From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Julie Philipp, filling in for Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour is one that all of us experience at one point or another, the loss of someone we love and the grief that comes with it.

In the words of one of my guests today, we don't live in a death and grief literate culture.

It's hard to talk about grief, and though it's a universal emotion, sometimes our grief can make us feel very much alone.

Often we turn to books to help us work through it and live with it.

August 30th is National Grief Awareness Day, and in recognition of that, a local bookstore, Hippocampal Children's Books on South Avenue, is planning a conversation about grief with two local authors who have written books about it.

And they're both in studio with me.

Today Maeve Cullinane as an educator and author of Almost 12 Uncovering My Journey Through Grief.

Thank you for joining us today.

And we have Doctor Linda Shanti, psychologist and author of After Your Person Dies Affirmations for Grief Making, Meaning and Going On.

Thanks for being with us today.

Before we start, I just want to say that we may talk about suicide at some point during this conversation.

If you or someone you know is struggling.

Call or text 988 to reach the 988 suicide and crisis Lifeline that's available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and services are free and confidential.

All right, so let's start out.

Both of you wrote books, that deal with your own personal experiences with grief.

So I want to talk about, what happened.

And I know there's multiple experiences with grief, but the main person in your books that you're talking about, who that person was, what happened, can you start?

Yeah.

So, my book is called almost 12, because I was almost 12 when my, older brother, died.

And, the book is mostly about the year after his death.

Okay, but you wrote it long after his death, decades, decades later.

Okay.

And do you mind sharing what happened to him?

Is that okay?

Yeah, it's a little bit of a spoiler alert, for the book, but he did, take his own life, and, he was in the age of 20, was not living at home at the time.

And it was, there's a lot of, taboo and stigma around, suicide and certainly much more.

This was in 1973.

Although it still is quite a difficult thing for families and the community around them to support or I'm not sure times has changed.

Has a lot has changed since then.

And, and your book sort of walks through, the perspective of a 12 year old and, and how the family was dealing with everything that happened.

Yes.

And I very intentionally wrote it.

With as the character of a but two 1112 year old, and wanted to be really authentic to that voice and that experience without.

I've done lots of other writing throughout my life, about, his death, about other deaths.

From an adult point of view perspective, with that kind of, understanding and process, all the processing that you go through with grief.

But that's not how it is for a child.

It's a lot different.

Okay.

All right.

Linda, could you talk a little bit about you, I mean, Linda?

Yes.

I make sure I get you to write.

Your experience.

What?

You're the person in your book is about.

Well, the person, my book is called After Your Person dies.

And my person was my husband, Jonathan, who died of pancreatic cancer.

My dad had died three months previous to that.

And the the book is actually written.

It's not necessarily about him, although he's, you know, present.

You can feel him present in the book, but it's more for than what?

For all the people that are in living.

Then what would that experience?

Okay, I want to read a chapter from Made's book, and that's almost 12.

It's a chapter called Time to Speak.

I'm just going to read a paragraph.

The truth is, no one wants to talk about death or loss.

We don't know how to have conversations about pain.

It is difficult to be open to pain, either as part of mourning or as part of living.

And when someone is in pain, deep pain that alters their daily perspective.

Most conversations feel superficial or miss the mark, or hold triggers and daggers that make things worse.

I am guessing that is part of the reason you decided to write about your own experience with grief, but could you tell us about what made you decide to make this experience so public?

Yeah.

I think, that for me, that that death happened when I was very, very young.

And, there have been other deaths, grandparents, other people who have had cancer or died that maybe are seemed more typical, in a life span to have to experience.

And I started to feel like there was, a lack of, resources out there.

There's certainly lots of books about grief, but, I still felt like there was not, a just didn't bring up enough about the the emotional experience.

And, the being very plain and very honest and direct about the kinds of things that come up for sure around suicide.

Also, for people who have lived with family members or friends who have had, attempted suicide or dealt with other, mental health challenges, other kinds of pain and loss.

So you felt like you were filling a void in an already difficult conversation to have.

Okay.

All right.

How about you, Linda?

What motivated you to write about, after your person dies?

I think originally.

So my son was eight when, my husband, his papa died.

