365: The Grief Journey: Midlife Challenges and Emotional Healing w/ Claire Schulz Bergman

Transcripts are auto-generated.

Courtney Townley 0:00
Welcome to the Grace and Grit podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them, not behind them. Join your host Courtney Townley right now as she breaks down the fairy tale health story you have been chasing all of your life into sensible action steps and lasting change.

Courtney Townley 0:28
Hello, my friends and welcome to the Grace and Grit podcast. This is your host, Courtney Townley, as always. Thank you for being here. If you listen to the show last the last episode that dropped that was 363 I had let you know that we had had this crazy storm come through Missoula, and it ripped up so many trees and did so much damage, and part of that damage was the roof on our house and losing electricity and water and all that. To say it’s been resolved. But during the recording of this episode, I had a lot of people working on the house, so there is banging and clanging and all kinds of fun noise in the background. I do have a genius audio engineer who I am sure took care of most of it, but I’m just preempting this show by saying if you hear some background noise, that is why, again, I did the best I could, but circumstances were such that I could not completely avoid having background noise. So apologies in advance.

Courtney Townley 1:28
Now the title of this episode today is called The Grief Journey: Midlife Challenges and Emotional Healing. And the reason that I wanted to speak to this topic is because midlife is really a period that is marked by so much opportunity to experience grief, and I say that largely from personal experience, but also working with so many midlife women who are grieving a lot of different things. So some of them are grieving the loss of loved ones or the loved loved ones being diagnosed with certain illnesses or challenges. We certainly are grieving some maybe missed opportunities in our lifetime, at midlife, or just feeling the passing of time in itself is a grieving process. I feel that way every day my son gets out of bed, I look at him, and I just think, Oh, my word, where’s the time gone? I feel like I’m feeling grief every day. As a mother that my son is getting older, we also find ourselves having to let go of a lot of things that no longer work for us or maybe never did, and there’s a level of grief that goes with that, there is a shift in expectations of ourselves, of the world around us, and there’s certainly a lot of navigating changes in our relationships with our loved ones, and all of this is happening for many of us at midlife, and all of this presents us with opportunity to experience grief.

Courtney Townley 3:02
So this episode today is going to do a deep dive into the multi faceted nature of grief in midlife and its really profound effects on our emotional and mental well being. And I am not a grief expert by any stretch of the imagination. I have, however, found that nearly every client I have ever worked with is grieving something as we’re working together, and so it is an unavoidable topic. But to help us have this conversation today, I wanted to invite somebody in who was more experienced in this conversation, and I’m invited back to the show Claire Schultz Bergman, who some of you may remember from last year.

Courtney Townley 3:49
Claire has been a long time member of my community. She’s been a long time client, and she is a therapist. She is a social worker, she is a health and wellness coach, she wears a lot of different hats, but she not only has the education to have this conversation in on a deeper level, but she also is going through her own grief process. If you listen to the podcast episode I did with her last year, she very generously shared her experience of being recently diagnosed with ALS, and in this episode today, we’re going to talk a little bit about that and the grief process, what that’s looked like for her in the face of this diagnosis. So there’s a lot baked into this episode today, if you are currently rumbling with your own grief, this episode is for you, but also to every listener. Grief is coming for you, right grief is a part of life, and you may not be in a space of that right now, but you will be in a space of grieving something sometime, probably soon. And so I hope that what we share and what we talked about. This episode today can just help you navigate whatever grief you face presently or in the future with a little bit more ease and grace. All right, let’s get to it.

Courtney Townley 5:15
Hi Claire, welcome to the grace and grit podcast.

Claire Schulz Bergman 5:18
Thank you.

