EFR 792: The Science and Process of Healing From Grief & How to Endure Any Loss with Gina Moffa, LCSW

00:00 - Speaker 1 The following is an Operation Podcast production.

00:03 - Speaker 2 Our nervous system is a smoke alarm, always scanning for danger. And so when we have a huge life stressor, our cortisol is raised, our every system is alerted. From there, our immune system becomes in disarray, our cardiovascular system, everything is on high alert because it thinks it has to survive. Really, the nervous system is really at the crux of how we endure grief and how we respond to grief, because there's no real preparation, as much time as we are ever given to understand that a loss may come. It's always going to be a shock. When it does, you can't catch your breath.

00:41 You're having palpitations, you can't sleep, your brain is racing, you have brain fog, memory loss. You know there's hunger changes. You know there's sexual changes. Right, you're not thinking of any of that stuff. You're simply thinking of survival, and we all can understand that. Whether it is a death related loss or a diagnosis or a breakup, you know some very significant life event where nothing, nothing will ever be the same. Hi, it's Gina Maffa here. Grief and trauma therapist and author of Moving On Doesn't Mean Letting Go, and welcome to Ever Forward Radio.

01:14 - Speaker 1 Grief. We're going to get into a lot of aspects of grief, but I've heard you talk about this inevitable portal that opens up the moment we all go through it when we suffer loss in life. What do you mean by that? What does that look like? What does that feel like? What does that really mean in terms of suffering a loss?

01:36 - Speaker 2 Well, I call it the grief fall because everybody can relate to this one moment, this one moment you get a phone call that someone you love has died, or the moment you get a phone call that someone's diagnosed with something that they won't come back for from, you get the news of something detrimental and you and you feel a physical sensation, just knowing that nothing will ever be the same. And people always say, okay, so when do we go from loss to grieving? Do we always grieve? And so there's this moment where it becomes a doorway, and to me, I call it the grief fall because it feels such a physical sensation of falling, like you don't know where you're going to land. You know that you are going someplace else, you know that you will be transformed, but you don't know how you will get there. You don't know how you will land.

02:28 And I remember getting the news of my mother's death and feeling just my stomach, you know, like as if I was just free falling and I didn't know what came next. And I felt the whole world disconnect in some way and I knew that it was the beginning of something new. And so, for me, that grief fall, that moment, that portal, is that one moment where you just acknowledge that nothing will ever be the same, and we all can understand that, whether it is a death-related loss or a diagnosis or a breakup, you know some very significant life event where nothing, nothing will ever be the same.

03:06 - Speaker 1 I've been through both. Um I, I got the phone call, or I had the conversation with my family about, hey, dad's sick and he's not coming back from it. And then, 18 months later, 15 months later or so, I got that other phone call hey, he's gone. And in that second phone call I felt exactly what I think you're talking about. I wonder if this is that free fall, that portal that you're talking about. It's even wilder with a terminal illness. You know it's coming, but when it hits you have no idea. There's no preparedness, I believe, to really fathom what that actually feels like when it becomes real.

03:50 And I was at home and I had just come off of about three days. I was on medical emergency leave from the military at the time and for the last almost three days I was in the hospital because the doctors were like it's going to happen any moment now. I barely ate, didn't sleep. But I was in the hospital because the doctors were like it's going to happen any moment now. Uh, I barely ate, didn't sleep, but I was just, I was just crashing. And so I went home and I was like let me just get a couple hour nap, I'm gonna go back to the hospital and literally in that three hour window he passed.

04:16 And there's this whole other story of how I think that was the way it had to have been. He was waiting almost. I tried to come home so many times to be with him when he passed and it just never happened. But what I want to say is that when that phone call came through and it became reality, I felt as if, literally, I was falling through a black hole. I remember it was in my head and it almost seemed like the real world around me.

04:45 It was complete and utter silence, like it was in a vacuum, and I blacked out and I remember just having these primal screams and I started beating the wall and beating the furniture and just like shredding pillows and just yelling as I was in the house by myself and just I like that's not me. I had no idea that I was going to react that way and I have never felt so so much in a free fall, but yet so almost violent at the same time and so confused and just in a weird dissociated state of what is real. Where am I? Am I in this world or not? Is that what you're talking about here?