And originally, it was going to be a picture book for kids, which I was very excited about.

And my son was moderately excited about it.

And it soon became clear that he really, at eight, did not want to be a grief expert.

Nobody really does but some of us.

So you were actually talking with him to try to, like, get what his perspective was, and he was not interested in the interview.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, so I think I from from there, I flipped into my, therapist mode, and I was like, I'm going to write a book about, you know, grief theory and what to do when you're grieving.

And I think of it kind of like, first it was my gut that wanted to write the book, like the part that was just wrenched open for my son.

And then it was my head, you know, it was like, let me just bypass this and tell everybody else what to do.

And then my heart came in, and the book really kind of wrote itself from there, because I did all the paintings first, and I did not know what this book was going to become.

This was not the plan.

And this is the book that came out.

And it is a beautifully illustrated book, I should say.

Thank you.

So, so both of you came from a spot of trying to, Deal with something, put something on paper that didn't really exist out there in your minds.

And and I would say the other part of the how the my book started was my intention was not to publish something.

It was actually part of a writing exercise.

And I can really relate to Linda's experience of, you know, I was doing all this art.

I didn't really know what was going.

I was writing, this story.

I created a character who was a girl and then was trying to tap into, you know, what I remembered about being that age and then thought, oh, I have a few experiences from that age that actually are a totally different story.

And so later went and, and worked more on that.

But I think that the, the process of creating, whether it's, like Linda doing art or, you know, for me, as a young person, definitely.

I wrote lots of poetry.

I wrote lots of lovely, beautiful things.

They weren't, per se, about the loss of my brother, but they were about all the feelings that I was feeling.

And I needed a creative way to put those feelings out there.

All right, so I want to, have you let's start with you may read a passage about your book from your book, and if you need to give us a little advance, background on that passage, go ahead.

Sure.

I'll read what you had read the other passage, which is, from one of the reflective essays that are in the book.

The other chapters in the book are, is storytelling.

It's the stories about graphical, right.

More, autobiographical.

So I'm going to read from, one of the later, sections there.

And, I think really all you need to know is, there is a person, Marianne, that I mentioned and she was sixth grade friend of mine.

Okay.

Otherwise it's self-explanatory.

So this is, from chapter three.

The day after the funeral service, things seem to be wrapping up.

The relatives were starting to leave.

Friends were fussing over my parents, asking if they had everything they needed.

We had lots of food, for sure.

But I wondered about my parents.

My dad sat in the den a lot.

My mom sat in a corner of the living room.

Did we have everything we needed?

What was going to happen next?

Marianne called me on Sunday and asked me when I was coming back to school.

She added that it was the final week of Julius Caesar rehearsals.

I had totally forgotten about it.

Luckily I hadn't missed it.

Could I go to school on Monday?

I didn't know, I wasn't sure whom I would ask.

Surely somebody would tell me when to go back to school.

It's interesting to me that and I'm not trying to call you old, but.

But you're going around quite a while and that just feels so genuine that that really has stuck with you that moment all of these years.

So two things there.

One is I did have, a bunch of diaries, the lovely little leather diaries with a little lock and a key from those days.

I said, still, I hope kids still use those.

And, but interestingly, I did not write a lot about my brother in those, but I did write about a lot of other just very ordinary things, and that helped bring back quite a few memories.

I, I also, I am a writer and I do a lot of fiction writing, and so I really used a lot of those, skills of trying to figure out, you know, lay the scene and all those details.

I want to ask both of you what was the hardest part or parts of the book for you to write?

I'd say the hardest was that I did not.

Excuse me, did not start the book, while my mother was alive.

And I think just the relationship that, I had, I had a very good relationship with her, but was always very protective.

And it had the loss of her son was traumatic.

And you felt like it would be too painful to.

Yeah.

I didn't even consider writing it, you know, and I think that, a year or so after she died, I realized I had I did have more that I wanted to say, and felt I could be more open.

And that kind of goes, with both of you in your books.

You're talking about grief doesn't necessarily go away.

You live with grief.

And that was one of the ways you lived with grief is to not bring it up so much with your mother.

Even though you had things to still process.

All right.

Linda, how about you?

