124: A More Helpful Understanding of Grief with Susie Ruth

• Transcript

  (Unedited)

  Susie Ruth Episode

  [00:00:00] 

   Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast. This is Meg Gluckman, your host. I am a divorce and co-parenting coach, and I have a guest with me today, which I'm very excited about. I think we're gonna have a really wonderful conversation about grief. Which is a topic that comes up a whole lot in my coaching and I think a lot of folks come to, divorce and co-parent coaching and they think we're just gonna focus just on logistics and what are the stages of divorce and how do I support my kids through this process.

  And we definitely talk about all of that. And we also talk about grief and how to live with it, how to process it, how to move through it. How to be okay with our grief looking different than somebody else's grief. And recently I got to meet Susie Ruth, who is a life and grief coach. She's also a massage therapist [00:01:00] and an end of life doula, which I wanna ask you about too.

  she's got over three decades of experience in the healing arts, and she weaves somatic coaching, body work, education, and ritual to help illuminate the darkness of grief and guide people through life's most difficult transitions. Beautiful description of your work. Susie, thanks for coming onto the podcast.

  thank you, Meg. Thanks for having me. my favorite thing to talk about. It's like we don't get through this life without it. Yeah. And yet it's one of the things that we have almost no training on, right? No one talks about it. Everything that we have learned about grief is pretty much a myth.

  Like, oh, give it some time. It'll get better with time to total myth. I mean, parts of that are true, but really grief lasts a lifetime. Why don't we start at the very beginning, how do you define grief? Oh my gosh, I love that question. I've come up with my own definition of [00:02:00] it, and what I like to do is ask other people like, what do you think grief is?

  And most of the time people will say, I think it's really hard, desperate sadness You know, I just a deep, heart aching pain in the heart, and that's all true. What I like to say is I don't think grief as an emotion.

  I like to think of it as more like a structure that lives within us and like a house, that contains all the emotions. , And you have this house of grief in your body. Oftentimes, we do feel grief in our heart, but it contains sadness, darkness, despair, and fear. , But it also contains relief, regret, joy.

  Gratitude. I mean, we can feel all the things when we're grieving and I think that when people are grieving, they start to feel some joy or they're laughing at a funeral or something and then they feel a little guilty because I shouldn't be [00:03:00] happy. I'm grieving and that's not true. Grief is something we have and we carry with us, but we can feel everything when we're grieving.

  I feel like it's just like this house gets lit up sometimes. When someone dies or when we lose something, that grief house gets lit up and all the emotions become more intense. I love that image of the, that we're carrying it with us all the time. And that there's just times when it's lit up and times when it's not.

  Yeah. Why do you think we try to simplify grief to just sadness? I think we're so accustomed to, or trained to get away from sadness. That we're supposed to fix sadness. It's written into our constitution. The pursuit of happiness is written into our constitution, right? So like, we're thinking, oh, should be happy.

  That should be the goal in life is to be happy. And everyone says, if you get this, you'll be happy, you'll feel better. And. This pursuit of happiness makes us think that when we're sad there's a problem that we need to fix [00:04:00] it. Because sad is super uncomfortable. Being sad sucks. And no one wants to be sad, but it's not something we have to fix. It's something we have to be. as you're describing it too. What's landing for me is how it feels to be sad. 

  I started thinking about how sadness feels in my body, like, that's what I'm really trying to avoid is how it feels in my body. And, I've said this myself before, that if I fully allow myself to feel this feeling it'll just suck me in.

  . That I won't be able to get out of this feeling. If I go there, I won't come back. Are there cultures that maybe do it better? I feel like we really don't have a practice around feeling sadness and.

  Building the muscle to know that we will come back and perhaps it's because, at this day and age we talk so much about [00:05:00] depression and that idea of being stuck in a depression and it being something that you need treatment to get out of which. I'm not saying that that doesn't, that totally exists.

  That's a legit thing. But we don't have a very good way of differentiating between what is the sadness that might be associated with my grief that is okay for me to feel? And then what is something more, something very different. Yeah. The, I guess that if you look at the brain scans, scientifically depression and grief look different.

  Oh. Yeah. So it's a different experience in our brains. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So we can be grieving and depressed. Yeah. And we can be grieving and sad and not depressed. Wow. That's so interesting. I know. That's really interesting. you started your question with, are there other cultures that do it differently or do it maybe even better

  I'm a death doula So oftentimes I deal with major losses in life, like [00:06:00] death other cultures do handle it differently and better. a thought came up to me when you asked that question, of an American couple who had a baby the baby died and they were screaming and crying, and the neighbor who they didn't know well, came knocking on the door.

