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Description

Over the last 14 months, everyone in this country has experienced some type of loss. But as a nation, we’re not always great at talking about our grief. So this week, Nzinga talks to grief counselor Claire Bidwell Smith about how there is no “right” way to grieve and the first steps we can all take to start to reckon with our losses from 2020.

 

Check out Claire’s books and additional writing on her website: https://clairebidwellsmith.com/ and follow her on social media at @clairebidwell

 

Please note, In Recovery contains mature themes and may not be appropriate for all listeners.

 

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Dr. Nzinga Harrison, Claire Bidwell Smith & Claire Jones

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  00:03

Thank you everyone for joining us for this episode of IN RECOVERY. I’m Dr. Harrison, your host, along with our producer — Claire.

Claire Jones 

Hey!

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

This week we’re going to be talking to another Claire, Claire Bidwell Smith is a grief therapist, and author.

Claire Jones 

We wanted to bring Claire on to talk about how much we’ve had to grieve already as a nation this year, obviously, between the pandemic but then also with racism, with mass shootings that we’ve seen increase a ton. With the amount of opioid overdoses that have increased over the year of the pandemic, there’s been a lot of grief in deaths. And then there’s also just been a lot of grief in non-death related things. And we really wanted to make sure we dedicated an episode to talk about grief, because it’s not really something that we know how to talk about. So we’ve brought on an expert, Claire Bidwell Smith. And we’re really excited to have her on.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Yeah, let’s jump in. So hey, Claire, so good to have you. Thank you for coming on the show.

Claire Bidwell Smith

Yeah. Hi, Nzinga, it’s nice to see you.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

So, you’re a grief expert and looking at the last year, what we’ve all been through, couldn’t be a more perfect time to have you come on to talk to our audience. So maybe we’ll just start out getting to know you a bit. Tell us who you are, help us get to know you and how you came to focus your professional life on grief. Yeah,

Claire Bidwell Smith

Yeah, that was not what I wanted to be growing up. I didn’t and I would be a grief expert. But I lost my parents young, they both got cancer. At the same time, when I was 14. My mother died when I was 18. And my father when I was 25, and I’m an only child. So it was, you know, the loss of my whole immediate family entering into young adulthood, which was a very different experience than most of my peers were going through. I had always been a writer. So I was still on that track working for magazines, newspapers, journalism, and aspiring to write books. But after going through these losses, as you know, when we go through something big like that, we see life in a different way.

Claire Bidwell Smith  02:20

So I started looking to do more meaningful work or just work that I felt like, was more inspiring to my life than writing about fancy restaurants and travel writing. So I became a therapist, I got my master’s in clinical psychology, I’ve been in private practice for over a decade, I worked in hospice initially. And I’ve written three books about grief. And last now. And you’re right, this last year has been something else, you know, for someone as, I’ve been doing this for over a decade, talking about grief and loss, this thing that nobody wants to talk about, the last year, people have finally really wanted to talk about it, to address it, to acknowledge it, to understand all the different ways we grieve and will be grieving. So it’s been a really interesting last year for me, professionally.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

You mentioned that you went and got your master’s in psychology and you’re in private practice as a therapist, I think it may even be somewhat of a new concept to a lot of people, the idea of, quote, proactively getting a grief therapist when you have a loss in your life. And so can you talk to us about why do we even need grief counselors and grief therapy? Who needs it? When do you need it?

Claire Bidwell Smith 

I think everybody can benefit from grief counseling, who is going through a big loss. I think that grief and loss are very disorienting. They can kind of cause a lot of upheaval in our lives, and really rearrange the ways that we see the world. The pandemic was similar, right? We were kind of all going along as a species, and as different cultures and then the pandemic came along and just dropped the floor out from everybody, right? grief is a lot like that. So you lose a partner, a child, a family member, a friend, and your life gets up ended in many ways. And so a lot of people struggle with the big emotions that come with it, but then also the life changes. And so finding grief counseling is really helpful to normalize all the feelings that you’re going through, all the big life changes. As a culture, Western culture, we’re not that great at grieving.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  04:31

Oh, that was so polite, “not that great.”