What was the hardest part of your book to write?

I think the book itself was actually quite easy to write.

I think it was, letting it be what it was going to be rather than trying to write the book, I thought I should write.

So I so I did all the paintings first.

I had no idea how they were going to come together, you know, and I just painted them.

And then actually writing from the paintings was not that hard.

I mean, it's it's hard.

It's like it takes forever to travel between your head to your heart, you know, and it doesn't take any time at all.

Right?

When you give it the time.

So, you know, when I actually wrote the affirmations from the paintings that came, I mean, that was probably a couple of hours, really.

Wow.

I would say the hard part is, and this might be true for you, move too was kind of becoming the person that wrote the book, right?

Like becoming that person and you become that person through the writing of the book, right?

You couldn't have written it right after your husband's passing.

You had to become this.

And the hard part was getting your son to cooperate with the book that you didn't end up writing.

So would you like to to read a passage from your book as well?

Sure.

I'll read just, the beginning of the introduction to set the stage a little, and then I'll read one of the affirmations.

So the introduction says, nothing in my doctorate program in psychology prepared me for the land of grief, which is not uncommon, by the way.

You know, unfortunately, when my dad died, followed by by my husband three months later, I felt thrown completely into unknown territory.

Like many people who haven't traveled with grief, I thought grief was a very sad, scary place that you visited for a few months.

Maybe a year, if you were going slow and then moved on, I thought it would be linear, follow stages and then be completed.

I thought the stupid things people say were appropriate things to say, or that saying nothing was a good thing to say.

Oops, big oopsie.

And then I picked one of the, paintings.

That's called traveling.

The path of the heart is not for the faint of the heart.

Oh, by the way, I have two caveats.

Okay.

One, since I'm a therapist, this is not psychological advice or treatment.

I'm completely speaking today from the perspective of a graver and expressive artist and a widowed mom.

Thank you.

Also, if I cry, I am going to offer you permission to cry two which made things messy.

I was thinking we should have Kleenex in this room today.

Yes, especially if we take colors that are crying.

I'm just going to give you permission if I cry.

Okay, so it says grief shatters.

Open your heart.

You may feel as if your heart is outside of your body, perhaps with your loved one.

Perhaps your heart feels so open that it scares you as if it had no rib cage encasing it.

We often think the pain will lessen over time, which it can, and it often does, but our hearts will never be the same.

Why would they be?

They have been broken open.

If you listen, your heart will talk to you about what it needs and what does it need to go to nature or light a candle?

Does it what?

Consider dating?

Does it never want to date again?

Does it need to cry?

Our hearts are wise and kind and clear.

You may want to shut down your heart because the pain can feel too much to bear.

Please don't shut it down.

Listen.

Ask your heart to write you a letter.

Here's what my heart told me.

Thank you for still being open to joy and connection.

Thank you for believing in stars and music and love.

I know your head wants to tell you all the ways things went wrong, but I your heart know how to be with pain.

It is never a mistake to open me.

You are so brave to continue to allow me to feel.

That is how I grow bigger.

I went numb for a bit in order to survive and when numbness thaws it is painful.

What used to be ice is now a waterfall.

Let it gush.

You were scared and hurt and grief is hard, not for the faint of heart.

Grief.

I am not faint.

I am strong, courageous and resilient.

I'm still here.

Open, thawing, thriving.

I might need to rest or go slower than your mind.

Please talk more kindly to me.

Stop telling me what I should and shouldn't be feeling.

I'm just trying to heal.

Let me.

That's my job.

Tell me I'm doing a good job.

Tell me I can find a way to live and love again.

Don't shut me down.

I love you so much I'm still beating.

Keep going.

I'm with you.

And I am not faint.

Who?

That was beautiful.

And thank you.

Julie Williams, our producer, who brought tissues in during that.

It's a little early, but I think maybe it'd be a good time for a little break here.

We are talking about grief with Maeve Cullinane, author of almost 12 Uncovering My Journey Through Grief, and Doctor Linda Shanti, author of After Your Person Dies Affirmations for Grief Making Meaning and Going On.

As you know, we have talked a bit about suicide and we may bring it up again during the next half hour of the show.