  She's from a Middle Eastern country. And she knocks on the door and she's like, what's going on? And she said that, her baby just died. And this woman screams and falls to her knees. Wow. And is just torn up. And they don't even really know her. But they said that expression of grief, that expression of, .

  Broken heartedness, her expression gave them permission to express as well. They felt so seen and so supported by her expressing her grief. And we're taught in the Western culture is taught to stay strong for others. Stay strong for [00:07:00] others. Be strong. Don't show your emotions.

  Don't let people see you boys hear that you're, you're the man of the house now. You're gonna have to stand up and be strong for your mom, People think that that's helpful. Don't show your emotion. Go to your room if you're gonna cry. How many of us heard that?

  I'll give you something to cry about. It's not so bad. , That's what we're taught. It is that bad. It hurts that bad. Yeah. We were taught not to show our emotions, and so we kind of hold it in.

  And what I say is, do you know what a Matilda is? a, a backpack that the, the little, the hobo that carries the stick in the bag. Oh, I never knew that's what it was called. Yeah. It's called a Matilda. And our Matilda of grief gets bigger and bigger and bigger. As long as we continue to stay strong for others and not process it and go to our room if we're gonna cry and grieve alone and all those things that we have been taught to do, our Matilda continues to get bigger and eventually it just sways us down and we're all walking around like zombies exhausted because we're [00:08:00] carrying this big Matilda of grief we're not processing it.

  So a couple of my clients are coming to mind right now, and I'm thinking about them as they're navigating a divorce and they're feeling all this grief and they have little kids at home and they're like, when am I supposed to feel this? I don't want my kids to see me being distraught all the time.

  Yeah. And they wanna be there. you're saying, we gotta be strong for somebody else. they wanna be there and help their kids process what's going On. what thoughts do you have for somebody in that kind of Situation? I'm a big person of ritual. I believe ritual is really powerful and really important.

  And here's what grief needs. Grief needs to be seen and acknowledged. It needs to be witnessed, so you can't, it's some one, one thing that we do alone, but we need other people to do it with. it likes ritual, it needs space. And so what I would [00:09:00] tell the person who wants to be strong for their kids is, yeah, you know, you don't have to grieve 24 hours a day, but your brain is gonna want to grieve, so you can't also.

  Avoid it 24 hours a day. So I would set up a space for ritual and for feeling whether it's lighting a candle and sitting there for five or 10 minutes and letting your brain just be angry. All the emotions that come up with divorce. just be angry and let yourself have those emotions and have those thoughts and just cry and scream into a pillow if you want, or do it in your car, which is a great place to let all that emotion out.

  But give yourself that time and then just say, okay, I did that today and I'm gonna give myself time tomorrow too. And you let yourself have that emotion. But you have to give yourself a chance to feel it, be with it, scream, and cry it out. Say all the terrible things that you wanna say, I remember [00:10:00] having very mean, angry thoughts.

  And then I would push 'em down and say, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna give my ex another minute of my time. I'm not gonna be sad. I am not gonna be angry. I'm not gonna give her any more time. I, I ran, I started moving. 'cause every time I moved I would stir my life up and I'd get super busy and I would avoid all of the emotion and that didn't work for Me.

   yeah. You can't run from it. Right. And I think, and I wanna come back to your story a little bit 'cause you're giving us a glimpse into it there. But, before we. Go there. I just wanna say, when you talk about that ritual, to me, it almost sounds a little bit like, you know, you got a kettle that's kind of boiling and once a day, you're saying, being able to lift off the lid and let off some steam and so forth so that it doesn't boil over.

   and, the other ritual, I don't know if it would be considered a ritual, I guess it would be a practice at least, that I [00:11:00] remember was the freedom of just watching a movie with my kids and. Being okay crying during the movie. Like it, my kids just accept it.

  Like mom's always very emotional, toy story, watch out, right? I'm just gonna be bawling. But it would be my chance to allow myself to process it without them having to really know all that was going on for me. Right. They can just be like, oh, moms. Super emotional.this is a sidetrack a little bit, but I'm a big believer in it being okay for your kids to see you feeling big emotions.

