Unpack Your Grief Case: How to Actually Support Someone Who’s Grieving with Dina Bell-Laroche

[00:00:01] Dina: What I'm trying to do, inspired by people like you, is to help people understand that the brave move is actually to express, not suppress, what is a natural human involuntary response to loss, which is a severed attachment. So the normal, healthy thing to do is to go, ouch, to retreat, to take a moment, to recover from our broken hearts.

[00:00:27] But our capitalistic society under a patriarchal regime isn't rewarding us for doing that. In fact, it's the opposite. Get back to being busy. And busy is the last thing that our broken hearts need.

[00:00:55] Kate: Hey, there. Welcome back to Rawish with Kate Eckman. You're in for a really special treat today. This episode is going to feel like a beautiful, warm hug when you need it the most. And we all need a hug regardless of where we are in our day or in our journey. And I'm just so delighted to bring you someone who is an exceptional space holder and just making you feel so good, so grounded, so calm, so peaceful.

[00:01:23] And it's a topic that not a lot of people really want to dive into on grief and loss. It's uncomfortable. A lot of people are avoidant of this topic, but I'm finding, and I promise you, that when you allow yourself to feel your feelings and the only way out is through and go through it, literally everything we desire is on the other side of looking at our stuff and feeling and healing our stuff.

[00:01:49] That dream job, the dream partner, the dream relationship, the money, the success, the abundance, the joy, the peace, the calm, all of it is on the other side of this. So it's so worth tackling and diving into, and we're going to do it in the most gentle, loving way here with grief and loss expert extraordinaire, Dina Bell-Laroche. Welcome to Rawish.

[00:02:13] Dina: Ah, Kate, thank you so much. You're such a bright light. And anytime I have the opportunity to connect with people like you that want to go deep-- you and I, maybe we've been rewarded to be mountain climbers. What's the next mountain that we're going to scale?

[00:02:32] And what I've learned and discovered is the real work, is the work that maybe nobody else appreciates, but we feel. And then when we do this work of mining the gems that are within us, as you so beautifully opened up with, anything becomes possible. And that includes giving ourselves permission and time to be with the pain, right? The grief.

[00:02:56] Kate: Yeah.

[00:02:57] Dina: Yeah.

[00:02:58] Kate: You remind me of this therapist that I saw after I lost my loved one, Sam, to suicide back in 2015. And I remember coming out of this session and saying to a friend, "Wow, that was the most extraordinary session I've ever had with a therapist." And the friend said, "Oh, what did she say?" And I thought about it and I said, she really didn't say much of anything, but it was the quality of her listening.

[00:03:24] And I just felt so heard and acknowledged and seen and no judgment, no agenda. And I thought, wow, that's so powerful. And it's so rare, sadly. It's such a gift. And it's one of the things that made me pursue an advanced degree in coaching and getting these skills and tools to learn and what a gift it is.

[00:03:46] And even just meeting you and the space you were able to hold for me. Didn't really have to say much at all, but just the quality of your presence. And it's something I'd love for you to talk about in our episode today. We have so much to get to, but it is a skill that I would love everyone to learn because it will improve every relationship that you have, especially with yourself.

[00:04:07] I almost asked you a question, but something that you did when my training with you, that was so impactful for all of us is you would always start our sessions with a song and/or a poem. And so I'd love if we could start with a poem to really set the tone today.

[00:04:22] Dina: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you for that invitation. And I love this because I never really know, as you know, with some of the work we've done together, which poem is going to call to me. And so as we were warming up together in advance of the conversation, this poem arose. And I've been playing with this poem now for about five years, and I thought it would an exquisite way for us to step into the stuff that nobody else really wants to talk about.

[00:04:52] But aren't we glad when we invite people into the grief club? It's the club that we never want to join, but aren't we glad that it's there when we're experiencing it? So this poem, is by Mickey Scott B. Jones. You may have heard of it. It's An Invitation to Brave Space.

[00:05:10] Kate: Hmm.

[00:05:11] Dina: Yeah.

[00:05:12] Kate: I'm excited. When people render me speechless, I know I'm in a great place.

[00:05:18] Dina: Right? Yeah. So move over, safe space. Welcome to a brave space. So here is the invitation. Invitation to brave space because there is no such thing as a safe space. We exist in the real world. We will carry scars, and we all have caused wounds. In this space, we seek to turn down the volume of the outside world.

[00:05:42] We amplify voices that fight to be heard elsewhere. We call each other to more truth and love. We have the right to start somewhere and continue to grow. We have the responsibility to examine what we think we know. We will not be perfect. The space will not be perfect. It will not always be what we wish it to be, but it will be our brave space together and we will work on it side by side.

[00:06:14] Kate: That's so beautiful. Thank you. It feels comforting because I think when we go through pain or heartache or grief, we feel alone. We forget that other people have gone through something similar. We forget that there are people besides family members or friends we've known a long time. We can be introduced to people like yourself and maybe it's someone we randomly meet at dinner who we strike up a conversation with, like I did last night. That there are people who care.

[00:06:43] I think that was one of my biggest takeaways from one of our classes, is at the end, and you asked us for our takeaway and I wrote down, there are people who care. And even just saying it out loud makes me want to weep. And I'm like, "Why do we forget that there are people who care?" I think because we carry grief in our grief cases.

[00:07:01] You coined that term, which I love. We all have our grief cases that we carry around. And I think how sad that we have to be reminded that there are people who care. But I think we've been let down or disappointed by some key members, or it feels like a letdown when anyone dies, or we don't get the love that we deserve. Can you speak a little to your journey and this work and what made you take on such a challenging topic and do it so eloquently?

[00:07:32] Dina: First, I would just like to honor that experience that you just modeled for us. I think it takes so much courage for us to show up fully human and to not repress but actually express what's arising in us when we touch into a wound. And so what you modeled for everyone, dear Kate, is, oh, there's a sudden temporary upsurge in grief. And instead of suffocating it, I'm actually going to allow it to be expressed. And how is that a gift of intimacy into me you see, for me, for your listeners, for the world? So thank you for modeling that.

[00:08:10] Kate: Thank you.

[00:08:11] Dina: Yeah. So about me. Well, you and I share quite a bit. We've only just begun to get to know each other. I was a trained journalist, so I was taught early on to the power of words and how they can shape our world. And to be curious about any one thing. When my younger sister, Tracy, was diagnosed with a tumor that was 14 pounds, and that tumor was growing alongside her baby boy that was inside of her.

[00:08:37] So she and our family, very close, we all just froze. We didn't know how to navigate all of this. And the care team around her, they themselves were caught in and caught up in this deep desire for Tracy to survive. And she didn't survive. She died 13 months, just two weeks shy of her 30th birthday, leaving behind a 13-month-old.

[00:09:04] And I had, at the time, a three-month-old in my arms. So you can imagine the trauma of navigating, going to and from the hospital, and just trying to figure out how Tracy was going to survive. We never, ever gave ourselves permission to think that this wasn't going to work out.

