What's Your Grief?

Oh, and welcome to the Get To Life podcast where we have conversations about organ, tissue, and eye donation. I'm Lori Steele. I'm Joey Boudreau. I'm Sally Gentry.

Are we smiling? Come see. Are we good? Big old tent.

Big old tent. The crew back together for episode 97. Here's what's coming up guys. What's your grief?

Yeah, we all know grief is complex. Here on the podcast, we're gonna try to break it down just a little further. And our mission today is to provide grief information to you. All good stuff, right?

And we want people to hear about it. So you listening to you right there, we need your help. Yeah, you know how to find us by now. You can find us, read us, and subscribe.

I'm on social media. Who's on social media guys? Me, me, me, me, me. All ends are up, right?

So on Facebook, Joey, we gotta work on that boy. So on Facebook, the Get To Life podcast guys, follow us there. Also Twitter and Instagram at GiftedLifePod. Okay, are we ready to do this?

Yes indeed. Guys, friends coming on the podcast. Episode 97. Here we go.

All right guys, here on the Gifted Life, we are excited to introduce you to our friends, Miss Leetza Williams and Eleanor Haley. How are you guys? We're good. How are you?

Good. Thank you so much. I'm gonna say our friends, but really, Sally's friends. She brought them in.

Only because we have known each other for many years being with recovery agencies. Right. But now they have gone out on their own many a couple years ago and have this really great website called What's Your Grief? What's your grief?

Yeah. I like it. I was looking at it. I mean, neat.

Lots of timely information going out. So good job guys. We want to hear all about that and how you're helping those in the community, how you're helping those organizations. So let's talk a little bit about your backgrounds and how you got into this line of work.

Sure. So this is Leetza, and my background is actually as a clinical social worker. Eleanor and I met because we were working for the organization organization in Baltimore, Maryland, as living like a C Foundation. I was working as a director of family services and community outreach.

So really working with a team who was supporting families at the hospital at the time at a loved one guide and then Eleanor was really responsible for the support afterwards. I just want to talk a little bit about that. Oh, yeah. So my background in counseling psychology and again, we met working at the Living Life Foundation and what I was really doing there for most of my time there was working to run the two year bereavement aftercare program where we were working to offer support to the families of any family who had been interested in donation of any kind.

And so we were trying to provide support both in person and then also through different mailings and workshops and things like that. And one of the things that we found I think in our work there is that there were lots of wonderful in person services that we were providing for groups and workshops and counseling for families. And then we were also struggling with the barriers that I think a lot of organizations struggle with everything from the fact that not everybody can come and access in person services or budget limitations that affect in person services or people's ability to access resources, transportation, childcare, all of those things. So it was really there that we got really interested in online resources.

We had people asking us about online resources and asking us about where they could go. They couldn't come to some of the in person stuff. And that was what caused us to scour the internet, struggle a little bit to find things and ultimately to found what's your grief as an online resource for people grieving. Yeah, I think one of the important pieces of our combined story is that we both had experienced parental loss in early young adulthood.

And so oftentimes we were looking around for resources that we could provide to people who were grieving to our family through aftercare. And we weren't always finding the online or print resources that we think would have resonated with often our grief. That was often our limit test. So we complained about it for a really long time because it wasn't our job to create all these resources.

And then eventually we just said, you know what I think maybe we can create a website. I think we can Google it and find the different steps to doing it. And that's exactly what we did. And we ended up starting a website just to see if it worked.

And it just slowly grew over the years to where we are today. And we have been referring families to your website. But you know, one of the things I saw was the 64 best things to say to a greever and then the worst things to say. And that is really helpful information because as you all are very well aware, most people don't know what to say at all.

And when they say it, it's kind of like, okay, well, I hope you'll be okay. Yeah, those people. Me, me, me. Yeah.

So when you talk about doing trainings, you mentioned with other organizations, is this more out community type organizations or other organ recovery agencies or combination of almost anything and everything actually one of the things that we have been amazed by is how many different types of grief related organizations and other organizations are out there looking for training and information and resources about grief and bream and support. Certainly a number of organizations bring us in for our trainings and to do things both with staff and with individuals who are grieving. But also we find that everything from offices, a number of military organizations work with us who are providing military grief support, fallen fire heroes foundation who work with a family of firefighters who have died. We've worked with a number of substance abuse organizations, some that are doing advocacy work around overdose losses and who have been really interested in learning more about overdose grief.

So they might be doing awareness on the prevention and they're really interested even understanding more about the grief and bereavement side of things. Funeral homes and funeral directors, we've certainly been involved in some training with them because it's really interesting that we've learned. And I think neither of us really were tuned into this until we started digging more into training opportunities is that many funeral directors receive very little training about grief and bereavement in their schooling. And many of course are really interested in learning more and they want to do a good job with families.