Courtney Townley 5:19
Yeah, thanks for being here now. This is not the first time you’ve been here. You came on. Was it last? It was last year where you and I did a specific episode all about health in the face of dis ease, yep. And we kind of talked about what that means and how we can still honor our self care and our emotional health, and all of the things, regardless of our diagnoses or illnesses or things of that nature, and you very openly shared your diagnosis with ALS so. And I really encourage listeners to go back and listen to that episode. I can’t tell you right now what episode number it is, but we will put it in the show notes, so people can link to it, because I think it’s such an important conversation. But the reason I invited you back today was to really have a conversation about grief. Yeah, and really from like, the reason I wanted to have this conversation specifically with you, is because I think you offer a really unique perspective, because you face grief in so many different dimensions. You are a therapist. You are a woman in midlife. You are going through your own grieving process, yes, and so for all the reasons those reasons, I just thought that you would be the perfect person to have this conversation with. So before we launch into it, what do you want listeners to know about you? In case they have never heard of you before, they haven’t listened to previous episodes with you?

Claire Schulz Bergman 6:48
Yeah, so I am just a normal midlife woman.

Courtney Townley 6:56
I think you’re pretty exceptional, but you can call it normal.

Claire Schulz Bergman 7:00
I am someone who has worked in the mental health field for the past 23 years. I think it is now, but also in the health and wellness industry, as a group fitness instructor. And currently I’m teaching cycling, still teaching cycling and yoga, yeah, awesome. I ran an adoption agency for 2018, years, and that’s where I got into grief work. But other than that, I have two adult children and a husband. And yeah, normal life, yeah. Oh. And I was diagnosed. Oh. And the UN normal thing, the abnormal thing, is that we was diagnosed with ALS in November of 22 Yeah, yeah.

Courtney Townley 7:49
So, because this podcast is really geared towards midlife women, I think we have a lot of outliers, right? People of all ages listen to the show, but we do have a lot of women in midlife, and I think midlife presents us with so much opportunity to experience grief. Yeah, in terms of, I always I think of grief as, for me, kind of a letting go, a release of attachment. It’s there’s a level of acceptance for things shifting and changing. But when I think of grief at midlife, I think of grieving that our physiology is changing, right? There’s a level of grief that goes along with that, and certainly with a diagnosis like ALS, that’s a whole nother level of grief that goes with that. There’s, I think, a grief I hear a lot in conversations with clients around missed opportunities, or grief around feeling like they they maybe wasted time or didn’t pursue certain things, right? A lot of grief around parents passing, parents, aging, children leaving what comes to mind for you when we think of midlife grief?

Claire Schulz Bergman 9:05
One of the things while you were talking is just the the identities that we hold up until things like parents dying and children leaving and new diagnoses. I feel with grief like grief is a grief is an emotion. Grief is with us always, and any kind of change can bring about grief. So it may be a death, or it may be the choice to change jobs. It may be a child leaving and becoming an empty nester all of those health diagnosis all of that change can bring about the feeling of loss and just the emotions of grief that come up with it. And I think what I’ve learned for myself and in my work is that each new change that kind of. Uh, bring brings that grief up. Take ice. Let me back up a minute. I see grief kind of like an onion. And so something might happen. And when another thing happens, it takes another peel off the onion or or maybe, like, picks up the scalp a little bit. Yeah. And so grief is something that we live with, and it sort of for me, lives in a little corner of my heart, and sometimes so I walk my life with it. Sometimes it runs the show a little more than others. Sometimes, if a bigger like a diagnosis of ALS, or like when my children left for college, for sure, when my dad died, sometimes it is is bigger and takes up more of my emotional space and my mental energy, and sometimes it just is able to kind of walk alongside me in my life. Yeah, so that was a lot, but I there’s a change. Can bring it up and change of whatever, whatever that might be.

Courtney Townley 11:05
I love what you said there about it’s it just walks with me through my life. Because I think that’s so important to recognize. It’s like any emotion, in a way, in the sense that anger is always walking with me. You know, sadness, happiness, joy, like they’re always walking with us. But of course, different ones are sort of brought to the surface and highlighted at different times, right? And certainly different experiences of our life change the intensity of that emotion. And I also love that you mentioned like that. It’s that you associate it with change, because when I think about so much change in our life, a lot of it is conscious change, like you mentioned, changing jobs. Some people choose to divorce and change relationships. Yeah, people change where they live, right? And there’s, it’s so fascinating to me that that can be such an exciting time, and grief is still there, right? Because there is that as a letting go,