Claire Bidwell Smith 

I think that there are a lot of misconceptions about how to grieve what it looks like, and especially how long grieve lasts. So a lot of people will come to me and for the first time and they’ll say, I think I’m doing this wrong. I can’t tell you how many times I hear that. They think that they haven’t cried enough. They’re crying too much. They’re grieving too long. They’re grieving too little. I mean, it’s amazing how confused we can get about what grief should look like.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

Yeah. So I want to touch on that. But I want to go back, you said anybody who has a significant loss could benefit from grief therapy, or grief counseling. How do I know what a significant losses like? How do I know if this loss is significant or not.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

That’s a great question. And I think, you know, to go back to the pandemic a bit, I think we’ve finally started to recognize that grief and loss don’t always have to be the loss of a person who’s died. A lot of people have been grieving in the last year and they’ve been grieving, canceling a wedding. They’ve been grieving having their kids home from school, they’ve been grieving their health, or politics, or the loss of a job, so many things that they’ve been grieving. And so you know, going through loss in any kind of form, you know when you need help, like you do with anything, right? Is it disrupting your daily functioning? Do you feel like you can’t sit with your emotions? Are you experiencing anxiety, depression, relationship troubles, and grief and loss effect all of these. Right? So if you’re struggling with any of those, then yes, you need help.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Are you drinking more?

Claire Bidwell Smith 

Exactly, are you overeating?

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Are you smoking marijuana, eating more edibles?

Claire Bidwell Smith 

Yeah. Did you pick up smoking again? You know, all those things. Which grief can definitely trigger.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

And so okay, let’s say I’ve had a significant loss and I recognize that I’m struggling, what is the right way to grieve?

Claire Bidwell Smith  06:33

It looks different for everybody. It really does. You know, every single person is different. Your grief is as different as the relationships you have with the different people you lose; you could grieve different people in different ways. You could grieve a divorce in different ways. Depends on your personality. What do you like, generally, and with your emotions. Are you someone who kind of keeps things in and deals with them privately? Or are you someone who wants to talk about it all the time with everybody, everyone’s really, you know, kind of does things in their own way. But I will say that grief often lasts much longer than people anticipate. So that’s one of the things I’m always trying to help people feel permission to grieve, however long they need to, however hard they need to, a lot of people try to bottle up grief, and they push it away, push it down and then it spills out and anxiety and depression and maladaptive behaviors.

Claire Jones 

Yeah, I was gonna say like, is there like a wrong way to grieve?

Claire Bidwell Smith 

There’s not a wrong way. I think that there’s ways that we suppress it, you know, so there’s ways that we can really push it away. Grief can be so big that a lot of people get scared to let themselves fall apart. I have clients who will actually kind of schedule time for their grief because otherwise they push it away and then spelled out in anger, anxiety, behavior. And so they’ll schedule time like, okay, on Saturday afternoon, I’m going to sit and look through old pictures, I’m going to cry, I’m going to let myself fall apart and be a mess. I’m going to tell my partner to you know, be on the ready, you know, and that’s great. I think if that is what needs to happen for you, then great.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  08:14

Yeah, I think Claire, you’re like putting your finger on what I was hearing in Claire’s answer. Okay, Claire-Claire. So Claire, producer Claire, what I was hearing and guest grief expert Claire’s answer. Which was like, if we had to say there is a wrong way to grieve, it would be not grieving.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

Exactly.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

But then I didn’t even feel like I can say that. Because whether you let yourself grieve or not, you will grieve like there is no way to not grieve. And so I think maybe we don’t recognize how much we’re punishing ourselves from when we don’t let that grief process happen, or we don’t embrace it.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

