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(Stephen) Hi, I'm Stephen Puddicombe.

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CFMWS is starting a new podcast series
on Grief and Bereavement.

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We'll touch on everything 
in the coming weeks

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about the many different types of grief.

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We are kicking off our series
with Andrea Warnick.

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She's a registered psychotherapist, 
a registered nurse and an educator.

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She specializes in ensuring adults,
children and youth

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have access to caring and informed support

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when experiencing illness,
dying and death.

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One of the things Andrea 
would like people to understand is,

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grief comes in many different sizes,

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there is no need one-size-fits-all box.

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(Andrea) Absolutely not,

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and I think that's what leads
a lot of people astray, too.

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Many people have this very like five-stage
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross as a model

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in their mind,

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and in fact, it's far more complex
and individual than that.

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(Stephen) How many types of grief
are there?

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Like what are we dealing with?

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(Andrea) Well, the way I describe grief,

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especially to kids, 
but it's applicable for adults,

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is that it's our response 
to any type of significant loss

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that happens in life.

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So this could be somebody
being deployed overseas

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for an extended period of time,

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this could be somebody moving 
from one community to another,

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families or relationship breakdowns,

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friendship loss.

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But a lot of times, 
what we think about is death,

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which, of course, 
is a type of grief as well.

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But really, it's our response
to any type of loss.

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And quite often, I try to make clear 
with the families that I'm supporting,

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it's not just our feelings,
it's also our thoughts,

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like, for some people,

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grief is a much more 
cerebral process, a thinking process,

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where for other people, 
it tends to be more of a feeling process

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and for most of us, 
we're somewhere on the continuum,

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but I find that what happens
within families is,

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it can look so different 
from one person to a next.

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Sometimes I'll have one person
say to me like,

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"Oh I don't even feel
like my wife is grieving at all.

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She's just up busy all the time
doing stuff."

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And another person doesn't think
their sibling is grieving.

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And it's not that anyone's not grieving,

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it just looks and shows up
very differently.

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(Stephen) Grieving and bereavement
is difficult for the best of us

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and it's obvious that 
there's help out there now

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and that's helped is so important

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to really get us through the process
and what we're feeling.

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And I don't want to imagine
having to talk to a child

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about their friend, their mother,
they're aunt, their grandpa,

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anybody dying or the child dying.

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How do you do that?

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(Andrea) It's actually the thing
that I'm constantly reminded of

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in the midst 
of these conversations with kids,

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even sometimes like two, 
three, four-year old kids as well,

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is that they don't have 
a lot of the same anxiety

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around the concepts 
and the topics of death and dying,

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like they often enter it
much more openly.

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And there can be some really raw emotion.

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I spend a lot of time coaching families

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around what language to use
and not using euphemisms

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like, don't say "We lost Grandpa."

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Kids lose things everyday
and find it again, right?

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Grandpa died, use the D word.

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But I'd say, to be honest,

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more challenging than the language
and how to talk about it

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is just being able to bear witness
to the child's experience.

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So if a child has just learned 
that mom is going to die of an illness

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and is completely devastated
in that moment,

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to just allow for that, hold them in that,

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don't rush in and try to distract them

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or suppress their grief response.

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And I think, to be honest,
that's the most challenging.

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But when it comes 
to the conversational pieces,

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I find that kids are just like,
they engage, they're interested,

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they're curious about death,
a lot of them.

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And if we invite the questions
and create safe spaces

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where they know they can ask anything,

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most kids are going to go there
a lot more comfortably

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than most adults will.

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(Stephen) So often we're just told,
"Suck it up, get over it."

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You know, "You're a man,"
"You're a woman,"

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"You're an adult," "You're this."

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How do you change 
that essentially preconceived notion

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that many of us have

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that that's how we should deal with this?

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(Andrea) Yeah, it's a lot 
of unraveling the societal messages

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that for many of us, the older we are, 
the more often we've heard them.

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And I find that even with young children,
I start letting them know

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and really trying to teach them 
that being strong and being brave

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doesn't mean denying our feelings
and our difficult thoughts,

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it means actually allowing
ourselves to feel that.

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And I really encourage--

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I mean, we'll even see it
in children's literature.

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They'll be references 
to withholding tears and being brave,

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and when I catch that 
in books I'm reading with kids too,

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I dismantle it right there.

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But really, reminding people
that sometimes--

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and this could be also for the 64-year old
that I'm working with as well--

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reminding them that sometimes 
the bravest, strongest thing we can do

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is allow ourselves to touch 
into the depths of our sorrow

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and actually experience that.