  And being able to articulate to them, I'm feeling sad, I'm feeling down. I'm feeling whatever I'm feeling today, and it's not about you, but I'm just feeling this and so this is what I'm going to do because I'm feeling this way. To me, that's Really amazing emotional modeling I agree.

  Oh my gosh. A hundred percent. Yeah. And, and I think that there's a way to be able to do it where I [00:12:00] just work with the most amazing parents and they come in and they're so concerned. They don't want their kids to, to feel they have to fix them. Right . these are the most thoughtful, caring, loving parents in the world.

  And I think that. Then we err on the side of never demonstrating any hard emotions because we don't want our kid to think about it. So what I'll just share, one of the techniques that I will say is it's okay to feel what you're feeling, describe it to them ask them what they do when they feel that Way.

   And let them share those coping strategies with you. So if you say to your, 6-year-old, Hey, I'm feeling really sad today. I'm just having a really sad day today. What do you like to do when you're feeling Sad? and they go and they say, well, you can cuddle with my teddy bear.

  Or, I like it when we play this music when I'm feeling sad. You know, that kind of stuff and you're showing them that it's okay. Like you can be with [00:13:00] that feeling and you're gonna be okay. I love that. Asking them where do they feel it? Yeah. What do you feel it when you're sad?

  Like right now I'm feeling it in my right here, in my chest. Mm-hmm. That's where I feel sad. Yeah. Where do you feel sad? Yeah, just getting them into their bodies too. That's so good. So good. Yeah. So I know from other conversations with you that going through your own divorce actually led you towards this path of working with grief.

  And I'm wondering if you'd be willing to share a little bit about your story and, and why doing this grief work is so important to you. I was happily married what I thought was a happy marriage. It was, in some ways I'm really lucky because I was happy until I wasn't It was like there wasn't this long, year long, two years long of fighting and arguing and worrying.

  I was just completely, I didn't know. I didn't know we were gonna get a divorce. we had a daughter that had [00:14:00] leukemia. She's fine now. but during that couple years I had given up my businesses. I had two massage therapy businesses and I was teaching and I was, had a pretty successful career doing massage.

  And when she got leukemia, I gave up my massage businesses and I was taking care of her. So I was at the Ronald McDonald House 'cause we were kind of far from the hospital. I was staying at the Ronald McDonald House and spending a lot of night time in the hospitals and stuff like that. During that time, my wife found someone else and fell in love and I didn't know because I wasn't really home very much and I was so preoccupied with taking care of our daughter.

  So when that kind of came out accidentally by on her part, She did. She thought I knew and I didn't. And she goes, I'm not in love with him. And I was like, you're, what are you talking about? You're not in love with who. And that's how I found out. it's kind of a short story because I just, [00:15:00] I, they basically packed up and moved out and I moved to Texas.

  I was a flight attendant at the time. I could make more money if I moved to Texas where I have more control over my schedule because I could what they call hold a line. So I could choose my schedule. I was based in Chicago. I couldn't hold a line.

  So I was, I was at the whim of. United because I was just on reserve. If I moved to Texas, I could pick up trips and make more money. So I moved to Texas and I, and I had some friends who were willing to watch my dog. For me, it's kind of a longer story than that, but they, they were gonna watch my one dog.

  So that's what I took. I took this dog and I left the family. Wow. Five kids, kid with cancer. My house, we had a beautiful, huge, beautiful four bedroom house. actually five bedrooms. it was just I had my perfect white picket fence and it just all crumbled. And then in the divorce, my wife was ordered [00:16:00] to, take a second job on the house and pay off our credit card debt.

  Which was like $70,000 and she foreclosed on the house and filed bankruptcy. My name was still on everything, so I lost my house. I lost my family, my, my whole world, everything. And, like I said earlier, I just started running, I lived in Texas for a year, and I was just not feeling right.

  Didn't feel like home. So I sold everything I owned and I moved into a van and I drove around for a year in this van and just kept running every time the emotions would, I didn't know what processing meant. People would say, you need to process your feelings, and I was like, I don't know what that means.

  Go for a run. I guess that means go for a run. You know, I would just move, move to another state. so several years later, COVID happened and I got laid off from the, airlines and I decided to become a death doula. And during the Death program, we had grief week and they asked us to walk, a labyrinth and think about our [00:17:00] grief.

  And as I was walking. Thinking about my grief and everything I had lost, I started crying, and I hadn't let myself really cry. I hadn't let myself really feel, this was years now, this was maybe 3, 4 years into my divorce, and I hadn't let myself feel anything, and I couldn't stop crying. I went there. That fear of if I go there, I'll never come back.

