Dr Monika Wieliczko (00:01)
Welcome to a guide to afterlife. Today, we will be diving into the power of community and grief and why connection is so vital and how finding a supportive network can truly transform your healing journey. Grief can be an incredibly isolating experience, especially in a society that often struggles to acknowledge and hold space for grief. Many of us feel like we no longer fit in
and navigating a world that seems uncomfortable with our pain. But the truth is, we all need community. We need to feel seen, understood and included because grief isn't meant to be carried along. My guest today is the wonderful Karen Sutton, the widow coach, a certified grief educator and life coach who offers both practical and emotional support to widows.
and Karen and I will explore how finding your people, those who truly get it, can be a lifeline in grief and how to break through the loneliness, the small but powerful steps you can take to rebuild a sense of belonging. So welcome Karen, it's great to have you here today.
Karen Sutton (01:22)
Hello, thank you for having me Monica.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (01:25)
I'm so glad we reconnected and that you found some time to come today and talk to us a little bit about what you're doing and that's perhaps what I would like you to start. Just maybe say a few things about your daddy in grief and your story but also what came out of it because I think you've managed to build quite a bit, you know, in terms of how you've been supporting
agree with community in the UK and across the world really. So yes, where do we start?
Karen Sutton (01:58)
Yeah.
Where do we start? Yeah. So it was, it was back in September 2016. So, you know, it was over eight years ago now. It was a Sunday morning and I was at home with the two girls. They were nine and five at the time. Simon had gone out for a Sunday morning bike ride with his friend and he had a cardiac arrest and died and didn't.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (02:07)
Hmm.
Karen Sutton (02:27)
come home.
Obviously, you know, it sends your life in to complete and utter devastation. You know, I've never known despair like it. Not knowing. You just don't know what to do with yourself. You don't know what to do emotionally, practically, physically. And I don't think it even necessarily starts to sink in that the true reality of the fact that your person has died.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (02:33)
Hmm.
Hmm
Karen Sutton (02:59)
I don't think, I mean, it's different for everyone, but for me, I think it was sort of after that first year. know, Simon was a wonderful man and a great husband and father. He was also a massive pain in the backside. He was not a saint. He could be grumpy and you know, life wasn't perfect because that...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (03:03)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Karen Sutton (03:27)
because it isn't, our relationship wasn't perfect, but we had a really, really good life. actually with the, we just got back off holiday, we were on holiday sort of three weeks beforehand and we'd had a really lovely time and the girls being nine and five, both at school. And I remember thinking, ? it's going to get better. It's going to get better. the, you know, the years of your children being really young and trying to find some financial stability in your place in the world and all the stresses and strains of all of that.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (03:29)
Mm-hmm.
Uh-huh.
Karen Sutton (03:56)
felt like they were settling down a little bit. He just had a promotion at work and I was like, this is gonna start to feel a bit easier and a bit better. And how wrong I was. So, you know, this obviously sent us into a tailspin. I'm incredibly fortunate in that I still live in my hometown where I was born and brought up. My family, I still have my parents and I have great friends and my sister.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (03:58)
Mmm.
Well...
Hmm.
Karen Sutton (04:26)
We really were just so well supported and I think it was very early on. Maybe not consciously in that moment, but I really see that power of community. Even the children's school, they created a food rotor and they would, when I went to pick the girls up from school, there would be a meal there waiting for us at reception from somebody and that would be our food done. They collected.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (04:42)
Yeah.
Gosh.
Karen Sutton (04:54)
vouchers for us for, you know, frozen food. I think it's called Cook or something that does, you sort of homemade frozen meals. loads of that, people helping me with pick up and drop off and just everything, you know, the community around me picked us up and carried us for a long time. And
Dr Monika Wieliczko (05:01)
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Karen Sutton (05:22)
I obviously wanted to connect with other widows and I went out seeking support groups and people that had walked a similar path to me because I think with anything you do in life, know, like when you have your children, you connect with people that have got young children. When you have a baby, you know, if you start a new job, you, find people at a a similar place to you in life. And
That was where I wanted to go. just wanted to find people. I think what I really wanted was somebody to tell me what to do and how long it would take to feel better, if I'm honest, because you spend a lot of time, don't you, thinking, right, come on, what's going to fix this? What's going to make this better? How am I going to get over this so I don't feel this absolute heartache and sorrow and pain within me? I had this inner determination and it wasn't...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (05:53)
and
Karen Sutton (06:16)
It might have been the day Simon died, it might have been the day after I was in the car with my mum and my sister and I said to them, I am not going to allow this to define me and the girls for the rest of our lives in a negative way. I had no idea how I was going to do that, but it was just an instinctive feeling that I had. I was not going to become a victim of this. This was not going to become an excuse for us not to live out our lives in the best way that we could for the girls to kind of say,
Dr Monika Wieliczko (06:42)
Yeah.
Karen Sutton (06:45)
or my dad died and I haven't done very well at school because of it or, you know, whilst I recognise there are absolutely consequences to losing somebody so significant in your life. But I knew for me, for Simon, for the girls that this couldn't be the thing that made the rest of our lives sad forever, you know?
Dr Monika Wieliczko (07:06)
Yeah. Yeah.
Karen Sutton (07:10)
I went out and I was looking for widows. I wanted to understand more about widowhood and I joined some, you know, sort of charity groups and peer support groups and all that kind of stuff. And they were brilliant in that I could read things and see things on these forums that resonated and that helped me make sense of my grief, put words to things that I didn't understand.