I don’t know. Help me Claire, help me with these words, because I’m struggling a little bit like what I’m trying to say is, you don’t have any control over it. You will grieve.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

You will grieve. Grief will drop you to your knees, you will be walking across the room and suddenly get hit with a wave of it and you’re on your knees, you know, and that can happen multiple times a day. I think grief can be a real roller coaster. You know, we’ve got these five stages that Elisabeth Kubler Ross came up with in the 60s’ and I love her. She’s an incredible pioneer. She’s gone now. But she was a Swiss physician. And in the 60s’, she was working in a hospital in Chicago and she was observing the experience of people who were dying, not people who are grieving, but people who were dying, facing a terminal diagnosis of facing death. And she came up with the five stages at that time for them.

Claire Bidwell Smith

So denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. And those make sense in a more linear fashion for someone who’s facing end of life. Those stages were then applied to people who are grieving, but they don’t work as well in the grief process, yes, I think they often all occur for people, but not necessarily in that order. So a lot of people get confused and they come in and they’re like, okay, I’m not doing the stages correctly. I’m stuck in one. I skipped one. I’ve done this one two times already, you know, whatever it is. Because, you know, I think what’s really appealing, there’s something appealing about having five steps, right? Like, okay, I just got to get through these five stages, and then I’m done. Right? So people really cling to these five stages. And I think that a lot of the work I do is demystifying those stages.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  10:35

I feel like one of the stages missing from the five stages of grief-Kubler Ross, is anxiety.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

I wrote a book called Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Oh.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

But it wasn’t me that said that.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Well, this is perfect, it must be true. This universe brought it to me in two separate ways. I thought that was so spot on. So tell me about your book, this concept.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

So I experienced it personally to begin with around the time my mother died, I began having panic attacks ended up, in an ER a couple of times, I was only 18. Every doctor I saw dismissed what I was experiencing. And so I did too, and I did not connect it to my grief, I just thought there was something wrong with me psychologically, physically. It wasn’t until I was in grad school, that I began to connect the dots and looking at trauma, psychology, looking at PTSD, realizing that all of my anxiety was directly connected to the loss of my parents.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

I began writing about it here and there in articles online, and I got flooded with letters, emails from people who then became clients. And they all said the same thing like is this real, this anxiety and grief thing, because it’s happening to me. So I began to really study it. And the clients that came to me and eventually wrote this book called Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief. And it’s absolutely connected. And it’s getting talked about a lot more these days, which is great.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

Let’s take a pause here for a quick break. And we’ll be right back to pick up this thread.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  12:14

Okay, we’re back. Let’s pick up where we left off. You mentioned when you had the develop the panic attacks after your mom died, and each of that you went to discounted what you were experiencing? I think that really says a lot about our cultural understanding, and our cultural response and our cultural beliefs around the idea of treating grief. And so I want to ask you a two-part question here, which is, one, this is the second part, how you would describe that cultural understanding of grief and how that affects the experience that people have kind of like out in the world when they’re grieving. But before we get to that, like, What even is the definition of grief, how you define it, and kind of how that relates to how we understand it culturally.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

So grief is, you know, in a plain way, this series of emotions we go through when experiencing loss. It’s pretty simple. But if you want to talk about loss, losses, transition, right? And we’re always changing, things are always changing. So kind of thinking about that is important. And as a culture, we really like to wrap that up quickly. We encourage people to move forward really fast..

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Three-day bereavement policy or..

Claire Bidwell Smith 

Exactly, three days bereavement policy, so that gives people the message that they should be over it in three days, or a week, or whatever it is. And that isn’t the way it works. But people start to feel this amount of shame, because they’re still struggling. And that is usually where they come to find me. And they’re like, I think I should be over this by now. And I’m still struggling. In terms of the medical community, I think things are getting a little bit better. So it was 20 years ago when I was in the ER for panic attacks. Now I do see a fair amount of clients who come to me being sent from a doctor who said, I think you have anxiety, there’s nothing wrong with you physically, I think you’re experiencing anxiety. So that’s heartening. I think it’s being recognized a little bit more here and there.