05:29 - Speaker 2 Absolutely it is. It's this moment that your entire body, from your brain to every 12, you know all of the 12 systems we have in our bodies is now trying to say some, something is gone and we are in danger and our nervous system is set off. And that moment is one that is so pivotal because we then realize why is grief such a deep human wound? Because it takes everything from us, and it takes, you know, the predictability of things. You know even a diagnosis, such as one that your father had it's. You know. You know it's going to happen and you can. You can hear about anticipatory grief and you know they can say, oh, you can prepare, but you don't. It's still a shock to your system and it's still your nervous system getting this. You know this alert that it's in danger, it's survival is in danger and nothing will ever be the same. And I say that line a lot Nothing will ever be the same, because that is a trigger right there.

06:30 - Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. What is the science of loss, what is the science of grief? What is what is going on literally in our bodies when we get that phone call, when we get that?

06:42 - Speaker 2 phone call. Well, it's a major stress response first and foremost, and there are two people that I refer to when looking at sort of the science of grieving, and it's Mary Frances O'Connor, who wrote a book called the Grieving Brain, which I highly recommend, and the Hubertman Lab Can't go wrong, can't go wrong.

07:04 And he even does an episode back in 2022, I believe, where he talks about the nervous system and loss, and really what it is is, just as I was saying earlier, our, our nervous system is a smoke alarm and it's always scanning for danger, and so when we have a huge life stressor, it's, it's, you know, the alarms go off and we're in danger. Our cortisol is raised, our every system is alerted. Um, from there, our immune system becomes in disarray. You know our cardiovascular system, everything is on high alert because it thinks it has to survive. And so, really, the nervous system and and we'll get into it, I hope more you know is really at the crux of how we endure grief and how we respond to grief, um, because there's no real preparation, as much time as we are ever given to understand that a loss may come. It's always going to be a shock when it does to our systems, and so it's really important to note that it is a full body experience for a reason.

08:08 - Speaker 1 But I heard you say that the nervous system kind of gets the shit end of the stick, so to speak, in terms of the response that we have physiologically.

08:19 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, the brain is around for one purpose and one purpose only, and it's to keep us alive, is around for one purpose and one purpose only, and it's to keep us alive. And when we go through a loss, um, or any other big, significant threat, quote, unquote to our system, let's say a really major life stressor, our brain is going to wonder how do we survive this? And so that's why it clicks into. You know, have you heard of broken hearted syndrome?

08:43 You know it, everything comes in and it's really important. Sure, the nervous system, we could say, gets the shit end of the stick, but it's really because it's the first entry point, you know it's it's really where we begin to see that there's danger and that nervous system feeds into the rest of the systems. So if there's no danger right, and our body doesn't need to go into survival mode, you can sit and tell me how you feel. You can breathe regularly when you're in danger. You can't catch your breath.

09:12 You're having palpitations, you can't sleep, your brain is racing, you have brain fog, memory loss, you know there's a hunger changes. You know there's sexual changes. Right, you're not thinking of any of that stuff. You're simply thinking of survival, and a lot of the time, right after a significant loss, that is, the physical sensations that come up is that you are, first and foremost, having a physical loss experience.

09:37 - Speaker 1 Is there a way can we physiologically realistically prepare for loss, or is it just a crapshoot?

09:45 - Speaker 2 I think that there are things that come into play and I talk about this in a chapter that I have called grief sister trauma, and it is really again I'm going to talk about the nervous system. It also is do you have a history of mental health challenges?

09:58 - Speaker 1 and high adrenaline.

10:00 - Speaker 2 Do you have weak or poor coping skills? Do you have a history of trauma? Right, there's a lot of things that come into play that would help get to a place of mitigation, or not, right, people can say or they come to me in my office and say I feel stuck, I feel like everybody else can grieve this loss and they're doing much better than I am. And I feel like I can't function, I don't wanna go to work, I can't be around people, you know I can't eat, I'm not sleeping, et cetera, and what's wrong with me.

