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Description

Underneath the anger, fear, and hopelessness many of us feel right now after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade lies grief. Claire’s expertise in this field is invaluable right now and we wanted to share her appearance on V Interesting with V Spehar with you. V asks Claire for tips on how to process your own personal grief, what it means to be grieving collectively with so many people, and how to handle loved ones with whom you disagree on this issue. Plus, Claire and V game-plan the best places to cry at work. You know, in case it comes up.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

V Spehar, Claire Bidwell-Smith

Claire Bidwell-Smith

Hi, I’m Claire Bidwell-Smith. Welcome to NEW DAY. Today we’re gonna do something a little different, instead of our usual Wednesday episode where I give you a tip and then answer one of your questions. I wanted to bring you this interview I did with  V Spehar, host of the new Lemonada Podcast – V INTERESTING. I spoke with them about how we’re all processing the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. If you’re like me, you’re quite frankly devastated by it. I’m so grateful. I got the chance to talk about our collective grief with V and I hope you find it helpful.

V Spehar

So, Claire Bidwell Smith is a therapist, renowned grief expert and best-selling author. She is also the host of NEW DAY for Lemonada Media, which is now available three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. In fact, we’re going to do a little crossover here, this conversation will also appear in The New Day feed on Wednesday. Claire, thank you so much for joining me.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

I’m glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Let’s get into it.

V Spehar 

Let’s indeed, I knew that we had this interview, like when the decision came out, and I’m telling you like all people who wait to see their therapist, although, in this case, my guess I’m like, Oh, my God, I cannot wait to talk to somebody who is an expert in this terrible feeling that we’re all having. Yeah. You know, there’s like, no easy way to talk about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, in a way that can like actually capture the weight of the decision. How did you feel when Friday’s decision was announced?

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

You know, we knew it was coming on one level. And then the actuality of it was just devastating. And you know, I think, you know, as someone who works in end of life and death and grief, you know, losses like that, too, you know, we can know someone is going to be dying of cancer, and we can think we’ve got our heads wrapped around it. And then it really happens. And we are floored in a way we didn’t expect and I think that this was like that for a lot of people.

V Spehar 

Yeah, I was in the most surreal experience of my life at VidCon just surrounded by TikTok influencer, like it could not be more unusual or vibrant or silly space to have got this news in. And folks were having a hard time like, putting their finger on like what it was they were feeling. It wasn’t exactly anger. And then it wasn’t exactly sadness. Is it right to say that it was grief? It was a collective loss?

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Yeah, absolutely. It is grief. And I think it’s important that we let ourselves name it as such. Grief has so many emotions that come with it. But the feeling of grief is really, you know, mourning something that we’ve lost. And that feeling of loss in this case is very real. The anxiety and uncertainty, the fear that comes with what has happened and what is to come from this. There’s so much tied up in it. But I think if we skip over the grief part, we really do ourselves a disservice.

V Spehar 

But I want to skip over the grief part, is the hardest part.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  02:55

I know, I know, it’s much easier to feel angry, it’s easier to feel even afraid sometimes, but to really let ourselves steep and the sadness that comes with this, is hard. There’s a lot of reasons to be sad about this. There’s so much sadness, I mean, just the like the layers and the history and the years and what this means for so many people, to really let yourself feel that sadness is really hard. But it’s also really important, you know, I think we should let ourselves just so steeped in it, really feel it find support while we do that, be around other people who feel the same way, cry together, you know, it doesn’t mean we’re not going to take action, it doesn’t mean we’re not going to feel angry; it doesn’t mean we’re not going to grapple with anxiety. But really like letting yourself feel that initial wave of just grief is so important.

V Spehar 

When I was at VidCon, there were so many female identifying folks who were like, taking it from one side to side of like, this is their body, this is going to be happening to them physically. But there was a lot of what we call like the TikTok boys with the cute haircuts and the thigh tattoos who were also asking me to like V, I feel like I don’t know, I feel like something bad happened to me too. And I was like it did it did happen to you too. Yeah. And they were talking about how they felt like a little bit of a loss of their youth. Like, they lost something they lost an option. They lost sort of like, and watching their faces, these young boys even understanding that they couldn’t put words to it, but that they also lost something and they didn’t know what to do what it was like, talk to other men about it. But for men, it can be difficult to talk about grief. Do you have any, like helpful hints for the guys out there?

