Grief, Growth & Real Talk: Rewriting the Rules of Loss with Meghan Riordan Jarvis

Episode 7 with Meghan Riordan Jarvis

Grief doesn’t follow a script. In this episode of No Permission Necessary, we’re joined by therapist, author, and podcast host Meghan Riordan Jarvis for a conversation that flips the narrative on how we experience, express, and support grief.

From cultural silence around death to the myth of the “five stages,” Meghan, Molly, and Jill dig into the real emotional, physical, and societal toll of loss and why our discomfort with grief is making it harder for all of us to heal. We explore what it means to grieve in public and private, how to show up for others without getting it “perfect,” and why holding space for both joy and pain is the key to real connection.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone who’s ever felt like they had to hide their heartbreak, apologize for their emotions, or rush through their pain. Because grief deserves better, and so do we.

No toxic positivity. No shallow sympathy. Just honesty, empathy, and a whole lot of insight.

• TRANSCRIPTION

  Meghan Jarvis 0:00

  Give me some bloopers. As you're not guessing too. You don't have to guess because I'm just admitting it.

  Jill Griffin 0:06

  I'm usually the dramatic entrance, like some something's on fire. It's

  Meghan Jarvis 0:11

  also like, you know where there's things where it's like, oh, that's not spelled correctly. It's like, oh, I'm a terrible speller, so that was probably my fault, the not being able to find the right link to where I am supposed to be is literally why I have an assistant. That is literally why it's because I look in the email and I can't find it, or I don't know how to spell the host name, or I put the wrong link so it is, it is something that I know is not my strength, and I have tried to work towards it, but I just need to live with it. As long as I'm going to need to navigate with the whole zoom scenario, I just need to understand,

  Jill Griffin 0:51

  yeah, my favorite is, my favorites, when somebody's going on a complete rant and they're muted, and you have to be like you're you're muted. We can't we can't hear anything you're saying, but it looks from your face like I want to Yeah, you have an important thing that you're trying to

  Meghan Jarvis 1:08

  communicate. You are deeply passionate, and also maybe don't say it, because if the universe muted you, you might need to take that. You might need to take sometimes that happens, right? Sometimes I'm like, ooh, that email, that little angry email didn't go through. Maybe that was the universe being my friend and I should tone this nonsense.

  Jill Griffin 1:25

  I have, I have intentionally, actually set my unsend feature so that I can retract it because, like, I have more. I think

  Molly Bierman 1:36

  that's not, that's not easy to do on a

  Meghan Jarvis 1:37

  phone. No, it's not as easy on a phone. Nothing is as quite as easy. Yeah, that's true. No, that's

  Jill Griffin 1:43

  true. But I don't send a lot of emails because I like to fire it off and then I'm like, I'm gonna take that back, or the schedule send,

  Meghan Jarvis 1:50

  right? This is it's like, no, you're allowed to be angry and also only be angry at the people who went home million percent deserve it, because we're angry all the time. Yeah, pause. Take the pause. We need the pause anyway. I am very delighted to be here with you this morning, this Friday. You're

  Molly Bierman 2:10

  so excited. Yeah, you're so excited. I knew immediately when, when I came to your training, I was like, she's got to be on the podcast. Yeah? Molly

  Meghan Jarvis 2:21

  caught magic for me, that is lovely. That's I am, again, like I'm not everyone's personality match. So

  Jill Griffin 2:30

  Sam, for both of us

  Meghan Jarvis 2:33

  and everybody, is the personality match, and they need to know that. I had people come to our book fair, grief tastic, which happens in November and on it, like the swag bag that you get is called the sad sack, and everything I have a sad fact, yeah, it's awesome. It's in these 1970 colors. Oh, yeah, of course. Well, you know, and, and there were these two little old ladies that were like, Excuse me, this is very disrespectful. And I was like, Oh, you're not gonna like anything that happens here today. Go to the register and ask them to refund your money, because you are going to find this whole thing. If you are looking for like, wheat in the wind and gentle piano music about grief and loss, you are in the wrong room.

  Jill Griffin 3:20

  Yeah. And that's okay. Listen,

  Meghan Jarvis 3:23

  there's a there are practitioners and trainers and and and conferences for everyone. So I'm not going to the wheat in the wind one, but they should find that and go. I always say

  Jill Griffin 3:34

  that for like, new therapists that I'm mentoring and training, when you know a client calls in and they're like, this just isn't the right fit for me. And I'm like, Listen, I'm not the right fit for anybody. And for somebody to be able to recognize that great, because now you don't have to waste your time struggling through maybe not getting somewhere with them.

  Meghan Jarvis 3:51

  Totally, totally. I actually, there was someone who said to me, like, maybe you don't want to use the swears. Like, don't come out the gate with the swears. And I was like, it's kind of like wearing leopard print on the first date. Like, you can hold that back if you want to, but like, it is a litmus test if someone really thinks leopard print means something and they don't like it, then they know. And there's no second date. Like the the all the F bombs, all the fucks, that's the last vice I have left. Like there's nothing else name seriously anymore because of menopause.

  Molly Bierman 4:27

  Shout it for the people in the back, right? I

  Meghan Jarvis 4:30

  don't run around like swearing is all there is. And people are like, You swear in front of your children. I'm like, Listen, my children have high executive functioning I've been swearing in front of them since they were little. And being like these words, do not go outside of the house and say them outside of the house. You're gonna get in trouble.

  Molly Bierman 4:46

  But it's not bad, and it's not always gonna be by me. Might be by your

  Meghan Jarvis 4:50

  teacher, so it's actually it's never gonna be by me. I laugh when my kids swear. And now everybody's teenagers, and nobody cares, and everybody just uses all the same language, which. It is nice, actually. Now I enjoy that, yeah, yeah, on the same level, but I, but I do think there are some things where, where grief, the grief and loss, and the way that I put it up on the platform, I just want people to understand that like I laugh about it as much as I cry, you know, I laugh about the absurdity of it, yeah? But I think some people think it's such a serious subject, you know, and it's there's so much pain inside it that they're not as available for the idea that, like, laughter is a tool, and it's important like, you know, when both of my parents died, my siblings and I were laughing at absurd things within hours, because it's a way to

  Molly Bierman 5:42

  cope. It's a way to cope. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.

  Jill Griffin 5:48

  Well, let's get into it.

  Molly Bierman 5:49

  Let's get into I don't have Jill. I don't have any notes on her, so I don't

  Jill Griffin 5:53

  know, share them with me. I No, I put them in the share notes that we have. I No,

  Unknown Speaker 5:59

  it's not that's okay.

  Jill Griffin 6:01

  That's weird. It's on my end on the top.

  Meghan Jarvis 6:03

  Okay, you can just ask me anything you want. And I

  Molly Bierman 6:07

  see, I see me, but I don't see, I don't see her, but that's okay. I

  Jill Griffin 6:12

  just want to make sure, are you in the drive?

  Molly Bierman 6:15

  No, I'm in the note. I'm in you've been using notes, Apple iPhone.

  Jill Griffin 6:20

  Yeah, no, yep. And you're, you're on it. I don't know. I'm gonna just start Okay, or do you want that? Can you do you want me to I can't share it with you again because I shared with you or

  Meghan Jarvis 6:32

  go out and come back in. Sometimes you do notes also my, my team and I and sometimes, yeah, I'm sending it to you again. Someone

  Molly Bierman 6:40

  else doesn't totally Jill and technology is throwing you right under the bus, right here in front of us. Oh, here

  Jill Griffin 6:47

  it is. This is how we thrive together. You know, I found it. I

  Meghan Jarvis 6:51

  found it. I'm the opposite. I'm always like, it's 100% me, even when I know it's not me. I'm like, I just need to follow my

  Molly Bierman 6:58

  story. I need to have more of that. We could actually, that should be a podcast question. I'm

  Meghan Jarvis 7:03

  a little child like, you know my

  Molly Bierman 7:05

  oldest. We're the oldest.

  Meghan Jarvis 7:08

  Oh well, I mean, we just call each other, right? Absolutely never it could be me. Could be me. Could be my fault, even when I'm like, it absolutely 100% is not me. It's just like, sort of like, Oh, I'm so sorry about that. That's probably even when it

  Jill Griffin 7:24

  even when it is me. I'm like, No, I don't know that happens.