[00:09:23] Kate: Wow.

[00:09:24] Dina: And the care team around us, I would say for the most part, they fell in love with Tracy. It was hard not to fall in love with her. She was just that kind of person. So that traumatic experience and watching her take her last breath, and as I write in my book, the beep, beep, beep of turning off the machine and then stillness and silence, none of us were prepared for the aftermath.

[00:09:50] And sometimes when there's an earthquake, it shakes you to your core, and that's what happened. But the aftermath was even harder because, as you said, Kate, in the moment, we allow people to bear witness to us. When someone dies, we are granted a hall pass. People will be a little bit more patient, a little bit more compassionate.

[00:10:15] But when Tracy died, the aftermath of that, it lasts maybe three to four months and then people fall away as they naturally do. And grief, as you said earlier, it's a lonely experience. It's meant to be lonely because my attachment to my sister was different than the attachments my parents had to her, my husband had to her, her friends had to her, her husband had to her, her baby boy had to her. And so it is lonely, but what I'm trying to advocate for is it doesn't have to be so isolating. And when we don't have language to talk about grief as our internal response to loss and how that's different from mourning, which is taking our grief public and having a collective experience, being able to mourn together, and when we are suffocated by all these grief myths that surround us, move on, put it behind you. What do you mean you're still grieving your sister?

[00:11:11] We get conditioned, socialized to do certain things. And what I was discovering as a bereaved sister is my grief was disenfranchised. Things that I'm going to offer today or things that are in the textbooks, because I'm also now a certified thanatologist, what does that mean? It means that I'm specialized grief training. It just means I geek out on all this stuff that's called grief and loss, right?

[00:11:37] Kate: Yeah.

[00:11:38] Dina: And I'm also a coach, like you. I'm certified through the ICF, and I've got 2,500 hours of coaching hours, journeying alongside, accompanying clients in their grief and loss stories. And my professional career, I've grown up in elite sport. That's another intersection where you and I, our hearts collide. And I'd say about a decade ago, I started to introduce grief and loss language into the elite sport arena.

[00:12:09] And at first there was like, what are you doing talking about grief and loss in sport? It was like a foreign concept. Now, after having worked with hundreds of brave people, athletes, coaches, leaders, they understand that the social construct of elite sport makes it so that every time we're vying for the medal, the outcome, there is loss in those experiences.

[00:12:38] And when we download this social conditioned way of being with loss to the experience of the young people in communities, you can imagine that they grow up with an aversion to anything loss related. Suck it up. Put it behind you. Stop crying like a girl.

[00:12:59] Kate: Wow. Let it go. Get over it.

[00:13:01] Dina: Yeah, move on. And then we reward people for being "brave." And what I'm trying to do, inspired by people like you, is to help people understand that the brave move is actually to express, not suppress, what is a natural human involuntary response to loss, which is a severed attachment.

[00:13:23] So the normal, healthy thing to do is to go, ouch, to retreat, to take a moment, to recover from our broken hearts. But our capitalistic society under a patriarchal regime isn't rewarding us for doing that. In fact, it's the opposite. Get back to being busy. And busy is the last thing that our broken hearts need, right?

[00:13:46] Kate: Yeah. Amen. Yeah. Thank you for explaining all of that, because I think a lot of people, as you're talking, I'm thinking of times where I even think of the morning-- I found out Sam, my love, died in the evening and was up all night, hysterical, and then I had this huge job the next day at Saks Fifth Avenue.

[00:14:07] I was working as a model at the time, and it was this lingerie campaign, which paid a lot. That was how I was raised too, to suck it up. I have the military father, and I was a swimmer, and it was like, you just keep going and you press through, and that's just how I was raised. And I wasn't in a position to turn down this money and bills to pay in New York city.

[00:14:28] And looking back at it, it makes me sad. And I just want to hold and hug myself from a few years ago. But I remember this photographer that I worked with regularly. And I was a little disheveled keeping myself together, but he said, "What's wrong?" And I explained what happened. The love of my life jumped to his death, and he walked away from me.

[00:14:50] He didn't even acknowledge what I just said. There was no, even, I'm sorry. And it was so painful. And he wasn't the only one that could not see me or meet me at all there. And I didn't expect him to respond like someone highly trained like yourself would, but I started noticing these patterns in my life, whether it's something as severe and significant as that kind of trauma or loss, or maybe losing a co-ed soccer game, and you're bummed about that.

[00:15:18] But something we talk about in coaching as well is you can only take your clients and meet them as deeply as you've met yourself. And the importance of doing this work and fine tuning your instrument before you play it for the world and how important it is from a moral perspective to really work on yourself and your own stuff.

[00:15:36] And so I just applaud you for taking on this work because I wanted to ask you, and we can go in a little bit-- I just spoke to it about why this is so difficult for people to talk about feelings at all, to express and to feel as opposed to numb, suppress, avoid. It's the grief and loss in itself, but then the secondary grief and loss of people making you feel terrible for being sad or not knowing how to be there for you.

[00:16:05] Can you speak a little bit to that and those of us who have experienced that so people have some tools or insight the next time someone is really suffering and we can be better for one another?

[00:16:16] Dina: Wow. I just want to honor Sam and your experience. And what people often don't understand or appreciate is we can go back in time to those moments when the loss occurred and we can, through ritual, repair some of the wounds that we still carry. Maybe I'll start with a story and this will help people.

[00:16:45] I will address some of your beautiful questions through the story. So earlier this year, I engaged in four-day, a ritual, a retreat, and it was really beautiful. And because your listeners know that both of us were in elite sport, which is very masculine as an energy form, being with women in a ritualized way and being surrounded by love and compassion and sisterhood in a four-day retreat where we're in the mountains, it was very disruptive.

[00:17:21] And for me, disruption is actually the space where we can grow and examine and challenge some of the conventional, traditional things, like our upbringing, that we are beholden to. But then when we give ourselves permission to examine, why is that, things can change.

[00:17:41] So in one of the ceremonies, we were invited into a hot seat, and as coaches, we know what that is. We're in the center of an experience. We're being guided by someone who's invited us to explore something that might need some attention.

[00:17:56] And I didn't really know that there was anything else for me to process with the death of my sister until I was in the hot seat. And as she invited me to step into and to be with something that needed some attention, I was transported back to 23 years and a half ago, the moment when Tracy was lying in her bed and there were seven of us surrounding her-- my parents, my husband, my sister's husband, my grandmother and my brother.

[00:18:32] And so the seven of us were surrounding her and the nurse came in and shut the machine down. So there was just stillness. And so that was traumatic. And I never would have used the word trauma. Nobody socialized us and said this is a traumatic experience.

[00:18:47] Watching someone you love die is often traumatic, especially in these kinds of situations. So what arose in me was this deep longing to send my sister off the way that I would now, as a death doula. I have rituals around this. I would play music. We would hold each other. We would sing. We would chant.