Claire Bidwell Smith  14:23

But again, this idea that I just do not believe that we allow people enough space and time to grieve. You know, when we have that three-day bereavement policy at work that often happens in the beginning, right, you lose somebody and then the first two weeks, you’re going through with the memorial service, the funeral, all the different things, right? And that’s when you get your three days of bereavement leave. It’s very busy time. Cut to six months later, that is when you see people really deep in the throes of grief.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

They are six months away from having talked to their person that they loved so much. They are six months into the reality of this and how much they’re life has changed. They are often very much alone at that time to everybody’s dropped off, because they’re like, oh, it’s been six months, you’re fine. And they’re feeling very alone and struggling. I think that the bereavement policy should come in around then and it should be six weeks.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

Oh, now you’re talking. Now you’re talking. So to that point, how do we start this conversation, and since we’re starting to kind of with bereavement policy, then I’ll benchmark this part of the conversation specifically to death, even though I want to make sure our listeners very clearly heard you say that grieving is for any loss. That it doesn’t have to be death, it doesn’t have to be loss of a person. And it’s about that transitional period. But if we think about that cultural understanding that you just described, which is exactly it, like get it over as soon as possible, which makes sense because grief is painful. And so of course, we want any pain to be over as quickly as possible. And if there were a way to not feel it, like we would avoid not feeling it.

Claire Bidwell Smith  16:05

And we don’t like to see our loved ones in pain too. So we often encourage people to move through it quicker than they should.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Exactly, how do we start to change that cultural understanding? How do we start to talk about death, and grief and loss differently so that it does ultimately end up in a changing of our bereavement policies and a changing of the experience that people have when they go out in the world as a grieving person?

Claire Bidwell Smith 

This is a really important question. It’s something I’ve been working on for over a decade. And I’ve never seen so much movement as in the last year, which is really heartening. So one of the positives to come out of COVID is, you know, there’s been a lot of positives, but this is really one of them, where people are finally taking grief and end of life seriously, I’m seeing more end-of-life planning, which is important. And I’m seeing more recognition of grief and loss, people are actually kind of curious about loss. And this idea that there are these ambiguous ambivalent losses like divorce or moving or loss of jobs, that can be grief. It’s important I’m seeing it talked about and written about more than I ever have. So that’s one way to start changing it, right?

Claire Bidwell Smith 

I’m really excited that we have a president who knows grief and talks about grief openly, and that he’s a male, male grief is its own whole subset to talk, we could have a whole other episode about male grief. Because men are even less allowed to grieve than women. So to have a man in that position, talking about grief and vulnerability and encouraging our nation, particularly at this time to let themselves grieve is a really big way that I hope to see some change. The last thing that I think is really important is I think we need some actual policy around grief. And I think it would be amazing if that came out of this administration, particularly given who the President is and that he knows grief so well.

Claire Bidwell Smith  18:01

But with this pandemic, I mean, the amount of lives lost, the amount of grief experienced for other things. People are still dying every day from the pandemic, even though we’re starting to emerge in the vaccine, people are still dying. And I think we’re gonna see another wave of grief come as we emerge. I think a lot of people don’t even feel safe enough to grieve, you know, we’re still kind of being vigilant. And we’re still kind of in the thing, once we’ve really kind of come on to the other side, I think people are going to fall apart in a whole new way, looking back at it all, and really letting themselves grieve.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

So I think there’s a lot more grief to come. And I think having some policy around that. I think really changing grief in the workplace is important. People are going to be coming back into the workplace in new ways. And they’re going to be bringing grief with them. So I think these are some big things that need to happen. If you want to call up the president right now we can get started on this policy thing.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Okay, let me just call Joey B up. (laughs)