Claire Schulz Bergman 12:09
yeah, yeah. I absolutely felt it after leaving my job of 18 years, when I, I mean, there was a lot going on at that time, but leaving that job. I mean, it was a conscious and very it was a very good decision, really good for my life, and it was really sad to do that and leave, leave, what I was leaving and what I had built. I think about that with divorce, I have clients who know that their divorce was the right decision, and they are grieving the loss of that relationship, or what they what they were hoping for in the future with their husband or spouse. So so I think it, I think it is change, definitely, even if it is a positive change and a very thoughtful and intentional change, can still bring those feelings. And I think sometimes that throws people off, like they think, why am I not feeling happy about this? But you know, that’s where the curiosity comes in. So what, what am I feeling, and how do I respond to this? And how do I take care of myself in the midst of knowing that I did something that I know is right for me, and it’s a bull and and I’m having these feelings,

Courtney Townley 13:25
yeah, and if we’re not careful right, recognizing and honoring that it’s there, and it’s there for good reason, we can do all kinds of crazy things to avoid feeling it right. We distract ourselves, we numb ourselves, we we have a lot of mental chatter about what it means to grieve and why it’s wrong, and all of that, of course, just creates a lot of unnecessary suffering. Yeah.

Claire Schulz Bergman 13:48
And the other thing with grief, you know, I, I’m I see a lot of clients who have had death and and come to me because there’s been a death that they’re grieving, but our culture doesn’t view I mean, we are we get what? Three days to get over somebody’s death, three days of bereavement at work, and then we’re back at it. And our culture doesn’t allow us to have the time and space to grieve something that in the way that works best for us. And so we as people, and whether we’re talking about death or something else that maybe the culture doesn’t even think we should grieve like an intentional decision, we need to be the ones who put those boundaries around ourselves. We need to pull back. If we need to pull back, we need to give ourselves a little if, if if we can maybe a little more mental health days, maybe, if we do need to go back to work, we don’t over schedule ourself after work, so we are really gentle and kind and compassionate to ourselves during these times.

Courtney Townley 14:57
I really hear advocating for yourself in that right. Because you might not you know the parameters of your job, or whatever it may be, may not be conducive to that, like in terms of how many days off you get for bereavement, but asking for what you need and advocating for that, I think, is so important, because there is no there is no timeline, there is no certainty to grief. There is no like, Oh, two weeks and you’ll be fine, right? But it’s over in a certain period of time. So let’s back up for a second and with, like, with grief, because I always think of emotions as messengers. They’re right. We remove the good or the bad label, and really just think about the intel that emotions are offering us. And when you experience grief and you work people, you help people through their own grief, how do you think about grief? Like, how do you what do you think is the message there in part, like, why is it showing up? I mean, yes, it’s loss, yes, it’s change, yeah,

Claire Schulz Bergman 16:07
I think it’s different. I think, I think it’s different for everyone, and I think it’s different based on what the what the circumstances, yeah, and, and I think that’s, that’s why it’s important to feel and listen to and just pay attention to what comes up when we’re in that state of and oftentimes, people aren’t even labeling it as grief. They’re just kind of telling me, you know, here’s how I’ve been feeling. I’ve been feeling down, I’ve been feeling really irritable, like all of these things, and we come to the kind of mutual agreement that probably what they’re feeling is grief. And so then the the next step is to get really curious about it. So that is, that’s the time to kind of listen for what this message is. I’ve had a lot of people who are and me for one too. My dad died suddenly in an accident, and a couple of my clients same thing, sudden, sudden death. And they have, and I have wanted to make some sort of meaning out of that life, or out of my life, because we never know when this is going to end. So meaning is whatever that is to the person that might be. The message that’s here in grief is, how can we make some meaning out of this?