? sometimes people would give me a bit of hope if there was a bit of upbeat kind of positivity going on. But actually what I found a lot was, a lot of the heaviness was being shared and portrayed and not saying that there's not a place for that there is, but I was searching for something that helped me to navigate my grief in a way that
ensured I wasn't going to become a victim of it and it wasn't going to define me. I like I wanted somebody to say to me these are the things that you can do to support yourself to help you navigate this in the best way possible and yes, you could pick up a few little bits and pieces, but really, you know, I was struggling to find anything but counseling and therapy and I had a great counselor, you know therapist I really did he was a fab guy and he was a huge part of my journey, but I wanted something a bit more
Dr Monika Wieliczko (08:07)
Thanks so much.
Karen Sutton (08:34)
I don't know, uplifting, I think, and something that maybe challenged me to think a bit differently, to see things a bit differently. I didn't know anything about life coaching at this point, you know, I didn't know anything about sort of mindset and different perspectives and all the things that you can do to support yourself. I was a nurse and a midwife for many years. I didn't go back to it after Simon died.
About two and a half years into my journey, when I realized I couldn't find what I wanted, and I felt really lost actually, I still felt really lost at that point. Obviously the grief had softened and life had become, I guess a little bit more manageable on a day to day basis, but still really hard. I always say like the first two years are actually the early years of your loss.
And in that timeframe of around two and a half years, I was just lost. I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know what I wanted. I think I'd lost my connection to myself. And I had fought so hard because I felt if I allowed myself to change and adapt to Simon's loss,
That would mean I would become this bitter, miserable, angry, frustrated old widow. Do you know? I just, had this vision. So I was kind of navigating my widowhood with a determination of A, not becoming a victim, but B, not allowing it to change me in any way because I liked who I was. I liked how I showed up in life. I liked everything about it. So I was.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (10:04)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Karen Sutton (10:23)
desperately clinging on to that version of me, you know, I was like, right, I'm still going to go out partying. I'm still going to be the good time girl. I'm still going to do all these things and be this version of myself. But it wasn't working. Like it just, it wasn't landing the same. didn't feel the same. Things didn't excite me in the same way. However, I still continued to force myself to do them because I thought, well, if I just keep doing them, I'll find my love for them.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (10:25)
Yeah.
Karen Sutton (10:51)
Anyway, I was completely lost and baffled and empty and all of those things. And somebody said to me, why don't you get a life coach? I thought, what was a life coach? I had no idea what one was. And I thought, do you know what? I've got nothing to lose. Let's just give it a go. And it was the best decision I ever made. It put me back in the driving seat of my life. It helped me to see things.
in a different way. gave me the tips, the tools, the strategies. It helped me reconnect with myself. It helped me see that change is okay. You know, things can change. It doesn't mean they're going to be worse or bad. It just means it's different and that's okay. Sometimes difference is okay. And I had to, you know, really understand what I was making things mean, how I was showing up.
what I was clinging onto, what was no longer serving me, how I was spending my time. And just sitting with a lot of big questions and giving myself time and space to explore who I was, what I wanted, where I was heading. And within six months of having this life coaching, I'd taken back control of my health.
of my sort of emotional well-being, my physical, my spiritual, all of it. Do you know, I just felt so much clearer. I felt so much lighter and more hopeful. And don't get me wrong, it wasn't a magic answer. Everything wasn't perfect. Life was still hard. But it was just, it was different, you know, I'd accessed my...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (12:34)
Thank you.
Karen Sutton (12:38)
my truth I suppose and who I really was and how this had impacted me and that was when I said I need to share this with people because if knowing this can impact me and I know for a fact there's widows out there because I've been in all the support groups all the the Facebook groups and
peer groups, all of that stuff. you you see posts, people saying, I'm 10 years in and it's as bad as it was on the day he died. And I've never found happiness as miserable then as I am now. And, and I thought, by the way, no judgment or criticism if that's anyone's reality. But I was like, no way is that there's no way I'm sitting in this for the next 10 years and I'm going to be the person writing that message. There's just no way. And
Dr Monika Wieliczko (13:30)
Mm-hmm.
Karen Sutton (13:31)
When I started to understand that there was a way to find your way through this and it's not a fix, but actually just taking back that power and realizing where you're holding yourself back, where you're telling yourself things that aren't true, where you can really connect with what's important to you. Doing your values and understanding things like that, I think would just...
life changing for me. So I decided I wanted to support just women actually, it wasn't even widows initially, that were going through difficulties. you know, that was one to one work. I noticed more and more I was attracting widows because that was my story.
Covid hit and I discovered Zoom. I think it was around then that I decided to do a group program and bring people together. And again, game changer. The one-to-one work has its place and it's incredible and it's really powerful. But what I could see was when you brought people together that were going through something similar.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (14:28)
I'm sorry.
Karen Sutton (14:52)
something magical happens. And it's very hard to explain the power of that connection of that safe space of that understanding of a sense of God, this these people get me they understand me, you know, when you lose a life partner, the world doesn't understand you anymore. And you don't understand the world and there's a complete disconnect. And that's very hard to navigate. You can feel very alone, very isolated.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (15:03)
Thank
Hmm.
Karen Sutton (15:22)
And you know, you can withdraw and pull back from people you feel unseen and unheard and misunderstood. But when you bring people together, it really helps them to find a place in the world where they feel safe, where they feel seen and heard and understood. But also when somebody shares something about their journey, it invites you to explore something in your
in your life that you might not necessarily have in the light of your sort of conscious awareness because you haven't gone there yet or you know whatever those reasons are it doesn't matter but you know when other people talk about their experiences and their feelings and and how they're working through them
Dr Monika Wieliczko (15:51)
and
Karen Sutton (16:12)
It helps you to explore that within yourself and you can see things differently. Sometimes it offers different perspectives. It often offers different thoughts and ideas. It gives hope. It gives inspiration. You know, if you surround yourself with people that are trying to find a way forward, I mean that that is incredible. You know, if you surround yourself with people that don't want to find a way forward, that will become your truth, you know, and if you find people that do and are fighting for that, but
Dr Monika Wieliczko (16:37)
Hmm.
