Let's Talk about Grief with Imogen Carn

0:00 Just a heads up that this conversation does touch on suicide, so if that is not something you're up for today, then you might want to give this one a miss. This is Crappita Happy and I am your host, Cas S. Dunn. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist. I'm mindfulness meditation teacher and of course author of the Crappita Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Imogen Kahan lost her mother in the most tragic circumstances in February of twenty twenty.

0:52 Following her mum's death, Imagen met up with another young woman called Sally Douglas, who was grieving her own mum's death, and they became fast friends. Shortly after they met, these two young women, in the thick of their own grief, struggling to make sense of their respective losses and the isolation that they felt, and at the height of COVID lockdowns, decided to team up to start a podcast offering support to others who had lost someone they loved. Now five years later, the good Morning podcast has had over a million downloads. Sal and Im have published a book, and together they've built a thriving online community, providing a safe space where people who are grieving all kinds of loss can find support and understanding. In this episode, Im shares with me the things that most surprised her about grief, the impact that her mum's death had on her other relationships, the complexity of dealing with traumatic grief, and the limitations of traditional therapy to help her process what she was experiencing.

1:51 Despite the heavy topic, I can assure you this is such a worthwhile and engaging conversation, and I truly hope that you will share it with anyone you know who is either grieving now or who has the potential to one day lose someone they love. In other words, everyone, please share this conversation with everyone you know. Imagen, welcome to the Crappy to have your podcast. Thanks for having me, Cass, It's good to be here, Imogen. You and your friend Sal, who unfortunately couldn't be here for this conversation together, you are the co hosts of the good Morning Podcast. You have now co authored the Good Morning Book. You both lost your mum's quite suddenly and unexpectedly a few years ago, and like, that's obviously a devastating thing to go through. But for listeners who are not familiar with the story, are you able to just give us a brief intro into the circumstances around how you and Sal met and the bond that you formed.

2:51 Yeah, of course, So Sal and I didn't actually know each other prior to our mom's dying. So, like you mentioned, we both lost our mom's suddenly and it was only months apart as well. So Sal's mom, Rose died from something called sou dep which is sudden and unexpected death in epilepsy, and her mom was in the early sixties. Sal was in her early thirties at the time, and her mom was living on the other side of the world too, so it was a huge, huge shock for her, and she had to do a whole lot of dead men we call it, orly looking after the early estate and the administrative tasks and everything. So there was a lot on her plate and she was in huge shock for quite some time. And my mom only a few months after Sal's mom died by suicide, and she had never experienced any previous mental health issues, and it was completely out of the blue and very shocking and the last person I could have ever imagined doing something like that.

3:52 And I had a nine month old baby at the time, so I was a new mom myself, and I relied quite heavily on her for support, and so losing her during that time was very challenging. And so yeah, and that was right at the start of COVID two, wasn't it. So you lost your mom in the February and then Lockdown's all started in March. It was pretty much straightway, you know, it was like, Bang, I've lost mom, and then the whole world is just shutting down. And I don't know whether that was a positive thing or not. Like I look back now and I'm like, you know that, you know that feeling of when somebody dies and that you're very close with and you cannot grasp how the world around you keep spinning. Well, the world stopped spinning for me, and so I kind of felt like everything you know, came to a standstill and everything was shutting down and life wasn't as we knew it, and I kind of felt like I was going through that with my mom dying so in a sense, I did feel like I was able to kind of hide myself away in a cocoon in our lockdowns and just grieve.