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

This seems like a non sequitur, but it’s related. I’m Chief Medical Officer and co-founder of a company called Eleanor Health. And we are trying to be like the most human company that our staff have ever worked in. And so over the last year, your comments when you said the grieving has not just been about death. But the appetite to talk about grief is that the highest we’ve made the most progress that you’ve seen on that over the last year is the same experience that I and if I can I try to avoid speaking on behalf of black people, but a little bit on behalf of black people right now have experienced with this racial awakening and the willingness to have the conversation but also how that puts our grief on front street in a way that it hasn’t been even at work. And I mentioned Eleanor Health because one of the policy revisions that we made was that our bereavement policy doesn’t have to be applied to someone that you’re physically related to.

Claire Bidwell Smith  20:25

That’s amazing,

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Right? Like you get to choose that the loss is significant enough for you to need three days off of work. Because that’s your grief. And we wanted our bereavement policy to be able to reflect that grief comes more widely than just your immediate family member having died.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

I’m so glad you’re doing that. That’s amazing.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

So can you give us some words about the grief? And like you said, you’ve been talking a lot about the collective awakening and the willingness to have the conversation around racism and police killings inequity in this country. Can you talk to our whole audience, but like, especially a little bit to our Black audience who is acutely grieving? The events of the last year? But also like having to deal with that in a spotlight.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

Right. There’s the spotlight. But I think in some ways, that’s helpful, because we’re bringing it to light more, you know, I think everyone in this nation needs to see that that grief exists and is really important and big. I’m seeing so many people grieving, racism grieving the events of the last year, but it also keeps unfolding, right? So this grief just keeps continuing. Like every day, every week, there’s another shooting. And so I think that that it just keeps unfolding. And we’re still coming off of the last administration. I know, I’ve brought politics into this a little bit, but it really applies to the grief. Right?

Claire Bidwell Smith  22:02

So there was a lot of racism that came down through that administration. There was a lack of letting people grieve as well. And so I think we’re still coming off of that and trying to find our footing in terms of can we grieve? Are we grieving? What are we grieving, and then not being able to fully grieve because things just keep happening. And I think that allowing space for it, really talking about it, even though it’s hard to be in the spotlight and talk about it, this is the way things are gonna change. We need to really help people feel permission to grieve and helping people feel that permission is by talking about it, acknowledging it, saying, yes, this is real. And this is hard. And we need to make space for people to feel this.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

Totally. So how do we, I know you brought politics in, I mean, can’t not, right? How do we start to get on the path? I think we’re starting to see a little bit of light at the end of the COVID tunnel. We’re definitely seeing a light I’m not gonna call it at the end of racism and police killing tunnels because I feel like we’re still like very much at the beginning of that tunnel, but at least we’re walking towards the other side of that tunnel when it didn’t necessarily feel like that a year ago. How do we kind of like, start healing on an individual level, start healing on a national level, like, give me some bulleted, do this, do this, do this do this?

Claire Bidwell Smith 

Yeah. Individually, I think we need to recognize if and how we are grieving. I think most of us are grieving something right now, whether it’s racism, whether it’s COVID whether it’s, you know, job, whatever it is, person, I know many people who have died and lost someone during COVID. So just recognize that you’re grieving. You know, like your work policy. I think sometimes people think, oh, it wasn’t an immediate family member, so I shouldn’t be really grieving. Yes, you should, you know, allow yourself to grieve. So kind of recognizing as such a baseline of like, okay, I’m grieving. Now, what do I do? If you’re grieving, start finding some support for it. If you feel like you need that, there’s incredible places on the internet right now.