Claire Bidwell-Smith  04:35

Well, I’m glad to hear that they are talking about it and even when we can’t name it, you know that kind of ambiguous feeling of loss and not being able to pinpoint exactly why or what it is just being able to express that find other people who are also kind of feeling similarly. I think so often we try to skip past that kind of stuff. We try to bottle it up men, especially culturally are taught to do that. So the fact that they weren’t Talking about it and naming it is so is so clear and so important. I think that everyone should feel threatened by this, you know, everyone should feel threatened by this. And that’s really scary to feel. Oh, those poor guys.

V Spehar 

I know, just the whole the whole group because it was such a young group of people and they just, it was like watching a wave crash on them, because they maybe never really thought about it that much before that moment. So there’s something that happens to our mental health collectively, right? When a single event has such a big effect on so many people. Can you talk about, like what this means? I mean, we know what it means for like our community for our friends and family we’re talking to but as a nation, what this can mean for people?

Claire Bidwell-Smith

I think it’s very triggering on so many levels. You know, I think this kind of thing activates past traumas, it activates so many other ways that we’ve had rights taken away that we have lost bodily autonomy. I mean, there’s just so many layers of it. And so, as a nation as a culture, we are feeling it and we’re spinning out into a new place, right, just as when the pandemic hit, and all of a sudden, culturally, we all went into a new space, this is going to have a similar effect. Plus, we’re still like in the throes of the pandemic. So it’s like another setback to our mental health, right, we haven’t climbed out of this hole, we haven’t climbed out of the Trump pole, we haven’t climbed out of, you know, like, there’s just, there’s just been so many, you know, national traumas that we’ve been going through, and we can’t seem to catch our breath between them. And so we just keep going back into these spaces that I think it’s a big mental health concern. You know, I think the anxiety levels in the country are skyrocketing. I think depression. I think hopelessness is something that a lot of people are experiencing. And the division is really making it difficult too, to heal.

V Spehar  06:50

You said exactly what I was thinking to ask you about next, like, while many of us experienced this, sort of collective grief, this sadness, this confusion, the shock, there were a lot of folks who were celebrating it, and I would even say gloating about it. And that almost hurt more in some ways, because it was like this silent, like you passed.

Claire Bidwell-Smith

Or some people, those were family members. For some of us who are grieving, our family members are celebrating, you know, and that how scary is that? How hard is that to grapple with? I can’t tell you how many clients I have, over the last four or five years who have gone through major family riffs. You know, and this is going to cause more of that. It’s so hard.

V Spehar

I mean, just on that point, before we get more into, like how we heal or process this. But on that point of, you know, you’re hearing people gloat maybe your family member or maybe it’s your dad, maybe it’s your husband, for some people were telling me like their boyfriends were celebrate, like there was there was just like bad stuff to it. How do they, how can you protect yourself from that?

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

I think you have to get really boundaries. I mean, I think this is why we’re making choices of who we need to spend time with, who we need to be talking to where we need to be leading for support. I don’t think we should be subjecting ourselves to people who, you know, are really opening these wounds for us who are activating us and triggering us in this moment, we’re already so vulnerable, or grieving or anxious, or angry. And so I think just getting really serious about the boundaries, no matter the cost, I mean, the cost is really going to come at ourselves if we don’t take care of ourselves and keep those boundaries in place.

V Spehar  08:28

Yeah, when the news broke, we were just expected to keep working like everything else, right? Just keep pushing just okay, you’re gonna have to put that on the shelf and turn it on, because it’s time to clock in or do whatever it is that you’re supposed to do. Just no time to process what was happening. Can you talk a little about like what that does to your body and to your mind?

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

I mean, I don’t think we can do that. I think that the I think that the stress level it puts on us is enormous, I think the sense of incongruence How can we just go about our day when we’re reeling from this? I think we have to take a mental health day, when something like this happens. I think we have to take care of ourselves. I think we have to speak up about it too, you know, and we have to say so you know, I can’t be here right now. I can’t be here today. Here’s why. And really, really have some compassion for ourselves. And just do those self-care things. That sounds so basic. I know like they’re so eye rolling, right? Like rest, limit your news intake, do some meditation to walk in nature. But seriously, well, we have to we can’t keep going like nothing’s happened.