Karen Sutton (16:40)
but can also hold space for the challenges, the difficulties, the down days, know those days where you think I can't do this because those days happen and they hold you up on those days. that, you know, on the other days where you are achieving things beyond your wildest dreams, you know, when you discover something about yourself, when you realize that you're capable of so much more, when, you know, you go out there and accomplish something that you never thought you'd accomplish, you know, whether it's...
leaving the house on your own for the first time, sitting in a coffee shop on your own, going on a solo holiday, driving on the motorway, walking into a group of people that you've never met before, speaking your truth to a family member. I mean, there's so many things. But on those days when you think, God, I'm good, I've got this, like you feel invincible sometimes. to find a place that you can share that and other people are...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (17:20)
Mm-hmm.
You
Karen Sutton (17:36)
cheering you on and saying, yeah, that's absolutely brilliant. Well done. And I just really...
really loved and embraced this power of community and I think from my first group of about eight people I think it's just grown and it's grown and the communities have become much bigger and the power in them grows with the amount of people in them.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (17:57)
Mm.
Yeah, it's just, I was just listening, thinking how, you know, this whole concept of surviving and, know, what you were saying at the beginning about really kind of not wanting the trauma of loss to define your future. Just thinking there's obviously, you know, there's the natural kind of survival mechanism kicking in that goes.
you know, saying, well, I need to preserve, I need to preserve my life. And I think some people have it stronger than others, that kind of capacity to fight against that kind of overwhelming sense of grief that, you know, it's not to say that we shouldn't be leaning into grief, but I think sometimes it can be so overpowering that there is no way of kind of reconnecting with the world. And I think what you were saying is that
Karen Sutton (18:37)
Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (19:02)
There was this kind of almost that battle between I want to hold on to my old life. I want to carry on. I don't want to let this to define me. And then that kind of sense of you, you know, that was grieving the part of you that was grieving that needed to mourn and needed to kind of get some help support to be held by the community, both through therapy, coaching and all of those kind of resources that you've been able to access that you've been searching for.
and accepting, which I think that's the, I often think of it as that's what defines our grief trajectory, whether we go into more kind of resilient ways of grieving and while we kind of go into more kind of stuck sense of grief where things are not progressing. And I think what you've just been describing is a really wonderful way of depicting how things can be transformed into
something kind of, that something good can come out of it, you know, that it's not just loss, that loss can be, can have a transformative power if we allow it to integrate into our life. If we don't fight it on the one hand for too long, I mean, there's always an element of fight involved, think, can definitely relate to that. You want to live, but you also need to grieve. And, you know, it is a constant, constant battle.
Karen Sutton (20:21)
Yeah, massively. Yeah, yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (20:31)
but at the same time, there's this kind of pull towards growing this relationship with loss and it's changing. When you were talking about letting go of certain ideas, certain concepts, I think that's really quite important, I think, for our listeners to get that message across. Obviously, it's not easy, it's not you're not saying that...
it's been wonderful and you've copped through the worst easily, but it sounds like you never gave up. You always kind of had this kind of almost like a survival kind of idea of what surviving would look like or that it's possible to survive. Whereas I agree with you that I think in a lot of kind of social groups that is really lost. That sense of...
wanting to live and I think that's, you know, I often think of social media as working as a mirror that mirrors in our own internal experiences and the more we kind of towards those kind of messages, the more it aggravates our experiences and kind of it kind of creates that kind of vicious circle, a loop in our minds about, you know, you know, if someone's telling you nothing's changing.
Karen Sutton (21:49)
Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (21:54)
which is such a, in a way, unhelpful idea that functions in those kind of circles, that you can't change anything, that you're being complete, you're a victim of your own grief and nothing can be done. And I think that is something we're trying to challenge on this podcast. And not to say that life is wonderful and nothing can get in the way of your happiness after.
after loss would actually have a more balanced idea of, like you were saying, know, there's time to grieve and there's time to live. And, you know, it's really quite an important message to get across that there's room for both, isn't there?
Karen Sutton (22:38)
Yeah.
You know, a lot of my work is based on the strobe and chute model of grief, you know, where you sort of oscillate between the, you know, the loss, the remembering of the person, but also the restoration of life. And it is that grieving fully and living fully and that balance.
looks different, you know, on different days, but also as you go through your journey, obviously in the early days, you are immersed in that grief and that pain. There's not a lot of the restoring of life going on in the first month or so, because you know, like you can't function, you can't function. You're a mess. It's horrendous, you know, and exactly to your point, I'm a
Dr Monika Wieliczko (23:14)
Yeah.
No.