Courtney Townley 17:36
Yeah, yeah. And really, it’s asking the question, right? Yeah,

Claire Schulz Bergman 17:44
this, yeah, yeah, yeah, and allowing, just being really open for allowing whatever to come up, to come up, without judgment, without, you know, criticism,

Courtney Townley 17:57
yeah. I always think of that quote that grief is the price of love. And you know, it’s even with things that I just I don’t really feel like maybe I did love, like leaving a job, right? That maybe towards the end, I wasn’t as in love with it as the day I accepted the job. And yet, there is a letting go. It’s letting go of the people I worked with, it’s letting go of the routine. It’s letting go of possibility in that, you know, in that position. But there is, like, I think grief is also a signal just that you cared, yeah, you cared about something. And that’s a beautiful thing, right?

Claire Schulz Bergman 18:36
Yeah, yeah. I love that. That might be the biggest message of it. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 18:45
So, can we speak a little bit about your grief with ALS and like, what that has looked like and like your because I’m sure it changes every day, yeah, so. And also, like, what are some tools that you’re utilizing to help you maneuver through this? Because it’s not like, just a complete thing, you know. It’s not like you’re like you said, your father passed away suddenly, yeah, and grief was definitely waiting for you. And this is like, a an ongoing and you’re grieving Your dad is an ongoing process as well. Please don’t hear me not saying, like saying otherwise, but I think that there’s, there’s a different ongoing process with your diagnosis.

Claire Schulz Bergman 19:29
Yeah, so I think, you know, it’s really interesting. Elizabeth Keebler, Ross has the five stages of grief, and they are sort of, there’s controversy around them now, but I think they’re kind of a good place to start. And just for reference, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. And when I think about my diagnosis, I’m sure that denial, well, I still probably feel that denial is still here, like. My brain oftentimes doesn’t my body often, wait, what is it? My brain oftentimes doesn’t realize that my body has ALS so I think I can do all these things, and then I go to do them, and it’s very difficult, and I recognize that I’m limited. So the grief surrounding this diagnosis has has hit me really strongly at times, and then at other times, it’s there, but it’s not as it’s not running the show. So over Memorial Day, I crashed my bike and I broke my ribs, and I um ambulance to the ER, even though I told my husband that we should take an Uber, he was like, you can’t get up, so we’re

Courtney Townley 20:53
ready to listen to you, right?

Claire Schulz Bergman 20:56
So, but that, I think, was the biggest after the diagnosis was the biggest significant time of grief that I felt in since I’ve been diagnosed, because I was so the ALS is affecting my arms, and I was really unable to use my arms at that time, and it gave me a glimpse into what my future is going to be like. And so there was a lot of just feeling really sad and not feeling like I wanted to do anything with sit on the couch, you know, and when friends reached out, I didn’t really want to see friends. So I think that there’s in those acute times, I think that there is a time and a place to pull back and to sit on the couch and watch TV if you need to, and, you know, do all the things. And then there is a time to find activities that kind of get get you out of the slump. So things, for me, are the things that that we’ve talked about that are better to do than the things that we numb with I call them feel good activities versus false good activities. So my feel good activities are like going on a walk or reading a book or doing yoga, meditating, those kind of things. False good activities being drinking wine and watching TV and, you know, shopping, things like that. And so what I try to do when I’m feeling it come up a little bit more is find one of those activities that I can do that I know will kind of at least for a little while, help me feel more grounded and better with what is going on in this moment.

Courtney Townley 22:41
Yeah, and how do you recognize when maybe you’re marinating a little bit too heavily in the sitting on the couch and struggling, you know, not wanting to get off, like, where? Like, how do you know when it’s it’s too much like, you need to reach out and ask for help. You need to get yourself out. You need to put apply some effort to sort of shift the dynamic, like, is there a trigger for you, or is there like a sign post for you on that

Claire Schulz Bergman 23:10
For me? And this is different, I think, for everyone too. But I don’t know how to say it in the other way than this, but I get really sick of myself, like, I get really tired of feeling like, you know, just I don’t I like to move. I like to engage. I’m not an extrovert, but I like to kind of have connection with people. And when I’m in those states, I feel like I like, I can do it for so long, and then I’m like, Okay, now I have to reach out, or now I have to get off the couch and go do something else. Yeah, I think for other people that I’ve worked with, they might have, like, a somebody who lives with them that just says that they’re worried about them, or they might have to do something else because their job is on the line, or their responsibilities come tap it on their door. Yeah, um, so I think that that depends really a lot on on what is going on with the person. Yeah, absolutely.