  Meghan Jarvis 7:28

  Yeah, I look, man, that was some guy named Joe. He doesn't work for us anymore.

  Molly Bierman 7:35

  It's amazing. Megan, do you like to go by Reardon Jarvis, or just Jarvis?

  Meghan Jarvis 7:40

  Yeah, Reardon Jarvis, all that complicated, like, got a license, started practicing before he got married. So it's too many names, but Reardon Jarvis, and also, you know how to pronounce it, so might as well say it. It's for people who are like, Megan Jarvis. I'm like, you can just leave the Reardon is very hard. I understand, not phonetic, yeah.

  Molly Bierman 7:59

  Well, okay, let's get into it. I'm gonna do your I'll do your bio, which is like, short and sweet, and then Jill will take over, starting to ask some questions. It's really conversational for us, like it's just gonna flow. We have a we have till what time Jill,

  Meghan Jarvis 8:20

  1030 or can you go over? Yeah, no, I think 1030 is that. I probably can't because I'm super tight today.

  Unknown Speaker 8:29

  So hearts, hearts stop

  Molly Bierman 8:30

  at 1030 and we'll maybe slice some of the stuff that we already said in the beginning, Anthony, calling Anthony we are starting, and please splice up some stuff in the beginning for bloopers. Welcome to no permission necessary. I am thrilled to have our interview today be Megan Reardon Jarvis. She is a therapist, speaker, educator, author. Has a book called Can anyone tell me essential questions about grief and loss, and she is the founder and host of the podcast, grief is my side hustle,

  Meghan Jarvis 9:07

  which I love that title. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I was at an event that my littlest guy was so small, it was right after my mom died. I was at an event and they were talking about this extraordinary woman. They were honoring this extraordinary woman. And my son was like, part of the little kid, dancers and singers. And my friend, another friend, leaned over and was like, because it was everything this woman had done was part of her charity work. And my friend leaned over and was like, That is a hell of a side hustle she's got going there. And without really thinking, I just turned I was like, Yeah, well, grief is my side hustle. And then I got all these chills. And I was like, oh, that's something. I don't know what that is, but that's

  Molly Bierman 9:49

  I just got chills. You take I did too. That is,

  Meghan Jarvis 9:52

  I'm telling you, there was something in it. And then probably three months later, I someone suggested to me that I started. A podcast. And I was like, Oh, I already have the name of that. It's going to be grief is my side hustle. So

  Jill Griffin 10:05

  I love those little nuggets that the universe gives us, like, this is meant for you. Here you go,

  Meghan Jarvis 10:11

  right? I'm trying to, I'm trying to follow all of that, that little Frisian and that chill. I'm like, oh, that's the truth. I don't know what, where it's going to take me, but that's the truth.

  Jill Griffin 10:22

  Well, I was so happy when Molly met you and, you know, asked you to be on the podcast. And as a fellow therapist, I thought immediately I was like, oh, grief and loss, like I would love to talk about that. I that's not one of my specialties, but as a trauma therapist and EMDR therapist, I thought about it more. And I'm like, I actually process a lot of grief and loss with clients. And you know what's really what came up for me, too, when I was thinking about today, is I one of the most profound courses I took in college, was this course on death and dying, yeah, and it was all about the cultural references to death and grieving, and how different religions and different cultures really express their grief, and also how they think about dying. Yeah, and one of there's a lot of research around how Americans in particular are really in denial about death. We we do not talk about it. We're a disaster.

  Meghan Jarvis 11:23

  We say so much harder, yes,

  Jill Griffin 11:27

  we, we don't talk about it. And even now that I'm raising children, it's almost like a dirty word to say that, like, you know we're all gonna die one day, because the reality is, that's the 100% truth is, we're all not making it out

  Meghan Jarvis 11:44

  alive. The one thing we're all gonna I'm glad

  Molly Bierman 11:47

  we're talking about this. Tried to cover for you. Jill remember when the cat got hit by by the car, and I was like, Don't tell them that the cat got killed, just tell them the cat ran away.

  Jill Griffin 11:58

  I was like, No, this is a very and I will tell you, Megan, you will probably have something to say about this. My children that that was their first experience with death of any kind, right? And, yeah, and I will tell you that it was extraordinary to see my children, who were eight and five at the time, they immediately got on the phone with my parents and their aunt and uncle, and they shared with them that they just died. They were they had friends over to they were crying. They were crying. They they started making these and then they planned a funeral for the next day. All on their again, have never been to a funeral. They planned this whole Memorial. They wrote all these beautiful, you know, memories with the cat and drew all these pictures. They invited my parents over to do this memorial service. Well, I had nothing to do with any of this, right? And as a therapist, I was like, I have taught them something that has embedded in my children, like I was so proud of that moment for them.

  Meghan Jarvis 13:02

  Well, because you're seeing them go through a healthy process that's instinctive. I mean, a lot of what I talk to people about is that what we how we need to process the energy that is grief, and that's how I describe it, which is grief is the energy that's created in your body on account of loss. Is that people have instincts about how to do that, and so some people will do it with movement and music and ritual and but, but there are lots of ways that people will cut us off, one by telling, you, know, not giving us the information that we need to mourn. So what would have happened was your cat would have gone missing, and then there would have been no ritual to honor that, because the kids would have been hoping and waiting for the cat to come back. And so then there's nothing really like, oh well, our cat, we don't know where our cat is. People don't respond to that in the same way as our cat died over the weekend. It's totally different game. And so by giving them the truth, they were able to process out the loss. But there's the loss of the cat would have still existed. They just wouldn't have been able to go with their instincts without leaning into the pain. It would have been more like ambiguous. I love these moments. My daughter, who's 17, she was texting me from a health class that was like, oh my god, mom, they're teaching the five stages of grief. I mean, it's such a great and I'm like, Lucy, no, I afterwards, and was like, Listen, my mom's a specialist in this. Like, I'm not trying to challenge what you're teaching, but there aren't five stages of grief. Like, it's not linear. So what she kept saying, like, Oh my God, why

  Molly Bierman 14:34

  don't you talk about that? Because I think for our listeners, they that's what people believe. I mean, I think I now pretty much believe that, until I went to your training.

  Meghan Jarvis 14:43

  So it's brutal. It's brutal because, I mean, to Jill's point, without the without any real education, which is which makes me crazy, like, I think it's actually nuts that we as humans understand this is something. We're all going to go through, and we have provided no core support in any environment, like, there's none in now, it's changing a little bit, little little in the UK right now, like kids are going to get at, you know, curriculum about schools. There's some states that, I mean, the curriculum about grief in their schools. There are some states, but like, as a whole, as a culture, we haven't done, like, what the menopause Movement has done the menopause movement is like, forget it. We're no longer minimizing the health of women. Like, here's how you get your information. You can get it on Tiktok. You can go to your doctor. But like, don't stand for not having the information that you need about the experience you're having anymore. And there are people who care about in their organizations that care about it, but as a culture, it hasn't really caught fire yet. And that's my hope. My hope is that people understand that there are at the root of so many things that we're struggling with as a culture, racism, for one of for one sort of, all of the ways in which there's divisiveness in our politics has a lot to do with the inability to let go. And I don't mean let go, let go and don't care. I mean allow a loss to be a loss, and so things like a flood will happen, or a fire or whatever, and people are turning to who to blame, instead of coming together as you could, as a community and as a country and as a world, and say these kinds of losses are completely devastating. So what we think there is, is this bad thing that happens, whatever that is. And Jill, I love what you said about being a trauma therapist and being like, I don't really talk about grief and love, because that was the same when I identified as a trauma therapist, I was focused on what is the bad thing that happened to you, and how to move that through the system. What I understand is the moving through the system is the creating a personalized grief practice around all that somatic therapy that you're trained in and I'm trained in, and it's really important to call that grief, otherwise people don't know they're grieving. So that's what that's the core education piece is me asking people, What are you grieving? And them telling me nothing. And I'm like, What are you talking about? Of course, you're grieving something. So those five stages, that idea that there's like, denial and we're moving towards acceptance, I understand that that feels good, because then we can do it, and then it will be over, you know, if I just move effectively through this linear process. But if you think about it, if you reframe it and say, grief is more like hunger than it is anything else, it's something that is a part of your everyday life, and it's gonna you're gonna feel it expand, and you're gonna feel it retract, and it's always yours to attend to always, it's always yours. I love that Molly might have a moment where she's feeling a lot of grief about her grandfather that died years ago, and Jill might have just had a terrifying, you know, terrible loss inside her family. And Molly and Jill are both responsible for their own grief. It's not like we need to focus on who caused what, or we need to say that Jill can't grieve hers because Molly's already great like that's not everybody goes to the cafeteria and eats when they're hungry. That's how it works.