5:07 And so you and Salmat at a support group Ryan. We did. So we were both desperately searching online for some extra support because we learned the hard way that grief is incredibly lonely and you're not prepared for it. Like we both hadn't really given grief much of a thought, and then we fell into this new world that we were suddenly trying to navigate and really struggling. We don't really get taught about grief and we don't really as a society even talk about it, so we had no idea, you know, what was happening to us. And so yeah, we were searching online for support and we both found a Facebook group which was through Motherless Daughters Australia, so they had a peer support Facebook group online and so we'd both become members of that. And then one of the members of the group had arranged a meetup in Sydney and it was obviously Pete Covid, so there was a restriction on how many people could go, so there were only ten women that were able to attend this event, and Sal and I were two of those women, and there were many times prior to that that I was going to back out and not go. I just felt like, I've got family and friends friends around me, you know, that are supportive, Like I don't need this, Like it's really out of my comfort zone attending a support group.

6:30 But I felt a real pool to go, and Sal felt the same, and without sounding to we both really believe that our moms were drawing us together to help each other through it. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to ask you what kind of led you to a support group in as much as like, what did you feel was missing from the support you were getting from the people in your life. I think with grief, it's hard when you're all grieving the same per you know, everyone reacts to grief so differently and is grieving in their own unique way. And so I found it, you know, difficult at times to lean on family members who were also grieving or friends who were also grieving my mum. So yeah, I feel like that did make it that little bit extra kind of isolating and lonely when I just felt like I didn't want to burden them with my grief because they're grieving as well. And you know, there's different grieving styles too, which I'm sure you're aware of, Cass. But I'm very much like an intuitive grievers, So I'm very emotional and I wanted to talk about my loss all the time, whereas some of my family members didn't grieve that way and didn't really want to talk about the loss all the time. And so, yeah, I was broadening my support network by hopefully connecting with someone else who understood what I was going through but was outside of my you know, usual support circle. And that's what led me to, yeah, seek some extra support.

8:02 And from that point, I mean, obviously you and Cell really bonded through that shared experience. What led you, I'm curious to know then, what led you to creating the podcast. It was almost like it was just happening to us. We were sitting at dy Beach one day, just talking about like how lonely grief is and all the physical symptoms and the brain fog and the anxiety and the exhaustion and all those things that we don't get taught about, and we're saying to each other, like, if we felt lonely and we had support, imagine how many other people out there that are feeling the same. And we had a little conversation about, well, what could we do to maybe help change that. We both felt like we had a fire in our bellies to help other people, and we Yeah, we just decided, let's do a podcast. We love talking and we'd meet up and talk for hours about grief. So it just felt like a no brainer, and so we launched the podcast not long after we met.

9:05 So we met, I'd say in maybe, so I was about six months ufter month, I said, fevery march Abel made you July. So about July we met, and September of twenty twenty, we had launched Wow, Good Morning, so straight in all guns blazing. Yeah. Do you feel like that was a really important part of your own healing process too, doing that together and kind of channeling that pain into something with purpose. Absolutely. I share my story in detail on our podcast, but it took a long time for me to be able to even talk about my story. But for me personally, like starting Good Morning, I would say it saved my life.

9:49 There was a lot of darkness in my grief and it was a very complex time for me. So my Mum's suicide had so many layers and and so what had happened was her partner of twenty years used to be her psychologist, and we found out after mum died that she had groomed my mom into a relationship and fabricated an entire family that didn't exist and said that all of her family had died in a car accident so that my mom would leave her partner and end up in a relationship with her. And they were together for about twenty years, and then we started uncovering some of these fabrications and then unfortunately that is what led to my mom taking her life. So I had this really dark, oh my heart of my grief, Yeah, that I was dealing with. And then there was Good Morning, which was so light and I could channel all of my energy and you know, even build a legacy for our moms as well through that. So, yeah, meeting sal and started Good Morning definitely helped me and just made me have a focus and find a purpose in all of this, because that was really important for me.