Mm.
and
Karen Sutton (23:28)
I'm eight and a half years down the line and my life is beautiful. It is beautiful. It's not perfect. I have my challenges. I have my down days. I have my up days. That's that's part of the human lived experience. But I have gratitude and I have peace and I have joy in my life. Things that I wanted and
Dr Monika Wieliczko (23:46)
Yeah.
and
Karen Sutton (23:56)
like you say, that survival instinct in me was there, but there were days when it really wasn't. You know, there were days when I was literally on my knees in the kitchen floor, on the kitchen floor, wailing and feeling like I can't do this. I can't do this. It's too hard. You know, I had to reach out and ask for help. I had to accept the help. And yes, sometimes it's...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (24:07)
and
Karen Sutton (24:25)
It's hard to do that, but you know, I always say to people, you cannot heal in isolation. You just, you can't. It's too hard. We are not designed to be on our own. And sadly, there's a lot of people out there, you know, especially those that lose their husband. You know, I was 39, Simon was 43. I had two young, girls at home. That naturally brings in a lot of support to my life. And a lot of the support I had was
Dr Monika Wieliczko (24:31)
and
Karen Sutton (24:54)
for the girls, you know, that helped me. But if you're a bit older, maybe you haven't had children or the children have moved out and they've got their own lives and you find yourself left on your own, like literally on your own, that's a very different scenario and your life can feel very, very bleak and very empty. Some people say to me, I don't know how you did it with the girls. I couldn't have coped with the grief of the children as well as my own grief. I only had mine to focus on.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (24:56)
Yeah.
Karen Sutton (25:24)
Others people say, you were really lucky to have the children because they kept you going. it's, you know, what I say, both sides and actually what we all have to do is find the things in our situations that bring us some comfort, some peace, you know, whatever that looks like and hold on to those things because if you're always looking at what you haven't got, what you can't do, what isn't available to you,
Dr Monika Wieliczko (25:29)
Both sides. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Karen Sutton (25:53)
That's, that's what you're going to see. That's going to become your truth in your reality because you know, the brain search for evidence to back up everything that you tell it. And so, you know, I'm always saying to people, look for the good, you know, Simon, Simon literally dropped down dead suddenly. I wasn't with him and that really bothered me for a while, but I had to, I had to change the narrative. I couldn't spend the rest of my life saying, Oh, I didn't get to say goodbye to him. We didn't get to have the conversations. I didn't know what he wanted. I wasn't there. I didn't tell him I loved him.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (26:01)
Thanks, our client.
Hmm.
Karen Sutton (26:23)
Everyone else got this and everyone else was able to do that and they were able to have these. But what does that achieve? That just makes me feel rubbish. So I have to look at that situation and say, do you know what? He didn't know he was going to die. He didn't have to say goodbye to everyone. It would have broken his heart. He didn't suffer. He literally did drop down dead. And, and those things for me, nothing's ideal. Nothing's ideal, but
Dr Monika Wieliczko (26:28)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Karen Sutton (26:51)
I had to look at all these different situations in the larger situation and take the, choose the good story, I suppose, you know, choose the thing that brought me some comfort, some peace, some connection, whatever that was, because that just on the inside helps you to feel, even if it's a teeny tiny 0.5 % little bit better.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (26:58)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Thank you.
Karen Sutton (27:20)
Each time
you're doing that, you're building on those little things and they become bigger things. But like you say, there is no magic answer. There's no easy way through it. It's horrible. It's horrible. It really is. It doesn't have to be forever.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (27:26)
Yeah.
No.
Yes, but yeah,
and I think what you're describing here is that we do have a choice to some extent how we respond to our loss or we can understand by understanding what's kind of blocking us or what's getting in the way of living. I think it's often the key to understanding that. And I see that the loss in my private practice when I work with
people who've lost a life partner or experienced some other forms of losses that there's so much there to be unpacked and understood what's blocking this ability to move forward, to kind of to live in grief at the same time, which is a very difficult journey. But one thing I wanted to kind of to go back to because you said it and I thought, this fits so well with, you know, kind of this element of...
of stepping out of your perspective for a second, because we had actually very different experiences to some extent, because your husband, as you said, dropped dead within seconds and there was nothing and it was just kind of like someone just switched the lights off and that was it. And on the other hand, you might be thinking, well, if we had this time, as you're saying, well, I did have that time.
And believe me, it was horrendous. So in some ways, I was always wondering, would it be easier if it was a sudden death? And obviously, there's no way of comparing that. It doesn't work like that. But we naturally just end up having those kind of ideas in our mind that if we had, I still have thoughts despite us having the time we had for about a year and a half from the time of his diagnosis till the moment he died.
I still felt like I couldn't fully utilize that time and we still haven't done enough or, you know, that feeling never goes away. it's, I think it's our capacity to tolerate and understand where that feeling comes from. It's a natural response to love's guilt. gosh, like guilt is such a fundamental part of grief.
And I think in our society, we really struggle with this because guilt is something that is shaped by as a kind of like a social norm, social rule that if you do something wrong, there's a fear of being either excluded from the society or that you're breaking certain social rules. And I think a lot of those ideas are created.
in our minds completely unconsciously, but if we never ever revisit them, if we never look at them, if we never have the experience of seeing someone else struggling with it, as you were saying about your groups and how, you know, similarly to my experiences of running groups, people just start to see themselves in, you know, mirrored in other people's experiences. And that is the powerful element of actually understanding, okay, that that person...
have been able to move forward, they have been able to go out, I might have a reaction to it because there's often, you see that a lot on social media, people just going ballistic when they see someone moving forward with their lives, meeting another person or, you know, are you moving too quickly or you're moving, you know, why are you taking you so long? You know, those kind of extreme positions we often take up in relation to life. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Karen Sutton (31:03)
Yeah, you see it everywhere, don't you? Yes.
And I think exactly that. And this is why the communities are so powerful, because we all have these belief systems within us. And to your point, many of our belief systems are in our, you know, they're in our subconscious and our unconscious. We are not aware.
of them. We haven't consciously necessarily created them. They've been formed from, you know, maybe caregivers, upbringings, other people's experiences, a book you've read, a film you've watched, somebody else's experience, what you see on social media. And we create narratives and we create belief systems in our mind. And like I say, we're not usually aware of these, but I know mine, you know, when Simon died,
Dr Monika Wieliczko (31:47)
Mm.