  Molly Bierman 18:16

  You know what just came up for me when you said that was that when I got so my daughter was one yesterday. Ah, when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, I believe it, whether it was my daughter my son, I think that's kind of irrelevant. But when I found out, I went to go call a good friend of mine, yeah, and let her know that I was pregnant, and there was part of me that was like, she's going through something, and this is a friend that I've been friends with since I was a kid. And so we know it's not somebody who I talk to every day, right? But when we talk, we pick right back up where we left off. And she was simultaneously going through a loss, just going through a miscarriage rate. And I think this happens a lot for women, and they don't talk about it. And what happened for me was I can be celebratory that I'm having a baby, and I remember specifically saying, I can also hold space for your loss, right? And that open dialog really created this parallel process that I was able to show up she didn't feel guilty for, I don't think so. At least that's not how it came across. She didn't feel guilty for saying if she was sad, or saying she's struggling or having a hard time, right? It opened this, like expansive space to say both can be true. Somebody can be celebratory in their life, somebody can be grieving in their life, and we can still have connectivity. So I think that goes to, you know, your earlier point of this divisiveness that happens and rather than like blame, or sometimes when. And are, like, resentful that, you know somebody is going through that, and you know they're they're getting the baby and they're not getting the baby right, like there was just this level setting that allowed both to be true. Well, in your

  Meghan Jarvis 20:15

  story, what it I think, is significant and worthy of noting is that you are in the position of having the joy knowing and caring that your joy is maybe going to hurt your friend, right? You've got the duplicity. I mean, you've got you the duality, which is like, I can hold space for the fact that she's not. We don't need to pretend that she's just going to be joyful. And you're totally right? This is a thing. I used to have a group of friends, and we called this mac and cheese, where it's like, I'm delighted, I'm thrilled for you, but I'm gonna have to go home and make myself a box of cheap mac and cheese and, like, stuff myself with carbs for my own self. That's what we called it, which I love, right? Like, it's just a way of acknowledging that, like I am, I can do both, but for a Griever, because grief is something that we do with our bodies and our minds, and it can be totally overwhelming. The way that the brain is sort of navigating loss is it doesn't always have the room that you just described to to be able to see the perspective past their pain. So sometimes, when you're the one who has the miscarriage, you you have to sit on that phone call with a friend, and you have to you have to put up with it, and then you have to be so brokenhearted that you don't have a lot of joy for them at all. You don't want to be that person you want to be the person who can show up and be joyful and and I think in grief education, being able to say, all of this is normal. This is not you're a bad friend. All of a sudden, all of this is normal, and we you will come to a point where you can hold your grief. Your grief will still be a part of you. Every woman I know that had a miscarriage still has sadness long past when they're able to have children or whatever it you know, they still mourn the loss of whatever pregnancy they did not get to have as a child. That is that knowing that you're going to hold your grief, but it's not going to, it's not going to just, it's not going to take up the whole dashboard of your life forever. Is really important education for people to have, because it feels in that moment like they're never going to be a good friend and never feel happy for anybody again.

  Jill Griffin 22:34

  I'm glad you brought up that example, though, Molly, because I have gone through whether it's friends clients, I feel like the miscarriage and loss of a child is such a profound experience as a mother and a lot of mothers who have experienced that, that I've spoken to, have this very disappointing experience with their friends and family who distance themselves from them because, and I've had to explain this to people that's not about you and them not being able to support you. That's their discomfort with not knowing what to do, how to say anything like you know, one of the things that I've coached people through is more often than not, those mothers want to talk about that child totally. They want to talk about it. They're you're more uncomfortable with bringing that up than they are. And I think that we have to get it goes back to what I was saying previously about it's just a cultural thing. We are not comfortable with it, with talking about death in general. And I think that for the people that I've supported through some profound death loss, because there's other types of loss, but people dying, honoring that person by talking about them and those memories and what that means to them has been really an important part of their healing process and and I've had people thank me, right, that I'm able to step into that fully with them, because that's what it is. It's like the family and friends that distance themselves, they don't know what to do. So what would you say to those support people to to help somebody through that grief process?

  Meghan Jarvis 24:15

  Well, I mean, I think this will not surprise either of you, but I mean, what I would say in in a serious way, is like, do better. I mean, so and, yeah, I mean about that. Like, so in my book, which is behind me, can anyone tell me there's a section in each chapter? So the chapters are things like, can anyone tell me why I can't remember anything? Can anyone tell me why I you know, food is such a problem. I'm really taking you through what happens when there's a traumatic event and the death of a loved one, but also the end of a marriage or a miscarriage, all of those things have biophysical reactions. They're not in your mind like actual you know your endocrine system is functioning differently because of what's going on inside. Like, the loss of this attachment, so it's all real. So I start the book that way, and in every chapter there's, like, something for the Griever, but then there's also something for the supporter and the this little section each each section is only 1200 words because, like, when you're grieving, you can't sit down and read a whole book. Each section says, basically, like, just do better. Like, I understand it's awkward, but there are a lot of things in life that are awkward that get less awkward if you continue to break through them. And the example that I use is sex. Sex is usually pretty awkward. It's not what it looks like in the movies. You know you feel out. You're like, I don't know. Is this happening? Is it not happening? Early sex is not what we want it to be, ultimately. But no one has ever said to somebody like, yeah, I get it. You should probably, like, not call them until they seem like, better. You don't do that. You're like, oh well, you gotta go on another date and you gotta, like, figure this out. Like, it that is how we respond to it. Like, don't worry about it. It will get less awkward. That's what we tell teenagers. That's what we tell our friends. Is like, Oh yeah, you can't, you can't take that at face value. And so that's the like, sort of ridiculous analogy that I use, which is like, yeah, it's awkward for them. It's awkward for the Griever because they don't want to be grieving, and their identity is shifting in this way where they feel really exposed and they don't know how to even explain to you what's going on, one of the things so my mom died suddenly, and I had PTSD, and I just felt like, when I was sitting in front of people, this white hot fury of like they think They know me, but everything about me has now changed by this experience. It was like, I didn't have arms, and so I wanted them to be like, holy shit, you don't have arms. But that's not they were like, Oh well, don't look at her, you know, don't say anything about her arms. It's like, no, no, we gotta talk about it. We have to talk about it. So that's what I say to the Griever. Is like, you are co creating the space. I mean, the supporter, you're co creating that space with the Griever. And the Griever might say, I really don't want to talk about it, but you're not going to know. You know, when magazines and TV shows call, they're always like, what are the top 10 Tips You know that you can give someone who's trying to support a Griever like and what I always say is, I wish those existed, but whatever I put on the list, don't do this. Never. Ever say at least he was, you know, at least he lived a long life. Never say at least I have an actual example of someone who was like, at least he lived a long life. That was the most comforting thing anyone could ever remind me. Like, whatever it is that you think is bad. Somebody likes that, and that's why they did it. That's why they said it. They were hoping it was going to be helpful. Instead, what we do is we go and we say, oh my god, this is the worst mess ever. This is the I am. I am so sorry, and and I really want to be able to do something that is supportive. Here are my ideas. Don't say to them, What can I do for you? Because their brain