V Spehar 

I don’t roll my eyes at it. Because I always forget, like, no matter how many times I go to therapy, like twice a week and I still forget and I’m like, oh right, go outside. Go outside, breathe some air. Go look at a tree. Yeah, but what when you can’t do that, do you have any kind of like, what about for the folks who can’t afford to or just aren’t in a job where they can do that thing? Like I think a lot about like, I’ve been culinary following chefs and restaurant folks like, what can they do if like, you have to be somewhere else but you also have to give yourself like inside quiet time.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Yeah, I mean, I think if there is someone in your environment in that situation that you can and just let them know how you’re feeling so that you don’t feel like you’re so bottled up or you’re hiding it, then that’s great if you can’t, and you just have to keep moving. I think getting really present, you know, not letting your mind spin out, bringing your thoughts back in. I mean, whatever you can do to get really present, whether you’re noticing the temperature in the air, or you’re just taking different kinds of breaths, or you’re turning your thoughts back to a positive memory, you can come back to the grief and the anger and the rage and the anxiety later. But in those moments, just to take care of yourself, like come up with a mantra. I love mantras like, I repeat them in my head all the time when I freak out, you know, something just like I’m safe right now. I’m loved, like and just keep repeating those things until you’re in a space where you can safely grieve.

V Spehar 

Go have a good hard cry in the walk in freezers. That was always my favorite. Crying is my favorite. I cry all the time.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

It’s a great stress reliever.

V Spehar 

Is there any truth to the fact I heard one time? So if it’s not true, just please lie to me. Because I’ve been living on this. That crying resets your emotional equilibrium.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

I haven’t heard that. Exactly. But it makes sense. It sounds really good. You should hold on to that one. And it is truly a great stress reliever. It’s really helpful for your nervous system. So I think crying, it’s good when we bottle it up. I mean, you know how your body feels when you’re trying not to cry? I don’t think that’s a good plan.

V Spehar 

Yeah, no tension headaches for anyone having you as an expert guide on this grief journey that we’re about to go into? Can you show us a little magic ball of like, what has happened historically, in situations like this, like how long does it take to start to feel like you’re back in your body or what happens next?

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

I think grief is really different for everyone. You know, it’s it doesn’t have a set timeline, it doesn’t have a series of emotions that you go through in a formulaic way. So grief really manifests differently for everyone. It takes longer than most people think. But I think one of the things that I really find interesting about grief is that it can be very transformative. Because when we let ourselves grieve, we really have to ask ourselves to look at pieces of who we are and pieces of who we want to be, and what really matters to us. And so from there, once we start to explore those answers, we can become the person that we need to become in order to make the changes that we want to see.

V Spehar 

Now we lose a little bit of ignorance, when we’re faced with grief, we don’t get to just kind of like those guys talked about. I know, they were like, wait a minute, I don’t get to just sort of live in a bubble of it’s not going to happen because it happened. So now I do.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  12:36

And that’s sad to hear, you know, but also if I think about it for me, like every hard, terrible thing that’s ever happened to me, has made me the person I am today. You know it they were horrendous to go through. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Yet at the same time. I’ve grown so much each time. And I’m grateful for the knowledge I have now the compassion I have now the strength and wisdom that those things have brought me.

V Spehar 

If there was something that you could tell folks right now, who are struggling with this news, what would it be,

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Just be kind to yourself, you know, like, give yourself permission to grieve, like give yourself permission to just double over and sob or whatever it’s going to look like or permission to spend all day in bed. You know, we will get to the action and the anger and all the things there. It’s coming for sure there’s going to be a tidal wave of it. But right now, like let yourself grieve and let yourself heal and take care of yourself and just be kind to yourself.

V Spehar 

Thank you so much, Claire, I just appreciate you making the time to join us and hold our hand through this. Claire Bidwell Smith hosts the podcast New Day and shares great information and tips like that every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And we had so many messages from folks, so we’re going to share some more of those voicemails. That’s what you can expect up next. Clara thank you so much for taking the time with me.

Claire Bidwell-Smith 

Thank you V. I appreciate you. If you want to hear those voicemails that you mentioned, or the entire episode, this interview was part of search for V interesting and the same app you’re using to listen to new day and hit subscribe. The show is entertaining and informative, and it’s definitely a new favorite of mine. And then come back here on Friday for my conversation with Dr. Kali Cyrus. She’s an acclaimed psychiatrist and coach who offers a unique approach to mental health services and diversity, equity and inclusion training. Dr. Kali opens up about some really vulnerable parts of her life and she’s just so wise. I got so much out of our talk and I know you will too. So make sure you subscribe to NEW DAY on your favorite podcast app. So that episode is in your feed when you wake up on Friday.

CREDITS

NEW DAY is a Lemonada Media Original. The show was produced by Kryssy Pease and Erianna Jiles. Kat Yore is our engineer. Music is by Hannis Brown. New Day is produced in partnership with the well-being trust the Jed foundation and Education Development Center. Thanks for listening.