11:04 Yeah, there's a couple of things you've mentioned, Imagent, which is you mentioned that you're an intuitive griever and other people don't grieve that way. Now, these these terms are not terms that I'd necessarily heard before. Can you explain the listeners the difference between the intuitive griever and I think the other is the instrumental yes griever. Yes, So these two grieving styles are in our book, and so we love them because Sally and I were both grieving the same loss, but we found ourselves grieving very differently, and we just these grieving styles spoke to us. And so they were coined by two researchers, Kenneth Doker and Terry Martin. And so the idea is it's a spectrum, so you're not really one or the other. You can kind of be in a blend of both. But yeah, I was very much sitting on the end of being an instrumental griever, which is somebody who really feels, you know, their emotions and what's to talk about their grief and that's their way of processing. But when it came to anything practical, I was completely useless, Like I couldn't do anything to help with the funeral planning or ringing around and letting people know and things like that. And then there's the instrumental griev where Sal was sitting very much back then, in those early days, and the instrumental griever is better at, you know, doing those practical tasks, and you know, finds it helpful for them in their grief to be doing things. Even she Sal would talk about

12:34 her mum, but it would be in a more kind of practical way. And she has this joke that she was like grieving Vira to do list and like planning all the funeral Vira to do list, which I think is hilarious. So yeah, just very very different. And you know, over the years, I've kind of leaned into my instrumental grief a little bit more and Sal's explored her intuitive grief. But yeah, we're very much identified on either end of the spectrum in those early days, for sure. I think that's so helpful to know and for people to understand. The other thing that you mentioned, sort of on the same lines, you said, you know, Sel had this all this dead men to deal with and had to go across the other side of the world and look after, you know, sort out her mum's estate and stuff.

13:18 I guess you're right, we don't really talk about grief. We often don't think about grief, especially when we're younger. Doesn't really occur to us. That's something way off in the distance, and we don't like to think about it, apart from knowing that obviously somebody dying is going to be terrible and sad. What surprised you about the grieving process once you're experiencing it for yourself? Hands down, how physical grief is. That was the most shocking part. Like the exhaustion was like full body can't get out of bed, no matter how much sleep you have, You're still exhausted. And that's really challenging. And I think for people that are having to go back to work, you know, a few days after their loss, when they're trying to still process and wrap their head around it, and also dealing with all the physical symptoms of grief, which nobody warns you about, is really really hard. And yeah, so doing the podcast and writing the book, like we've learnt so much about all the different ways that grief can impact you. But yeah, we kept hearing time and time again within our community as well, like everyone's struggling with what's called grief brain, and so we wanted to kind of find out what was happening to our brain, Like on a neurological level, like why are we feeling this way? I remember not being able to like string a sentence together. I forget like basic tasks like I just my brain had turned to marsh and we interviewed

14:50 a world renowned neurologist called doctor Lisa Shulman, and she was incredible. So she explained to us, so her husband died from cancer and disorryation became a big issue for her after her loss, and so her research shows that when you experience a significant loss, it's like an emotional injury to your brain, and your brain can actually rewire itself. So we're going through all of these physical changes on top of trying to deal with our loss and process that and the exhaustion and all the admin tasks and everything. So there's a lot of physical changes happening, and then there's you know, just the emotional stress of grief as well, Like stress can have a huge impact on the body and your nervous system. I had no idea about our nervous systems prior to you know, my mum dying, and now I'm like, I'm fascinated by the nervous system and how we can store trauma and the cells and the fashion of our body. It's fascinating.

15:50 Mm hmm, it is fascinating. I just had an interview on the show a couple of weeks ago on that exact topic. So because it is so interesting, and I think everybody's really wising up to the role of the nervous system. It's so important. And you had a nine month old baby at the time your mom died, so that's just another added complication, isn't it, Like there's no rest for a new mum. No rest. She's five and a half now, and yeah, so back when she was nine months, I mean, she wasn't even walking when this happened. She hadn't really said her first word, she hadn't even had a first birthday. Like it was just it's meant to be the most joyous time of your life. And I felt like I was living in hell, Like it's the only way I can describe it. And I'd wake up and it would feel like my reality was a nightmare. And this is the best way I can describe it. Like you know when you have a bad dream and you wake up and you get that relief, you're like, oh, it was just a bad dream. But I was waking up and my life was the bad dream. And in some ways having her made my grief harder because I couldn't just collapse on the full and do nothing all day. But on that same note, she also got me out of bed and I had to survive. Like I don't actually know if I would have got through it without her, to be completely honest, like I think for a lot of suicide lost survivors, experiencing suicidal ideation is very common,