If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Services are free and confidential.

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Or you can leave comments on the WXXI news YouTube live stream.

We will be back in just a minute.

I'm Evan Dawson coming up in our second.

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You're listening to connections.

I'm Julie Philipp in for Evan Dawson today, and we're here with Maeve Cullinane, author of almost 12 Uncovering My Journey Through Grief, and Doctor Linda Shanti, author of After Your Person Dies Affirmations for Grief Making Meaning and Going On.

Now, you both have touched on this a little bit.

But we all have heard about the five stages of grief in the book, you know, on death and dying, and we think we know what to expect, and then we get there, and it's just not what we expected.

It's not a linear experience.

Could you talk about that in your own experiences?

Why don't we start with you?

I think that the five stages of grief are fabulous as a description rather than a prescription.

So they describe the experience of grief that we experience again and again and again, not in a linear order.

And, they don't lead us to any kind of end point.

And David Kessler is also added a sixth stage, by the way.

Making meaning, finding meaning.

Which I think is wonderful.

I think he's doing really good work in the world.

And the five stages were originally written by Kubler-Ross to describe the experience of someone that is in the death process, not the bereaved person that's survived there.

Yeah.

The loss of their person.

And they were not, they're not research based.

So, that that would be my critique, but I think they're wonderful.

I just think the problem is that other grief theories, which I find to be so much more helpful and relevant, like the dual processing model or continuing bonds or the resilience theory, or there's so many that, people don't know about.

So then when they have this experience of grief, they think, okay, I'm gonna go through these five stages, then I'm going to complete them and then I'm done.

And it really does grieve versus a disservice.

Yeah.

How about you.

Yeah.

I actually mentioned that book the Kubler-Ross book in my, my book.

That and because I was a child, free to be you and me was big in the 70s.

And, I think for me, the, importance of those books was that they really they were affirmations of like, it's okay to have really big feelings and, and and as, Linda said, the Kubler-Ross book was here are some of the big feelings or the big not stages so much, but aspects of grief that you're probably going to feel these ways at different times.

I think that six stage of adding meaning, has, been very important as an adult because, you have to always ask and particularly with suicides, you're like, why are we, you know, dealing with like, why did this happen?

Why are we dealing with this?

Why do you know, questions that you're never going to be able to answer?

You don't.

But you do need to find a way in yourself about, you know, so what are you going to do with this experience?

And not, you know, what was its purpose necessarily?

But just what am I going to do with this?

And, and, and the same, I think, with big feelings, you know, so there's value to these books in the sense that they let you know, what maybe the adults in your life or anyone around you can't vocalize that by having it reading.

You recognize that you're not alone in what you're going through, but they don't necessarily say at all.

It's not going to hit everything.

And I want to read another chapter, from one of the books.

This is Linda's book.

After your person dies, just part of a chapter called you will Need to Grieve the Future you imagined.

I thought I would be bringing my English husband tea in bed every morning and hear him grumpily say me the way he said too early until we were very, very old.

I thought we would raise our child together, attend his high school and college graduations, his wedding, meet our grandchildren.

I thought he would lead us on camping adventures, wrestle with our son, coach the soccer team.

I thought he would teach our son woodworking and how to pitch a tent.

I thought we would be traveling around Europe where he would navigate us through Italy and France, knowing I suck at directions, even with a GPS, I thought we would live in our house across from the ocean, going for walks with our walking sticks along the beach.

When our person dies, we have to grieve the future we imagined we would have and live our way into a new one.

And so I think those stages of grief, what they don't say is that when they're done, they're done.

You know, that's not what happens.

And that's what I think people sort of, if I can just get through these stages.

But that's not your experience at all.

You want to start?

Oh, that's hard to hear, but it is really, by being personal, I can relate to that.

I can picture the person in my life.

And I think it's really wonderful that you wrote that.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I think, you know, speaking to children in particular, I think, you know, I've heard it too.

Just describe to me that children grieve forward.

Which is an interesting way to think about it.

So, you know, as a, as a widowed mom, I'm seeing my son go through the milestones without, How old is your son now?

Is 15 now.

Okay, we're going to we're going to let you sort of knit.

There's tissues right there.