[00:19:13] We would mourn because these are all normal expressions when you're in a goodbye experience of someone that you cherish. But none of that occurred. We were all frozen in our individual traumatic experience, which explains why Kate, when the beep, beep, beep of the microwave would go off, I would jolt, and I never even consciously knew why.

[00:19:40] But then I knew why, because the beep, beep, beep brought me back into that experience. So with this amazing guide, she went and found music. There were six women and myself surrounded me, and we created a send off for my sister, 23 years and a half later. It was so profound and I felt-- think of grief as our sediment, the stuff that is also nourishing.

[00:20:14] Yes, the stuff descends, descends, descends into the bottom of the well, if you will. But that's where the sediments are. And there right alongside that is David Whyte's beautiful poem, The Well of Grief. There are the small round coins thrown by people who are inviting us into a shared experience where all trauma carries grief, but not all grief is traumatic.

[00:20:42] So back to your beautiful question, people often want to know like, why is it so hard? It's so hard because we're attached. It's based on John Bowlby's attachment theory. And what we attach to, we derive meaning. There's a form of often pleasure, often pain, but often pleasure. And when that attachment is severed, we're going to experience grief.

[00:21:07] Now, people often don't know what to do with that. Why? Because they're a mirror. I'm a mirror to you. And if you witness me being in grief, it's uncomfortable. I want to make that pain go away. Why? Because you're a reminder to me that someone I love might die. So then I'm making your grief about me.

[00:21:35] So the bereaved person often ends up comforting the people that are coming here to comfort them. So we get conditioned to be the good girl, the brave girl, the silent girl, the one who's going to remember her sister through all of these fundraising. We've built schools in Nicaragua, a learning center, indigenous learning center here in Canada. We've raised tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars now through my sister's charity, Tracy's [Inaudible].

[00:22:08] Kate: Oh, that's beautiful.

[00:22:10] Dina: Yes, beautiful. And what I was able to recognize, in a way I was hiding behind my sister, because who's going to reject the sister who's propping up her beautiful deceased sister through this legacy work. And what I would say is it's so powerful and so beautiful that I stepped into that.

[00:22:31] And because I've been continuing to do the work, in a way it was like preventing me from growing alongside. I was stuck in a way of being her big sister and wanting to preserve her memory. So now I feel I have a healthier relationship with my deceased sister.

[00:22:53] And that is the theory of continuing bonds, where we can continue to have a relationship with the people that are deceased. Because just because they die doesn't mean my relationship with them has to die. But first I have to unattach, be with the pain of the loss, and then over time, my bereaved heart will refuse itself into something that is often a different version of me.

[00:23:21] I can't go back to the me that was the me before Tracy took her last breath. And this is what society wants us to do. Go back to being Kate before Sam died. Go back to being Dina. And now I'm like, no, I'm transformed.

[00:23:38] Kate: Yeah, I'm better.

[00:23:39] Dina: Because of my pain. But the rest of society often doesn't want us to be transformed because then we start asking other questions like our policies, our focus on consuming and producing. Maybe we start challenging status quo. Maybe we start speaking up for ourselves and ruffling feathers. And people are used to us being that version of a person. This is what Viktor Frankl says, "Will we allow our pain to inform our purpose?" That's the beautiful invitation.

[00:24:19] Kate: So much goodness there. And I want to acknowledge a few things. First of all, you and your beauty and brilliance. I want to acknowledge if anyone is feeling any discomfort, I'm on a body temperature rollercoaster. I just got in a span of a couple minutes, super hot and sweaty, freezing cold and chills.

[00:24:38] So I want to just acknowledge any discomfort that comes up, and we're here and we've got you, and if you need to press pause and revisit. But please do really use this episode as a companion to your healing and your health and your wellbeing and your transformation because we've all experienced grief. And if you haven't had any big grief yet, your time's coming. Sorry to say, but buckle up.

[00:25:01] Dina: It's true. Okay, just pause there, if we could.

[00:25:04] Kate: Yeah.

[00:25:05] Dina: Sometimes people feel guilty because they haven't experienced the big G. And we tend to compete, and you and I are competitors. We've grown up in an elite sports system where we have this and wait for the next grief work, a griefarchy.

[00:25:21] Kate: Yeah.

[00:25:22] Dina: This hierarchy of grief that says death of a child, followed by death of a spouse, followed by death of a parent, death of a sibling, death, death. So when someone comes to me bereft because their pet, their fur baby died--

[00:25:36] Kate: Oh, that's so hard.

[00:25:38] Dina: And they feel completely disenfranchised. I'll allow and invite the person whose loss has had them eat, praying, loving on the kitchen floor. That's how they usually find their way to me. Let the loss inform the needs that you have to attend to your broken heart. And know that I didn't say fix your broken heart or heal your broken heart. It's less about the focus on the attachment of the outcome. It's more, let us be guides together as we journey through your experience of loss.

[00:26:14] You know when you're climbing a mountain and then you have these grommets where you're attaching and it's anchoring yourself and then trying to trust that when you allow the weight to fall back, something's going to hold you? That's what we can do for each other. When we're bearing witness, it doesn't require specialized skill, but it does require us to show up, shut up, and listen. So what's our capacity to just witness and listen?

[00:26:44] Kate: And the power in that, something that's become so clear to me recently is that most people don't want or need our advice or for us to solve or fix anything. We need to be experienced. We need to be witnessed. We need to be acknowledged. And so something else that came up when you were speaking about Tracy, and again, it's part of my training and as soon as we went on to the next question, I said, "Oh gosh, I forgot to acknowledge", which I have before, but not in that moment, I'm so sorry about Tracy.

[00:27:19] That is heartbreaking. And I can't imagine there was so many things. But what occurred to me, I became a lot more compassionate towards that photographer who, in my experience ignored my pain, ignored what I said, did not acknowledge me.

[00:27:34] And so I have compassion for him because in that moment, there was so much, and I care for you so much. And especially thinking of her child and then all of you there and how it's impacted all of you and her being so young and how unfair, all of it, I think it was so much, and I'm here anchoring a show, and I'm mindful of time.

[00:27:56] And I think, as a journalist-- and this is one of the reasons I left the business, is I never got desensitized to all the death and destruction. And I don't want to be because then you're desensitized to all the joy and all of the good things. But I think part of my brain, rather than if we were at a coffee shop, for instance, just really sitting with that and acknowledging that, my brain is like, we're in a show. It's not live.

[00:28:21] I always record as though I'm live though. And it's just like, I can feel the producer in my ear, wrapping in 20 seconds. And so I'm like, I'm so sorry, Tracy, but please answer this last question that we need you to answer and then we got to go. So I just even want to acknowledge that for myself too, that I, in that moment in this conversation, didn't show up how I would have wanted to.