  Jill Griffin 28:03

  is they don't know. They can't think of those things. Women in

  Meghan Jarvis 28:07

  particular, don't know, and I think that's because women are mothers and wives who are often sort of like, what do you want to eat? What do you want to eat? They don't know because they're not used to checking in on themselves and their own personal experience first. So asking them, what do they want? They're not good at good at answering that question on a regular Tuesday. Never mind now that their mom died, but coming up and saying like, and again, so important, I am never, ever bringing you a lasagna, because my cooking is so bad. No one my kids are like, don't, don't do it. You're bad, don't do it, mom. But I can take your kids to Six Flags, no problem. Like you, you need a break, and you need your kids to have a some kind of break. I will make an adventure day for them like you have never seen. I will bring an entire art store to your house to distract your toddler, not a problem. You need a referral to somewhere important. You want to know all the books and all the resources, and I'm your girl, but I'm not bringing you food. So you also have to be careful not to sign up for whatever the traditional, like Western idea of what grief support is, and do something that's really authentic. And so I have, I had a friend one time send me a pair of sneakers, like these amazing pink Adidas that was like, I'm so sorry, your dad's dead. Like, death sucks. These sneakers don't and so I

  Molly Bierman 29:29

  loved that. Sounds like a great gift. Yeah,

  Meghan Jarvis 29:33

  I send people stuff, and I'm like, I am so sorry. Your life is shit right now. And I thought this was pretty and, like, beautiful stuff is good to have around, and I will send them that, yeah, or sometimes, you know, I have a friend that lived remotely, and her dad died, and I sent her flowers because that's all I could get there. And I was like, these flowers are so stupid. But it was my it was my best, the best I can do. And I just want you to know I love you

  Molly Bierman 29:58

  like. Week, going back to your point about moms and, you know, wives or daughters or whatever it is, you know, as it pertains to knowing what you need, this is actually like I just had this interaction this morning, my mom and my, you know, sister are here, and I had a really hectic week, which doesn't have anything to do with the grief process. But they basically leaned in and they were like, okay, like, just, you know, we'll help you when, when we get there. What they're used to is that by the time they get here, I've gotten it all figured out. I've mapped it all out. Well, I really took them up on this offer. So this driving back from driving my son from here, like, here,

  Unknown Speaker 30:37

  like, here's the laundry.

  Molly Bierman 30:37

  So, so what's the food for the party for for your daughter, right? Like 50 people coming to the house, okay? Sunday. And I was like, Oh, well, you guys had offered, so I figured you guys would figure that out today. I haven't bought anything, but I mean, so I I'm learning to embrace the help. And they looked at me. They were like, Wait, seriously, who is this person? You didn't plan anything, but I didn't have it in me, right? Like, there was a lot of reasons of why, right? And my husband and I being kind of like ships in the night this week. But, you know, I leaned into that. But I will say that that is, it's very rare that I do that, right? Like, it's very rare for, you know, moms, women, you know, people who are used to juggling all of it and when grief happens, which has happened, you know, many times in my life, naturally, you know it's all part of all part of life, that you're left feeling so disconnected from what gives you comfort, not even the person that has passed right, but the disconnection from the distraction, because now you feel like you're just paralyzed and you can't do anything, and it's like, okay, now I have nothing to distract me from this, because I feel totally, I mean, I left her analogy like no arms, like it really feels completely upside down,

  Meghan Jarvis 31:56

  and it's more moment to moment than people realize also. So again, like you think about we grieve in our bodies, like, just think about, like, how sometimes you're hot for two minutes, or like you have hunger and then it passes, or like you had a weird, little, like pulsing headache, but like it went away. The other thing that's challenging about grief and loss is that, like, I might be on the phone with you now, for you know, telling you how I feel. But there's this, there's this data about, sort of, like, emotional shifts being really rapid, and so three hours from now, it is pretty reliable that I won't still be in that exact same mood. So what I what I say to folks is like, before we're going through the grief process, having a core educational experience, the same way that you would when you're teaching kids about puberty, right? Like we teach them at 11 generally, because that is the time period where we know people are about to go through puberty. Now, girls are going through puberty at nine, but for the most part, at 11, we're saying, Hey, here's what's going to happen. You're going to get irritable. You're going to you know your body is going to be changing in this way, you may have some difficulty with friends. You might discover that you're more distracted at school because you're more drawn to your romantic feelings than you are towards math. And that might feel weird because that's not who you were before we give that to kids so that when that happens, they're not like, oh my god, a I'm a terrible person. Because that's a thing that happens for a lot of Grievers, as they say, What is wrong with me? Because they believe that they're supposed to grieve and lock all that up kind of in a couple of months. Because, and

  Jill Griffin 33:35

  why would they should be over it? They should be over

  Molly Bierman 33:37

  like, why are we still talking about it?

  Meghan Jarvis 33:39

  Yeah, why wouldn't they think that right? Because we have, we have five days off. That's the average from work. Please go and do your grief in five days and then come back and do your work. Very few supports of any kind at work. I always hear from people that say, like, oh, we offer a lot. And I'm like, oh, okay, can I talk to your employees and see if they also say the same, right? Because if your employee doesn't say that they felt really supported by whatever it was that you were doing while they were grieving, it doesn't count. I can't say I'm Molly's best friend unless Molly says she's my best friend. Like we, we. It's got to be reciprocal. Reciprocal, yeah, what most workplaces have on the books is that you get five days. That's it. That's kind of all they have. And by saying five days, it's as if I've said this many times, but if I told you you have 15 minutes for your lunch hour, like you're it's called the lunch hour. You have 15 minutes for lunch and you can't finish your sandwich in 15 minutes in a cup. You know couple of days you're gonna be like, what's wrong with me that I can't finish my sandwich? On time instead of nobody finishes their sandwich. You know, appropriately, in 15 minutes, we're supposed to have a real break at lunchtime. That's what we end up doing, is we end up setting this culture system where it's like, what's wrong there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing. Wrong with you, if you're if you're 40 years old and your mother died, it's gonna be a minute. It's gonna be a minute before your brain even understands what happened, before it's updated the data and understands like, Oh my god. This is what holidays are gonna feel like, and this is Oh my God. You know, my mom died six, almost six years ago, and I still will be like, Oh, let me quick call her. Let me just quick now call her and ask her that question, or like, I have a minute, and then I'm and then I'm doomed for the rest of the day. Like, shit, I forgot she was dead, and now I'm so heartbroken. Whatever it was I was gonna call her about wasn't even that important, but I have to sit here in the pain of it, in that flare up of grief. And so when we can talk more honestly to people about that, when we can say, this is what this is, and make room for it, we are going to do better at showing up in all of that awkward space, whether it's because of a miscarriage or because of a death or the or of a divorce, we're going to be able to say like, are you sleeping at all? Because I took a class, and that class told me that disrupted sleep is a really common or, how's your memory, man? Because I hear that that really goes when you're grieving. Are you having, you know, distractibility? Are you having a hard time focusing? Are you watching, like, hours of TV? Because that seems to be pretty common. Instead of Jane's watching hours of TV, and she couldn't even remember what day her husband died, which is what we get. We get the hushed tones of judgment from like, beauty. Go ahead, my guys, suspend you both into silence. Stun them into silence. They're like, Well, I was

  Jill Griffin 36:37

  thinking. I was thinking about a couple things. You mentioned the word attachment, and there's a lot of grief work that I do around attachment trauma, yeah, and I've had a few experience recently where, you know, really explaining the grieving process of a parent who's still alive, and grieving the fact that you have never gotten what you needed, and you will never get what you need from this parent, right? And I think it's been a profound moment for them to kind of be able to put it in that perspective of, Oh, I've had this expectation and hope that this person's going to change? Yeah, I'm now an adult, and I'm still hanging out for I'm still holding on for this hope, but I actually need to step moving that energy, right? We need to actually move this energy and shift it into grieving, that that my expectation is never going to get

  Meghan Jarvis 37:35

  mad. Yeah, that's such an important point, and we have some good language for things like this, like disenfranchised or ambiguous loss, which is just sort of a way of saying, like, there's not a dead body there for somebody, no one's gonna bring you a lasagna. But also the burden is kind of on you in this way that right now is silent, that I wish wasn't silent, to be able to acknowledge it for yourself first, right? So like, when you the assumption, when you say, my mom died, is that sad? But it might not be that sad. It might be of a relief. Maybe you were, maybe it is sad, but you've been sad for seven years because she's had dementia and you lost her years ago, right? Yeah. So one of the things that we do when we're doing grief education is we say it's not fair, it's like utter bullshit. But you as the Griever, are gonna have to explain some things to people around you, so when they're gonna make assumptions because your hair is washed, that you're fine, you're gonna have to remind them that you're not fine. You can do that. Yes, angry way. You can do that. And like, people say it's not fair. And I'm like, You're right. It's bullshit. It's not fair. All of it's not fair, but it's still your problem. So you can be in silence and let somebody believe that you are so close to your mom and and, you know, give you the day off, or give you the week off for her funeral. Or you can say out loud, and you, you get to choose, at work, at church, wherever we were, not that close. So it's, it's even has this other level of complication, like I hadn't spoken to her in 12 years. So it's not as it's not just like that straightforward grief. And you don't have to do that, right, like you don't have to share your intimate experience with other people, but you do have to understand. And every time that we don't, we're letting that minimization of all the complexities of grief the way that people are sort of like, hey, go see Jill on your lunch hour, work through that process of loss and tidy that back up, and, you know, put your mascara back on and please come back to work as efficient as you were before when we have data empathy.com, has this really extraordinary data that tells us that people who are the executors of wills, so that's going to be more men than women, but people at higher management levels, right? Because they're, you're picking the highest, you know, functioning people in a family. They're reporting that they're. Mental health is impacted for 18 months, and that their performance at work is impacted for between 12 to 18 months. That's staggering truth, right? That's staggering truth.