17:22 and that's something that I did experience, and I had lost all hope for the future. I couldn't see any way out of the darkness that I was in, but I knew I had to keep going for her, and we interviewed I'm not sure you're familiar with her, but doctor Edith Eager, she's one of the few remaining Holocaust survivors. You know her, Yeah, she's incredible, and so we interviewed her for our podcast. And because I remember coming across one of her episodes with doctor Rang and Chatatejy and listening to it and being so inspired and thinking, Wow, if this woman can go through what she's gone through, I can too, And that really helped me pull myself out of it and you know, find a little bit of perspective as well. But something that she shared a bit of wisdom that I really held on to, was, in those early days after a really traumatic experience, you're not living for yourself. You have to find someone or something outside of yourself to live for. And I felt like I really did that with my daughter and with good Morning, just getting up each day for her, not for myself. And then eventually, you know, the light does start to come back in and even when you can't see any way that it's going to.

18:42 Imagen. How did your mum's death impact your relationships with other family and friends. It's a great question, Cass, and I think it's a topic that we really should touch on as just how grief and loss can impact families and dynamics. And I think in the early days it really brought us all really closer together because we're kind of like, well, we've got each other, we need to get through this. And then everything kind of blew apart after that, and yeah, I feel like I've yeah, I feel like I've lost lots of relationships after I'm dying. So you're not just dealing with the death loss, you're dealing with lots of secondary losses as well on top of that. So, yeah, relations relationships with people that break away or fall apart after grief, it's so so common. And friendships as well, Like I've lost friends, there were friends who I expected to be there for me who didn't show up. Yeah, it's a real mind field. But we know in our community like grief can impact friendships so much, and I guess that just makes people feel a little bit more lonely and isolated as well.

19:56 When you say friendships, just all relationships they fall off way, like for what reason, Just conflict in how people grieving, or just people not showing up, Like you said, like what causes that break? I think it can be a mixture of things, but definitely people not showing up. And then I also think the expectations that we put on people, and when those expectations aren't met, you know, we can be really hurt and then that can damage relationships. So there's a whole mix of things going on. But I think what we've found through Good Morning is just how important connection and community is when you're grieving. So we found so much confident solace with the grief community, and obviously Salini meeting and we were both grieving and we just understood. And I think grief is one of those things like unless you've been through it, it's so difficult to understand the magnitude of it. And so that's why I think sometimes people can't show up for you in the ways that you expect them to, because, yeah, unless you've been through it, you just you just don't know, you don't get it.

21:01 And I was that person once. I had people that had lost someone in their lives, and I probably did and said all of the wrong things and didn't show up for them in the ways that I definitely would now with that lived experience. Yeah, it can just really change you as well as a person. Death is a really scary topic for people. And I think you know, as you know, as you just said, then most of us we don't know what to say. We don't want to say the wrong thing. It's a thing you kind of want to avoid. And so I can completely understand. I'm not that it makes it right or justifies it, but why people kind of stay away, but having been through it now yourself, or if somebody's listening and they've got a friend who's lost somebody, for example, or they're wanting to know the best way to support somebody through grief, Like, what are the things that people should be doing? What would have been helpful for you?

21:57 I think first and foremost people should acknowledge the loss. And I think another thing that's helpful is to realize that death is something that we can't fix and no amount of platitudes or you know, throwaway lines are going to bring our person back. So what we need is for people to sit and listen and just be comfortable with witnessing our pain, which I don't think we're very good at. And yeah, I think if you can avoid platitudes, it's a great start. Like and for example, that would look like the loved one wouldn't want you to be sad, or they've gone to a better place or things like that, which they are well meaning, but they can be really minimizing for the griever who's on the other end, who just wants their grief and their pain to be witnessed.