[00:28:43] So I think we're so distracted. We're managing so many things. Maybe that photographer was like, "Oh my gosh, I've got to shoot for 10 hours today. I can't take anything else on." And so I think letting people off the hook, but also being mindful. But that's why it's so important to talk about these things.

[00:29:00] So this is top of mind. And we've got our tools and we know how to respond better for not just other people, but for ourselves. How many times do we say to ourselves, like, you, why are you still sad? Or you need to get it to-- we judge and shame ourselves.

[00:29:17] Dina: All the time. And you know what's really powerful? First of all, thank you for acknowledging people who are just listening can't see that it immediately evoked an emotional response. My eyes started to fill up with tears, and Mary-Frances O'Connor, The Grieving Brain says our tears, when we're crying tears of pain and sorrow, there's toxins.

[00:29:41] We're getting the toxins out of our body. Our body knows how to heal, but will we give ourselves permission? And then when we're crying tears of joy, the alkalinity in the tears is low to non-existent because it's an emotional response, which is what you created in me. It's that witnessing, even almost 24 years later, when someone speaks her name.

[00:30:05] So people who are listening, one of the first invitations is speak their name. Speak their person's name. You will have heard Kate and I today talk about Sam and Tracy. And we're not denying that they died. We're just finding ways to stay connected to people who matter to us, who will always matter to us.

[00:30:27] And we know, us North Americans, informed by European culture, we've got a grief phobic, death denying relationship with endings. And other cultures don't. In Mexico, they have the Day of the Dead, Día de los Muertos. Other cultures know how to be informed and honor, revere the lineage from which they come.

[00:30:54] So they're not so fractured all the time. So this is us reclaiming what our bodies know so that we can move into reconciliation, which means to make myself whole again after the pieces of my heart have been shattered. I can come back to wholeness, but I'm not going to be the same person because that pain that I experience has created a new version of me.

[00:31:24] And it's not about being a better version. It's actually moving back into wholeness. What does the Dina now look like, feel like, sound like? What does she want? How does she want to show up in the world? And so what you're speaking to is-- generally, we were technical.

[00:31:44] People as journalists, we learned the science of being a journalist. And like you, I quickly didn't become a journalist because I just didn't have the metal for it, the heart for it. And when I support doctors, nurses, psychologists, therapists in bringing grief and lost literacy to their worldview, none of them, as a matter of their training, are taught grief and lost literacy for them as much as for their patient.

[00:32:15] So I'm trained in something called dignity therapy. Dr. Harvey Chochenov, he's a palliative psychiatrist, and he patented, I say that with a smile, this beautiful question, which is, what do I need to know about you to provide you with the best possible care? What do I need to know about you, Kate, to provide you with the best possible support in this moment, to parent in a certain way, to love, for our loved ones?

[00:32:44] If we can model that kind of sensitivity on our behalf first, that's why I'm on fire with supporting coaches like yourself to expand our grief and lost literacy. Because the work that we do as coaches in corporate America, corporate Canada, corporate Europe, these are people who have impact. The CEOs, if we can expand their grief and lost literacy on parallel tracks, we are now expanding their capacity to demonstrate compassion, vulnerability, authenticity.

[00:33:17] That is the antidote to some of the constriction we're now seeing in the world. So that is what I'm on fire with, equipping the technical people with greater capacity to show up fully human.

[00:33:31] Kate: Yeah. And I think it's us knowing when people ask that question. You're not going to get asked a lot. That's why, everyone, please find a certified professional coach or therapist, and you've got my information, and you got Dina's information now. So please use us and our resources and listen to this show again and again, which I will, because I'm feeling what my brain is doing, Dina.

[00:33:52] I'm processing a lot. I'm mindful, and a lot of different things from my life are coming to mind, examples, as you're talking. But it's so important that we know how to answer the question, what do you need right now? And for instance, I'll say, I really need my pain acknowledged.

[00:34:11] Because I think that's why some people struggle with supporting others during difficult times like grief and loss, is what do you hear? I don't know what to say. Or people are just like, "I'm so sorry." And then they think that's sufficient. And then they are avoidant or check out.

[00:34:26] Or I had a man who was when I was getting my degree at Columbia and we were peer coaching and I shared with him about Sam and I could tell he was physically there, obviously sitting across from me, but he was gone from the conversation and he brought it up when we were in discussion with the professor and then he shared what I shared and he said my brother died by suicide. So she said suicide and lost someone to suicide. And he's like, "I was gone. I was gone."

[00:34:56] And that's, I think, our body, our brain-- it makes me very weepy too-- to keep us safe. And so I understand that, but that's why it's so important we talk about this. Or even for me, again, I was the client, and most of our clients aren't trained coaches, but in that moment, I wish I could have just been a human and not doing my education and just said, "Hey, are you okay?" And talk to him about it.

[00:35:21] But I think the more we can just say, or even say, Dina, I don't need any advice right now. I'm feeling really unsupported and I just need to be acknowledged. But telling people, and then instead of thinking, I don't know what to say, or this is uncomfortable, or I'm ill-prepared to show up for this person, asking questions.

[00:35:42] Is that helpful to say to someone, you don't want to be rude or insensitive, but you just got taken out by whatever they said? Do we ask a question? How can we, as those of us who maybe never want to go into-- we'll say people listening or watching who don't want to go into advanced degrees in this. Some just simple things they can do in that moment with someone [Inaudible] or loved one.

[00:36:05] Dina: Yeah. Such a beautiful question. I would say, show up, shut up, and listen. So that's the first, just show up. The second thing I would encourage people to do is to really set your intention for this other human that you're here to support.

[00:36:21] Because if you can get clear on your intention, you might be willing to maintain the, it's going to be uncomfortable. So I'm going to show up. I'm going to offer to do something. So as opposed to, Kate, let me know if you need anything, which the brave person, we end up with grief fog.

[00:36:38] We can't really make sense of things. So Kate, on Wednesday, I'm going to pop by with your favorite meal. What time is good for you? Notice I'm being more directive. Or Kate, I'm just going to put out the garbage for you. Or Kate, I'd like to go for a walk. Would you like to go Wednesday or Friday?

[00:36:57] Because my grief brain can't compute any levels of complexity and now I'm going to feel supported. So what you're touching into, Kate-- we did do this actually in our training. I talked about Gary Chapman's Five Languages of Love.

[00:37:15] When we can understand someone's love language, is it physical touch? Is it gifts from the heart? Is it words of appreciation? Is it acts of service? So understanding someone's love language means that I'll get a sense of their grief language. And if I can get a sense of their grief language, I can show up and offer to companion someone in a way that's most going to help them. So understanding someone's coping language is really helpful. And one way to do that is to ask someone, what do you do when life goes sideways?

[00:37:51] Kate: I love that question.

[00:37:52] Dina: People are like, "I don't know." We tend to numb. So if that's too hard, then I would invite all of us to be thinking, okay, when I'm frustrated, when I'm feeling angry, when I'm feeling constricted, what do I do?