  Molly Bierman 40:11

  So not an executor that's attached to the loss, or the executor that

  Meghan Jarvis 40:16

  yes, is not, it's a family affiliate, family member, yeah, so somebody who is doing as many of us do as caretakers, right? So it could be that we're taking care of a child, it could be that we're taking care of an elderly person, but some significant change in our lives. It's a part time job. It's, you know, we're doing our job, and then we're doing this other part time job, and the executor of an estate is a literal part time job, like you have to go to the bank in person and beg them and maybe, you know, bring them a bribe to get them to give you the five copies of whatever to close the thing with the forms. And it's very arduous. Yeah, I was

  Molly Bierman 41:00

  actually thinking about that yesterday, because my mom, my grandfather, passed a few years ago, and there was a lot of work that had to be done, right? And I don't live nearby, and my uncle was the one who spearheaded, you know, he was the executor, and my mom would say, like, it's been a lot of work on him, and I could understand why, right? Like, there was a lot of things that needed to be done. And yesterday, I got the text that the last, you know, the last thing has basically, you know, sealed the deal, which is the house, you know, got sold, right? And it was like that last bit that needed to be wrapped up for, you know, the whole estate to close. And even that, I looked at that text, and I was like, Oh, I looked up the house online, and I was like, you know, it's sad. That's like, the last kind of like, that's really it. That's the end of the era, right, when the house is closed and it's no longer there and all the things are out. And, you know, you know, he passed now, you know, God, I think it was two years ago, but I can't even, yeah, it was a year or two, but, yeah, but you know, it is that that piece that it's not done until it's done in that way

  Meghan Jarvis 42:09

  and out of curiosity, when you have that moment, which I would say is like a grief moment, right where you look at the house and you're having that thing and that, you know, that's what makes all the artifacts that are left behind so hard is like, it's not, it's not neutral. You're not just, like, cleaning out, you know, sock a sock drawer, it's all has emotional content. Did you tell anybody? Did you reach out? Did you say, like, Oh, I just looked up the house. Did you

  Molly Bierman 42:37

  I almost thought, you know, I, I almost thought to say, oh, end of an era, you know, still on a group chat with all my siblings and, well, I don't know if it's, you know, if I'm really honest with myself and sitting with myself, I really believe I didn't say that because I was juggling the two kids by myself, my two small ones. But I don't think it was because I didn't feel like I could talk about

  Meghan Jarvis 42:56

  it. Okay, yeah, but, but both are in there, right? Like, yeah, there's the, you know, because I'm sure you know this Jill, like, every once in a while, I will be the person who leans in and says to somebody, this is a really big deal. And, and it's like, I'm giving them a permission slip, but, but really, I just want to frame it right, like that, this is a really big deal, this thing that you're doing. And I have just as many people who don't celebrate big things as have a hard time mourning. Oh yes, so that people can you know, I my son came home yesterday, and my husband whispered to me, he's 15. He's just gotten back on the soccer field because he broke his arm for the spring season, so he was out the whole spring season, so he's doing the soccer thing. And my husband listened to me. He was player of the day. And I was like, fucking kid is not gonna tell me this, like he and so I came downstairs where they're watching a TV show, and I was like, Daniel, do you have something to tell me? And he was like, What? What? And I was like, um, did something happen at soccer camp today? He's like, no, wait, what do you mean? And I was like, Daniel, for the love of God, and then he like, little, tiny corner. He's like, Oh, I was player of the day. And I was like, What did you say? And he was like, I was player of the day, mom. Okay, I was player of the day. And I was like, and how did you celebrate? And who did you tell he's like, I didn't tell anyone. I was like, text your friend Ben right now and tell him, like, go upstairs and tell Lucy you were player of the day. And he's like, I don't need to do all that. I was like, we need to do this. Daniel, like, we need to do it now. He's like, a little shy and a little but I mean, who knows if, ultimately, in his grown life, if he will be a person that needs to celebrate. But I'm not doing it to turn him into some egoist. I'm doing it because if we can't celebrate, I all I know on the other side, we are a person who has a hard time honoring the losses. Now, not celebrating doesn't drive you to go become an alcoholic, but not being able to process loss might. And so I'm trying to instill in us this idea that, like all emotion. Decisions are something that need the energy to be moved through acknowledged, like identified, acknowledged and moved through our system. And when I'm teaching I have this, I have this curriculum called the grief mentor method. When I'm teaching that method, I am really doubling down over and over, which is like, it's not, it doesn't matter whether you think you should be sad. It doesn't. It's is, do you notice it? And do you notice, like, just a little pinprick of it? And then I just always ask, and what did you do about it? And so it's not, in this instance, Molly, it's like, not a big deal, but it's always worth noting. And what I always want people to do is let somebody else know. When someone say, What am I supposed to do? I'm like, just let somebody else know. So I have this thing called the triangle of trust, which is Molly. You probably heard me talk about it, but it's three. It's having three people who when you're in trouble or when you're celebrating, you can just text them and say, I'm in it like the bullshit is going down. It's really hard right now. And they will, they will come back and say, because you primed them to do it, I'm with you. You're not alone. And I have this sort of famous example with my dog where, like, my dog ate 20 Grapes. Grapes are toxic to dogs. The dog is fine, by the way, I sometimes forget to tell that part in the story. The idiot dog is totally fine. He has an interior of tin. But my husband was away, so it was like, I have to deal with this. The dog is my 12 year old. And I was like, Oh, this is definitely, this is the legacy of loss. Is like, Oh, this dog is definitely dying. Like, there was no question in my mind that we were carrying this, you know, 140 pound dog. So I'm driving to the place, and I text my little triangle of trust, which is a group chat, and I'm like, I am in it like the fucking dog ate 20 grapes, and my best friend immediately calls me, and with the like, you know the wheat in the wind voice, she's like, are you okay? Do you need me to take care of you? Like, are you safe driving? And I'm like, stop it right now. It's all fine. I'll call you after that is not helping my sister pop up with a like, I can't talk right now. Can I call you later like instant reply from the phone, you know, from Apple. And I'm like, okay, her fuck you too. Gotta have three people. Then my friend Rachel, she wrote back fucking dogs.

  Jill Griffin 47:23

  Yeah, that's what I would have said, yeah. Like, of course, of course, your husband's not around too.

  Meghan Jarvis 47:28

  I just needed someone to know I am doing garbage thing so that I'm not alone in it. Because alone can very quickly, for Grievers, alone is just like, Oh, I wish there were more people here. It's a yearning for connection. What can happen for Grievers really quickly is it can go from alone to isolated, which is like, I'm in a glass jar and no one can get to me, and I can't get out to other people. And that is where all the you know, Vivek Murthy, our former Surgeon General, wrote this report in 2023 that was like, you know, isolation and loneliness as you're driving all these horrible health outcomes, cardiovascularly, that's really what I think is so interesting about that study, is what he doesn't do in that study is identify who those people are. So it sounds a little bit like, oh, the lonely little old lady in the five floor wall of Brooklyn, when actually it's young people, yes, people who are grieving. I mean, that is the first and grieving, all the losses, all the ways that they thought their life was going to be and coming out of covid, it wasn't. And how are they now going to live a good life? Those are the folks that are really struggling, and they feel like they're in a glass jar. They don't know how to get out, and one way to get out is never do anything emotionally alone. That doesn't mean you can't have privacy. It just means you gotta let somebody know. And if you can do it, you know this Jill is a trauma therapist, if you can do it in the moment in vivo, you will feel like you are not alone. If you can reach out to someone, the shit is going down. That actually changes the neural pathways of the experience.