22:52 And there's actually a post in our community. So we have a peer support community platform now called good Morning Club and it's beautiful seeing you know, some of the comments that people are writing in there. But one of our members was talking about how they feel like when they're family members and friends, like if they tell them that they're having a really griefy day or you know, experience grief bombs we call them, which is just like those waves of emotions that just come and hit you out of nowhere. And they were saying that when they share that, or if their friends and family are witnessing that, they find that, they say to them, you know, have you got a counseling session booked or you know, what are you doing to look after yourself right now? Whereas they just want someone to go, this is so shit, I'm so sorry. I'm here with you, Like, let it all out. It's normal to feel your emotions, no matter what looks like, no matter how messy it is, just don't rush it out the door. And so I think that would be the biggest thing I'd love people to know, is just let people be where they're out in their grief and it's grief is really messy and it's not there's no time frame to it, which I'm sure you know, Cas.

24:04 Yeah, no, exactly exactly right. I mean, if I know anything, that's one thing that I know, and that's probably the one helpful thing that I've been able to share with people you know who've been grieving, is like, there's no there's no time frame, there's no normal, there's no the right or expected way. I was going to ask you from all of the people who Now you've had your own experience, obviously, and then you've mentioned your community and all of the shared experiences. You know, you've talked to a lot of people in your community and on your own podcast, what are the most common things that come up for people? Like, what's the most common things that people experience. People not feeling understood is a massive one that we hear, and I think just that loneliness and isolation, and the reason why people are feeling that way is because they feel like unless people have been through it, they just don't understand. And I think as well, we I'd love to touch on the five stages of grief, which ties into this nicely, but there's a big misconception that we grieve in a linear way, in a set order and with a specific timeframe, and as we just touched on, that is just not what grief looks like at all.

25:16 And I think what's happening is people are just feeling really lost, feeling like they don't know where to turn, they don't know if what they're experiencing is even normal. And I know firsthand when I was desperately googling things to see if I would ever feel normal again, I would always come across the five stages of grief. And so if anyone's listening, who hasn't heard of the five stages of grief, I'm sure everybody has. They are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And what people may not know is these stages were actually observed by a Swiss American psychiatrist called Elizabeth Kobler Ross in her nineteen sixty nine book on Death and Dying. And these were stages that Elizabeth observed in people who were terminally ill and people who are at the end of their life. And so what's happened is, over the years, they've been misinterpreted for grief. And so we're all, you know, searching for support and coming across these five stages going great. You know, I've done denial, I'm in anger next time, you know, and then eventually I'm going to hit acceptance and then I'll be over it. Yeah, but it doesn't work that way at all. Like for me, I was in anger for the whole first year. I didn't even really feel I wasn't able to feel sadness.

26:31 I was just anger and guilt. So if I was looking at these five stages, I certainly, you know, would have felt like I wasn't doing grief right. But it's really important to know there's no right or wrong way to grieve and there is no linear path. Grief is a big black, messy squiggle and yah, which we would in our book. But yeah, like I feel like learning that was so helpful for us and also for our community, and just knowing that there's no one size fits all when it comes to grief. And we also had David Kessler, who was protege to Elizabeth Koble or us. He came on our podcast and he had some brilliant advice, but we we ran this past him. I'm like, David, you know, what's up with the five stages? And he confirmed, you know, confirmed for us that Elizabeth never intended for those stages to be prescriptive. And I also asked him, what does acceptance even mean? You know, if we're meant to hit this point of acceptance, what does that look like for us?

27:26 Because years on we're still grieving, so some people haven't really accepted the loss. And he said, there's not one big final moment of acceptance, and acceptance looks more like little moments of acceptance throughout the rest of your life. And you know, he said, people ask him, you know, how am I going to agree for and they he says, to ask yourself, well, how long am I going to be alive? Because you're going to agree for the rest of your life. And I just felt a huge amount of relief hearing that, just knowing that I didn't have to hit that big moment of acceptance and then get over my loss because it just felt impossible for me. Yeah, but that was really helpful for us to learn.