[00:38:04] For me, I need to organize. So I need to organize my closet, I need to organize something, or I bake. I have to do something. Other people, if they're more intuitive in their coping style, they might need to express. So this is people who rage. This is people who need to cry. This is people who need to vent. Well, then, you, as a companion, you know. You just show up. There's nothing for you to do. I don't have to fix Kate. I can just be a witness to her. That's gift enough.

[00:38:39] Kate: Yes.

[00:38:39] Dina: And then other people, Kate, they're more cognitive. They're more like, I need to research the disease, which I did on Tracy's behalf. I need to. My coping style, raising money for her, wanting to maintain that continued bond. I didn't have any of this language. I had to stumble and bumble. What was I doing? I was trusting myself, and I was feeling very timid almost.

[00:39:04] Why am I not doing it the way everybody else is encouraging me to do, which is move on, put it behind me. So understanding our coping styles will equip us with a lot more confidence to then allow the experience to unfold. Does that make sense?

[00:39:20] Kate: It does. And I hope everyone's doing this. I'm like, "Okay, I'm the intuitive." I'm a talker. I want to talk about it. And here I am on a show. I want to talk about it. And I think when my swim coach, the late great Larry Lyons died the summer before my senior year in high school, it was devastating for us at swim team. It was horrible.

[00:39:39] But I remember going to different teammates houses that day. And we were all swimming. Everyone has pools and we're swimming. I'm like, "Gosh, we can't stop swimming." But every single mother of my friends was baking. Every house you went to, there was eight things being-- it was just food everywhere.

[00:39:55] So I was seeing how all the mothers were dealing with it. And then I guess we were dealing with it talking, playing, swimming. So that's even something to notice and be aware of. And you asked me, how did you cope or what are you doing to cope?

[00:40:08] And I think in the past, or what does our culture say? Oh, I need a drink. And while I'm not anti alcohol, I really don't care for it much at all anymore because now my coping is to go to the meditation center. My coping is to take a course with someone like you and talk to you and create a show where we have these conversations.

[00:40:28] And last night I went and sat in the hyperbaric oxygen chamber. And it may sound excessive to some people, but it feels amazing. And it works. And everywhere everyone's like, "You're glowing." And I'm like, "I think that's the red light and oxygen and meditation and not drinking and not stuffing myself with pizza all the time to cope." It works.

[00:40:52] Dina: This is my tagline. When we do the grief work, it works. And what do we mean by it? You're modeling a sense of fulfillment, a sense of alignment. I feel more whole because I'm getting literally the oxygen that my body needs. What people don't understand is grief is not just an emotional journey of the soul.

[00:41:13] It's physical. When someone receives bad news, this is why they fall to their knees. So it's a complete journey of the human soul, physical, spiritual, relational. It reorders our entire way of being. Now, not all grief experiences are the are traumatic, right? But all trauma carries grief.

[00:41:37] This is why when people who suffer through PTSD, they do all of this work to rewire the brain because their bodies have suffered an assault to their selves. And then they do all this work, this trauma work, and then they get sad. And my point to them is, good. Let that out. You're now on the path to reconciling yourself. A lot of people don't understand because they're given ABCs and the 1, 2, 3s. Grief is not a pathology necessarily. For the most part, the brave people will get through the experience their souls intact, but it's in spite of the system and the community support, not because of it.

[00:42:21] But we need the community to come back together and reclaim what it means to be human. And when we do, we're going to start challenging some of the isms. When we look at colonialism and patriarchy and all of these structures that are person made, we are going to start to poke the bear and ask, why is this so unfair? Why are we distributing resources equally so that people don't have to suffer? We don't divert our gaze. We stay in the conversation, right?

[00:42:53] Kate: I'm getting a major download. May I please share?

[00:42:57] Dina: Yeah.

[00:42:57] Kate: There's so much emphasis in our culture on be happy. The books, the talks, the articles, the shows, the programming, the be happy, be happy, be happy. And listen, I'm one of the happiest people I know and I love happy. But think about it, Dina. I'm trying to think of anything I've seen, and there's only a few if there is because I can't think of anything right now. Where do you ever see any click bait or viral videos on how to be sad, how to be sad?

[00:43:30] I know you're laughing and it sounds absurd and people are like, "Why would you want to feel that?" I was saying to my friend's husband about some activity I was doing and some meditation. And I'm like, "Yeah, it brought up a lot of sadness." And he said, "That sounds horrible." And I said, "No, it was really good." Even breath work, which seems easy, I'm, oh, you're just breathing. Breath work is hard, and breath work, it does. It brings up a lot of stuff.

[00:43:54] And so a girl the other night said, "You're going to breath work tonight?" And she said, "No, I cried so hard the last time. I have a Christmas party, and I can't be crying." And so I get it. And I get that feeling happy is much more pleasant than feeling sad. Well, sometimes feeling sad is pretty juicy and amazing.

[00:44:10] Ooh, there's a lot of wisdom in our sadness and in our grief, as you know, but that's why I'm like, you'll have to come back. Because I want to keep having these conversations a little more guidance around getting really good at being sad, just so maybe then we don't have to spend as much time there.

[00:44:27] You get that down and then you get to deal with it. That's for me right now. There's something I'm overcoming, a wound. I'm hitting it head on. I'm Tom Brady going for my 100th Super Bowl title, because I know without a shadow of a doubt that if I go through this really challenging situation and heal this wound, a, I don't have to go deal with that.

[00:44:52] I get to feel so light and be at peace and have this dream life that's so close to my fingertips. I've got a great life now, but we all want other things. But that's why it's so worthy doing this work, because I never want to shoot people, but I just invite and encourage everybody so wholeheartedly.

[00:45:12] You want to do this? I promise you do. Is it going to be uncomfortable? Yes. Are you going to want to throw in the towel and give up? Probably. Are you going to hate it at times and think why me or why this? Perhaps, but it's so worth the investment of our time and energy.

[00:45:28] Dina: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's so beautiful, Kate. You had me thinking about something that I'm toying with, is a series on my Substack, which is The Grieving Place. I've called it Conversations with Grief.

[00:45:41] Kate: Ooh.

[00:45:42] Dina: That's what we're doing here. We are normalizing and humanizing, not pathologizing what it means to be human. And the reason why we grieve is because we're attached. And sometimes our attachments are complicated, we know this. You and I talked about the different layers and levels of grieving, and we can grieve the identities. We can grieve a relationship that we never had with persons that are still alive.

[00:46:12] So we can normalize that the natural and involuntary response to this phenomena of being human means that I'm going to grieve. And what you said earlier is so true. I think it was Brené Brown that said we cannot selectively numb. So when we numb the experience of being in the grief, in the sediments, which is where all the nourishment is, by the way, we also grieve our capacity and truncate our capacity to experience profound, knee dropping joy, where all of a sudden you feel like you're one with the universe.