Courtney Townley 24:21
And it can be such a hard place, right when we’re deep in the throes of our grief, knowing like we are getting tired of it, but also needing to apply effort, whatever that looks like for you, to kind of work your way out of it, to be more proactive around it, that can feel like such an impossible place.

Claire Schulz Bergman 24:42
Yeah, yeah. And I think again, this goes, I don’t hierarchy grief at all. I think that if something, if a job, change, may not feel as significant to me, it could feel like the most significant thing to somebody else. But there are. Are, like, there are some things that I just said, I don’t hierarchy, but I’m gonna hierarchy it for here a minute, because I think, like, the death of my dad was way bigger than leaving my job. Yeah, and if you’re in, if a person is in a really significant grief, there is, there’s no timeline on that. And there’s, there is the kindness and the self compassion is to take the time that you need to kind of get through that sit on the couch as much as you want to in the beginning, in that acute time. Yeah, but eventually life continues, and people start to realize that they need to move forward in some way, and then that might be talking to friends, reaching out to a counselor or coach or a therapist, finding a grief group, something like that. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 25:53
it’s amazing how many clients I’ve talked to over the years who’ve gone through, you know, deep grief, loss of loved ones, loss of just anything that really mattered to them and how tired they are on the other side and not under like just completely dissociating from that, like not understanding that the fatigue and the low energy and all of that. Of course, I always say that grief is a very resource heavy emotion, right? It requires a lot of us to experience it, and I think that that’s where a lot of compassion comes in, yeah. And, you know, recognizing that self care in the face of that kind of grief looks very different from self care in a space where it’s walking like you said earlier, walking alongside of you, but it’s not necessarily running the show.

Claire Schulz Bergman 26:47
Yeah, and imagine if you’re in that really acute grief time, regardless of what stemmed what caused it, if you if you’re judging yourself, if you’re holding yourself to I should be through this by now. This shouldn’t still be bothering me. What in the world is wrong with me, like all of that negative self talk? Yeah, that’s what’s exhausting, too. So it’s already exhausting, because grief is exhausting. And then to add all of that really strong inner critic, grief talk or judgment on it, that just makes it even more exhausting. So on the end, on the opposite side, whatever. And I don’t even know that we, you know, get, we don’t, definitely don’t, get over it. We walk through it, and then we kind of, like I said, I kind of carried along with us a little smaller package, if we can get curious about what this is telling me. How does this actually feel? How does this grief actually feel in my body? So then, if we have another moment that triggers it, we can go, oh, yeah, this is grief, probably. And what did I do that helped me back then? Okay, I need to find my feel good activities and go walk in nature or talk to my friend or sit and cry, whatever it is when we get curious and we offer ourselves that self compassion that’s what’s going to allow us to be on the other side of that acute phase and be feeling like we have a little more resources to move forward in life? Yeah, absolutely.

Courtney Townley 28:27
And I think guilt too, right? Like, there’s this guilt that comes with when we have been processing our grief and, like, I love how you said it there. Like it just becomes a little bit of a smaller package. I think sometimes we can get caught up in this feeling of guilt that it’s becoming a smaller package, and so it’s almost like we fight for it to come back, because we think that it’s a way of honoring whatever we’ve lost. Yeah, yeah, I agree, and I again, that’s a lot of thought work, which you alluded to, because what I’ve heard so far is like we make grief unnecessarily hard, when we judge ourselves, when we make it mean terrible things, when we buffer so we again numb ourselves or distract ourselves with things that chemically alter us. Can you think of any other ways that we make grief unnecessarily hard?

Claire Schulz Bergman 29:18
You had a really good list.