Karen Sutton (31:57)
I was like, right, in six months, it's going to be so much better, so much better, you know, it's going to be fine. You know, at seven months, I was in the doctors asking for antidepressants and sleeping tablets because I just wasn't functioning. And then I thought, okay, get to the end of that first year. A year's, you know, like a year's enough time, it's going to feel better. My second year was horrendous and in a lot of ways worse than my first because I was expecting it to be better. And, you know, like
Dr Monika Wieliczko (32:05)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Karen Sutton (32:26)
You think that allowing yourself to laugh and have fun is being disloyal in some way to your person. You think that allowing yourself to love somebody else and meet somebody else is dishonouring the love that you shared. It's it's an either or, not an and. you know, society has these belief systems as well and how long you should be grieving for and what your grief should look like. And we talk about grief and, you know, I always say to people,
Dr Monika Wieliczko (32:31)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Karen Sutton (32:56)
What does grieving look like to you? And of course, everyone, know, sadness, tears, despair, upset, longing, all the things you write as grief. And what else? What else does grief look like? You know, come on, what else? So were you telling me that when you go out and you do something that you enjoyed, that that means you're not grieving? Is it just eradicated?
Dr Monika Wieliczko (33:04)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Karen Sutton (33:23)
And when you start challenging people's belief systems and bringing in different concepts, different ideas, they start to see what they are making things mean in their unconscious, bringing that into the light of their awareness. And when you do that, you can rewrite the story, you can change it and you can say, well, maybe that's not true. Actually, what evidence do I have to back that up? You know, what else could be true in this situation?
How can I change the narrative so that it gives me permission so I stop holding myself back, so I don't make things mean something that they actually really don't? And this is where the power of community is so incredible because we all approach this and nobody does this the same way, Nobody.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (34:03)
Hmm.
Karen Sutton (34:14)
You know, I don't invite people into my communities and say, right, I'm going to tell you exactly what to do because this is how I did it so that it work for you. It's not. It just doesn't take the same steps. It doesn't take the same timeline. It doesn't look the same. But what you have to do is find your own unique way. But doing that through other people's stories,
Dr Monika Wieliczko (34:14)
Mm-hmm.
Karen Sutton (34:39)
helps you access so much more of yours and bring it into light so that you can take back control, make different choices, make things mean something different because you can see how that has impacted somebody else's journey when they haven't carried a certain narrative around something that keeps them feeling stuck and then they berate themselves for it. They feel guilty for it and to your point, it doesn't eradicate all of the guilt, all of the pain.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (34:40)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Karen Sutton (35:10)
It's always about this, just doing that one little thing. If we can keep working towards doing something that helps you feel 1 % better, 1 % calmer, 1 % more accepting. These things build up and over a period of time, and I'm talking years, you know, really, realistically, I'm not going to sit here and say you can, you know,
Dr Monika Wieliczko (35:10)
Mm.
Hmm.
That's the realistic idea, yeah.
Karen Sutton (35:38)
It takes years. does, but not, your grief won't look the same through all of that time. It's going to shift. It's going to change. It's going to evolve. It's going to feel different. You're going to show up differently. But you know, each time that you take that step forward, you can do it with compassion for yourself, with acceptance and I think with grace.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (35:44)
Mmm.
Yeah.
Karen Sutton (36:07)
And that just opens your eyes up to what else is possible for you and how you can create something beautiful again after loss. We all have so much more in us than we realize. We are capable of so much more. You're going to blow your mind at times. You really are. And surround yourself with people that are doing brave, courageous things. And I don't mean writing books or
Dr Monika Wieliczko (36:18)
Mm.
Yeah.
Karen Sutton (36:37)
you know, producing podcasts or changing the world in any way, but people that are just, you know, stepping out of their comfort zones a little bit and pushing themselves to fight for a life that they can't see. But they just believe that something out there is possible for them that could feel good and just to keep going after that. And they're the people that I want to be around and they're the people that are in my communities. And I think that's...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (36:44)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Karen Sutton (37:06)
That's the power, that's the beauty of it.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (37:09)
And that's the choice that we all have to make. And I think if it becomes a bit more conscious, you know, that this is this, you know, that we can't stop ourselves from the pain of grief. But I do feel that we have a choice whether we suffer or not, because I think that the level, there's a level of suffering that is almost like self-inflicted. And I kind of almost feel that there's something culturally
prescribed, socially prescribed, especially for women. And this kind of idea that you were describing, think I had this image at the beginning of when you were talking about this idea of being a widow, this kind of bitter, angry, kind of resentful widow that always wears black and never goes out and just stays like, I don't know. Yeah, Victoria.
Karen Sutton (38:01)
Victoria, I think, didn't she? she? Very
well.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (38:05)
yeah, but
this is it, you're an empty vessel and there's nothing left in there. It's such a powerful concept. And I think that's often what fuels all that guilt. I, you know, throughout my life, I've always had a complex relationship with guilt. And it took me a very long time in my own personal psychoanalysis to work on that.
Karen Sutton (38:13)
Mmm.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (38:30)
And you kind of realise that it's not like you're suddenly going to reach a point when you don't feel guilty or you don't feel sad or that somehow grief is going to stop or the problem is going to stop appearing in your life. But it's just really whether you have the capacity and the support to bear those feelings, to tolerate them, because there's always going to be a part of me that's going to feel...
and in some ways, not to some extent guilty that I've survived and he didn't, that he died at the age of 41 and I carried on living and it's just this kind of sense that I now can live with it, you know, that somehow it's, yeah, it's, sorry, yeah.