Claire Bidwell Smith  24:23

I have seen the grief community, the clinical community step up in such beautiful ways in this last year, there are online support groups, there are discussions being had every day, there are vigils, there are memorial places you can go. So join some of these communities, talk about your grief. I think that that is a way to honor it, write about it. I’ve been really encouraging people to find their own sense of ritual. As you mentioned earlier, we haven’t been able to have our usual grief customs and rituals in the last year. And I think that that is a really cool opportunity in some ways to create our own sense of personal ritual. What does that look like for you, you know? Be curious about it.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

Create a little altar in your house like, you know, find, find your own ways to honor and ritualize what you’re feeling. I think those are those are important things to do. As a larger picture culture, I think we need to have some days of honoring different things that have occurred, different ways people are feeling like many different things, you know, we should have a George Floyd day, we should have a huge day of memorializing all the people we’ve lost in COVID.

Claire Bidwell Smith

I just think that there’s so many days that I think would be helpful for people because it allows them again that permission like okay, today, I get to feel this, you know, even if I’m not letting myself feel it on other days, or it’s not being recognized in my places today at least I get to feel this thing. So I think that some of that, and again, some policy around grief and bereavement would be helpful.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

So helpful.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  26:10

I wanted to go back to something you said earlier, and I’m trying not to cry myself, I’m actually in the midst of a lot of grief. And so holding grief for others, which I find for myself can be more difficult than even like navigating my own grief. And so can you talk to us a bit about strategies, techniques, like I’m just gonna get some free little grief therapy from you right here on the episode about holding grief for others, right? So even if, like you said, it’s not your immediate family member who died, or it’s not your restaurant that closed. But you’re, you know, you feel it through the community, or you knew the person who own that restaurant, and you’re holding the grief of all of those things we’ve been through for the last year for other people. How do you navigate holding grief for others, while holding your own grief?

Claire Bidwell Smith 

Yeah. That is a really good question. I think, again, just you know, let yourself cry right now, you know, like, let yourself feel those things. I see this a lot when a public figure dies. Kobe Bryant, for instance. You know, last year, I saw so many people thinking they shouldn’t be feeling what they were feeling. Of course, you should. We’re human, one of the most beautiful things about being human is that we love hard, you know, and what grief often is, is a lot of love, you know, it’s love for your community, love for your friends, love for these public figures. Love for all these things that we can lose. So let yourself feel that, you know, we don’t have to be so tough and independent all the time.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

I think it’s really important to talk to our people when we’re holding space for people who are grieving, let them know you’re holding that space, you know, oh my god, when  you’re the one grieving, when you’re the one going through that loss, just the idea that someone else is there with you. Holding that with you, holding that space feels so meaningful, because I think that grief can feel so lonely and so isolating. So let people know whether it’s an Instagram post about public kind of grief or whether it’s calling up your friend and just saying I’m feeling here for you. I’m sitting here and if I could take this for you, I would you know, whatever it is you want to say to someone people often don’t say anything because they’re afraid to say the wrong thing.

Claire Bidwell Smith  28:41

I had this conversation last week with a friend of mine about the same as true in terms of some talks around racism, people are afraid to talk about it because they’re afraid to say the wrong thing. But you’re not talking about it makes it worse. Grief is the same not to not acknowledging the loss, not talking about it, that’s the worst thing you could do. Right? Even if you’re afraid to say the wrong thing. Just say I don’t know what to say. But I’m here and I want to acknowledge it and I feel it.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

I think that’s so beautiful. It’s been several years now. But I had a friend who lost a pregnancy, like late term, like 36 weeks. And she was out of work for I think about three months. And when she went back to work, she said the most difficult thing was that nobody said anything. And she was like I knew they wanted to say something like you can tell by the way that they’re looking at you. And she was like, I knew they wanted to say something and I knew they didn’t know what to say. And so they just said nothing. And then so I just said nothing. And she was like that was the most difficult thing about going back to work and so..

Claire Bidwell Smith 

Think about the message that sends. Think about the message that sends to the griever. Like, we don’t talk about this. We’re not going to talk about this. It gives this message of shame; it gives this message of you shouldn’t be feeling what you’re feeling because no one’s acknowledging it. I mean, this is where stuff has to change, you know?