  Jill Griffin 49:07

  Well, I know I do this with Molly all the time, the unhinged voice notes, text messages, I'm like, I don't even need a response half the time. It's like, I just need you to know that this is what's happening right now. So in case I call later, you know, to pick up the phone because it is going down. That

  Molly Bierman 49:27

  is shovel

  Meghan Jarvis 49:28

  when I got a body to bury, when my when my mom died, and I was because I was really sick after she died, which I think is just an important thing for somebody who's trained in trauma to admit that, like, it didn't matter how much I knew I this is how my system responded to the death of my mom and my husband. I mean, he was just beside himself, and he was like, what, you know, tell me one thing that I could do every day that would just not he, you know, just make you know that I love you, is it and that? I'm sorry that you're going through this. And what I said to him was, every night, before I go to bed, can you just ask me, how are your feelings? Which is the thing I used to say to our kids when they were going to bed, like, any feelings I need to know about, like, how are your feelings? And that's what he did every single night. He'd be like, you know, any feelings I need to know about. And sometimes I'd be like, Oh yeah, I was in a really dark like, everyone's gonna die and my life is going to be miserable, like, at 330 this afternoon. And then he'd be like, do you want to talk about it? I'm like, No, I don't. I know. I just want to go

  Unknown Speaker 50:33

  to I'll leave you with that.

  Meghan Jarvis 50:36

  I think he knew that, like, if I need, if I if it had grown or become something darker was going to keep me up. I would wake him up, or I'd tell him, but instead, but instead, what it really did was like, the the job of grieving is still mine, but it I had company in the idea of how hard it was. At one time, I said to him, I want to tell you a thing I did today. And he was like, Okay. And I was like, I counted how many times I missed my mom today? Oh, this is gonna make me cry. And he was like, what is the number? And I was like, I want you to guess. Like, I want you to guess. And he said, 50. And I was like, it was 111 I missed her 100 and it was, it wasn't like fresh grief, it was, I was like, I missed her 111 times today. That's what it's like to be me in my in my life right now. And it was such a quick like, like, you got to see this. And then he said, Do you want to talk about I was like, I really don't want to talk about it. I just want you to know that when you see me and my hair is washed and my shirt is ironed, that for 111 pin pricks of pain got through, you know, my bangs and my linen shirt today, and so that when I'm teaching people how to how to sort of break open the culture of grief and lost. That's part of what I'm doing, is you don't have to sit down and do what Tiktok says, which is like, just sit and bear witness and like, there's like, one image that I've seen so many times, and I'm not, like, making fun of people. It's just not my vibe of like, a piece of wheat that's like blowing in the wind with, like, mental piano music. And it's like, grief is hard. Bear witness, you know, just bear like, No, I have a I have a guy who will email me and be like, nobody knows what bear witness means. Megan, nobody knows what he's he's like in his 70s. I've talked to him on the phone. He's like, nobody knows what, like, holding space means, so and so I'm also really careful

  Molly Bierman 52:46

  that is true. That is true unless it has actually done, like, experiential work, you've done some dream, deep type of trauma work, you actually don't know what that means. What

  Meghan Jarvis 52:54

  he said was, which I really appreciate is it's like, it sounds like you only get to do this grieving, which I'm trying to normalize, is just a nor it's developmental experience for all humans. He's like when you use language like that, it therapizes it, and so it sounds like it's for people who have gone to therapy. And the whole point of the work that I do is there is a small percentage of people that are going to need the kind of treatments that you and I do Jill, because they have trauma inside their system, but as a culture, if we had more supports, if we had more groups and churches, if there were as many group meetings around as there are like AA meetings, if we had people clergy who was trained supermarket clerks who understood, if We were able to put it inside school systems, and probably maybe, most importantly, have grief informed workplaces, since we spend a third of our life at work, then we wouldn't need so much of the other kind of language and intensity. It would sound more normal because it would feel more normal because it would be more normal.

  Jill Griffin 54:00

  I mean, going back to how important it is to expose just, just the discussion right around grief and loss, which I think starts in a very age appropriate way. I can remember talking about my husband's my husband's mother died long before I met him, so she's never been with us and but we've always honored her by talking about grandma Gayle to my children. And I can remember, and this is one of those profound things for me around children, is that we've always talked about her. And I can remember one day my daughter, she's probably around four or five, and her looking out the window and saying, Yeah, Grandma, I can see grandma Gayle with us, and she, like, had this whole kind of story about how she watches over us and all this stuff. And for me, you know, my spiritual practice and my thoughts on, you know, the body dies, our soul continues. There's something. Yeah, there's something to that, right? And there are part of that death and dying class was about near death experiences, and which fascinate me, because it really gives a glimpse into what happens. There's no way that all of these people have the same things happen in a near death experience. And to me, it gives me the belief system that, like our soul, continues after this, right? And so when small children, who don't have the conditioning of the world, they haven't even heard those right? They don't have the conditioning of the world. To say that, that's not possible. When I hear small children, and I've had conversations about this with other people, have had similar things when they say, Oh, they're watching or they're here with us now, it's because they, they they don't have that veil. They feel it, they see it. They probably are there with us, you know, like, because that's how souls work, right? I mean, that's so I do think that there is an opportunity to heal on a level that we can't even know right until it starts happening. Because if you look at other cultures, I mean, I'm thinking of thinking of like the Dia de los muertes and Mexico, and in India, they have a lot of public celebrations when somebody dies. There they are. They're much more exposed to the concept of death, dying and all those things. And we need to start having those conversations so that our communities can heal and our nation can heal. And, you know, yeah, it's going to be awkward, and we don't like talking about it, but also it's going to happen. And I so, I wonder

  Meghan Jarvis 56:33

  hard topics in the past. I think, yeah, I mean, again, people can have feeling about this, but it is something that we were able to do. We were able to shift into pronouns being different, even though, like, it doesn't make any grammatical sense. We did that largely at a push for supporting a teenage population that had a very high suicide rate. So some mother somewhere said, if we don't gender these kids the way that they need to be gendered, we're putting them in danger. And even, like cranky old men who were like, that doesn't make any English grammatical sense, were like, Okay, we're gonna change. So again, like, whether you feel like that's the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do, as a society, people were able to so that, to me sentence, a really hopeful message that like, if we understood how important this was, and and I love that you just brought up the idea of near death experiences, the fact that like they seem to be, they have, they have similarities across cultures, so like That can't be nothing like this. There's a great book that's written, oddly by the Lonely Planet, which is called a guide to death, grief and rebirth, which is all about all the cultures around death, dying, rebirth, funerals, burial, across all cultures. And it's freaking fascinating. And I often ask people who are working with me to get it and then we have it. Because when you can't imagine what else is possible, other than, like a Western funeral, I want them to be able to see things like, there are cultures in South America that, you know, bury the bones and then bring them up and and they clean the the funeral space, and they redress the bones, and then they put them back in the I mean, it's, there's, there's a million different ways that are different than how we do it, but the concept of spirituality, which is how I identify what you're talking about. So it's not about religion, and it's not about it really is about. Do you believe there is something bigger than just you, that we are all connected? Yes, that conversation in therapy is often like, unless you've had this specific neglected, neglected or, I mean, when I was being trained as therapist, people were like, you probably should, off limits, off limits. And so again, when I'm training therapists in my grief mentor method, what I say is like, look, in 1986 when my my teenager who was beloved to my family, died, the ethos then was, Do not talk to small children about hard things. So the fact that nobody spoke to me about this teenager's death was totally in line with sort of the cultural understanding of what people believed was best for children as the norm. We don't at that time, yeah, we don't believe that anymore. We know different, but we're having a hard time like sort of doing the thing that we know is better for people. Every person that I have ever worked with who has an experience of profound loss has some question about what happened to this person? Yes, where are they now? And if I don't bring it every single time I bring it up, people are like, I am so glad you asked in my book, can anyone tell me? There's a chapter that says, Can anyone tell me why I think that butterfly is my mom, and the answer to the question is right underneath it says, who's to say it isn't who? Is to say it isn't. We don't quantum physics, religion, you know, reincarnation, we don't know.