So that's been an area where we've grown. We have a small little sub website called the funeral friend that specifically to help funeral directors to increase their knowledge about grief and bereavement and to better serve families immediately after a lot. And actually that website though, it is titled the funeral friend and directed towards that group of professionals. It's really for people who are working in aftercare positions and people who are speaking with families at a time or immediately following a loved one's death.

So we're just providing some education about their very unique needs and considerations for working with people who have just recently experienced very profound loss. And you know when you were mentioning that funeral directors are not having too much information on this, I know the number of nurses that I talk with that they have like maybe just one short course in psychology or how to have the sort of information to know how to support families during that time. So that sounds like a great thing that you all are doing there. Yeah absolutely.

We're lucky to still be involved actually with the Living Legacy Foundation for training also for physicians. So we still go in and we provide the training for fellows and physicians at Johns Hopkins on how to communicate brain death to families and how to help them to be able to better communicate end of life conversations and generally around the throughout support and things like that. Because you're right nurses, physicians, unfortunately there are a lot of people who are working with family at the time of a loss to unfortunately because there's so many things they need to know and learn. It doesn't get the time and attention that maybe it needs or deserves.

Yeah, well that's great. I'm really glad to hear you all are able to do that. So we here to get to life obviously we're in the podcast world that was new to us when we started almost three years ago. Are you guys in the podcast world?

We are. We have a podcast as well. It's called about what you're great. We must be friends now because like we're doing the same.

All right. I just called what's your grief? What's your grief? Okay.

Yeah. What's your grief? Just like the website and I think we started it back in 2014, but maybe before that maybe 2013, but I will warn you we are sporadic pod captors. We do not have a Troy who is working wonders for us.

So two of us a laptop and a microphone. So it's a labor of love, but we aren't as consistent as we would like to be. Our goal for 2019 is to get our podcast back on track. So people keep listening and they keep emailing us and saying what's your next podcast?

So some people are listening just by the fact that we aren't the most polished. Or maybe you can share this one and then that'll help you get over that new year. Yeah. That's a good idea.

I love it, but we use it as a new tool as well. We're in churches and schools and things like that so we can pull different pieces of info to use, but it sounds like what you were talking about. Like not everybody can come to you. So we have to think of new ways to reach them with that information.

And so I love how you have the online. I love how you have the podcast. So if you had to have some aha moments or some successes that you would out since taking this journey, what would you say? I think just being able to grow the audience that we have through the website has been really remarkable when we first started to kind of watch your stats on the back end of a website.

And if we got 28 people in a week, we knew at least half of that with our family and friends. We were really grateful for everybody who found us and who didn't feel obligated by family bond. But where we are today and now we have over probably 20,000 page views a day. And that's really incredible to feel like we're able to reach individuals and professionals and help just kind of normalize and validate and create the experience of grief and grief of any kind.

I think if we had to talk one kind of accomplishment, that would be it. We have tried many different things that haven't stopped. But I think with this, it's been really amazing to watch it grow and to continue to wear it now. Do you also dive into children and grief as well?

Or is it more towards professionals, adults? No, we definitely have a lot of children and grief. We have a whole section on children and teens and we are very connected and we're really closely with the National Alliance for Griefing Children. And we have a lot of grief centers that are geared towards children who use our site as a resource for ideas for groups and things that they can do with kids.

But then also for parents to help them have ideas for how to communicate with their kids, activities they can do with their kids, understanding grief at developmental stages for kids. We really look at our site as not focus on any one specific type of grief or type of grief, but trying to really catch as many different people and as many different aspects of grief as we can. We have about 550, I think, articles at this point. So we really get into a lot of different areas of grief.

And one thing we really have to prioritize has been keeping the aesthetic and the feel and the dialogue very accessible and relatable, but in that way, even whether you're a teenager or an adult, hopefully the site feels like it is for you. So we really try to keep it very non-specific in terms of who we're targeting. Well, and you know what I really like about what you have is again, you have such a diverse grouping here of different aspects of grief and whether it's kids or adults or all the different things that go along with it. Because I've been using that for a good while.

Your site for a good while. When people say, well, can you recommend something and I'll tell them yes to go to your site because you do have such a diverse grouping. It really makes a difference. Yeah.

That was one of our, when we started, one of the things that was a real struggle for us was we just found that what was out there seemed very general and non-comprehensive and that was one of the things we dedicated ourselves to writing articles that are really comprehensive and to leaving notes don't unturned. We also recognize that grief is something that sticks with people for a lifetime. So somebody might be visiting up on day 10 of their grief or on your 10. And so we want to have stuff that is relevant to people who are really in the thick of it.