Courtney Townley 29:22
I reviewed things on there. Yeah,

Claire Schulz Bergman 29:25
I think, I think maybe just the denial that grief might be what we’re feeling when we’re when we’re in those moments that don’t, that aren’t, like, really obvious. You should feel grief because somebody died. Like, that’s just so obvious. Like, yeah, you know, if somebody close to you dies, you lose that person grief? Yes, that makes sense. But if we don’t recognize that we have grief in those other kind of less obvious times, I think that makes it harder too,

Courtney Townley 29:56
definitely. I think self neglect makes. Hard too, and I do realize, right, like administering self care when you are deep in the throes of grief, of course, has its challenges because we don’t want to apply effort. We’re low on resources, but even maybe the unwillingness to ask for help, to ask for support, to have someone cook you a meal, to have someone take your dog for a walk, right like just that, that maybe is, in part, what self care really looks like when we’re deep in the throes of it. Yeah, yeah.

Claire Schulz Bergman 30:31
Really for me, because my, my the changes with the ALS are coming fairly slowly, thank goodness I still have the need for people to help me with things, and that’s been a big thing for me to get through. Because I I’m independent. I want to do things myself. Yeah? So, yeah. Somebody once said to me, the greatest act of love is allowing someone who loves you to do something for you in those moments. And I was like, that’s true. Like the people who want to help, they want to help, so allow them to help. Yeah, here’s my tip for the people who are wanting to help, choose something to do instead of ask what somebody needs, because asking the grieving person what they need makes that person have to think about what would be helpful? Yeah, sometimes in that acute phase of grief, and even if it’s just something that feels like it’s going on for a long time, like my stuff, I feel like it’s here all the time. I don’t have the energy to think about, okay, it would be really helpful if someone would pull so, like, look at my garden and know that I might I need my weeds pull

Courtney Townley 31:43
Yeah. Take initiative. Take initiative. Yeah. So I’m curious, too, because support, like having a support network, is so important to help us move through our grief, and also just to help support us while we take that time to grieve, because no one can do that grief for us, right? That’s our work. But what would you say to somebody who really just feels kind of alone in their grief, like they don’t know where to reach out, or they don’t know how to create a support network? Like, what would be maybe some tips for that? Yeah, I

Claire Schulz Bergman 32:15
mean, I there’s lots of online grief groups, and they is really, I can’t remember this. There’s one that is specifically has several different groups for several like pet loss and different things that don’t feel necessarily like the traditional thing you would spend time in a grief group for, yeah. But you can just, you can look up. You can google grief groove, pet loss, job loss, whatever it is. And you can come up with some, some groups and that might feel safer in the beginning, to be a little less a little removed from, from the sitting with somebody like a counselor, a therapist or a friend and talking about these things. But I think that it’s so important to have that community, whatever way you can find it. So reaching out in that way would be really beneficial for somebody. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 33:18
what have been your maybe, strategies that you’ve used for kind of processing your grief, like, has it been talk therapy? Has it been journaling? Has it been your yoga and meditation? Like all the above,

Claire Schulz Bergman 33:31
oh, the above, all the above. Yeah, but I have noticed that writing, there are moments Well, I can’t write anymore. It’s dictating my I don’t, I can’t even read what I write when I write, because my hands don’t work. But there are words and feelings that flow, that feel like they need to come out at times, and then other times. My journal just is over to the side and I don’t even look at it for a long period of time. Yeah, for me, I’ve, I mean, I’ve done a couple fundraisers. So for me, it’s getting active and trying to, like, do something about this. So that might be really good for somebody who’s, like, you know, somebody was lost for drunk driving, or even, like, you know, if a child is diagnosed with a disability, or a learning disability, or something like that, that that can bring bring grief for what could have been, or what the idea of how life was going to go with this family member? Yeah, and so maybe that person gets involved in advocating for pro programs or groups or whatever for children that are like theirs. So I think getting active can be one thing that could be helpful too. Yeah, that’s also something that could make meaning out of whatever’s going on. Yeah? But yeah, meditation, that’s a grounding thing for me. Yoga certainly is definitely I’ve reached out to you. I’ve reached out to my therapist when I have acute times that, like after I broke my ribs, yeah, I was like, I need to talk to my therapist. Yeah? Because, you know, it’s so I think all of those things are, are helpful, and it, again, really depends on what the person feels like they’re ready to do and willing to do, and has helped in the past for that person.

