been able to recover aspects of myself and grow aspects of myself I never been in touch with before. And and that is a bit like someone could say, well, I've benefited from death because I do think that there is a bright side of death and loss in in general that those things can also, you know, show you how to live, how to appreciate what you have, how to ask for things you need and want in life. It doesn't always happen this way, but I think there's an incredible potential in in expanding into those areas. So when you were describing it just now and I thought, yes. Because we can relate to each other, I think then that allows us to almost, like, go beyond that. It's like there's a second layer or, like, another level where you can look at those all those experiences. You can hold them, and there's still enough room around to move, to grow, to bring new things in. It's like this I don't know. Internally, it feels like we're expanding, you know, there's something's growing.
[00:42:33] Speaker 3: So I I do a lot of movement dance, conscious meditation Mhmm. Different words for it. And that's really powerful for me. And I have a a community of people who dance. Those people I found could be there. They could hold it. I could dance and bring all of me to the dance. The anger, the rage, the despair. And and the dance practice I do often allows us to go through those emotions and often to come out with some freedom and some joy. But the other thing I was gonna mention was what I found was when I was with people and trying to feel heard and trying to talk and sometimes people couldn't they couldn't let me say, they couldn't. They would block it and I could feel they were blocking and saying, it'll be okay and I'm sure you'll survive or you try this. And really what I was hearing was, I don't wanna hear this. I don't wanna feel this. And I would find that very difficult and if inside I would be screaming, please, please, please listen to me, hear me, not feeling connected, not feeling attuned and I think they would find it very difficult as well because they would hear me moaning and wallowing and not letting it go. And then when I would talk to people who allowed me to express and this is where the parallel with the dance allowed me to bring my sadness, my grief, my anger, my rage and hear that and allow that and accept it, it's almost like I go through that and then come out into joy even in a short conversation, an hour of time with friends, and we would often end up laughing. And I I noticed that I could only do that when I felt heard, that the humor yeah, the joy, the the feeling connected. Yes, there is sadness and there is still life. Mhmm. It was really, really important to deep listening allows that. And I think that's what I was picking up from you, a sense of connection with another human being, proper connection Yeah. Attuned connection Mhmm. And love. And we can feel love from another. And we can also feel when it's blocked because because we don't want connection. For whatever reason, we don't want to be open and connected with another, and the love's blocked. But when it's there, it's immensely healing.
[00:45:03] Rosalind Coon: And I really like your analogy of dance because, similarly, for me, movement and the bodily experiences were very important in my healing and recovering my body because, as you said, there's so much grief that sits in the body and is experienced physiologically. But also as you said, there's something very freeing, I think, about being able to have the the freedom to move, the freedom to just take the space. I I always think of that kind of bodily practices. There's something about it doesn't just happen in your head. It actually happens in relation to others that you engage with other people in that dance, that you go there, like physically present with you. And when and I think that sometimes without using words, you can say much more, especially when there are things that don't have words or they don't come out in the same way because, you know, you can't talk about sadness without the sadness coming through your body. Like, for example, not just crying, but just, you know, physiologically releasing sadness. It's it cannot just happen in the head, like, it it just cannot you can't fully be embraced by someone unless you've got that physical presence in the body. And I think
[00:46:31] Speaker 3: we're talking about dance a bit, but in the therapy session in in sitting with a friend, we can feel when somebody is present and open. Mhmm. But we've got, in order for us to be open, we we have to allow ourselves to feel. And I I know you said words about words. It's not about the words. We might use words, but it's about feeling the heart connection between two vulnerable feeling humans, and we can't do that without feeling ourselves.
[00:47:06] Rosalind Coon: Yeah. And I think that I would say that was one of the most important transitions for me through my grief is not realized. I think there's something part of grief that you don't really give a fuck about certain things, like you just don't care about. I definitely felt like I just didn't really care that much about what other people thought of. I mean, I did to some extent with certain things, but there was this kind of freedom that comes with grief that you catapult it out of the usual world and you end up in this space somewhere in between life and death. And and in in some ways, I think that really helped me to find my own voice and it kind of consolidated certain aspects of me that just perhaps they weren't as available to me or for some reasons, they were buried away or crushed by guilt or expectations or commitments. And then suddenly, you just think, wow, this shock and this devastating experience also brings up something new, something refreshing, pulsating, bodily kind of experience that is life. It's you know, I've in some ways, I felt like I finally understood what being a life means and and kind of connected with it and and cherish that experience. And it's it's so weird when you can you think about such terrible experiences that bring up so much life. And I think that's, in some ways, an essence of of today's conversation, Rosalind, is about that kind of coming back to life and and bringing ourselves back to life and and how else to do it other than experiencing the pain and experiencing feelings and connecting, which is often missing and is the the major obstacle for people who are grieving is if you if you don't have someone you can connect with or if you don't have the avenue to make those links, then you all kind of gets lost in the process, and you're kind of trapped in this perpetual state of convoluted grief that doesn't have any way to come out and and to be experienced.
[00:49:26] Speaker 3: And as relational human beings and and all the things that we know about recovery from trauma, generally, we need that with another human. Some people just try going and and howling in the hills. I I guess that didn't work for me. I I needed human connection whilst I was howling. Yeah.
[00:49:49] Rosalind Coon: I think that's really beautiful and such a beautiful way to end this conversation, which I wish we could have continued for longer, but it's this kind of connection that allows that real transformation to take place and for life to come back. So thank you so much, Ros, for being here today and for sharing it so generously with us your experiences and building those bridges and and an understanding between the body and mind and our experiences and how we grow. It's been a real pleasure, to have you here.
[00:50:24] Speaker 3: Thank you, Monika. Been lovely to talk to you.
[00:50:28] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Thank you for joining us. I hope you found it useful. Connect with me on Facebook and Instagram under guide to afterlife for more brief tips and resources. Visit guide to afterlife.com to send me your questions and to take part in the grief MOT, your free first aid program for grief. See you next Tuesday for yet another stimulating conversation.