Karen Sutton (39:19)
That's interesting. Well, no, I just think it's interesting
because and I've and I hear this a lot and I've done this as well that we tell we say to ourselves, I'm always going to feel sad. I'm always going to feel guilty. But that but is that us creating a narrative that we might not? Is there is there a time in our lives where where that guilt might dissipate or that sadness might might dissipate?
Dr Monika Wieliczko (39:46)
Mmm, absolutely. It's not there all
the time. Mmm.
Karen Sutton (39:49)
No, and actually,
sorry, I feel I cut you off a little bit there. But I, but this is where I think I kind of tune into to what people say in the words that we use, because they're so powerful, aren't they? And, and if we say to ourselves, you know, I'm always, I'm always going to feel really sad, I'm always going to feel really guilty. You're creating a truth that might not actually be
Dr Monika Wieliczko (40:04)
Yeah.
Karen Sutton (40:18)
true and what's the impact of that and and and i don't know i've i have been thinking recently you know do we grieve forever but what does grief look like you know and if we think that grief is always sadness and pain and despair and is guilt always attached to that as well i i don't know ? but is it possible to get to a point where you feel that you you don't grieve
Dr Monika Wieliczko (40:21)
Hmm.
Karen Sutton (40:48)
anymore. But what is grief? Where does grief end? Because actually we integrate it into our lives and I feel that we learn to live alongside it in peaceful, meaningful, beautiful ways. So if you are never feeling any sadness or pain or guilt around the person who's died, does that mean you're no longer grieving or does that just mean it's
Dr Monika Wieliczko (40:52)
Hmm.
Yes, exactly.
Karen Sutton (41:16)
It's been created into a more meaningful, purposeful space within you that you can live alongside actually really peacefully and with acceptance. And I'm really interested in that. I'm really interested in that because they say we grieve forever. What is grief? How do we...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (41:25)
Hmm.
Yeah.
I agree with you. think this concept of grieving is something that I personally also have a complicated relationship with because I think people often assume that it's a static process, but I often think of grief as a relational process and that's because of my background in psychotherapy, but to me it's something that constantly evolves.
you're right, know, the intensity of feelings changes, but also the way you start to see the person who died changes because you're changing. So they might be, they're gone, but you're still here and you're changing. So of course you're going to look at it from a different perspective. I see my late husband completely differently now in comparison to how I saw him when he was still alive. And, know, and that, that will continue to evolve and, will change. And, you know, there's, there's, think it's, it's such a complicated.
area because people just assume and I think we're so afraid of letting go of what we have you know that it's somehow we will forget or we will you know we will we will be seen as being you know kind of bad for for forgetting you know or are we worried about losing that part of our life or the person that we
Karen Sutton (42:34)
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (42:53)
cherished for so long and I think it's this concept that this person is living somewhere externally, you know, in those objects around us or in those places and they do to some extent but I think the real for me the real work on grief is about kind of how do you internalize some of the aspects of the person who died, you know, so for me I've always got to cherish the passion for music that we've shared, the passion for learning, for exploring ideas, for
expanding our minds, you know, this thing is never going to go, which is also why I'm doing this podcast, is actually the music, the intro of the music is the music that Bois-Jane made and he kind of, was the piece of music that he cherished the most and I thought this is always going to live with me, you know, it's always going to be part of my journey.
But there are other things I'm letting go of. This idea of what the relationship should look like, the fact that he's not the number one anymore in my life. I've got another relationship I've got. know, are things we really have to let go of and with time, when we're ready. But I think this is something that we strongly, I think this is the core of the problem with grief. And for me, this is where...
Karen Sutton (43:59)
Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (44:12)
Grief changes from this kind of acute stage of grief to mourning, which is kind of our capacity to do a bit of like a cleanup in our minds. What are we letting go of? What are we keeping? What are we cherishing? How are we evolving that relationship with the person who died? Because they're gone. And I think the fundamental task of grieving and mourning is to accept that they're no longer alive. They're transformed into a different
Karen Sutton (44:24)
and
Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (44:41)
relationship transforms into something kind of more symbolic, but essentially that's the task of grief. And once you get there, I think it is suddenly a bit more room to live. And, you know, it's a real struggle. mean, you're much further ahead with your journey than me in terms of the time scale. You know, so I always kind of think, well, what is going to look like in 10, 15, 20 years time, because things will be completely different, you know, in your life.
Karen Sutton (44:48)
Yes.
Yeah. It is. It is. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (45:12)
Mm.
Karen Sutton (45:12)
the more you move away from something, you do forget, you know, we think often and I relate it a little bit to childbirth and maybe that's a bit clumsy, I don't know, but you have a child and you come out of there, you're like, oh, I'm never doing that again. That was the most painful thing ever. And then lo and behold, a couple of years later, you find, you know, the intensity of the pain
Dr Monika Wieliczko (45:25)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
You
Karen Sutton (45:38)
your memory of it softens, know, logically, you know, it really hurt, but you don't, you don't experience it in your body, as you did at the time. So you think, oh, I'll go back and I'll do it again. What was I thinking? And I, and I think for me anyway, I can only speak of my experiences, but I do see it a lot in my communities. I really do. The, you know, as you move through it,
Dr Monika Wieliczko (45:44)
Yeah.