And I talk about how I mean, clearly your experience has been a lifelong experience since you are 1112.

And I think one of the things about, grief not being linear is that all of those future events or, or future, connections that you aren't going to happen, you know, sometimes you anticipate, oh, you know, a birthday's coming up or a wedding is coming up.

Okay.

You know, this might be hard.

Like, I might need to.

And then.

But there can be other things, that just come out of the blue at you, and you.

Are deep in grief for a little while.

And I think that's where it's really important to realize that it's not necessarily linear.

And, I know for me, one of the things is particularly when other people die, I can, I feel like I go back and I really grieve all the people that have have passed and, and for me with, you know, if a, a friend or a acquaintances person, kills themself, I just, I all of the experiences come back and I feel like, that's where the grieving is so circular and spiral.

Okay.

So I think it's really interesting that you were young when it happened.

You have a son.

And, and you're both giving a talk at a children's book store.

But neither of your books is, is specifically for a child.

Can you tell me, are there materials out there for your son?

I, you know, and how how why are you speaking at a children's book store when you have adult books?

I don't know which one of you wants to start.

While I know in talking with, Pamela Bailey, who runs, Hippocampus Books, that, she was saying that a lot of, customers will come in looking for books, for children who are experiencing grief.

And you're absolutely right.

Our books are not designed for children, but they are very much designed for the adults that are supporting children.

And I think, my book in particular, I think it can help give a very child like perspective that, you know, a lot of what you read about grief is not from that perspective.

And, and some of the children's books, which can be quite, good, but they're kind of designed to, you know, read to a child and see if this helps them talk about how they're feeling.

And that serves one purpose.

But I think as an adult, really kind of getting a view into this might be how a child is, is looking at things or just because they are wanting to go to their Julius Caesar play at school.

You know, that doesn't mean that they're not deeply sad inside.

I think as a child, there's a real need to get back a lot of regular routine and familiar, things I know.

And my family, you know, we did not have a family dinner for a long, long time.

And that was.

I couldn't really make sense of exactly why that was happening.

So there's instances like that.

I think that is important for adults to kind of realize, oh, right.

This might be something I want to attend to a bit more.

Yeah.

And there's one section in your book that I found really interesting is when your mother, I think, started telling people that she had two children instead of 3 or 2 daughters and didn't mention her son.

And I wouldn't have thought about that.

But that must have been a really momentous moment when you heard that.

Yes, absolutely.

And I, you know, there are a couple things I've said in the book that I, you know, I had an aunt who, was, you know, saying, you know, how helpful I was.

And I really internalized that to be like, oh, I need I need to be helpful.

I need to be responsible.

I need to, you know, take on, take care of these things.

And I had to tell my aunt after I published the book.

You know, I'm not saying that you said the wrong thing.

That was a good thing to say, but also maybe could have been followed up with, you know, and you don't have to be helpful.

All of you don't have to carry this, even you, all the time.

Right?

So yeah, it your book definitely gets you kind of inside the head of a young person.

And I think that is helpful, too.

All right.

Linda, so your book, you actually have a chapter for children, but most of it's not right.

Can you talk about the chapter first of all and then what you hope, the adults and caregivers get from your book that will help children in this?

It sure.

Well, I mean, I love I love that people come to hippocampal asking that question.

How can I support the grieving child?

Because I think it's a natural instinct, like the children are the vulnerable ones.

And so we always want to go towards how can I support them?

And I think of this like, one of the other guys I work in, in, in therapy is postpartum.

And so I work with women with perinatal mood disorders.

And people say, how can I how can I support the kids, with someone with postpartum depression, will you support the mom?

You support the mom, the kid does better.

I remember when my husband was, sick.

I went to see a social worker, and I was so worried about my child going to be okay, you know?

And she was very helpful in the sense of she affirmed for me, that the research shows, that the parents that model grieving and model resilience have the best outcomes for their kids.

It's not about the book, although there's a lot of good books.

And I could I actually could speak to that.

We are going to talk about other books too, but yes.

Yeah.

Continuing.

But that that's the piece.

And so if you support the grown ups, the kids will do better.

And so I love that people are going to her bookstore asking, how can I support the kids?