28:12 David Kesler I have familiar with him as well, and I think two things. He obviously having been the you know, worked with Elizabeth Kubileros. He then lost his own son, which was just some weird, tragic irony. But didn't he also add a sixth stage? Did he add transcendence or something similar to the to the five stages finding meaning? Meaning? Right? Yeah? Was he sixth stage? So he wrote a book about that as well, which is great. Grief is, like you just mentioned, it's complicated. I think even when we allow ourselves to think about the possibility that we're going to lose somebody, it's you know, it's a grandparent when they're old and I've lived a long, happy life. We don't deal so well with the grief that doesn't kind of fit our expectations of what's normal or expected losing somebody young, losing a child, for example, and you know, that's when it gets really messy and complicated for people. But also when grief is traumatic, like when it's a violent death or for example, for you, like losing somebody to suicide, Like that's a whole other level of hell. I think, what would you share with people in terms of like how to unravel trauma and grief.

29:34 It is its own kind of special hellicide loss. But yeah, for anyone who's experiencing traumatic loss, I mean we touched on a little bit earlier, but about it's important to know that what you're experiencing is trauma on top of your grief. So it's traumatic grief, and it's very complex and very multi layered and can take a long long time to process, much longer than normal griefs, say an expected death of a grandparent or an elderly parent, So it can be so sudden and shocking for your nervous system and take a long long time. So I'll just touch on my personal experience and that might be helpful for people to pull something from that. But I did a lot of talk therapy in the first year especially, which was crucial. I needed to kind of process and talk and wrap my head around what had happened and find some strategies to help me cope. So I would definitely say talk therapy is a good place to start.

30:41 And then I had felt that after quite some time, I was still struggling with the trauma. So it looked like for me ruminating, I was constantly stuck on a loop in my head. I was stuck at the time and place of my mum's death. I was riddled with guilt and anxiety trying to process what had happened. I blamed myself, even though logically I know, you know, I couldn't have stopped it and it wasn't my fault. But it's a very common experience to feel when you've experienced a traumatic or suicide losses to experience guilt, and I started learning about the mind body connection, which again I think is something that saved me in my grief, and learning about the nervous systems, like we talked about, so I now know what was happening to me is my body was stuck in what's called sympathetic overdrive. So we've got the sympathetic nervous system, which is fight or flight, and the parasympathetic nervous system, which is when our bodies in rest and digest mode. So I was stuck in that fight or flight mode for a very long time, and so those symptoms of my trauma, they weren't getting better because I was just stuck in that and I didn't have the tools or the knowledge to know what was even happening to me. So I could have talked for the rest of my life, but that wasn't going to help the trauma that was in my body. And so I started off learning about breath work and I

32:14 did a five week intensive breathwork course with an incredible energy healer called Rebecca Jacks. She's common our podcast and shared her story. So she lost her brother to suicide and then went into the world of energy healing and so yeah, she was kind of starting out when we connected and I did this five week intensive breathwork session, and within that five weeks, I started to notice a real shift, like the ruminating started to slow down. I was sleeping better, I was getting clarity on things. I wasn't feeling as panicky as well, especially with a young child. I felt like I was such a helicopter mom. I would like gaspish my daughter fell over, or just any little thing. I was just so triggered into that fight or flight state, and I felt really unsafe in my body.

33:00 And as I started doing this sematic work, I just felt like I was stripping away, you know, those parts of me that I'd been holding on too. And something else that was really interesting is I had I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder when I was seventeen years old, and so I'd carried that all the way through into my thirties, just thinking that was part of my identity now, just being a really anxious person. And as I started doing this sematic work, I started healing and resolving some of those traumas from my childhood that had, you know, resulted in me being diagnosed with this disorder. Wow, and so there came a point where I actually stood back and went, I feel safer in my body than I have since I was seventeen years old, and after going through so much trauma with losing my mum in this most catastrophic way, I was like, this, this work is just incredible, Like it's truly healing and changed my life.