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One of the hardest parts
of my job, Stephen,

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is to convince people 
that there's actually utility

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and it will serve us well

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to feel the feelings and the hard thoughts

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and allow ourselves to experience that.

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Because I think 
for many people in our society,

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the go to is like, "What's the point? 
It's not going to bring my kid back,"

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or "It doesn't bring 
my relationship back."

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And that's really a lot of my job,

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it's helping people understand 
that actually there is a point.

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And when we don't allow ourselves

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to feel those feelings,
or think those thoughts,

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it actually ends up 
being a real disservice to us.

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(Stephen) One of the things
you touched on earlier

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that is very important and I'm sure 
is overlooked constantly,

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we think of grief and bereavement,
we think of death.

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But it's like losing a limb,

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your best friend moves
to Vancouver from Halifax,

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your father gets deployed,
he's given up on you recently,

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he doesn't want to be with you.

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There's all those kinds of grief as well
that are equally as important.

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(Andrea) Absolutely.

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And often, they're what we call
disenfranchised grief,

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which is an overly academic term,

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but basically saying 
or basically sort of capturing

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it's unacknowledged 
or it can be unacknowledged.

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And when I use 
the language of bereavement,

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usually I am being pretty specific
about it is a death,

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a death that's happened in your life.

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If it's a bereavement leave,
somebody has died.

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Bereavement camps for kids

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are kids who have had somebody died.

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But grief, as you said, Stephen, 
this could be any significant loss.

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And I think that, quite often,
what happens is like,

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we sometimes downplay our own...

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We're like, "Well, the person didn't die"
or, you know, we sort of are like,

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"Oh yeah, well, I've still got a job"

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and we start trying 
to silver line our own suffering

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as opposed to just allowing ourselves
to have a grief process around that,

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and that's where 
all of those losses build up.

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I often joke living not that far
from the 401,

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and it's 16 lanes 
and everything else that,

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you know, that highway
is full of road rage,

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which I am convinced 
so much of it is unprocessed grief

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that is just coming out 
at the driver in front of you

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as opposed to actually 
being directed at where it belongs.

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And I think that's the key,

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we need to not pathologize grief,

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but we also need not to sugarcoat it,

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it is hard.

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And it's not something, as much 
as our brains would love it to be,

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it's not something

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where there's going to be
a fixed end point.

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And now we're over it.

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And that's where I find 
there's so many platitudes

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like "time heals all," 
or "at least they're not suffering."

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Often well-intended, 
but completely misguided.

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And yet if we get the right support,

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and it doesn't have to be professional,

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whether it's within our families,
our communities, professional,

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but if we get the right support

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and we're able to process
and integrate the grief,

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even when I work with, you know, families

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where there's multiple deaths
or losses that happen,

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we can grow around the grief too, right?

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And for a lot of people in the trenches
of those early days of their grief,

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like that the feel is up for grasp,

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many people will say to me, 
"I can't actually envision

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that they'll be a day 
where I feel joy or genuinely laugh,"

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and then they're surprised
when they actually do.

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And that's where I think
that the fact is that,

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how grief works for humans

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doesn't tidy up 
into one nice little sound bite.

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But often, the way 
I will sort of describe it to people

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is it's big, it's hard, 
but it's natural, It's healthy,

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it's often rooted in our love 
for the person who's died

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or the person who's no longer
in our life in some way

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or the loss.

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And with the right support 
and actually making space for it,

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we can grow around it,

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so that we can still live full lives 
and experience joy,

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and sometimes even this concept, 
I never dangled in front of anyone,

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but sometimes this concept 
of post-traumatic growth to.

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But it doesn't mean the grief is gone,

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it's still there and sometimes 
we're going to bump up against it

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and it's going to hurt 
ike it was a fresh wound.

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(Stephen) One of the important things
you express in your talks

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and on your website,

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is the need for informed support.

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What does that mean?

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(Andrea) I think often 
what we contend with in our society

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is people are well intended
but misinformed.

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I work with so many families
where somebody is dying

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and they're like, "Well 
we're not going to tell the kids

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until it's really close to the death."

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Even in my own family,

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when my aunt died 
and her kids were five and ten,

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which was probably what really 
sparked a passion for this for me.

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She was a registered nurse

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and she just chose 
not to tell the kids at all

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until they found out 
two days before she died.

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And I can tell you 
that didn't go really well,

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and our family was well intended,
but just misguided.