Because grief needs a village and grieving children hundred percent need a village.

Especially because usually if there's a child grieving, the rest of the family is grieving, and that is not the best time.

It's like postpartum, you know, it's not the best time for you to be a support for someone else.

But you're the mom, so you have to, you know, I'm the mom.

So I had to be, you know, and I really wrestled with now I have to be two parents now, and I don't know how to play baseball.

I suck at baseball, you know, it's like so.

So they need a village.

My son just went to this place called Camp Kassam, which is for kids that had a family member with cancer and, proud mom moment.

Like, the counselor came up to me after, and she's like, your son is the OG here like he is the mentor.

You know, he's just being himself.

Just being himself because he knows how to sit with things now without fixing them.

And also those places for kids just like those places for grown ups, those grief literate places provide a place where kids can just be themselves, and they don't have to tiptoe around all the grief illiteracy of taking care of other people.

And I'm not saying this in a blaming way at all.

Like, you know, to people saying the wrong thing, you know, you could say completely the right thing, but it's not at the right time because grief is so individual.

But that village is so important.

And I think kids books, one of one of the books.

I'm just going to say this I don't get any money from saying this, but raising an emotionally healthy child when a parent is sick.

That was a super helpful book for my husband and I in terms of learning how to speak to our kid in a developmentally appropriate way.

And not say things like, okay, when your person dies, they went to sleep because a kid hears that what's going to happen?

They're never going to be able to go to sleep again, right?

Or they went to a better place.

Well, why don't I go get to go there like and and what did I do wrong that that my person wanted to go somewhere better and not be with me.

You know, like all these things people say, and they're trying to be helpful.

But all these euphemisms are not helpful, especially for young children.

Young children need to hear, you know, they died.

Not they passed on, not they went to sleep.

Not that they went on a business trip with Jesus.

You know, they died.

Their body stopped working.

They're not coming back.

Here's what we can do now, here's what you can look ahead to from here.

Now or I don't know.

Right.

We're going to sit at the dinner table and there's going to be an empty chair, and it's going to be hard.

My son and I like speaking of the village, one of our neighbors helped him make this little wooden chair.

It's like the size of a hand for a little teddy bear that is from his papa.

So he could sit at the table with us.

So there's like a place for grief at the table.

At the table?

Does it make it better?

Of course it doesn't, you know.

Right.

Does it honor that there's an empty chair at our table every day.

Forever?

Yes.

So it does.

And I think the other thing, there's a lot of, children's books.

And Pamela would be great about speaking to this at hippocampal, but she's not here.

So you are going to fill us in as best you can.

It sounds to me, and we'll get to the books in a second.

But it it sounds to me like having the responsibility of helping your child through this also helps you.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, in a way, this is kind of speaking to the post-traumatic growth aspect, but if you choose to, you know, you can you can make sunflowers from the compost of grief.

But, I mean, I say that with the caveat of, like, you don't have to know.

Don't put that kind of pressure on yourself, you know?

But if you know, if you are supporting a child in grief, then you know, like for me, I got them into other resources as well as myself because I know and I knew I'm not going to be enough.

There's a great local organization called dreams from Drake, and it's a nonprofit supported by, to, a mom and her sister who had a child die.

And they support families in, in the local area.

And it's just fabulous.

It makes it it creates this village at my son's camp.

They don't they don't spend a lot of time on grief.

It's like an hour during the week, you know, but they get to just be normal kids.

They don't have to deal with all the petty looks and all the stupid things people say.

You know, they just get to be normal kids, right?

Right.

Okay.

All right.

So since we are talking about books and using books to work through grief and live with grief, what are some of your recommendations?

What are some of the books that carried you and or your son along?

I, you know.

I can't speak for my son because I think my son needed to kind of compartmentalize for a while.

You know, I really wanted to read all the books.

I wanted to I wanted to draw together and let's do therapy and let's do all these support groups and, you know, and I had to kind of step back and go, you know what?

He is grieving the way he is grieving and how I respect that.

He was 8 to 8.

Okay.

He was eight.

But I do think like there's this great book called Tears Soup.

I don't know.