  Jill Griffin 1:00:06

  But every time I see a red Cardinal, it's my great grandmother. You can't tell me otherwise, it's

  Meghan Jarvis 1:00:14

  similar. People will tell me that when they find dimes, they think that that's a message from their loved one. And then there's a small coin in India that's sort of the same size as a dime, and people say that's the num that, you know, they think that might be their grandfather trying to get in touch with them from another so who's to say you don't know? Right? What would you have the conversations? So,

  Molly Bierman 1:00:37

  you know, a lot of the folks that kind of tune into our podcast are either obviously supporters of us or friends or, you know, people that are in leadership roles or looking to advance their career. What would you say to folks who are in leadership roles or in organizations of tangible ways they can actually implement some, like, quick, fast, I don't know if it would be easy, but, like, what are some, some light lift, maybe tangible ways to implement some of the things you're talking about? Because I think that people are going to need direction here. Yeah.

  Meghan Jarvis 1:01:14

  So I love the question, because I actually think you know a lot of what I what I think about a lot is sort of, how do we get the message out the most impactfully, and people in leadership roles are the ones that we want to talk to. So one is they themselves. Should listen to a couple of podcasts about grief and loss, because what ends up happening for everyone always right? If I like a hand cream, I'm going to become a promoter of that hand cream amongst all the people in my community. So rather than get a you know what, and this happens to us, a CEO will call and say, we had something terrible happen in our company. We'd love for you to come, but I'm going to be away when you're there, like, oh, we'd love for you to come. So actually, my, my small consulting company, we are not going to come out unless we can talk to you there, right? Yeah, because you're a human and so you know this also, Molly, what I say to people is, you can be here as a clinician, or you can just be here as a human. I have never had anybody walk through my class and be like, Wow, I got nothing out of that. But it's just not possible, because any conversation about grief and loss is going to impact you personally. So what I always say is, buy a bunch of books. You don't know what books. Buy a bunch of books, make them available to your people. Those people actually the books are not the thing that is usually the most useful, but it sends such a message. We want the gesture, right? Yeah, put it in your company newsletter. We want you to know we have identified these six books. We think they're really good. Here's what they're about, and we will make them available to you and your friends and family for free at any time. Or if you and I say that, because most people have a hybrid workplace, but if you have a workplace where there's like, a bookshelf, get the books and put them on the bookshelf. So that's one number. Is that for

  Molly Bierman 1:02:56

  an event like, does it sorry to back you up for a second? Does that mean that you're doing this when an actual, like, a loss, actually,

  Meghan Jarvis 1:03:02

  no, I mean, I know,

  Jill Griffin 1:03:05

  okay, let it be around. Let it kind of be something that you can talk

  Meghan Jarvis 1:03:10

  about. We have all these, you know, one of the things that we offer is like, hey, we'll create material. We'll create content for you that goes out once a quarter, once a month, whatever you want. And so we have this little newsletter and what? And I'm not suggesting people need to hire us, but we will work. This is what we do. We see this content that says, hey, we're aware that many of you are going through a lot of loss. Now I often, if you're just randomly doing it, I often say, put that in the spring. Put that in the spring, because we got Mother's Day coming up, we got Father's Day coming up. We got graduation coming up, weddings coming up, summer coming up, all the things where you are going to feel the ache and the loss of the person. So somewhere in late April, Out goes the newsletter that says spring is a season of renewal. Here are the things that we're doing, you know, here's your gym membership pass, here's the whatever. And also, we are aware that this is a season of transitions, and so be, you know, and then naming the things that are non death losses. Many of you are going to be sending your kids out to college, and that's right transition. Here's a book or a podcast that we've identified where people are talking about that topic of grief and loss. So one of the things that will happen in corporate environments, I would say it happens 85% of the time, is somebody says, Can we use language other than grief and loss? Because people don't love that. And when it's not a death, they don't know that they're grieving. And what I say is, you can call it whatever you want. It is grief and loss. And my soapbox is, I want you to put that language there, because I'm trying to shift the culture. But if what you're trying to do is, you know, just offer support. You can say a season of stress, stress inside a season, and put that, you know, launching your kid out into the. World is also a stress. But when you look at what are you know, because people like to talk about resilience in times of stress, that's like a buzz phrase, okay? What is resilience? Resilience means it doesn't destroy you. You don't go all the way down and stay there. What are stressors? The most significant stressors are health care issues. You know, health issues, changes in your family. You're getting married or divorced. Number one is the death of a loved one. And listen to how that sounds different. Like, oh, Molly. How are you doing? Well, I'm really stressed. There's a lot going on that to me, sounds like maybe you're not balancing, like you're not getting enough exercise, you're not prioritizing sleep, and maybe you have a hard job. But if I say, Molly, how's it going, and you say, you know, my kid is leaving the house and my mom is dying and we're thinking about moving, I'm like, girl, you want to get a cup of coffee, like that? There's no it's a different thing. When you name what the actual stress is, and you'll notice in all of those there's loss. Because every time there is a change, you are losing something. What happens when kids are going to college is we say to them, aren't you so excited? Oh, my God, you must be so excited you're going to college. So we over and over and over, tell them what we what we value. Here is the positivity. But I'm telling you, you got a young kid that's going to college, and you say, Wow, what is it like to be leaving your high school community? Just that question, and they're going to tell you, it's hard

  Molly Bierman 1:06:32

  as well. And we work in the behavioral health space, so we work with a lot of young adults that don't even get past go. I mean, by end of first semester, they're already pulled out of school because they either are in a mental health crisis, they are addicted to substances. The family pushed and pushed and pushed to say that they needed to go to school, and kind of avoided all the all the

  Meghan Jarvis 1:06:56

  bells and whistles, great, they said it's going to be I mean, I work here in DC, and I've got a whole bunch of one year I had all these young women whose parents were like, panicked. They're not, you know, they're not adjusting well to college. And I'm like, first of all, does anyone remember freshman year? It's really hard, it's really hard, it's really bad. You constantly have FOMO and you think you're doing things wrong. But what I was hearing from these young women is like, this, this is what I worked so hard for. This is what they told me it was all about. This is just like, more school and more stress and more whatever. So also that, like loss of a dream or an expectation, we don't know how to you know that impacts our mental health. We don't know how to talk about that. And when you put the word like, Wow, that really sounds like your heart is a bit broken. Like, when you say it like that, people are like, Yeah, I'm really disappointed, and I'm hurt and I'm, you know, and all of that is about loss, all of that is is, you know, what are we going to do about that? Are you going to hold on to the expectation that freshman year is going to be great? What I always say is like, let it break, let it go. We do not have a culture that is able to accept like, because having too many feelings, back when my dad was a young kid, like, made you a problem. You were a problem. You were not a man, you were not a whatever, if you had just had feelings, but now what we sort of imply is like, well, if you're feeling lost, you're kind of a loser. Like, if you haven't been able to spin some kind of traumatic growth from this, or like, oh, well, it was hard, but now I'm on a trajectory. What I usually say is like, let it break and just look at your hands. You know where it used to be and become someone who is adjusting to I thought I was gonna love college. It sort of sucks, but I'm doing it, yeah, instead of it sort of sucks. And I'm hoping my parents are gonna take me, like, try to fix it. It sucks, so I need it fixed. So I'm gonna leave.