To people who are maybe more just trying to say like, you know, 10 years later, why am I still having these types of feelings or what is something I can do to remember my loved one or look for new ways to cope that are maybe creative and outside the box. So we really try and have something for everybody and keep it as specific as possible. Right. Right.

So we are in this time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. What are we going to see you guys kind of pushing out as people are dealing with grief, holidays? So one of the things we actually really encourage people, certainly on our site we have a lot of folks about ideas who are coping with grief at the holidays, how to memorialize an honorable loved one during the holidays even, how to make practical plans, how to recognize that everybody's needs during the holidays even sometimes can be different about how you cope, about how you memorialize, about what traditions you keep and what traditions you change. So we focus a lot on how you communicate and really do a plan.

We have a print booklet about that but then also we just have some post-boner sites about how you do that. And we also have a free, completely free e-course for people on managing grief or holidays and special days that really is kind of a, if I set e-course guide to thinking through some of these considerations, everything from practical ideas to that communication piece with families. So we try to do an array of different things and then focus on our social media, we do different things during the holiday season. So we've done things like gratitude challenges around the holiday season or encouraging people to focus so the grief can be overwhelming during the holidays and focus on the things that we are grateful for.

We also periodically during the year do photo challenges on Instagram where we'll do prompts about encouraging people to take grief and share grief related photos and so that's something that sometimes we do around the holidays and different holidays. So we try to, again, a little bit of different things for everybody. We've got some ideas around that that are craft related on idea on making memorial ornaments and some other things that we encourage people to look into maybe as a family that they might want to do together. And we hope that by having some different approaches to the holidays season, whatever somebody's grief style is, they'll find something that works for them.

And we encourage individuals, especially, and also professionals to, at the very least, if they're on Facebook to kind of come over on our page because we will be doing things like Facebook Live around the holiday just to talk about some of the difficulties and ways to manage grief and we'll have some opportunities to do more kind of video type of things where people are able to sort of maybe if they don't want to read a resource or read an article, actually just kind of tune in real quick to a Facebook Live and see if there's anything useful that it has to offer them. Well, I think you all are offering an absolutely wonderful service to all these different types of people out there that really can access you regardless of what their ways of getting to you might be. That's our goal. So thank you.

We hope that's working. It's working. I like that you said, you know, things are online. I like that you said social media.

A lot of times I won't vocalize what I'm looking for. Like let me do some research first before I go out so that I don't have to take that step sometime. So I think the anonymity is good too that I can go and look. We talked to Sally one time too about on the podcast about social media.

How do you think that kind of plays in when somebody's breathing? Do you see it could be a positive or would you thoughts on that? I think that we hear a lot of times people talking about how we can make re-parter, but I also do think we exist in the online space. So we definitely see the benefits of being able to access support at 2 AM.

There are some really cool ways that people are memorializing loved ones on social media. I have friends who've lost relative to, you know, write to their loved ones on their memorial pages on Facebook occasionally. It's a good way to put something out there and get support. So I do think that there are a lot of benefits.

Also if you're in an area, maybe more rural area where you can't find a support group that really is relevant to your type of loss, social media and online support spaces might have online groups that you can access, even though you can't access things in person. So there are a lot of benefits, but of course there are a lot of things that we need to consider when using online spaces. Yeah, one of the things that we really encourage professionals to do, but also just individuals, we have articles about it on our site, is just helping people to think through all the considerations around social media. So one of the things that's wonderful is that you can access great, great support and you can sort of share and connect with people through social media in a way that didn't exist before.

But there's a level of vulnerability that comes there. So you can put yourself out there, you open yourself up to feedback that you, that might not be the feedback that you wanted or hoped for, it might not be the support that you wanted or hoped for. And there's a lot of control that can come with social media and we can do that as well, where maybe information gets spread more quickly or in different ways than expected, where people are sharing things on the memorial pages that some people are comfortable with and other people aren't comfortable with. So there's always, you know, like with so many things, with the good comes the bad and we have to be aware of both the benefits and the considerations.

I think especially around the holidays, we want to be mindful of how social media is impacting us in some ways. It might be the way that you connect with family and friends who are far away from you. But in other ways, it might be really overwhelming to see photographs of other people's seemingly perfect holiday celebration and feel like your holiday has changed or maybe somebody very important is missing. I think it's important to remember first that most often times people are putting out the most perfect picture that they took, not the 20 that they took that were imperfect.