I think it's more for adults and kids, but it is a picture book and it's such a fabulous book about grief, tears, soup.

And then there's a lot of other books that I think kids books are good at, like offering metaphors, you know, for really?

Again, more for the grownups and the kids.

I mean, the kids might get it, but like the invisible string and tears soup and Badger's Parting Gift and Freddy the Leaf and Max's box, those are some of my favorites.

I read this one book about, a girl whose parent had died, but, I mean, I loved it.

My son didn't want to read it, you know?

So you got to honor and respect the child and what works for them.

And then you can take that metaphor and talk with them about it and see if it speaks to them.

Yeah.

And I, you know, even a lot of Disney movies I think are really more for the adults.

If you, if you watch them closely.

How about for yourself.

And then I want to go to you as well.

You know your book recommendations.

Not the children's book, but were there any books that really stood out for you, or still do?

Oh gosh.

Again, there's so many.

I think I could sort of trace chapters and years of like, grief.

What you see in my life.

Yes, yes.

The first year I just wanted to read little memoirs, you know, because I had so much brain fog and I, I didn't want to, you know, hear any prescriptions.

I just wanted to know someone else had been here.

Someone else has been here.

They survived.

Maybe they thrived.

Here's how they did it.

And then after that, I went into my late grief nerd phase, and I read all the grief theories, and I got certified in grief counseling.

So, now I sort of bounce back and forth between.

And I just read this great novel called the Poppy fields.

It was such a well done book, and I didn't even I didn't even know it was about grief.

I actually found it in the airport because I had brought this other book on vacation with my son and I, and I was like, oh, this is too heavy to read.

I need something light, And then, you know, grief.

But it was so good because she just wove it through.

All the characters are wrestling with it in some way.

So that was a beautiful book.

I love Mary Frances O'Connor's books on the grieving brain and the grieving body.

She's a neuroscientist, and she bounces back and forth between the neuroscience of grief and her personal experience with grief.

So they're just beautifully written in Maeve.

First, it sounds like you've had a lifelong, love for words and writing and books.

You had your diaries.

Were there any books that you recall as a child?

That helped you through this?

And now what what you're reading?

I so to two sides of that, I guess one I'd mentioned free to be you and me like that.

Just the, things that I read that were really affirming, about life is going to be good.

You know, you're going to be okay.

People go through hard times, and then they're better.

I think there were a lot of songs like that that I really, really attracted me when I was little.

And I read a lot of poetry in my, junior high, high school age.

And some of that was, very depressing.

Sylvia Plath and Janis Ian and very, just gave me some words from other people about the losses and the the traumas that they were going through that could it be totally different than what I had experienced?

The facts of what had happened.

But they had this loss and this grief that, those, reading that kind of poetry was I obsessed with it?

As a as a, young tween or teen?

And then I will say I did also go through a huge, period of time reading lots of memoirs of people who had, lost someone who had, parents who were struggling, with losses.

Yeah.

Just, and I don't know specifically what I even at the time, I don't think I could have told you what exactly I got from it, but just that, like, realization of like, oh, yeah, people are experiencing these really difficult things.

And that's like me putting into words what people around you might not be able to say, right, right.

And, and I think, the other thing I was going to say about children's books is when you, like, you were saying you found, Linda, that you found a, you know, a book at the airport that happened to have this person, grieving person in it.

You know, I think if you can find children's books that have, you know, oh, you know, this person's father died, this person's, you know, lost their grandfather.

But the book is actually about something else.

And I think children's books do a great job of that.

Actually, my mom was a children's librarian, so we had all kinds of books in our house.

But, you know, if you're looking at, examples of different types of families, you know, you're not necessarily reading a book that is just about, oh, you know, families come in all sizes, but you're if you're reading a story that has a, a mom with no, other.

Yeah.

Right.

I think that that is a really just helps normalize the experiences for kids.

And I would also say that.

Giving kids like you were saying, Linda, that kids aren't, they're not living in grief 100% of the time.

They're also kids.

They want to go play baseball, kickball.

They want to draw.

They want to I, you know, I got a lot of comfort from creating beautiful poetry.

I wrote a lot about nature.

I wrote a lot about, other beautiful things in the world.

It was a way to escape.