Courtney Townley 35:29
Yeah, it’s what you and I, I mean, you know, talk about so often, which is like, even in grief, we have to be willing to run experiments, because everyone’s process is so wildly different, and what you need in one moment of grief is probably wildly different from what you need another moment of grief, right? And so it is that kind of that willingness to just dip your toe in the water and see what does work for you, yeah. And,

Claire Schulz Bergman 35:54
and the way to kind of start doing that is to just, again, get really curious about what’s happening now, so when, and that means presence, so in the day, throughout the day, just getting like, how am I feel? Checking in. We talk about this all the time, yeah, checking in and saying, How do I feel now? What do I need? What is the wisest and kindest thing I can do for myself, and how do I feel? Okay. I’m feeling pretty good. Okay. Well, what is going on right now? I’m outside. I’m talking to my friend. Okay. These are things that need to go on your feel good list. Yeah, because you know that you that, whatever it is that you’re feeling okay right now. Yeah. Take note of what you’re doing, where you are, who’s around you, yeah. And then same with like, I’m really feeling crappy right now. Well, what happened? Well, I ate sugar cereal for breakfast and sugar cereal for lunch and sugar cereal for dinner, you know. So maybe that’s not the best thing. So paying attention to all of that is really important. Then you have your list of what can help get you through. And I think you really need to have it on a list so it’s super easy to look at when you’re in those moments where you are can’t think of what anything that’s going to make you feel better. You can just look at your list. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 37:13
it’s so funny. Like, when I do thought work with clients, right there, they always tend to want to gravitate towards the negative in terms of, like, Okay, well, I’m feeling bad because I’m having all these negative thoughts. And it’s like, okay, but recognize what makes you feel good. Like, let’s, let’s go for the quality of that thinking too, because it just gives you evidence for how powerful focusing on that those different thoughts is. And that’s I hear that echoed here for sure, which is so powerful. So yeah, being willing to experiment taking note of kind of what helps you to to bring a little life back into your life and help you heal, because that’s really what we’re talking about, right? Is, is that healing? Yeah, as you were talking to I thought of that one of my favorite questions, because I just feel like it always realigns me so fast is what would love do here, yeah, and in grief, when I’m in the throes of it, what would love do here? She would, she would put me to bed. She would help me take a bath. She would feed me. She would, you know, like, maybe run her hand through my hair and just really be nice to kind to me. Yeah, and, and I think that, yeah, that’s

Claire Schulz Bergman 38:20
and what happens is we let judgment come in, and I talked about this earlier, but if we’re, you know, oh, I should be getting off the couch and like, making the dinner and folding the laundry, doing all the things love is gonna tell me I actually Need to just put myself to bed totally. So, yeah, I think that’s really good. She’s

Courtney Townley 38:44
so wise. Love is so she really is. And we barely let her run the show, right? We let all, like you said, the judgment, the self doubt, that all the other stuff, and just it is. It’s such a I feel like it’s the ultimate self care question, right? Like, if you’re ever rumbling with knowing how to take care of yourself, what would love do here? Yeah, great one, yeah. So any, any final words for what you would want an audience member to hear in terms of grief?