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  30:10

So I love that discreet piece of advice you just gave. Even if you just say, I don’t know what to say. Like, that is such a good strategy. I don’t even have the words. And okay, and then give me the last part of that sentence, Claire, what I can say to somebody.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

I don’t know what to say but I’m here. That’s it. That’s all you have to do. You know? And that lets them know, like, okay, one, there’s this person here, and they’re acknowledging it. And you know, I think sometimes people will say, I was here, people get hurt, because someone will come in and say, oh, I know exactly how you feel my dog died last week, you know, and it’s someone’s spouse who just died, not pet grief, we could do another episode about pet grief. But you know, I think sometimes people will presuppose things that are difficult. So people just get so tripped up. And they, all they have to do is say, I don’t know what to say. But I’m here just to open that door to let the grieving person know that they can talk.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

That is so beautiful. That works over text message. That works on voicemail. That works on the phone. That works on Zoom. I feel like this can be universally applied.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

They should make a Hallmark card.

Claire Jones

I want to ask a little bit about like the mental health aspect of grief I’m the pandemic, because when you were talking about the sort of policy aspect of this and like what we can do to address this nationally, it’s hard because like in my mind when you were like we should have a George Floyd day. And we should have, you know, a day where we acknowledge all the people that we’ve lost in COVID I think one of the hard parts about this year is because of the past administration, because of the reality of the country. There’s a divisiveness that to me, I think has provided a lot of cynicism, where I’m like, and hopelessness honestly, where I’m like, that will never happen.

Claire Jones  32:16

And like, I can’t see a world in which we could pass policy where things will, where people will like agree to make that kind of change, and things like that. And I think a lot of that is a mental health change for me that has come out of not providing a lot of space for grief. I mean, I know this because of like, I have been in therapy about not making space for grief and how much that has depleted my own mental health and given away for like hopelessness and so can you just talk a little bit about like, I guess the tie between like mental health and grief, especially in COVID, in this time, where there’s so much uncertainty, but then also, you know, at the time of this recording, there were six police shootings last week and multiple mass shootings. And so there’s also this continuousness of tragedy that’s happening. And so how does that impact mental health? And what are some things that you can do as these things just like keep happening and keep happening and keep happening.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

Yeah. I think a couple of things. I think that we can’t rely on the culture as a whole, or any administration or anything to kind of really take this on for us. We can’t. It’s not gonna happen like you said. I think that you’re right, there’s a lot of anxiety and depression that has come out of all of this and that it just like you said, and I keep saying it just continues to unfold, you know, the police shootings, the pandemic, so we can’t fully grieve because it just keeps happening. And we keep getting back into states of anxiety and anger. And there’s just this depression that comes with that reality, right?

Claire Bidwell Smith 

So I think in some ways, taking care of ourselves individually is really important, you know, allowing time for you to grieve whether or not it’s happening around you, or in our culture, finding places like minded communities that are grieving or are addressing these things, or are taking time for that because they’re there, you know, just like in like kind of typical grief when I say I have a client who loses her husband, I encouraged her to find a group of other women who’ve lost their husband, and often similar age, you know, she’s in her 50s find a group of women in their 50s, who’ve lost a husband. And so you know, just like right now, let’s find little communities and pockets of people who understand how we’re feeling and support ourselves in that way.

Claire Bidwell Smith  34:36

The other thing I want to say is that I think we’re going to see, and we are seeing a lot of complicated grief. Complicated grief is an extended period of grieving, which I kind of think all grief tends to be complicated in some ways, it’s an extended period of grieving but it’s that feeling of like not being able to resolve something, not that there’s ever any kind of resolution with grief or we don’t, we don’t get closure, when we lose somebody we love. That’s a myth. However, I think there are things that we aren’t able to resolve right now that are very difficult.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

For instance, not having been at the bedside of a loved one who died of COVID, you know, having to FaceTime with the nurse to say goodbye to someone you loved, that adds to a complicated sense of grief, then not being able to have a memorial or sit Shiva, or do all of these usual customs, you know, that, again, lends to this leg, something’s missing feeling that keeps you in this grieving state. And so I think we’re going to see a lot more of that as we begin to emerge from the pandemic, and it’s going to need to be addressed.