10:28 And then we look at the whole picture. Right, I could say we're, we're forced into resilience. Right, everybody has resilience in some way. It takes a little bit more practice for some people. Or support systems such as therapy or group you know, group therapies, whatever. But you know, at the end of the day, we have to look at somebody holistically and historically, because I'm not going to say you know, you know it's. It's dangerous to say that everyone can do this, but in my 20 years as a therapist, I would have to say that if you don't look at the whole picture and you're just saying you can do this, you can be trained, and if somebody can't. Now they're failing at that too, right, and it's a and it's a right or wrong thing, I'm sure a lot of people listening hear that and needed to hear that and appreciate that.

11:19 Thank you of the day. A physiological response is a physiological response. Right, we can't really prevent shock and so we can cognitive, behavioral ourselves through it. Right, we could look at fact versus fiction, we can try to replay our narratives, but at the end of the day these things are physiological. And like, if I see a bear coming and I practice to see, you know, I practice seeing a bear coming a lot and I train my brain for that bear, that bear comes, I'm still going to run fast as hell and you know I'm going to be in survival mode.

11:50 - Speaker 1 Oh shit, it's a bear.

11:52 - Speaker 2 No, and I'm going to be in survival mode. My body is going to be like we better get out of here. This is really dangerous. It's not going to sit and do breath work and say there's a bear coming. We've prepared for this and you, you know Mr Bear.

12:05 - Speaker 1 Winnie, one second please. I need to have a moment. Winnie, I'll take your honey, please.

12:11 - Speaker 2 But you know what I mean, and so look not to shame, you know, or discredit any of that thought process. It's great If I felt like I could prevent, you know, any kind of physiological response. I would be all for it. But you know, I think that it dangerously sets us up to simplify something that's incredibly complicated, scientific and personal. So I would be careful.

12:38 - Speaker 1 What about familiarity with loss and grief? Does the relationship matter? Or is it more the frequency that matters in terms of for lack of a better term just getting the reps in with loss so that we can become more resilient with it? No no no, I'm not downplaying the situation, but I'm trying to make you know it's a heavy subject matter. I'm trying to make it lighthearted a bit but just to get. It's life To understand life more Death is life.

13:06 - Speaker 2 Right To live is to grieve. Death is life it's true, I mean to live and to you know you said earlier, and not to sidebar for a moment. You know there's so many different types of losses. People are losing and grieving so much more than they would ever assume that they've ever been. You know, grieving People come to me thinking it's anxiety or depression, and yet they've had all of these multiple losses, layers of losses secondary losses.

13:32 - Speaker 1 Those are just symptoms of loss, yeah.

13:34 - Speaker 2 Right, right. And so you are really grieving and it you know, and it's it's far more than death related losses that we grieve in our lifetime. You know even identity and you know ways of being. I think you know who we are, friendships, I mean, there's so so much and I think we have to just put the spotlight on that a little bit, and so I wanted to just get that in, and then I forgot your question. No, I was, uh, I was joking, but really no, no, no, you're good I totally forgot your question.

14:10 - Speaker 1 After all, that I'll come back to. Oh, specifically it was is there such a thing as getting the reps? In with loss to make us more resilient to its effects.

14:20 - Speaker 2 So no, we can't get really good at practicing loss, but what I can say about it is that relationship does matter, but mostly it's the meaning that we give things. It's the meaning behind the losses. Right, if you lose everyone. I had a client at one point who lost many members of their family, um, and every one of them was devastating. There was no getting used to it and there was no getting better at grief. It was just a different response because every relationship had had a different meaning. Um held a different significance, and so it's.

14:58 You know I always say it's the type of loss, perhaps it's the shock, you know the shock of the loss, perhaps the unexpectedness of a loss can have different effects, um, but we can't really get our loss reps in. There's just no practicing loss, I think. I think theoretically, you know we could say, oh, there it goes again, we just have another loss. But you know, it's the cumulative nature of loss that it we don't forget all of those little losses and the meaning that they hold for us. And so you know, everyone that you mentioned before has a different relationship to you but still has meaning.