[00:46:50] This is not woo woo stuff. You're listening to two very competent, successful women who've been around a few times. We're here as advocates to say, when we do this grief work, we start to become more awake and aware and conscious. And if humanity needs something right now, it's for more human beings to be conscious human beings, to be able to witness someone who's suffering and lean in and say, "Hello, human, I see you. What is one thing I can do right now to just support you while you're for your grieving?" What is one thing I can do?

[00:47:28] But if we don't have the language, if we've been conditioned to be in an experience of loss in a certain way, then we're bumbling and stumbling along and then we numb ourselves, rejecting what our bodies know and need to feel whole again. Can you feel how disruptive it is for us to be having this conversation, inviting people to be with their grief? It's like, be sad. Because when you are sad, your body goes, "Oh, she's listening to me. I can start to heal.

[00:48:04] Kate: That was beautiful.

[00:48:04] Dina: Can you feel that?

[00:48:05] Kate: I just felt that. And gosh, how disconnected we are from our bodies so much and that what I've learned too through your work and this trauma healing work that I'm doing is the importance of embodiment. And even when you're working with clients, if they're not in their body, you can't continue forward in this work.

[00:48:24] We got to get in our bodies, how often we leave the body. And they talk a lot of sexual assault survivors leave the body and sometimes never come back and it's just such a disassociation. But that importance of being in the body with our grief, can you speak just a little bit more to that?

[00:48:45] Because I think the more we're really connected with ourselves and we're all in sync here in an alignment, then we can show up for others. And then it's not like, okay, Dina's grieving. What did they say on that podcast? What do I say? What do I do? It just becomes, it was you. We talked about it. The unconscious competent.

[00:49:04] Dina: Yeah. We were just talking about when we're learning something new, we become conscious of our incompetence. A lot of us are unconsciously incompetent. We don't know what we don't know. And we're balling around. That's humans, right?

[00:49:19] Kate: Yeah.

[00:49:19] Dina: When we're on a developmental path, as many of us coaches are, we become more conscious of our incompetence. So what do we do? Well, we get a coach or we do the work, and we become then more confident and in our competence. So now I'm conscious of my competence, but the sweet spot is when I move into unconscious competence, where it's like air. I'm breathing. I can bring attention to the way in which I'm breathing and the quality of my breathing.

[00:49:52] But you talked about presence. And I think that there's something really beautiful about just showing up and trusting that my beautiful heart is everything. It's all that's needed in this moment for you to feel witnessed. And I would just invite people who are listening and a bit tentative, like, really? Is that the secret sauce? Yeah, try it.

[00:50:19] Try it with someone where it's low risk, low intervention. Try it with your child the next time they come home because if we want to learn how to do grief really well, guess what we can do? Go check out a three-year-old. They know exactly what to do. When their toy gets broken or something happens, they have a boo boo. They come right to someone they trust and their whole body is in the experience.

[00:50:44] That is grief. We've grown up, silencing, suffocating the parts of ourselves that need nourishment. So if we befriend our grief, which is what you're talking about, Kate, and we allow our grief to be expressed, our bodies then feel, okay, so Kate's trusting me.

[00:51:05] And then I get into alignment beyond my head, my rational brain, which is on overload these days. I descend into my body. I start to breathe differently. You and I know, because we've had conversations, that when I'm grieving, often my voice will get lower. But at the beginning when I'm tentative, I'm talking like this because I don't want to access all the stuff that's underneath that needs expression.

[00:51:32] My body knows what to do, but my head overrides it because I've been conditioned to be silent, to be the good girl, to be the hero. But the hero's journey is actually inviting us to go in. So let me read what David Whyte says this.

[00:51:48] Kate: Oh, I love David Whyte.

[00:51:50] Dina: So he's given me permission to share this in my book. It's called The Well of Grief. So we're talking about, this is not performative work. And here's the disruption. Nobody knows when we're doing the descending work, which is what you and I are inviting people to do. Go inward. So he says, "Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief, turning down through the dark waters to the place we cannot breathe, will never know the source from which we drink, the secret water cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wished for something else."

[00:52:35]The coins full of wishes and hopes and possibilities. We are so quick to give away our wishes. But what if we did the work? What if we gave ourselves permission, like you are, to go inward, to learn how to breathe differently? It's in us to give this self-compassion. And in our work together, Kate, we talked about, as a teacher shared with me, what if we made taking care of ourself an ethical imperative?

[00:53:14] Kate: Thank you for pausing there. And please say that again for everybody.

[00:53:17] Dina: Right? Yeah, feel that in your bones. Audre Lorde, she said back in the 70s, "The act of taking care of myself is an act of political warfare." Why? Because the minute I take care of myself, she was a black, gay, activist, author, pioneer, and wrote the Cancer Diaries and many other essays.

[00:53:41] And what she's inviting us to do is to hold the caring of ourself as an ethical imperative. Because, I contend, informed by my teachers and guys, when we actually turn inward, when we nourish ourselves, we stop othering. We stop blaming others. We stop using all these excuses and then numbing ourselves because it's too hard to be in this world right now. When we pause and we make this commitment to integrity and to nourishing ourselves, something shifts. We show up differently.

[00:54:20] Kate: That was so beautiful. There's so much here. I have to ask because what you just said is, something that I've really embodied and embraced really for the first time in my life, at my age, which I don't like to say. I like to say I'm timeless. But, I'm no longer young, so it's taken a little while.

[00:54:38] But can we talk about the grief and loss around finally, and hopefully everyone has done or is now open to doing this, putting yourself first, which sounds in our culture, especially as a woman, it's a little poo pooed upon?

[00:54:55] But when you finally love yourself enough, not just pay lip service to it and post a quote on Instagram, but actually make choices consistently that reflect that we love ourselves and our health and wellbeing is our priority, it's going to disappoint and even piss off some people, especially those close to us who have been benefited, sadly, from our low self-worth, who have benefited from us not speaking up, who have benefited from us trying to keep the peace to maintain a superficial surface level relationship that did not serve us.

[00:55:29] And so you're grieving that old identity that maybe more people liked, candidly. You're grieving the identity of the peacemaker, of the people pleaser. And not as many people like a feather ruffler. And not as many people like an empowered woman who knows her worth. People are really scared of her. So maybe you no longer are able to have a relationship with your mother or your sister or your husband or your business partner.

[00:56:11] And that means financial disruption. That means family disruption. That means your whole world may potentially blow up. So do we then just stay how we were so everything else kind of maintains a status quo, misery, or do we stay on that less traveled path and get the peace that we deserve, get the love that we deserve? That's something I'm personally grappling with. I feel near the end of it, and I'm really proud of myself. But this thing about people talk about breaking generational curses and healing ancestral trauma, and not only do you not get a pat on the back or a medal or a good job or congratulations or any financial reward directly, but you are often labeled difficult, a villain, a bitch, a what's wrong with her, or who would not talk to their mother? What's wrong with her?