Right. That's right. So it's a really curious, curious collection of their lifetime moments. And also people, you know, I really encourage people to challenge themselves to take a break from social media if they feel like it's getting to be too overwhelming around the holidays and focus on what is kind of in front of them and here and now what maybe things that they have to be grateful for, things that make them feel moments of joy and meaning and things like that.

I think you appreciate it. I think one thing that we're seeing more of on, I would say on Instagram more so than Facebook is people who are trying to capture their grief experiences in a more real way rather than capturing sort of this perfect curated experience of life and everybody maybe, you know, gathered at a perfect holiday table with a perfect holiday meal. You know, and that we do have people out there who are saying, you know, here's a picture of my empty point of Ben and Jerry's ice cream and my sweatpants. Yeah.

Yeah. And this is, this is what my holiday looks like. And there is an opportunity with social media as people are getting more comfortable putting out left curated and more honest experiences. I think for people to feel a little bit less alone.

And I think when we share things like that, like the uglier pictures of, you know, piles of undone laundry and the, you know, the things that people face that they're not normally sharing on their social media, there is this moment of connection and something that takes away a little bit of that isolation or that feeling of like, Oh God, I thought I was the only one with a mountain of undone laundry because I just am struggling so much to get through the day and that if we can do more of that on social media faces, that I do think there can be a real bad event. I think that's good. I'll interesting. Sometimes I see families post a lot about their loved one, especially around the anniversary date date and then they apologize for having said so much and sassy.

Those conversations, I think those tips are good, but I think it's healthy for them to post like that personal page that's on their mind. Yeah. You know, at that time, especially depending on what time of year it is, I know it's a hard time right now. Yeah, definitely.

I think that that's the way many people are reaching out to get support nowadays is by posting something online. And so it feels a need and I absolutely think that it can be very healing and beneficial for many people. It can be a place to educate. I think we hear people say a lot.

You know, thank you so much for your articles, not just because they've helped me in my grief and understand my grief, but because I share your articles on my Facebook page with hope that people in my support system who aren't grieving might read them and better understand grief and loss or my experience and that we can spread the word and help people to better understand grief that then we'll all as a community and a society be able to better support one another in grief. All right. So if folks are listening, they haven't been to your site yet. Would that be the place where you send them or would you send them to a Facebook page or where would you think their one stop shop would be?

I would, I would if they really truly wanted to connect with us. I would say go to our website and subscribe to receive our articles via mail because we email not mail. We're not emailing anything. Because every new article we write goes out and then also we do a newsletter once a month.

It ends up being like one email a week. But it would also whatever social media platform they're on, I would say primarily if they're on Facebook or Instagram, we definitely recommend that they come connect with us because we do share a lot of things there that don't get shared on the website. Some of the initiatives we do like the photo challenge that we do on Instagram and we may do a little thing over the holidays as well. We'll share that there, but it might not get shared in an article on the website.

So I would recommend also if people are on Instagram and Facebook and they just follow us, it's not, you know, just click the like button and move on with your day and maybe something that shows up in your feed will be helpful. Cool. And it's all under what's your grief? Yep.

Everything on all the platforms is under what's your grief. We're also on Twitter, on YouTube and on Pinterest. Well, I for one am going to be listening to your next podcast. All right.

Well, we will work it on it. Awesome. Great information. We appreciate it.

Tell us how wonderful you guys are, the resources that you provide and we just had to share that with those who follow us on the gift of life. So we appreciate your time. Thank you ladies. Thank you.

So glad we were finally able to catch up with one another and this is really going to be a great resource for many of our listeners and our families also. So thanks. Thank you for sharing and letting us come and speak with you for a little bit. Yeah, absolutely.

And thank you for all of the amazing work that you do in Oregon as a student, obviously, for us. It's something we hold near and dear. So we're not in the appeal world anymore. We appreciate so much.

It's a great work that you guys do for donor family. On this episode of the gift of life, we're talking with Sally about this time that we're in the holidays. We always love to learn from our mental health experts. Yeah, Laura, of course, now we're in the middle of the holiday season and we know that grief right now is a little bit heightened with the loss of loved ones.

So we want Sally to just give us a few tips to help us through the holiday season. I'd be glad to. Yeah. It's difficult during the holiday season to begin with because there's a lot of pressure on all of us to remain pleasant and upbeat and pretend like we're really happy with everything that's going on.

But you know, holidays are always a time for joint happiness, especially for folks who are dealing with the sudden death of a loved one. And so grief does rob you of emotional and physical energy. So you might just want to think about less than your involvement in holiday activities. In other words, don't expect too much out of yourself and realize you're doing the best that you can.