15:34 - Speaker 1 Very true. I like that interpretation, thank you. What about the timeline? How long should it take us to get over it? How long should it take us to go all right? This person died, this relationship ended, this loss happened. How long can I expect to have to navigate grief?

15:53 - Speaker 2 Your first question is the second question. I'm laughing at you with. I love it. So those are two different questions. Number one I wrote a book called Moving On Doesn't Mean Letting Go as a snarky quip to society, because moving on and, you know, getting over it and letting go seems to be the American way. But the truth is is that there is no moving on, there's moving forward with, and that's the language that we need to really adopt as a society. Um, but we're such a society of capitalistic, you know, productive humans that we have to always be back to work after three days, back to ourselves. People don't know what to do if we're not our normal selves.

16:36 - Speaker 1 Society has kind of quantified the, the, the, the parameters of grief for a bereavement time off from work. It's you know X amount of days. You know we're kind of already put into buckets for how long we should take to heal Right.

16:52 - Speaker 2 And they even prioritize how long we should heal or how long we should take to mourn a specific people in our lives, Right, If it's an immediate family member, you might get a full week. If it's a you know a distant family, extended family member, you might get one day. If it's your pet, who sometimes most people are closest with.

17:12 - Speaker 1 I'm closest. I'm closer to my dog than some of my people.

17:14 - Speaker 2 Right you get zero days for a pet loss.

17:16 Right, and so I think it's really interesting how you know society also or corporations, or healthcare, or the workforce, or capitalism gets to even define how long we get to grieve specific people in our lives. You know, because so many people have estranged relationships with their family and yet you know their best friend dies in a car accident and they have to take PTO or you know whatever it is, and it's, it's just so backwards. And you know, part of my writing this book and my mission as a grief therapist being more vocal in the world is to really try to change that policy. How do we teach people how to be more grief informed, how to be supportive leaders in the workforce so that people can come back and not feel like they're getting worn out? Grief, like I said, is so physical that if you're shoving it down just so you can show up back at work and show up back as normal, you're going to get incredibly sick and that will take a very big toll over time. And so we have to really right.

18:19 - Speaker 1 We have to look at it.

18:21 - Speaker 2 So you know. Back to your original question is what is the timeline? How do we, how do we move on? How do we navigate this? You know I feel bad in saying that grief will always be with us. It will change in a lot of ways. You know how we deal with it when things come up. But birthdays, anniversaries, days of meaning, you know, memories smells.

18:40 - Speaker 1 There's that meaning word again.

18:42 - Speaker 2 Meaning is a lot means a lot. Meaning means a lot to me when it comes to grief. You know, because it's so individual, it's so subjective and because it's deeper than anything we could ever even have language around. You know, and so it's. It's incredibly profound, the meaning within our losses and personal and personal and, um, you know. So you know, I think that we really can't put a timeline, but we can say that there are going to be more intense moments within grief.

19:19 You know, smells, someone you resemble, you know an item that you find of theirs, you know, uh, an inside joke, something that comes up, anything, um, the brain is imprinted with the memories of them, anything, the brain is imprinted with the memories of them. And so when that gets triggered and reawakened, you're going to have this wave of intensity and it will feel almost like you're back to square one in your grief and a lot of people say, oh my God, I feel like I'm just back down to where I started and it's not true. Please know that it's not true and I say this to your listeners. Please know this. This is what's supposed to happen in a way, because this is your brain remembering something. It does not mean that you are. It's not a slide where it shoots in ladders.

20:02 You're not going back to square one. You're simply acknowledging that this is going to be the ride, and some days, some moments, some memories are going to be so much more profound, powerful. You know they may knock you off your feet. They may knock you off your feet for a while, you know, and you will get back up and it will shift in intensity over time, and it will, but it will be with you. It's not something that is gone from you. It's something that becomes a part of you.

20:28 - Speaker 1 Wow, that's a. It's hitting me very intensely right now. I was sharing with you. I let my audience in on everything, maybe too much, but, um, I'm there. Uh, I recently have been feeling like I was slipping back down that slide to to to square one.