[00:57:07] It's challenging. Can you speak a little bit to that? Because I'm finding that a lot of people are, I'm saying suddenly dealing with this, because I think people are waking up in healing and I think a lot of us have just had enough and finally know that we deserve better.

[00:57:25] Dina: Yeah. I'm just in awe right now of how you spoke to something, that feels really personal and privileged. So I'm just really in awe that you can so eloquently describe a journey that you've been on. Megan Devine says, it's okay to not be okay. Poke, poke, poke.

[00:57:48] And I like to say, yes, it's hard work. It's harder if you don't. It is so much harder if we don't do this work. And if not us, then who? Who's going to do this work on my behalf? So yes, it's going to be disruptive because, as you spoke, Kate, people become attached to the version of me that was me before the big event.

[00:58:16] And so the people I'm attached to now need to unattach from the version of me and now form new relationships with the person I'm becoming, which is why marriages fall apart, which is why friendships end. I like to believe people come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.

[00:58:37] And I also believe that when we do this work on ourselves, we start to transmit-- I think we're transmitters as humans. We transmit an aura, an energy, and people can feel it in their bones, which is why when I'm connecting with someone who's bereaved, they can feel me feeling them. It isn't what I'm saying. It's more the quality of the presence.

[00:59:01] So how do we work on presence? I don't know. How do we work on presence? I can only speak about my lived experience. It is getting out of my head, into my body. It's noticing the thousands of different ways where my unconscious self wants to trip me up, keep me small, keep me safe. And when we can have those exquisite conversations with grief, what are you here to teach me?

[00:59:28] When the sadness arises, but usually before sadness is a constriction. It's like frustration or anger. My go to, my fear is to be rejected. And so as journalists, people who are out there putting themselves out there with their voice, their pen, their personality, it's like, ooh, what if they reject me? Here's what I've discovered through my work. If I don't reject myself, no one can reject me. Because then I'm not receiving it as a rejection.

[01:00:01] Kate: What are you receiving it as? I hate using you as an example, so I'll just use myself. Let's say it's no longer want to have a relationship with a family member.

[01:00:09] Dina: Yeah.

[01:00:11] Kate: I guess, how would you not judge yourself when you feel the judgment from others, especially because you've been thrown under the bus? There's been a whole smear campaign by you setting a boundary. Do you just, I guess, not care because you haven't rejected yourself? I would love any more insight on this.

[01:00:31] Dina: Yeah. So it's beautiful. And it really is real. I've been rejected by a family member who felt that they had no choice in the rejection. And what I discovered, the younger me saw this as a rejection. So I doubled down on trying to be reasonable, trying to talk them out of this decision that they felt they could not make.

[01:00:56] And then I go to wooing, trying to charm people into reversing their decision. The me now with way more clairvoyance and capacity, I can hold their decision and not attach to the decision, not own their decision or see it actually as a rejection of me. I can meet the moment with greater empathy.

[01:01:20] So I'm not getting sucked into the vortex of their choice. And what does that do for me? It allows me now to connect more with people like you that are vibrating at a different level. And I'm not judging those who vibrate at a different level. I'm acknowledging some healthy boundaries, what I like to call riverbanks, that says something like this; I want to be choiceful with the people and the energies that I bring into my life.

[01:01:50] And I know that some are more soul sucking, and that's more about me than about them. So other people, I can just be more choiceful and recognize who are the people that right now, now, I want to be with in my life. And it's not a hall pass to discard people, but what it does do is like, what is it about Dina that's bothering me?

[01:02:16] It's that she's always happy. I'm like, "Oh. Why am I jealous about the fact that she's always happy?" So it becomes a conversation with myself and my own limitations and my own needs. And you said it earlier. We need to reframe from selfish, which is focusing only on my needs, narcissism, and to self-centered, where I can center myself. Well, first I have to know, what does that even mean? For me, after Tracy died, I needed to go into this deep exploration of my core values, courage, compassion, community.

[01:02:54] And when I had those three C's alive in me, I'm taking you back 20 years ago, those decisions, all my decisions since then have been centered around those three values and proportionally. I don't just use one. I try and ensure all three are possible. And sometimes that makes it hard.

[01:03:13] It also means I have to let go. So we're coming back to full circle, what is our capacity to be with goodbyes? Not usually very good. We suck at goodbyes. Think of retirement. I support athletes who are retired out at the age of 26. All they've known in their bubble, 10,000 hours and 10 years is to perform.

[01:03:37] And now they're a whole new identity. They don't know who they are. Their whole group, their village has gone the way, along with the credibility, the money, the financial security, their plans. And they're 26 and everybody is telling them, you should feel so fortunate. You should be so happy because you've got the gold medal and you have the endorsement.

[01:04:01] Why are you moping around? You've got your whole life ahead of you. Yeah. And watch them fall inward and feel so ashamed that they don't have their shit together because they're grieving a whole way of life.

[01:04:17] Kate: Yeah. This could be listened 100-hour conversation, and we've done so much, and so I have a million more questions. You'll have to come back. But I would love for you to share a little bit about your exquisite book, Grief Unleashed, and everyone pick up a copy and really explore ways to work with Dina as well.

[01:04:37] Because it's something I do want to say is, again, this is humanity. This is evolved humanity, like Harvard PhD showing up, shutting up, and listening. But something that you said to me that no one has ever said to me that was so healing and felt like being handed a million dollars is when I shared something painful and difficult with you, normally what do you feel?

[01:05:00] You feel like I don't want to be a burden. I don't want to be Debbie downer. I don't want to bother this person. Is this too much? Is this too heavy? Is this too sad? All the things that get communicated to you, even by people who love or claim to love you, and then we wonder why. Why is everyone so avoidant? Why is everybody numbing? Why is everybody suppressing?

[01:05:18] It's because the people who love you the most are essentially making you feel like they don't want to hear or listen. You're too much or too something. So I share this thing with you. And not only did I not feel or experience, or you say like, "Ooh, that's heavy," or, "Ooh, that's a lot," or, "Can we talk about something positive, or "Let it go?" Or blah, blah, blah.

[01:05:36] You said you were so honored that I shared with you and you said, "Wow, thank you so much for trusting me with this," and said a bunch of other wonderful things too. But I've never heard that. And I think, wow, if we were all communicating like this, can you imagine the world?

[01:05:58] But then the flip side of that is, wow, Dina, it's challenging to speak to a lot of people because you share something even much smaller than that and they don't even acknowledge what you just said. They just start talking about themselves. For me, it's to the point now I'm starting to call people out and just say, "I'm really excited to listen to your story, but I really need you to at least acknowledge what I just said." Even if I just said it's Tuesday and I'm really happy. Like, Oh yeah, I love Tuesdays too. And I'm so glad you're happy. I'm happy too.