Karen Sutton (46:06)
It does soften within you, you know, and it turns into actually something really quite beautiful and it has done for me and I know it has done for others. I'm not actively, I kind of say I'm not actively grieving anymore because I'm not. I have moments where I feel sad he's not here. That's more around my children that they don't have their dad. I feel that in intense sadness. I feel sad for him that he's missing out.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (46:09)
and
Hmm.
Yeah.
Karen Sutton (46:34)
on all of the beautiful things that life has to offer with these two girls. There's a lot of sadness, but it's not active grief. You know, I think we all have. Yes, it's just, yeah. But I'm in a place now, eight and a half years in, and I'm not saying this has been easy. I'm not saying this is permanently my truth. But for the most part, I love, I love.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (46:41)
Yeah, to your mourning rather than grieving, you know, that's how I would define it.
Karen Sutton (47:04)
My relationship with Simon now, I feel the relationship I have with Simon now, eh, it's all on my terms because he can't answer me back. I have conversations with him. You know, I talk to him when I'm out and about in nature. I think about him all the time. I don't really think there's a day goes by that he's not mentioned in some way. I still have pictures of him up in my house. My children reminds me of him so much.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (47:08)
and
That's right.
and
Karen Sutton (47:32)
And the relationship I have with him and the grief that I've experienced is a really beautiful one. It's one that is filled with so much gratitude and growth and understanding. I, I'm not grateful that Simon died, but I am so grateful for everything that I learned within my grieving process after Simon died and all the things that it has taught me who I have become.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (47:55)
Hmm. Yeah.
Karen Sutton (48:02)
And what my life looks like, a lot of that is down to having had Simon in my life. And I am so grateful for everything that he brought to my life, everything that he has given me. know, most days I thank him for all that he has provided me with, the lessons, the children, the home, all of it, do you know? And...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (48:26)
Yeah.
Karen Sutton (48:28)
I just, hold that in my heart with so much love, with so much peace, with so much gratitude. And for me, it has evolved into this beautiful part of my being that I love, that I love and I'm grateful for it. Did I ever think I'd say that? No. But you know, could I have learned those lessons in different ways? Did he have to die? I don't know, but I can't change.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (48:31)
Mm.
Mm.
course no.
Karen Sutton (48:56)
I can't change the fact that he died on that day in September in 2016. I had no control over that. And I think, like you say, I reached that point of acceptance and not acceptance in terms of it's okay, it doesn't matter, but acceptance of this is my reality and this is my life and detaching my reality from Simon's death. Does that make sense? So I don't think, well, I've only got this now because he died.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (48:56)
Hmm.
No.
Mm.
Karen Sutton (49:26)
I don't think like that because I think then you're, to me, you're in muddy waters, do you know? Because that's where the guilt comes in. Because you think, well, if I've got all this because he died, I shouldn't have it. Because if he'd lived, I wouldn't have this and I wouldn't feel these things. But I don't see it that way.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (49:26)
Mm-hmm. No.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
But there's
also that kind of magical thinking that somehow we are in control of what happens to us and if we stop ourselves from doing something, we will somehow magically avoid something bad again happening. I think that's big part of why people struggle to invest in life again. It's holding on to what we've lost and pretending like it didn't happen. I think that is the kind of narrative, this relentless hope that they're going to come back
Karen Sutton (49:47)
Mmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (50:09)
walk through the door and something will be recreated again in our lives. But it's so hard to let go. And as you're saying, think there's beautiful way you put it about just being able to cherish those good aspects of Simon and your relationship with him that is still alive. And I think the only way how we can get that is by, well, accepting.
the last, accepting the fact they died, except not as you say, not accepting that, you know, it's okay, they died, but just the matter of fact, you know, it's happened. It really did. And I think there's also going back to this concept of community, which was why I thought it would be so important to talk to you about this is, is I believe that, you know, we are relational beings, human beings are relational beings, and we need relationships to survive. And
Karen Sutton (50:44)
He did. Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (51:05)
where the real problem with having, with losing a life partner or losing a child, which are kind of the closest relationships we have in life, is that we are interlinked in so many different ways. The way our brain, our mind functions is relying on the presence of the other person and how we function, our physiological, emotional responses, it's all interlinked.
So when we lose someone, the resilient way of adapting to that loss is to reinvest over time, to reinvest in something else, in other relationships. It doesn't matter if it's romantic or friendships or whatever that is, but we essentially need that to co-regulate, to be able to function in a kind of practical ways, but also in psychological ways.
So, you know, being able to process our emotions, being able to process what's going on internally to have a narrative about what happened, you cannot do it in isolation. And I think this concept of grief is this kind of, I think, ability to step out of that from, you know, at least initially from time to time, step out of that state of intense grief.
and move into the world, lean into the world and kind of be able to co-regulate. And then when you're more regulated, it's just easier to tolerate the feelings, to work through those feelings. But if we don't have that community, we're you know, like we were talking about COVID, that was the hardest time for many people to grieve because there was no connection, because there was no other body, literally presence of another body that will help you.
Karen Sutton (52:43)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (52:51)
regulate your own nervous system. And that is, you know, something I feel really passionate about that we don't talk about why community and being in the presence of another human being or especially group of people is so essential. It might not feel right from the beginning and you might need to find the right person to do it with, but just sitting in a room with someone else who's better regulated can have a profound.
Karen Sutton (52:53)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (53:20)
impact on how our own body responds and how capable we are then of living. We've recorded this episode with Mary Frances O'Connor about grieving bodies, great great book I really recommend to anyone who's going through loss about those processes and physiologically because it starts within our body and then it kind of evolves into obviously psychological and social and practical work.