20:47 Um, for the first time in a couple of years now, I've been having some very extreme triggers that I can't quite put my finger on as to why this is happening. Because I feel so much and I know that I am so much better. I have developed a much healthier, stronger relationship with my grief and loss and for some reason last week I've had two extreme episodes panic attacks and just and there's a new layer to it now, whereas before, when these would happen, when I was on the beginning of my journey of grief, I mean scary, it's weird, it's wild. You know I'm hyperventilating, I'm blacking out, I'm inconsolable, I'm unsafe, and that's happening again. But now I have this other kind of side of awareness too. I'm like almost watching myself and there's this new layer of fear of going. Am I slipping? Am I sliding all the way back to the beginning?

21:41 Because now I have comparison to what life was like before knowing, before healing and before developing that relationship to what it's like now on the other side, and it's almost like I'm grasping for straws. I'm like no, like we've worked so hard, chase, we've gone through so much, like you. You you deserve more than going back to square one, because square one was not good. It was a very hard, difficult, scary time for a lot of different reasons and that affected almost nearly every relationship in my life. And that's kind of a new layer to this now.

22:17 And you have this concept of endurance that I would love to kind of get into next. And this is very timely for me, because now I'm able to kind of go all right. Just because you got better with an aspect or even a large portion of grief does not exclude you, chase, from carrying it with you to your point for the rest of your life, and a part of me knew that. But it's kind of one of those things until you hear it and it like really sinks in and it like really sinks in. And so hearing you need to develop endurance to this thing, even when it gets way better, and, like in my case and a lot of other people, you go months, years without feeling like you're falling back down the slide that can be so overwhelming.

23:06 to go wait, I have to prepare myself forever with this.

23:09 - Speaker 2 And terrifying.

23:10 - Speaker 1 Yeah, can you help us understand, to get on board with this idea of endurance with grief?

23:16 - Speaker 2 Well, originally, you know, when I, when I started to talk about the endurance that it takes, I was. I was talking about fresh grief. Because people just assume it's an emotional experience and they don't understand the blackouts, the palpitations, the heart racing, the panic attacks, the anxiety that feels never ending, the inability to sleep or you're sleeping too much. I mean, nobody prepares you for that, nobody teaches us how to grieve, and so, and nobody teaches us how to support grievers either. And so we're in this space where we're flailing, we're completely at a loss, and, and I say you know, when you're in a state of overwhelm, whether it's panic attacks, whether it is, you know, severe depression, whatever it may be it's incredibly important to take it back to basics. It may seem so simple, but shrink our world up, and that means drink more water, eat enough protein, move your body, rest your body, talk to people who love and support you and stay away from triggers that are like people who pressure you, push you, berate you, judge you, offer their opinions. You know this is a time to be incredibly compassionate and to realize that we're in a place where our feelings are unpredictable.

24:34 I have a whole chapter in my book called grief rhythms and it's, and I and I wrote that because I think there's so much judgment, just like you were saying on you know, I thought I was okay, I deserve to be okay, you are, you are okay, you're simply grieving and that right now you're in this particular rhythm, you know, and we have to go with it and we can't judge it, because our rhythms change and we flow in and out of them and you know so when I say it takes endurance, it is a long game, it is a marathon, not a sprint. Although society wants us to believe that grief is a sprint, it is not. It is not physically, nor emotionally, nor psychologically, even familially, how our roles shift, and you know and and relationships change.

25:15 It is an entire reorientation to our lives. It's as if we've been placed on another planet and now we've got to sort of figure out what we're doing on this planet. Who are the people? Do they speak our language? Right, we look at and I say this like platitudes. Platitudes are a thing you know. I remember when my mom died of a dear friend. She just wrote on my Facebook wall heaven got another angle, Couldn't even spell check angel, and that was all I heard from her and I was like, wow, I don't know who this is.

25:50 So now I'm in this new place as a new person and, mind you, I was a grief therapist, I was a trauma and grief therapist before the loss of my mother, yes, and so I thought I had all the tools, I thought I knew it all, and that's why I say my major learning curve and my edge was that grief takes endurance. Because grief became a very physical, um disorienting, unpredictable and turbulent thing in my own life, having known about it and helping other people through it, and so it was a real humbling moment for the trauma therapist but um, I'm so sorry for the loss of your mother too.