34:02 And so many amazing things have happened as well since I've done that work, and we went on to write a book with you know, building out our community further, and just even personally as well, Like I've grown so much as a person after my mum died, and I wish she could meet this version of me, but I do feel like she knows, you know, she's she's watching over somewhere. But yeah, I definitely feel like I've experienced post traumatic growth. That is fantastic. And you know, I talk a lot about the nervous system, and I've talked about breathwork. I'm not like a trained breathwork kind of facilitator, but I find that so fascinating that that was so powerfully effective for you as part of your healing process. It's amazing.

34:46 Yeah, it was incredible, and I urge anyone who you know, can relate to that version of me that was ruminating and feeling anxious all the time to explore it. You know, there's even just youtubes that you could start looking at whim Hoff, like a ten minute breath work session. You can start, you know, small, and just give it a go. But it's just changed my life. And I think everybody should be breathing. Oh for sure. For sure. I actually had Samantha Skelley on the podcast and she runs Pause Breathwork, so she does breathwork facilitator training, but she also has this app, this breath work app, and so I often refer people to go and have a look at that. But you know, she's only one of you know, there's there's plenty out there for people to to go and find. But that's really great testimony for the power of just breathing.

35:34 The power of the breath yeah, and the power of the brand. You know, we don't just grieve without minds. I think there's a big misconception that grief is just an emotional experience, but it's not. It's very physical. It's emotional, it's physical, it's spiritual, it's social. It can impact us in so many ways. Yeah, absolutely, Imagen, this might be I don't know if there's any morbid questions or not morbid questions. But having been through you and soal both having been through what you went through losing your mum's has it have you put in place anything in your own life to make the process easier for the ones that you leave behind? You know, do you more think about not just your own mortality, but the aftermath of you passing away? For example?

36:20 Like have you put you know? You know what I'm saying, I know what you're saying, and I know how to answer it. Is practically absolutely not. I don't even have a will, which I really need to sort out losing my mum. Suddenly. I'll get onto that after this conversation. Yeah, But emotionally absolutely, like I live differently now, and that's something that my mom's death has taught me, is that everything is finite, and so I really live in the moment and I really try and be as present as I can every second that I can with the people that I love, because you just don't know, you know when we're going to die, and take a lot of photos, take a lot of videos. I feel like I'm always annoying people with the camera in their face now. But yeah, I wish I had more videos of my mum, And yeah I do. I do live more in the moment, and I do try to not sweat the small stuff as much because it doesn't matter at the end of the day. You know, we're not going to take all those things with us.

37:20 Yeah, so true. And there were two aspects of that question. One was the emotional living differently. But I was particularly thinking of like Sal and all of that admin stuff that she had to do, and thinking, Oh, I wonder if you'd be more likely to make sure things are all in order, affairs in order, just in case. But no, absolutely not Saal, Probably yes, because she's an instrumental instrumental me absolutely not. I mean, I'll probably have like letters for everybody everybody I love, but like haven't sorted out the dead men, sorry in advance to I love, But hopefully that day doesn't come for a very long time. Yeah. I one thing that I that really struck me, and I was doing my clinical psychology training, which we tend to really struck me that we tend to pathologize people's emotions far too much, Like everything needs, everything needs to be a diagnosis something that really turns me off. Psychology.