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We didn't know 
and we didn't have research then,

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but now we do around the fact

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that kids benefit from honesty, inclusion

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knowing if somebody's dying in their life.

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If it's a death 
where it was a suicide death,

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it's not uncommon, I work with families 
who are like, "We told them a person died

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but we didn't say it was suicide."

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There's a lot of literature out there
around suicide too

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and being honest with kids.

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Or a medically assisted death.

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And that's where I think 
it's important to have somebody,

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hopefully, in their orbit,

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who can bring some well-informed guidance.

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That's either rooted in the literature

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or clinical practice, ideally both,

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about the fact that, actually,
the vast majority of people

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are going to benefit from inclusion.

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Even this concept 
is really new in our society

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where we think it's going to be
inherently traumatic for the kids

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to be at the bedside of somebody dying.

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I often remind families,

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throughout most parts of the world
still and through history,

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even here in Canada,

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kids were always at the bedside.

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Grandma died at home,
she was laid out at home.

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They were probably helping wash her

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and dig the hole and everything else.

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And I think that, 
as we've outsourced death,

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in many ways, as a society,
we've gotten these ideas,

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these sort of misperceptions 
that kids shouldn't be around,

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it'll be too hard for them,

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and I actually think we made it harder 
by trying to push them to the side lines.

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(Stephen) You've got person A,
somebody dies,

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they don't know how to deal with it.

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What do they do?

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How do they get in touch 
with a person like you

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or, should they or,

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what did it take me through
what they should be doing?

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(Andrea) Yeah, and I try 
to be careful with the shoulds,

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because I find inherently a lot of people
are like, "I should be doing this"

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or they're getting advice
from other people

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who are like, "You should do this,
get back to work, don't think about it,

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take time off."

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You know, often 
very conflicting advice, too.

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I think one of the healthiest
things you can do

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is really a) allow yourself to feel
what comes up for you, right?

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Allow yourself to think the thoughts

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and when laughter naturally comes too,
allow yourself to go there

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and try not to control too much.

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I find that as a society, 
we are very information obsessed,

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we really like to control things as well

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and grief defies a lot of that.

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Quite often, Stephen, 
I'm actually encouraging people

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to sort of surrender into their grief.

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If it's bringing them 
to their knees one day,

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allow it to do so.

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I find many people worry they think like,

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"I'm going to get sucked down
a black hole

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and I won't get out of it."

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And part of my job is helping them
build up the confidence

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that actually you can go there
and you will get out of it.

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And I think, for people 
who do want to seek out professional help

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and feel like they benefit from it
or even just want to try it,

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looking to see if there is a therapist
in your area, or a counselor,

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or a support group, it might be pure lead,

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that is really focused on grief.

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And I do always like to check credentials.

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There's people out there
even with grief books,

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like there's some really
bad advice out there,

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so you want to be careful.

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It can be helpful 
to talk to other people,

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who might have had a positive experience,

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or nowhere to go.

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But I also think 
part of what can really help

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is just cultivating in your life

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who are the people I can go to.

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You might have to be a teacher
of the people around you.

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I find that one of the things 
many people who are grieving that,

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when somebody's died,

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are worried about,

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is that their person 
is going to be forgotten.

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And that can be complicated

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because often people don't want to talk
about somebody who's died

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because they're under this misconception

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"I'm going to make the person sad

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if I bring up their son who died
or their dad who died."

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And that's such a miss.

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And I think one of the most important
things we can do

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when somebody dies in our life,
keep telling their stories.

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I know when my own dad died,

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one of my friends said-- 
he never got to meet my dad but he said,

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"You know, Andrea,
if you ever want to sit down

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and talk about your dad, 
I'd love to hear stories

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and get to know your dad
even though he's died"

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and I actually think that was 
one of the most helpful things

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anybody said to me 
in the early days of my grief.

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And that's where I just encourage 
for other people to reach out,

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use the name of the person who died,
ask for stories about them,

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remember when it's the anniversary
of their death and reach out

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and just, you know, "I'm thinking
about you and your brother."

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(Stephen) Andrea, 
thank you so much for this.

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(Andrea) My pleasure, Stephen.

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Thanks so much for drawing attention
to this really important topic.

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(Stephen) That was Andrea Warnick, 
she's a registered psychotherapist,

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registered nurse and an educator.

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She's been working in the area of grief 
and bereavement for almost two decades.

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Join us again next week

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when we'll have another podcast
about grief and bereavement.

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Thank you for listening.