Karen Sutton (53:41)
Mm-hmm.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (53:48)
spaces and everything but really grief started within the body and you know not having someone that will help you co-regulate is a bit like saying well I'm just going to choose to suffer. To me it's a bit like you that's the moment when we do have a conscious choice because if you want you know that this is something that could potentially help you.
and you're choosing not to do it, that is the choice you're making. But I think being aware of that, why are you doing it? You might not be ready to do it just yet, but that's the natural trajectory. It's the survival mechanism. you know, we're choosing to be with people or we're choosing to stay away from them. But it's a choice. And I think we often don't talk about it in these terms. It's almost like...
Karen Sutton (54:21)
Yeah.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (54:36)
we are victims of our grief and to some extent, yeah, we can't, we didn't choose this, but how we respond to laws often we have some control over.
Karen Sutton (54:44)
is and
I think that's such an important point isn't it because I mean I hear it so many times in my communities you know when people get offended if somebody says to them you know you're doing really well you know you look great or you're really strong and and and the the common response is well what choice do I have you know and and and I and I
Dr Monika Wieliczko (54:57)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Karen Sutton (55:06)
I find I'm like, no, don't give your power away. You recognize where you are making powerful choices and you are showing up for yourself because you do have you always have a choice in how you show up. But you're doing these things on automatic pilot. know, a lot of what we do is driven by our unconscious, isn't it? 95 % of our thoughts, actions, behaviors. we're not consciously thinking about them. Therefore, we think we have no choice, but
Dr Monika Wieliczko (55:16)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Karen Sutton (55:34)
But you do, you do have choice. to your point of, know, earlier in the conversation, you said about, we cause a lot of our suffering ourselves. And we do because internally we are attached to certain beliefs and ideas that aren't true, but we're making them our truth. And then we're showing up in a way that's attached to those, those truths that we've created that confirms it.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (55:57)
that confirms them.
Karen Sutton (55:59)
And
then we just sit in that space of, well, I have no choice and I can't and it's too hard. And actually you can reduce your suffering significantly. I'm not saying you can eradicate it. Of course you can't, but there's so much you can do to reduce your suffering because a lot of your suffering is caused within you. You're not aware of it, but it is.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (56:12)
Mm-hmm.
Karen Sutton (56:21)
And you can bring that into your awareness and you can make different choices. There are so many different choices. And when you educate yourself and you start to understand the importance of regulating your nervous system, know, how it's in overdrive a lot of the time when you're grieving. Just not just the mental aspects of grief, but the physical, emotional, spiritual side of things that all need time and space. And you can't...
You can't actively keep doing to get you through your grief. Sometimes it's making that choice to actually sit in it and feel it and immerse yourself in it. And I know that's not very appealing because it's so horrible, but it's finding ways to allow the grief to move through your body, to release them, to find healthy distractions from it, healthy ways of releasing it, of connecting with others that get it and can regulate you because...
Dr Monika Wieliczko (56:58)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm.
Karen Sutton (57:17)
You have so much more choice than you think you do. just recognizing, it comes back to that quote, doesn't it? What you're not changing, you're choosing. And I know it can sound a bit harsh because people will say, well, I didn't choose this and I didn't want him to die. And absolutely, you're allowed to be angry about that. That's valid. But recognize what you can do to support yourself through that.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (57:21)
Yeah.
Mm hmm. Yeah.
Karen Sutton (57:44)
You know, because there's a lot, there's a lot of, you know, Mary Frances O'Connor, The Grieving Brain and the Grieving Body. There's two great books there. Do you know Dr. Bessel van der Kolk has done so much work on The Body Keeps the Score. You know, you've got Grief Yoga Expert. There's so much. And if you go out there and look for it now, you know, it's a growing space where there's a lot of people that are really sharing incredible information and tools and ideas and you get to choose. You know, you don't have to do them all.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (57:52)
Hmm. Hmm.
Mm, they're so much better.
Mm.
Karen Sutton (58:15)
But do some of them, you know, to support yourself because it probably can feel a little bit easier than it does now in some way.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (58:17)
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely. And I always encourage people to take part in the grief emote, which is something I've developed, kind of bringing all of that kind of understanding and knowledge, the very basics of what grief journey would look like. And I'm always really surprised when people come back and they say, well, I didn't realize that this is all going on in the body, you know, that this is how our brain functions. This is how, you know, my thinking is changing over time. And I think having that kind of
somewhere where you can start to begin to unpack all those layers of grief but also having some kind of structure into thinking, okay, this is the experience, this is what happened to me, this is how it unfolded and what can I do about this? How can I develop those more resilient ways to grief? So we always encourage people to go and just do this quick questionnaire that gives you access to a lot of resources there.
but also thinking how you can begin to link up with those communities that can hold you, that can support you, because these things are really growing in the UK, not just across the world, but also in the UK. And there's so many places we can go to and reach out and reconnect when you feel like you're ready to take that step. And I think, what you're doing, Karen, is another example, and we will put some links in.
in the show notes where people can find you. And I know you obviously run your programs and you do retreats as well. So there's a lot of information on your website where people can go and find out a bit more about you and how to connect with you. You're on social media as well and Instagram and Facebook. And yeah, so there's always, there are all the ways we can connect.
Karen Sutton (1:00:10)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All of that.
Dr Monika Wieliczko (1:00:19)
with the wider community and yeah, I'm just so thankful for your time and expertise and kind of sharing your story of grief and how inspiring it is for many people to hear that it's possible to live after loss and find that middle ground between grieving and living. So thank you so much for today, Karen.
Karen Sutton (1:00:39)
Yeah. Thank
you. Thank you for having me.