Since each family member grieves differently, you may want to talk to your family about how to spend the holidays and how to involve your children. And oftentimes, don't think that they're shielding their children from grief by just not talking about it or talking about it behind closed doors. But you know, grief is always included in our lives regardless. And it's much more beneficial for you to discuss your thoughts and feelings.

And you don't have to go into a lot of in-depth issues. But share with your kids what it's like for you going through all this. Well-meaning individuals expect you to hide your feelings about grief and loss. And don't know how you're feeling just to please other people.

You are not obligated to be cheerful. Please keep that in mind. Goodness, it's really. Yeah, that's right.

And you know, if you do start feeling overwhelmed when you're in a gathering of family and friends, you know, get a strategy of how I'm going to exit this and just go take care of yourself. And you know, sometimes people find that doing for others does help. And that might mean you could volunteer to food pantry, a shelter, a hospital, retirement center, something that might get your mind off and giving back to others also gives to you. So most of all, just be kind to yourself.

Know your limits and give yourself permission to feel sad and also grant yourself permission to smile and recall fond memories of your loved one and all those great times you had in the past and keep that very positive thought with you through the holidays. My sister and I just had this conversation because we say when the weather changes and it starts getting colder, it's almost like this depression wave comes in. And we have had a lot of loss and we just sleep like we just need to take a nap. We need to go back.

Earlier. And then once we kind of get over that, then we're able to do those things that are talked about and get involved kind of thing. But it was like, man, as I get older, I'm like, recognizing like, okay, here comes the follow and that the weather's not comes. I'm going to go in hibernation.

But the good thing about that is that you're recognizing it. Many times people don't and think there's really something wrong with them. But once you begin to understand, I know what's getting ready to happen here. So I can expect this from myself.

I think that makes a big difference. Yeah. Now that we recognize we're talking about it. We have to start running around everybody's excited for the holidays.

So yeah, I get that. I like that. Thank you so much. If you have a topic you want Sally to cover, info at the get to life dot org.

On every episode of the get to life, we honor a hero that hero today is Jeffrey Carl Carr senior. Today, we're going to do something a little bit different. Donor family submit squares and honor of their loved one for our donor family quilts. And today, the story comes from Jeffery's family.

Jeffery's family's sending a beautiful quilt square with a bunch of symbols on him representing things that he enjoyed. The symbols on his quilt block represent his love of motorcycles, Batman, horses and basketball. The red heart shows his love for people. Jeff was a high school graduate in attend college.

Batman was his emblem of self. Even his motorcycle had the emblem. He owned the horse and loved to attend and ride at the trail rides of all the other clubs. He also was a motorcycle club member.

He was an active member in his church, coach basketball teams and his last group of teenagers was very successful. He was Uncle Jeff to young people, their mentor, a loyal and dedicated employee, never met a stranger. He was a loving, caring, kind, and dedicated father, son, brother and friend. Really is beautiful guys.

You want to see it? Go to our heroes page at Loba dot org. And now we pause to say thank you to Jeffrey for the gift of life. Today in our question and answer segment, Laurie, this one is for you.

Oh, okay. Is it about my hair? No. Not quite.

Got you off guard. Okay. So what is the difference between the national registry and my state registry and do I need to register on both? Oh, good question.

Well, you only need to be on one, right? We can all agree on that. Cross the board. All hands up.

Yes, we're good. So the national registry only started a few years back. So each state has their own registry as a matter of fact, if you go in to change or address or anything with your driver's license at the office motor vehicles, you'll be placed on the state registry. And we thank you for saying yes, right?

You do have the option of going online to join the national registry, register me dot org. And just so you'll know, organ procurement organizations or OPOs can access both registries if and when the time comes. And if you should have any other questions that you would like for one of us to answer, please give us a call at 5046483477 or you can also email your questions to info at thegiftedlife.org. And that'll do it for episode 97 of The Get to Life.

We received a lot of great information from Lisa and Eleanor and we're really glad we had them on the podcast and we hope you enjoyed listening to them also. Yes, Sally. We certainly learned a lot. Check out whatyourgrief.com.

You'll find a ton of resources for professionals and the general public alike. And if today you're a sitting mayor and you're not registered to be an organ tissue and I don't are maybe now's the time, right? The national registry is register me dot org. What we do hope is that you go out and do something you wouldn't normally do today to help us make life happen.

Thanks for listening. This is a production of the Louisiana Organ Procurement Agency or LOPA. The Get to Life is hosted by Lori Steele, Joey Buudro and Sally Gentry. Our executive producer is Kirsten Hines.

Producer is Shalom Caraway and we are recorded, engineered and mixed in our Covington, Louisiana studio by Troy Perez.