26:28 - Speaker 1 Oh, thank you, I didn't say that.

26:29 - Speaker 2 Thank you. Yeah, all of that to say is that there's so much changing that we don't anticipate, we don't understand, we can't prepare for, and everyone around us is different. And so, whether it's panic attacks in fresh grief right after a loss, or panic attacks 10, 19 years later, it's important to shrink your world down and take it back to basics. And number one and another simple thing is really to be present with yourself and be present with the emotions and be present in terms of seeing. I even just put my hand on my heart and say what do I need? What do I need? It's not square one, but something is reawakened, and you know if I can share, you know cause you shared with me earlier.

27:17 You know you were revisiting a grave after years, and this is a new experience.

27:20 This is you revisiting it, I imagine, as a different person with different life events, and so now you are experiencing this grief in this new phase of life that you're in, and so, yeah, that could trigger a whole lot of nervous system upheaval.

27:36 And the most important thing is, which you at least have by your side, is someone to help you regulate your nervous system and then, from there, when it feels safe enough, safety is the biggest thing that I talk about in my book when it comes to grief and allowing us to feel safe.

27:52 To feel our feelings is to feel your feelings and to allow it without judgment, and it's something that we don't do enough of. I'm sorry to say it, but we do, and you know we worry about other people judging us and pressuring us and pushing us, and we do it more than they, than they do, and so we're like why don't I feel better right now? Why am I not okay? How come I am still in this place? How come I'm back in this place? Yeah, well, this is grief. This is your lifelong companion that will shift and change and morph and show up in different costumes and want some tea and, you know, or some ketones and and you and you have to invite it in or it will knock on the door, knock on the window, show up at the back door.

28:37 You know, and and it's really you know part of my work is really helping to teach people how to engage and befriend it, because it can otherwise be incredibly terrifying.

28:48 - Speaker 1 Wow. You hit on a lot of things there that definitely ring true for me, or helping me understand what I wanted to get into next, and that's there are a lot of concepts to grief that we can fathom, that we can in some way prepare for, but there are a lot of others that we can't, and that's a lot due to what I believe is as we grow and as our relationship evolves for the first time in a long time, or we develop a relationship for the first time ever to that event, instead of just ignoring it, suppressing it, there is a moment in my experience that you will come to and go. I'm a different person, Like Chase what is, what do you mean? To your point, Like you're moving on. You're like you're moving on but you're not letting go. Like that's very real. That's very, very real.

29:38 - Speaker 2 It is, and I think you know, some of the time the best we can get is bittersweet and we think that we want it to be so happy. But we have these beautiful life events that our person is missing and we're growing up and we're growing away and we're growing older and life is moving forward and milestones are happening and they miss it and it's impossible to ignore it. And we may not spiral, but it's impossible to ignore it. And we may not spiral, but it's impossible to ignore it. And if we consciously ignore it, we certainly aren't ignoring it in our unconscious. And so that's important to just realize is that you know it's okay to feel different and not spiral, but also to acknowledge that there might be, I don't know, sometimes maybe even a sense of guilt.

30:31 - Speaker 1 Yeah.

30:31 - Speaker 2 It's complicated. And I think, even in the best of moments, when life is really beautiful, to know that someone we really love, somebody that was our important person, right, our parents are our motherships, they're the reason for our aliveness, you know, and so it can be really challenging to sift through, I think, the many physiological and emotional experiences that come up with even happy moments.

30:59 - Speaker 1 Yeah, why do some people experience grief so drastically different, despite having gone through the exact same experience as other people?

31:10 - Speaker 2 differently. And if somebody has a history of trauma or much loss in their lives which is also associated with trauma, they will they will experience a different type of you know, panic perhaps, or anxiety around their loss. Um, if somebody doesn't have good coping skills, because they just get really worked up over things and you know they just you know they're more sensitive, some may say that'll be a part of it. It's also you know, the type of loss.