38:14 I think for many years that was its focus in how to label and categorize and pathologize emotions. And I think that, yeah, I just wanted to make that point. I think going through the grieving process, like the point that you have made very well is that everything's normal, like human emotions, everything that you feel. It's like, I worry that people going through a grieving process they're almost pathologizing themselves. Would that be fair to say absolutely wondering what's wrong with me? Everybody's wondering what's wrong with them and feeling like they're going crazy even or that what their experience isn't normal, and comparing themselves to other grievers. There's a lot of comparisons going on. I remember walking into my GP's office immediately after Mum died, just desperate for anything. I just didn't know where to turn and just thought, maybe, you know, I go on a mental health plan, go and see a psychologist. And the first thing that she wanted to do was prescribe me with antidepressants. And I look back now and I'm like, that's the last thing I needed.

39:14 I didn't need a band Aid fixed on that, like grief is a natural, normal response to loss, it's not something to pathologize like they're quick too. So I love that you brought that up. And also at the six month mark, after my mum had died very traumatically, I was diagnosed with complex grief disorder, that new disorder that went in the DSM five that caused a lot of controversy. So yeah, I got diagnosed with that disorder, and I look back now, I'm like, I didn't have a disorder. It was a very normal reaction to be still ruminating six months after my mom died by suicide and not having access to the resources and support that I needed.

39:55 So yeah, I'm very passionate about this that we do need to stop pathologizing grief and look at you know. I mean, in our book, we've put a whole chapter of all the different emotions that you could feel, and then a whole chapter and all the physical symptoms that you could experience. But it's just different for everybody, you know, and some people may not have a hugely emotional experience, and then they're wondering, what's wrong with me? Why am I on the floor crying when I feel like I should be and I'm not, and we're all judging ourselves so harshly. And I just really want people who are listening to this who are grieving, to just let go of any expectations of how you think your grief should look, and please don't compare it to others because it's so individual.

40:39 Yeah, that's another really great point, that people who feel like they're not sad enough. Yes, yeah, we're all judging ourselves. Yeah, imagine. I think that the work that you're doing is amazing. When I ever put out a call and say what are the topics that I should cover or I haven't covered, the topic of grief comes up all the time. I've meant. I actually reached out to David Kesler at one point, I think, and never got a response back. So when I saw the work that you and Sale are doing, I knew that I had to get you on here because I just think it's so needed. So thank you for the work that you're doing. And well done on all of the success of the Good Morning Movement. Thanks so much, cas Well. Hopefully we the next best thing after David Kesler anyway.

41:22 So I think I think even better. Yeah, it's brilliant. But yeah, so it's been an honor to chat with you and just share. I'm very passionate about the subject, as you can probably tell. But the more conversations about grief are better. And I love that you had lots of requests for the topic because I feel like, you know, not everyone wants to talk about it. Not everybody wants to talk about it, but then the people who do can't find anybody to talk about it, right, And it's like where do they go? And it's all different types of grief that I hear about. It's like, oh, you know, it's exactly what you've talked about today, like these various kind of kinds of death and dying and bereavement, and then we haven't even talked about anticipatory grief and and bigulous. You know, like it's this whole spectrum and there's all these different circumstances that people find themselves in and there just isn't enough available.

42:18 So thank you, oh thank you for having me on. But yeah, grief is, I mean, there's so many different types of grief too. That could be a whole nother episode, but yeah, we do you want to do that, But yeah, our community is for all different types of grief and loss as well. So both Sal and I lost our mums, but we have members who are grieving all different types of grief and in our platform as well, we have a support group for anticipatory grief, we have a support group for ambiguous loss estrangement. All the different types of grief are welcome there. So if anyone is looking for a corner of the Internet you know to find that support, yeah, find it with good Morning.

43:01 You can connect with Im and of course her partner Sal at good Morning m o U r NI NG dot com dot a U and their book is now available in all bookstores. If you enjoy this episode, like I said, please do think about sharing it with a friend, leave us a rating and a review. It really does help us to get into the ears of more listeners and grow our Crappy a happy community. If this episode did bring up any issues for you, you know that twenty four to seven support is available at Lifeline Australia one three one one one four For now. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I cannot wait to catch you next week on another fabulous episode of Crappy to Happy