It was a way to create beautiful things, share them.

Like to just show that, you know, I was not just the sad girl, right?

Right.

There was a whole other, other sides.

Okay?

I don't know if this is connected at all to what we're talking about, but I think you have another passage from your book that you chose.

Could you read a little bit more since we have a little bit of time?

Sure.

And this is, from one of the reflective chapters, which is, a sense of, what is going to help, you know, when you are supporting someone who's grieving.

And it's certainly true for children, words aren't always the thing that's going to help them the most.

And this is a chapter called A Time to Embrace.

After crying, there needs to be a hug.

It is the embrace that has brought me the most support.

Hugging is the one thing.

The only thing that I can say helps, whether it is because of the sheer physical sense of touch, the releasing of endorphins, noted to be found in a 22nd hug, or the holding of someone else's burdens.

However, briefly, hugging a person through grief works.

I have been both the receiver and the giver.

I have been the casual friend and the best friend, the morning daughter and the fellow survivor.

Offering an embrace helps when words fall short, when promises of better days sound false, and when the loss is so profound that taking a friend in arms is the clearest way to express I am here with you.

Grief support is less about removing pain and more about holding life together.

I think that was a perfect phrase or two to wrap us up with.

Will you?

What is the one thing that, or maybe more than one thing that you really hope people take away from, your book when they read it?

For me, it's definitely that it will start conversations.

And that I would I love also that it would start people writing on their own.

And I'm one of the things I'm doing, with this book and after this book is, doing some more writing workshops and creativity workshops to encourage people to.

You may be connected to this book.

Yes.

Some will be, okay.

But definitely starting conversations.

And, I just ran into a neighbor on the, street and she was saying that she had read the book and she had lost a, brother when she was young, and she bought a copy for her sister, and they read it together and they had, you know, they talked late into the night and that just that kind of response, is wonderful what you're hoping for.

How about you, Linda?

What were you.

What are you hoping people get when they read after your person dies?

I think the main thing is to feel less alone.

To feel less alone.

I would also hope that it would serve to give the reader permission to be where they are and cultivate an ongoing relationship with grief based on questions like, what do you have to teach me now?

Rather than when are you going to go away so I can move on?

And I of course, if it speaks to you, I would hope it would serve as an invitation to write or draw or collage or paint your grief process or all of the things you did right.

Okay, so you were setting out to write a children's book.

Is there still a children's book in you, on this topic, or is that not going to happen?

Because it sounds to me like there is somewhat of a shortage of of books for children specifically on this.

And maybe that's okay.

Maybe it's, it's it's enough to have something for parents, but, is it is there either one of you see.

Well, see, I mean, I'm, I'm currently working on, more, the Art of grieving kind of kind of about the art of grieving, then then cross out grieving and living kind of a thing.

Okay.

I'll.

I'm looking forward to both of those things.

So let's talk just we have about a minute or so left.

Talk about your talk that's coming up originally, I think it was in August, but now it's September 3rd, I believe.

Can you tell us the logistics of all of that and what you'll be doing?

Sure.

Yeah.

It's at, hippocampal books was which is at 638 South Avenue and Thursday, September 3rd at 630.

We're going to it's really going to be a conversation about grief, much like this.

I think both Linda and I were very, excited at the idea of it being just a conversation and not, just a here's my book, I'll sign it for you kind of event.

And we'll, we'll share our, our books and our experiences, but also talking about the, complexity of grief and, but with an emphasis on supporting, grieving children.

And how did this come about?

This whole idea for this event.

You don't remember or credit to Pamela Bailey?

Pamela.

Yeah, I think we had both, talk to her and then she got the idea of putting us together together.

And I think it's a great idea.

Sounds like a wonderful event.

And I wish you both success.

Thank you very much for being with us.

This is Maeve Cullinane, author of almost 12 Uncovering My Journey Through Grief.

And we also had Doctor Linda Shanti here, author of After Your Person Dies Affirmations for Grief Making meaning and Going On.

This has been connections.

I'm Julie Philipps, sitting in for Evan Dawson, and I would like to thank our production team and our listeners, and I will be back tomorrow to wrap up the week.

Until then, take care.

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