  Jill Griffin 1:08:58

  Well, I think a lot of time we talk a lot about, like, do it messy, right? And sometimes the messy part is, wow, this isn't what I expected. I actually don't like this at all, but I need to, kind of, I think sometimes we're afraid, especially whether it's in leadership or something you're really excited about doing. I mean, the college example is certainly one, but I know I felt this in my career. I would say, even when I left a big role that I had, I just quit my job, yeah, and I remember a lot of people not understanding that. And you know, you had said something about grieving, something we never even wanted. And it was one of those things where I made a decision that I didn't want that life. I did not want that job anymore. I didn't want that trajectory, right? But it there was no closure for me. And I think that that word closure, there is no need at all, no when we don't. Have closure, like the grieving it took me. There are still moments now, and it's so it sounds so silly when it because it's like, again, it's not a death. I've thrived since then. It was one of the best decisions of my life, right? But there are still moments it's like, you know, I didn't get the closure I wanted, yeah, yeah. And I still like that, you know, my Oh, because Molly heard plenty of conversations about this. And I think, like, we both grieved leaving our agency jobs over the last five years. Obviously, the timing was different, but we, we would call each other, be like, hey, like, I'm this is, I'm not feeling well today about this. Like, and I think that happens to a lot of people like you, go to college, get your degree, right, and then, oh, I don't even want to do this anymore. We have

  Meghan Jarvis 1:10:50

  ways in which we tell ourselves stories like, right? We sort of make a prediction or we have an explanation that we want to be the reality, and then when it doesn't bear out to be true, it's hard to let it go. So this like there is no closure. Closure as an emotional experience, you know, this is not a real thing. I think when we're talking about closure, what we mean is we want to feel the pain drop out. We want to feel like the

  Jill Griffin 1:11:23

  idea, could this be over now? Can I not think about this anymore? If what I said

  Meghan Jarvis 1:11:28

  was, it will be over, that pain does drop out. But it does not drop out because of your force or your will, or, in this case, your judgment or your opinion, it drops. It's the same conversation about forgiveness. People are always like, I want to be able to forgive them. And I say, when the pain drops out, it will so don't focus on them. Focus on your pain. Be with your pain. And when the pain drops out, you will have that energy of looseness around what they did and did not do. But there's so many stories that we tell ourselves, like, if only, and this is so this is so important in grief and loss. If only I had called them on my birthday, I would have, oh, yeah, hard. If only I had visited at Christmas. Why didn't I just say I love you, and then the rest of that story is, then this would not be so hard. But guess fucking what it was always going to be this hard. So to some degree, when you're talking about leaving your job, it was always going to go down like that. It was always going to be hard, it was going to be messy, it was going to be funky. There's no closure. There's no better version of the story. It is painful because it is painful. And at some point, I imagine now there's less pain in your hands, and so you can reflect on it, but that's what we're always thinking we're supposed to do, which is get from point A of pain to point B of forgiveness or closure. And in reality, I mean, I know people, if you talk to them about their first love at 15. They are still gonna have some will will catch in the throat,

  Molly Bierman 1:13:08

  but there's still some, well, becomes less vivid. I think that, like somebody once told me, when I had a pretty significant loss some years ago, you know, and unfortunately, we didn't get to this in the podcast, but, you know, in this episode, but I think there's a whole episode we could dedicate to the young people that are losing young people, right? Yeah, and so, you know, lost tons of, you know, friends to overdoses or alcohol related incidences or mental health crisis or whatever it is. But I remember vividly this, you know, loss that I had, and I remember somebody calling me, you know, out of the blue to check on me, right? And it wasn't like a close friend, but it was just like, Hey, I heard about what happened, you know, how can I support and actually do remember who it was now that I'm talking about it. And he said, The only thing I can tell you, is that it'll just become less vivid, right? But the pain will always be there. And I really took that because I knew that at some point, like you said, the pain would like drop out. You know that the sadness and the grief would eventually fall out, but until then, it was just going to become more vivid or less vivid as time progressed, right? And it was honestly the best thing anybody could have

  Meghan Jarvis 1:14:29

  said to me, yeah, acceptance of that this is something that you are, that is happening to you and that you're going through, and then you're going to learn your way forward and become someone that knows how to navigate it. Rather than this is a thing that you need to, you know, kick the ass out of that you need to figure out how to do. It's actually some of what this is, is like your brain needs to just acclimate to the reality that this has happened and that your brain. Body needs to stabilize some of the trauma of that event, and you'll learn over time whether or not you need more treatment or more support. You know, the largest, largest percentage of people are able to integrate it and to acclimate to it, but it's not. It's not a short process. It's much longer than people think it is, and there is some element of like it changes us, and it changes how we view things, and maybe not forever, maybe we revert back to some of who we were before, but we are changed, particularly by profound loss. And I think one of the things that you know when you were asking about leadership, one of the things that is a is a real Bellwether in corporate America, is this idea that you need to be able to adapt to change. And so one of the things I'm always saying to folks is when you have employees that are in front of you who just lost a child or their dad, or are getting divorced, these are your change agents right here. You support them through this. They're going to lead you through shit after this. One of the real pieces of power for me is I'm kind of not afraid of very much now. I checked myself on inpatient facility after my mom died, like you couldn't even humiliate me, like it's not possible. I already, I already experienced myself as so disorganized and disparate and so unlike myself that I have it doesn't even take a lot of courage for me now, because I'm sort of like, I mean, you, you have no idea what I'm made of. I know what I'm made of. Here's how I'm going to step forward. But when I'm talking to corporations about like, why bring grief and loss education in? Here is these people are going to go through this anyway. You have the OP. You have the incredible opportunity to be right there, by their side, be part of their support network. It doesn't take very much. A lot of it is just sort of like encouragement and constant tap backs. How are you doing? Do you need time off? Do you need flexibility? A lot of the support that that a company needs to give a Griever is around flexibility, and then that person lives through this profound loss, stays at your company because 50% of employees actually leave their company because they don't get what they need, they stay at your company, and then you watch the rocket fuel that they may be able to support your company with, because they become someone who has an understanding of what's more meaningful. And I don't mean they're going to perform, and, you know, I don't know, increase your revenue. I mean, they are going to shift what it means to be a cohesive team and understanding of what so that's an argument that I use with folks, which is, like these people are going to change. And change is the thing that happens that you guys have to be resilient towards inside workforces all the time, and what I think has happened inside the American workforce, particularly, is people have acted as though we did not change on account of covid. They're just sort of like, oh, well, we, you know, we had that weird weekend. Now we're back. That's not

  Molly Bierman 1:18:14

  weird year. No, we changed, okay? And conversations about it over the years, right? Yeah, but,

  Jill Griffin 1:18:20

  well, I feel like we can talk for all day. I could talk all day, yeah, period. What one thing we do at the end of every episode? We didn't prep you on purpose for this. Want to be on the fly. We do a permission slip. And so we would love for all of our guests giving them a permission slip to, you know, this is called New no permission necessary. But the permission slip is really to you know, what do you need permission? What do people may be grieving, leaders, anything that comes to mind that you want our listeners to know.

  Meghan Jarvis 1:18:53

  So I'll say this to the people that are listening to what we're talking about, and they are holding their hands are full of pain that they are in a change process, something where they are losing, and they don't want to become a loser, but they are experiencing loss. So the people who are listening that are like but I am still feeling the pain of my mom's death Three years later, what I'm going to give them permission, permission to do is just hope that there is a bit of a pivot on the horizon. So here's the permission slip. The permission slip is even though you only feel your pain or even though you are overwhelmed with scary thoughts that it's not going to get any better. I want you to lean on my 22 years experience and my master's degrees and my personal experience with profound grief and loss, to say it is not always going to feel the way that it feels right now, there's a little hope you have it inside your system, and it scares you, scares you, but I want you to just go grab the string and say. Way people survive profound loss, we don't exactly know how, but the statistics tell us that they do, and that you've already survived it. If you're listening to this, you have already survived the profound loss, and you want to have some hope that there's going to be a life on the other side for you. And I'm just, I'm here to tell you I believe in that for you, and if you can't believe in it your permission is to just lean on my belief, open up the thing and be like Megan said, Megan said,

  Jill Griffin 1:20:28

  I love that. Megan, thank you so

  Molly Bierman 1:20:31

  impactful, really. Well,

  Meghan Jarvis 1:20:33

  this is a lot of fun for me. So thank you so much for having me. And you know, anytime you want to chat, let me know this.

  Molly Bierman 1:20:40

  Yeah, and if you want to be able to find Megan, we're going to have all of her information in the podcast credits and links to her social, to her podcast, to her website, to her book, to all the wonderful things that she's done for this space. And you know, forever grateful that you said yes to come on. Thank

  Meghan Jarvis 1:20:59

  you so much. Course, thank you so much for having me. Thank you.