31:52 - Speaker 1 um, the type of loss is important too, is it meaning, like our meaning, associated to that person or loss.

31:57 - Speaker 2 No, actually the type of loss in terms of was it sudden, Was it?

32:01 - Speaker 1 brutal.

32:02 - Speaker 2 Was it violent, you know? Was it unexpected? You know, did you have a relationship with this person that was estranged, and now they're not here, and now you'll never have a chance to fix it. Um, all of this contributes to the way that I'm going to use the words again. Our nervous system will, um, experience that loss. And so, you know, I have people come in to my office, like I said earlier, and you know they're like why can't I get over this, why is this affecting me so much? And my, you know, my sister or my mother seemed to be doing okay. Well, it could be traumatizing, and you know I'm never going to tell somebody that something is not traumatizing to them when they're reacting in this physiological way and they can't seem to regulate their nervous system. Or, you know, they lose resources in terms of peer support, like their friends don't want to talk to them anymore. This is so alienating. Now they're depressed, you know, now the anxiety is higher.

32:57 And so it becomes a spiral, and then we're like, why can they do it better? Well, okay, there's, there's really to me, a lot of reasons and and it's your history, you know, know, and and also, like we were saying earlier, it is the meaning behind the relationship. You know, did you rely on this person for your livelihood? Is you know? Are you going to lose your house now, after you know this person dies? You know, do you? Was this person your only supportive person in your life and now you have no one and you're isolated and feeling abandoned. I mean mean it's so. It's so multifaceted and so layered, the ways that we internalize loss and the ways that we actually then exhibit and experience grief, that it's impossible to compare our, our grief experience to anybody else's. And yet it is the one thing that we all do, because we have no reference point for grieving. So what do we do? We look to the other person, we look for structure, we look for a map, and there isn't one.

33:57 - Speaker 1 It's almost like we can't not compare ourselves to others that went through the same traumatic event or even very similar right.

34:04 - Speaker 2 Yeah, you really can't, because everybody is going to internalize an event differently. It's the same idea as you know, six people witness a car accident and everyone will have a different story and a different angle on what they saw and what they experienced and how they took it in. And so it's like we can't really always. You can't compare that, because everyone is going to look at something and internalize it differently.

34:32 - Speaker 1 What about this aspect of what no longer is compared to what could be? I think there's a realization in grief of going. This person's gone, this relationship is gone, this thing is gone and there's work that needs to be done with that. But then when we begin to realize, coulda, shoulda, woulda, what could we have done together my life? Now? What would it be like with this person? Is there a difference in navigating grief when it comes to acknowledging what no longer is compared to what could be?

35:13 - Speaker 2 I'm not sure that there's a difference, necessarily as much as a need to acknowledge it. I see it as a here's what we've lost and that's what is now in the present and all of the things that could be in the future, right, and all of the things that could be in the future, right. Those are sort of like these nebulous things that may or may not have happened, but they are potentially secondary losses right.

35:39 So if it's our identity. If it's our, you know, whatever it's usually our identity or our role shifting or whatever it may be, that's head, that is still a secondary loss. It's just an unspoken one and it's one that doesn't show up right away.

35:55 - Speaker 1 Right, yeah, it's kind of a surprise.

35:57 - Speaker 2 Yeah, it's not as apparent you know, but I talk a lot about secondary losses because it can be what actually traumatizes people. They're like wait, I lost my mom, now I've lost this, this, this and this. Oh wow, like I didn't see that coming, or you know.

36:11 - Speaker 1 My future kids lost their grandmother. None of that exists yet, but you do begin to kind of go down that timeline.

36:17 - Speaker 2 Yeah, and it may happen. You know in your mind, symbolically, that you can feel that loss or that grief, but it always comes. And so you know I always say it's a domino effect in a lot of ways You're, most of the time you're not going to have just a primary loss, you're going to have additional losses that come with your loss, but that is the timeline. So we're we are almost, I want to say, simultaneously grieving what is and and the idea and the symbolism of what we lose in the future, and then we lose it again in the future more tangibly. Yay.