Claire Jones 

What is the process of addressing this?

Claire Bidwell Smith 

It’s a good question. I think, you know, I think some of that really does need to come out of our leaders, maybe our political leaders, I think this needs to come out of all of our clinicians who know about this work to be talking about it, I’m trying to talk about it as much as possible everywhere I can just to again, acknowledge it. I think there are, you know, nurses who have come through this and think they should be fine. But what if they hear a podcast like this, or they see a news segment about grief, and they say, oh, maybe all this anxiety and depression I’m feeling is because of all the stuff I’ve been through, and maybe I need to do some grieving. So I think again, just need to be talking about it nonstop so that people hear that it’s okay to feel these things.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  36:27

It’s like there’s this concept of health in all policies. So if you’re making housing policies, you’re making health policies, if you’re making education policies, you’re making health policies, I could see a similar type of thinking, for grief and all policies. Because it touches every facet of our lives and so every kind of industry of our lives should be considering how to position itself to best support and open dialogue and supportive approach.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

Yeah, I think that that is really important. And it’s not an obvious thing that people think about. So again, how do we kind of get into these spaces? And how people start to realize that this should be happening? Because otherwise they’re going to realize it too late, right? When it’s just like in a big mess in their lives or in their workplace? And they’re gonna be like, Oh, wait. So I think if we can preempt that as much as possible, it would help.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Yeah, I think COVID gives us that opportunity. Like you said, Claire, earlier, the appetite for the conversation is broader.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

And it is starting to happen. I have never been busier my entire life. I mean, all I talk is grieve, and everybody wants to talk about grief, which is amazing. So I am heartened that that it is shifting in a really positive way. But this is kind of the beautiful thing about grieve, edit, like about the pandemic, this idea of transition, losses transition, sometimes that transition isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes our lives open up in incredible ways, because we see the world in a new way, because we went through this thing, right? And that’s going to happen with the pandemic, it’s going to happen when we lose people it’s going to happen when we get divorced, or move or whatever it is we’re grieving. It’s transition. And there’s so much beauty to be found in an opportunity, as well as pain.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  38:13

Yeah, beautiful way to roll us out. So I think to all of our IN RECOVERY listeners, Claire just summed it up for us. There’s definitely pain and grief, there can be beauty in grief. I think if I wanted you to just take away two things, from this episode, one, grief is normal and we’re going to go through it. And so the easier path is to let ourselves go through it, not to try to choke it off. Two, let’s talk about it. So same like last season, when we were all about stigma reduction, let’s talk about addiction. Let’s talk about grief. Because the more we talk about it, the more we normalize it, the more we can support each other, the more we can get more quickly, quote to the other side of the pain to the beautiful parts of them.

Claire Bidwell Smith 

Thank you for this work that you are doing, Nzinga. Thank you for this conversation. Claire, you guys opening this up. It’s so important. Thank you.

Claire Jones

Thanks for coming on, Claire.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Is it weird to call somebody else by your own name?

Claire Jones 

Yeah.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

It is weird. (laughs)

CREDITS

IN RECOVERY is a Lemonada Media Original. This show is produced by Claire Jones and edited by Ivan Kuraev. Jackie Danziger is our supervising producer. Our theme was composed by Dan Molad with additional music by Kuraev. Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer are our executive producers. Rate us, review us, and say nice things. Follow us at @LemonadaMedia across all social platforms, or find me on Twitter at @naharrisonmd. If you’ve learned from us, share the show with your others. Let’s help to stigmatize addiction together.