  I went there and, I was really struggling. With the emotions. And, a friend of mine helped me out and sent me to the grief recovery method and I became a grief recovery specialist. That's what started my healing journey and my interest in grief. ' cause I realized that my not processing grief my entire life had kept me from being a whole Person. Yeah. So how do you, now, how would you define that term? 'cause we hear it all the time. Processing grief. Mm-hmm. [00:18:00] How do you define it now? Oh gosh, it's. As coaches, we learn how to process feelings by, bringing it down into our body. where do you feel it in your then for me, I take it a little further and ask my body, what does my body need to do?

  does it need to move or what, And usually it's a movement and shaking. I I do a lot of shaking. I do a lot of, this kind of thing, I call it brushing off, brushing, brushing, brushing, brushing off the emotions and things like that. So I do a lot of physical processing and I meditate.

  and I let myself have feelings. I let myself cry. I play sad music, I watch sad movies. I don't try to fix my Sadness. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So what I hear in that is I really just allow myself to feel It. Yeah. Versus trying to push it down or trying to, always look for the silver lining or always flip to something positive and refocus instead.

  Yeah. [00:19:00] Yeah. Journaling is really an amazing way to process. tell me a little more about that. What is, what does that look like? Why is that helpful? I like to journal from different parts of Me. So I can let the part of myself that's really angry have that voice and I just journal from my angry Part.

   And I let that angry part be five years old. It's not fair. It's not fair. Yeah. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. and just let that angry part, that young, angry part, just say all the things that they wanna say and then I can journal from my sad part. And I'm just so sad. I just, miss my family so much.

  I Miss. just let, let tho that part have a Voice. And then I let my excited part have a voice. I'm so motivated right now, so motivated to change my life, my whole world. I have a new opportunity. I get to shine, I get to become, whatever I want. So you get to journal from your different parts.

  Yeah. That sounds cool. It's [00:20:00] kind of like, I'm imagining going down a hallway and opening one door and this part of you is, in there and, and letting them speak and then going out and trying another door. Yeah. yeah. I'm curious about, and I don't know if it's looking at your divorce or, or just what you know of other people that are, 

  Dealing with a lot of grief, that challenge of grieving something that's in progress, I think a lot of us think about when we lose a loved one and it's done, and then we have grief, but when you're going through a divorce. Like you are grieving it while there's still stuff that's happening, there's still, new stuff coming up or still interactions with your ex or what are your thoughts on that?

   I remember when I was going through my divorce, and this is not true, but what I used to think was it would just been easier if she'd Died. You know, it [00:21:00] probably, it would've, in so many ways, I wouldn't have lost everything, I think that that's with divorce is so complicated because we grieve one thing at a Time. We have one grief at a time. And with divorce, there's so many things we grieve. Yeah. First of all, I can talk about the six gates of grief, what we grieve because it's more than just everything we love. There's six gates. Six gates, gates to grief of grief.

  Okay. So doorway. 6, 6, 6 entrances to what we grieve. Six things that we grieve. One of them is everything we love we lose, which is, you know, our, what most people think about grief. But we also grieve the parts of ourselves that we're never loved, the bullied, outcast parts of ourselves. We grieve that for that we grieve for the harm we've done.

  if we could have done better, if I, if I would've been a better wife, if I hadn't have cheated, if I, I wish I would've been a better parent. Of course, we always have these and we grieve that. We grieve that we could have done better. Ancestor grief, grief gets passed down [00:22:00] just like trauma from.

  Generation to generation, we grieve for the sorrows of the world, things that are happening all around Us. how many is that? I think that's five. I think I'm missing one. yeah, there's all these different things that we grieve the biggest one. This is the one I I wanted to say because this is the this is the doozy with divorce is unmet expectations.

  Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes the way that I talk about that too is we had a dream. Yes. Like we had a dream about what the rest of our life was gonna look like, however glorious it might have been. It might have been so simple, right? That this was just the person that we were gonna grow old with. We were gonna take care of each Other.

   That could have just been the dream and it's gone. It's gone. Yeah. I like to put the unmet expectations into a category of safety, belonging, and dignity. And if we don't have those three things, we don't thrive. And oftentimes marriages, we lack some of that. As divorce is starting, we lose our dignity, [00:23:00] we lose our safety, we lose our belonging.