Claire Schulz Bergman 39:14
I just think that. I just want everyone to really understand that, that the grief, having grief in your life, is normal, and there is nothing wrong with you if you grieve something that the culture thinks is, you know, not something that deserves this gigantic emotion of grief. Um, because the other thing is, grief is Kate doesn’t always, we’ve talked about this too. Doesn’t always have to be gigantic. So if there’s little, if there’s something that just feels off, maybe getting curious about it, and, you know, asking the questions, am I feeling? What am I feeling here? Maybe it is grief. What does that mean? I. I don’t only I’m I am certified in grief therapy, but I don’t only see people who come after death, but I think every single one of my clients has some form of loss in their life, and therefore we talk about grief. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 40:17
life is grief, right? It’s a constant letting go and changing, and all the things that we’ve talked about today. And I read somewhere like, if you gave me the option between, like, a life with no grief or a life with grief, I would choose grief every time. Because what does it say about your life to never experience grief? Right? You never cared about anything, right? Yeah,

Claire Schulz Bergman 40:41
and you can’t feel the really beautiful feelings of joy and peace and no excitement if you’re not allowing yourself to feel the more difficult feelings. So yeah, I mean, for me, it’s really what I’ve learned through just my life, through this diagnosis, through the death of my dad, through working with all my people, is to just get really, really curious when something is here that feels interesting, that feels like it might like, I could be like, I don’t want to feel this today. Okay, well, what is going on? How does it feel? What am I thinking? We talk about this all the time. Thought work. Yeah, it’s sort of a scary thing to lean into grief, but it can really be peaceful, and it can be information giving and so all of that, I really don’t have to be scary.

Courtney Townley 41:45
Yeah, I love that you mentioned that, because I do so often when I’m working with clients who are avoiding grief, right? They’re drinking and they’re eating and they’re doing everything but feeling their grief, the rationalization for that is, if they allow themselves to feel it, they’ll never pull out of it. That’s 100%

Claire Schulz Bergman 42:04
when my dad died, I thought, if I allow myself to feel this, I’m gonna drop to my knees and I will never get up. Yeah, and I allowed myself to feel it eventually. I mean, there was a moment where I was like, I don’t, you know, this is too much. And I think that feeling that allowing has, it’s like building a muscle. It’s like that allowing has, then made me go, okay. I got through the worst of what I thought could happen. He went on a vacation, never came home. It was pretty traumatic. And now, okay, now there’s going to be more grief in my life. My other people will die. I got diagnosed with this terminal illness, all of these things, but I know that I made it through what I thought was going to put me out for good. Yeah. And so there’s you build that that muscle to be able to tolerate it more and more.

Claire Schulz Bergman 42:58
One of the things that is interesting when we talk about people avoiding when I worked in adoption, I worked with birth mothers who were placing their babies for adoption, and that is so I mean, there’s grief all over the place in the adoption world, and for the women who did not allow themselves to feel The depth of what the feelings were that were there, it’ll come out crooked somewhere, like I would sit in court with them, and they wouldn’t be able to get through court because they had not felt all the grief that led up to that point. It might be a year after that. It might be five years after that, but if it’s stuff down, somehow, some way, it will come up. So that, to me, is the and it will come up in a way that is way worse than probably what’s feeling right now. Yeah. So that, to me, is why I really want to help people when they come to me, to walk through that with them, and to kind of help them understand what to expect, and help them be kinders themselves and all of those things, so that they don’t have it come up crooked when they’re, you know, in the least possible, the least the time when they really don’t want it to come out. Yeah, it’s just better for people,

Courtney Townley 44:18
definitely, and like, considering the work of like Gabor Mate, right, who talks a lot about the correlation between the stuff that we’re unwilling to feel and then the autoimmune challenges and all the things that you know, like saying that someone died of a broken heart like that is a real thing. Yeah, you know that that that we if we don’t process it in healthy ways, we don’t find the support networks, we don’t learn how to navigate it in a way that keeps us well, we can get ourselves into a whole lot of trouble, right?

Unknown Speaker 44:48
Yeah, yeah.

Courtney Townley 44:50
I so appreciate you, my friend. Thanks for having this conversation. Thank

Claire Schulz Bergman 44:53
you, yeah, thanks for having me.

Courtney Townley 44:55
Yeah. I think it was a really important

Claire Schulz Bergman 44:57
one. Yeah, me too.

Courtney Townley 44:58
Thank you. Thank.

Courtney Townley 45:06
Thank you for listening to the Grace and Grit podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story, and it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self care. You are worth the effort and with a little grace and grit, anything is possible you.