36:52 - Speaker 1 Great Love that journey for us. I love that for us.

36:57 - Speaker 2 I love that, for us, I mean, and I think that's why it's so important for people to be educated about grief, because it is so crazy, making for so many people and you can feel so out of your body and you can feel so much again not to use that on a different planet, but you don't know who you are anymore and you don't know how to.

37:15 Actually, how do I, how do I participate in my life?

37:18 Because my life doesn't feel like my life anymore and so I always. You know, part of why I wrote my book is because I wanted to teach people what they could experience and how they could, how they could actually have a sense of agency over something incredibly unpredictable and terrifying. And I think, the more that we could try to understand what could happen to us, it doesn't necessarily help us prevent it, but I do believe that knowledge is power and we can help prepare for it, and that may mean simply going to a therapist or a grief support group or getting all the books that you can or you know to a therapist or a grief support group, or getting all the books that you can or you know, having really good friends and being as honest as you possibly can. Pastoral care, whatever your, your supportive choices is, is having the understanding that we need to be grief informed, and grief informed means that we're going to understand and support what is happening now with the understanding that we're going to have to be there in the future as well. So, yes, please.

38:16 - Speaker 1 Light work. All right? Yes, it is, and we choose this.

38:21 - Speaker 2 No, it's an honor, it's really a humbling journey to walk and be a traveling companion with somebody going through a significant loss. I mean because this is the deepest human wound that somebody will have and and you're and everyone will have it, and everyone runs away from it, um, or tries to, and when you're vulnerable and authentic, you give permission for other people to do the same and we need more of that.

38:47 - Speaker 1 Well, before I ask my last question, um, I'll have all this linked in the show notes and video notes for everybody, but where can they go to learn more about you, your work, your book?

38:55 - Speaker 2 I would love it if they did. Come on down, I know, I'm like sounding like a QVC. They can go to my website, ginamafacom. I'm on Instagram at GinaMafaLCSW, where I am the most active. I love interacting with the community. It's a really great it's. It's interesting. I call it the community because kind of the same people talk to each other and comment and support and engage and, um, I feel so privileged to even have a community there. And um, yeah, and my book is called. Moving on Doesn't mean letting go.

39:29 Um, it's available everywhere books are sold, and um, it's not a savior, but my hope is that it could be a companion and a soft landing for a time that feels really hard and unpredictable, and um and I and I wrote it as a as a way to give access to people to have any kind of grief support, since I noticed during the pandemic there really just wasn't enough support for people going through loss, and you know we're not taught grief in graduate school enough, so, um, so I wrote this as a sort of a gift in a way, um that sounds.

40:04 - Speaker 1 That sounds too heroic and I don't mean it that way.

40:06 - Speaker 2 But it's hard to have access to specialized grief therapy, either through financial reasons or location, and so it was sort of just a small gesture, in some way, of feeling like a mission to to educate grief and bring it really to the forefront of the mainstream, since, uh, grief is the biggest mental health burden people are carrying right now and we just are not acknowledging it. So thank you for having me on to acknowledge it my pleasure, my pleasure, thank you.

40:30 - Speaker 1 And uh, I always joke when I have professionals on the show such as yourself, because I feel like you're. This is probably a billable hour for you.

40:38 - Speaker 2 Two hours.

40:39 - Speaker 1 Two hours I'm walking away with so much. Thank you Seriously, personally, my last question Sure, this has definitely helped shine a light on a unique area of our being, of the human experience. To help us hopefully move forward today after this message. But those two words ever forward, what do they mean to you? How would you say you live a life ever forward?

40:59 - Speaker 2 I think it's really about the continuing to get up every time I'm knocked down, the continuation of hope and looking for good, looking for glimmers of hope. And looking for good, looking for glimmers um, recognizing that even a step back is still a step forward. Um, because you still have that knowledge, you still have every learning lesson that you have created yourself or learned along the way. And um, yeah, and it means honoring um where we've been and how we've gotten to where we are today.

41:37 - Speaker 1 Even a step back. Even a step back is a step forward. I loved hearing that. Thank you.