  Those three things are kind of life threatening. Yeah. We need those for life. Yeah, and so it's much deeper than just getting a divorce. It's terrifying. We don't talk about how fear is terrify or, or how grief is Terrifying. I think grief is really terrifying because, tell me more about that. Yeah.

  The way I like to say it is when you're really going to go there. What going there feels like is being, I don't know if you've ever been on a cruise ship, but have you ever been in the middle of the ocean and imagined yourself just being out there? Mm-hmm. With no boats and no islands just out there in the sea with nothing around you.

  That's what grief feels like. It's terrifying because there's nothing you can do about it. There's nothing you can do to bring it back. The thing that you wanted is gone. The thing that kept you safe is gone. And so what our brain will do is [00:24:00] go to other emotions rather than feel the terror of being alone and not being able to do anything about it.

  Like that loss is complete. Like especially if somebody dies, it's gone. Mm-hmm. And to, rather than feel that our brain will go, I should have done it this way. I wish I would've done it better. It's much easier for your brain to feel guilty than it is to feel that terror of loss.

  It's much easier for your brain to be angry than it is to feel that terror of being dropped in the ocean of loss. So you'll, your brain will come up with all kinds of crazy stories, , and it's the if only thoughts, if only this had, if only he hadn't done this. If only she wouldn't have gone to that store that day.

  Oh, yeah. That's the stuff that our brains will do because it doesn't wanna Feel. And I also see a lot of going to Anger. Like, just just so much blame, so much anger, so much. you know, he doesn't appreciate me. That kind of angle. Oh yeah. It's, it's much easier to feel angry than just [00:25:00] like, I am so Sad.

   it's powerful versus powerless. Mm-hmm. Oh, totally. Totally. It gives you something to do. We have a way to fix it. When you're out in the middle of nowhere, there's no way to fix it. So what is , your recommendation to folks or your what's coming to mind for me is a guidebook.

  A guidebook to grief. when you're in the midst of it and you have all seven of these gates open And each day it's something different. And it totally doesn't feel linear at all. And it's, these things come up that you weren't anticipating and the big feelings come up and they're just in the midst of it.

  I don't really have a guidebook 'cause there's no right way to do it. That's frustrating for people because I wanna do it right. I wanna have a, mm-hmm. A rules. I wanna have a, a, a knowhow. But I think it's a little bit of understanding that this is a human experience. We know how to do it. We've been doing [00:26:00] it for, since the dawn of time, we've been grieving.

  Humans are really good at it. They're really good at grieving. We just kind of have forgotten how. The work I do is kind of just getting people to remember that we know how to do this. In the last, I don't know, based probably since the Civil War, we've been kind of outsourcing death and grief.

  We've been outsourcing it to other people to take care of, but we always did it as a family before, We always had support. We always had home funerals. We always buried our family in the backyard. We always, grief was just a, it was just a part of, people wore black and, it was a ritual.

  There was all of this understanding because there was so much grief back then. I don't know what this, remember the exact statistics, but it was One out of every five kids or something like that died before they were five. kids died all the time.

  Women died in pregnancy. It it was just grief was everywhere. Yeah. And we knew how to do it and we've [00:27:00] Forgotten. And we, because we think we are supposed to feel good and happy all the Time. And things are supposed to kind of be easy. And we've got what's called a comfort crisis.

  Like we are never uncomfortable. Mm-hmm. We have climate controlled houses, we're never hungry, we're never thirsty. We can go to the store and get fruit anytime of the year. You know, just there was, we have no hardship. So we're so unaccustomed to hardship. We're so unaccustomed to feeling hard things, and I wanna say that.

  Yeah. This is hard. It's the hardest thing we do, but we do it and we all know how to, and it's temporary. When I say, time, like time heals is a myth. Time doesn't heal. It's doesn't, it's just that we grow bigger and stronger to hold it. The grief never gets smaller. . We get bigger and stronger.

  So just know that when you are grieving, I call it the opportunity for deep soul work. It's the time to really go in and see what is in [00:28:00] there. Mm-hmm. What is the darkest soil is the richest, most fertile soil. Mm-hmm. Yeah. and the other thing that's coming to me as you're saying that it's the time to go in, but then it's also the time to go out like it.

  I feel like one of the challenges, in grieving like divorce is that. It's kind of, I'll say it's similar to like miscarriages in that people don't talk about It. And I feel like it is still much more accepted to grieve the death of a loved one and to be visible in that grief than to be grieving through a divorce.