[01:06:31] I just got a promotion, but can you just acknowledge what people say? And then extra bonus, if you just said, "Thank you for trusting me with what you just told me." That's some high-level humanity right there. Thank you for that. So I'm sure there's more of that in your book because you were like, "Okay, Kate. Help us. Help me help you." So we've got a resource here.

[01:06:57] Dina: And I think the book is a mixture of a story and the many ways that I didn't get the literacy. It comes down to the ABCs and the 1, 2, 3s. And I would say the book, there's some Easter eggs in there, but at the end, I talk about the companioning model, which is what you and I danced into.

[01:07:15] And so if people are curious, I have a Substack that pretty much has lots of free things on there. Every two months now, people can drop in and connect to a grief cafe. So what's a grief cafe? Feels like this.

[01:07:27] Kate: I love it.

[01:07:28] Dina: Right? Where we can just pour ourselves a cup of tea and just show up where your grief experience, it's welcome here. Your grief matters because grief does matter. And so that's one way. The other way, I offer grief coaching. I do grief companionship. There's lots of different ways to do that, and a good portion of any monies that I make off my Substack goes into some of the charities, and I explain what those are.

[01:07:57] They're all charities that help to support the bereaved and the broken hearted. There are things that are out there that can normalize and humanize what has been pathologized for far too long. So it's been a delight just walking alongside you, Kate. You have such a beautiful soul, and I feel really compelled to do more of this work.

[01:08:21] It feels like I'm attracting people like you, we said it earlier, who want to gaze up at the stars and not be in competition with each other. It's like communing with each other. We can look up at the constellations and honor each other's experience. And it's so interesting to me, the world of journalism and high-level sport is very competitive.

[01:08:42] And I would say, that's a beautiful energy. And I don't want to annihilate that energy because it's alive in me. It fuels me. But now I have greater capacity and greater longing to create more wholeness, which allows more of that feminine energy, which we're kind of dancing in right now that talks about there's space for all of it. Let's make space for storms. Let them breathe fearlessly the way an open sky inhales a storm. The beautiful words of the poet, Carolyn [Inaudible], makes me [Inaudible].

[01:09:17] Kate: Yeah. You've got some great poets in here, and they're found in your book as well, which is really beautiful. It's such a great pause. And to just sit with whatever we're feeling and take it in, your book is that. It's a hug, and you are that. And it is. It's not just paying lip service to it. I can tell the work is working because a lot has been cleared out, and I'm attracting and like a magnet for incredible people like yourself.

[01:09:43] And so if nothing else, you want better quality relationships with self and others, more career success, more abundance, more joy, it's in there and it's coming, but we got to make space for it. And it is. I like to say these things out loud because sometimes if we haven't hit our humongous goal yet, we think like, oh, I'm not there yet. But it's like, are you seeing the beauty and magic and wonder that's being created and brought into your life because you've become a different person, frequency, vibration, and it's what we're attracting. And then will repel other energies.

[01:10:16] And it's like you said. It's not, I'm better than that person or we're better than that person. It's just what and whom we're in alignment with and what is out of alignment and just taking notice of it. Before we head out here today, and thank you so much for your time and generosity, I would just love a quick success story or when you think back on this journey, the grief and where it started with losing Tracy and the extraordinary work you've done in lives that you've touched in such an impactful way.

[01:10:44] Thank you so much for deeply impacting me in such a profound way. Is there a little nugget or that little rainbow moment that stands out for you that just is that God wink of, wow, I'm so glad I took on this challenging work?

[01:10:59] Dina: Yeah. Okay. Beautiful. I'm smiling because what came to mind immediately is when I turned 50, and I think there's something around the language, we're not old. We're moving into elderhood. So what does that mean to revere the wisdom that comes with time? So I'm really reframing that, and I think turning 50 was a bit of a pivotal moment for me.

[01:11:25] So I woke up that morning, I didn't know I was going to do this, but I got out my pen and I started listing some of the things I wanted to experience in my 50th year. And the things that downloaded were things like baking cookies with the kids, going on a bike ride in the forest with my husband, a sunset kiss, visiting Greece, the modern day Olympics and the ancient Olympics, the home of a movement that's been a part of my life for so long.

[01:11:58] The list grew and grew and grew and I went, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to name 50 things." So 50 by 50 was born. And one of the last things I did, Kate, was I traveled to Colorado to study under Dr. Alan Wolfelt, who's, I'd say, one of the well-recognized preeminent death educators in the world. He's done so much beautiful work.

[01:12:23] And what Dr. Wolfelt says, and it's true of us and see if this language feels true, we are wounded healers. Those of us who've been wounded and dare travel where most dare not go, we then extract the nutrients from the experience and offer it to others as a gift-- Henry Newman's work.

[01:12:47] So I think that when we allow this to be true, and when I found my way to Dr. Wolfelt and I was there for four days learning his companioning model, which is now my six-month grief companion model where I'm working with coaches to support them, when I was there, I asked for a sign. And didn't I find a dime on the ground?

[01:13:12] And one of the students who was with me, she turns to me, she goes, "You found a dime? Do you not know the story of dimes?" Dimes are like messages from above. And when you find a dime, it connects us back to a person. But as I was saying, I need a sign that this is the work. Because I wasn't a grief doula, wasn't studying this work. The sign came. And so it's like when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Right?

[01:13:41] Kate: Yes.

[01:13:41] Dina: Yeah. So pay attention to the signs. Trust the experience in your body. Where is your body opening up? Where do you feel expensive? Where do you feel constricted? And start to move in that direction, giving ourselves permission to pause and to connect. And for me, when I've done this, grace has appeared.

[01:14:07] Kate: How beautiful. Thank you for sharing that.

[01:14:11] Dina: Yeah. Thank you for asking me.

[01:14:12] Kate: Yeah. Your work is exquisite. You're exquisite. Everyone, go check out Grief Unleashed and Dina's substack. And I think it's all of our signs that we're on the right path if we're here in this moment. And if you're listening to this and taking the time and you're here till the end, I just honor you and appreciate you being here so much.

[01:14:30] And Dina, thank you for such a nourishing, enriching conversation. I feel like I just had a bunch of IVs and red light therapy and the most nourishing home-cooked meal and a ton of clean, crisp water from Lake Louise or something there in Canada. And I honor you and this work so much. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You've just given my heart and soul so much nourishment and kindness, and I can't thank you enough.

[01:15:00] Dina: It's been equally nourishing for me. And remember, through pain, we find our purpose, Kate. So it feels like we're both living into our purpose, and I'm looking forward to more of these grief conversations.

[01:15:14] Kate: Yes. With my grief companion and unpacking our grief cases. So I hope everybody is up for the challenge. See, grief, we can have fun and smile while we're doing it. And I think it's because we're here companions working together. So thank you so much for being here. Everybody, go and check out Dina and her fantastic work. And I just appreciate you being here on the journey with us. Have a great day. We'll see you next week. Bye, everybody.