  Oh my gosh. Totally. And so what I think, when I think about, yes there's the deep inner work, the soul work, and it is an opportunity to reach out and be vulnerable and say to your friends and to your loved ones, I need support and I need to grieve this with you, and I need to be in community and I [00:29:00] need to talk to you about what this feels Like.

  I think we have so many. Ideas about how people don't wanna be burdened with our grief, and that if we talk about it, we are burdening them. that is the assumption, right? If we talk about it, we're burdening them. They don't want That. And so then we just keep it all to ourselves.

  And I love hearing, and I'd be curious if you've heard anything. these little wisps of ways that I've heard people start to bring in community into their grieving for their divorce. whether it's just even one night of a ritual. Mm-hmm. of saying, I wanna talk about what it's like for this to be ending and I wanna mourn and I wanna light some candles and I wanna.

  Cry with y'all and place add music together and mm-hmm. let's be together and let me just mark this. Or it's, doing, many different things, many small things to, to mark it and to grieve [00:30:00] it. But I'm curious if you've heard of anyone or any examples of where folks have brought a little more community.

  Into their grieving of their divorce? Oh Gosh. I would say that that would be something we should offer.

  I think that has to be created in a way because we're not naturally gonna go out and find people that are struggling with the grief from divorce. 'cause you said, we don't talk about it. Mm-hmm. So it has to be something that we start to create. Mm-hmm. We're very grief illiterate. We're, yeah.

  Death phobic, grief illiterate. And so I don't see a lot of that out there right now. grief support, when people think about grief support, they think about. The death of Someone. Yep. Absolutely. You don't see death grief support. But the grief recovery method was written by a man because of the grief from a divorce.

  I went to the grief recovery method, my divorce, but mostly because of my dog. That, that I went there, that was what pushed me over the edge. pet loss is Huge. And pet [00:31:00] loss happens during divorce too? Yeah, oftentimes. Yeah. I think that's a really. Great Point. 

  What else haven't I asked you yet, Susie, that would be good to share? Or whether there's a resource or practice that you might wanna share with us? Yeah, so what I, said earlier what grief needs it needs witnessing. So don't keep it to yourself. Grief doesn't heal by yourself. It doesn't heal alone.

  It needs acknowledgement. I'm sad. I'm so sad about this. Yeah. It can be angry too, but you can acknowledge this, the grief, it needs a daily practice, like what you said, like the writing, the journaling, something that you do with intention every Day. It loves Ritual. These are the things that heal grief.

  . So, like I said, we don't do it alone. So that's why rituals in group ritual, like I've done healing rituals with people and it's really powerful. It's really powerful. Understanding it, [00:32:00] understanding that it's not Forever. That there are so many gifts that comes with it. There are so many gifts that comes with it.

  It's really hard to see the gifts when you're in the middle of it, but I can promise you that without my divorce, I wouldn't be where I am Today. And I love where I am today. And even though I lost everything, my money, my credit, my house, my, all of it, I still would choose where I am today. And that's because of grief?

  Yeah. That's so beautiful and a beautiful place for us to end our conversation here today. I feel like we could have many more wonderful conversations on this topic. And I encourage everybody who's listening to go check out. Susie, what's the best place to learn more about the work that you do, Susie?

  you can go to my website at susie ruth S-U-S-I-E-R-U-T h.com. Okay. I'm the grief tender on Instagram, but go to my website. That's better. Okay. Start [00:33:00] there. Start there. Yeah. I love that. Thank you for all you shared today, Susie. And the resources and just the ideas and if nothing else, giving folks a sense that you're not alone if you're feeling big grief through this and that , it doesn't look the same for everyone.

  I appreciate you talking with us about all the different ways it can look and feel so that, we can see ourselves in this conversation. Thank you, Meg. Thanks so much for having me. My pleasure. All right, y'all, we will catch you on the next episode.

  Thank you. 

“Grief is something we have and we carry with us, but we can feel everything when we’re grieving.”

Join Meg and Life & Grief Coach Susie Ruth as they share their personal stories and discuss how grief is more than sadness—it's a mix of emotions that can be honored through ritual, community, and honest expression. Together, we explore practical ways to process grief, especially during divorce and parenting, and encourage allowing yourself to feel, seeking support, and modeling emotional honesty for children.

Resources & Guest Info:

Learn more about Susie Ruth: susieruth.com

Instagram: @thegrieftender