Doing The Grief Shuffle With Glen Lord

Death didn't exist in Glen Lord's family—at least not in his childhood. After losing his four-year-old son Noah to complications of a tonsillectomy, he found himself angry and lost. Realizing the need for genuine, accurate information on grief, Glen founded The Grief Toolbox and the Walking Through Grief Support Series to connect with others in the midst of loss. We're talking about what it's like to grow up in a death-averse home and the process of "companioning" after loss.

Transcript

Glenn,

I am so excited to be sitting across the microphone with you today,

Both as a founder of the Bereavement Cruise,

Which is totally new to me and to all of our grief growers this year,

But as someone who has also experienced loss and is helping others cope with it out there in the world.

So if you could please start us off with your loss story.

Well,

Excellent.

Yeah,

I guess I have to start with my loss story by kind of telling a little bit of my life story,

Because for me,

I think grief and my relationship to it has shaped largely who I am.

And I would start by saying that my first memory of a grief event is picking up the phone and having my cousin on the other end of it.

And the question to which my cousin asked was,

When is your grandmother's funeral?

And I,

At that point,

Had no knowledge that my grandmother had even died.

Gosh,

We'd had no experience with death in our family.

So I turned to my dad and said,

You know,

Did grandma die?

And his answer was yes.

And I said,

Do you know when the funeral it is?

And he said,

No,

We're not going.

And so,

Okay.

And it wasn't that we didn't have a great relationship with my grandmother.

I mean,

We saw her alive all the time.

But death just didn't exist in my family.

And it's difficult to tell that to people because I think sometimes people think I'm exaggerating.

But,

You know,

I had never been to a funeral prior to my own son's funeral.

And that would be the next grief event that I would bring up.

My son died in 1999 from complications of a tonsillectomy.

And at that point,

You know,

We had never dealt with grief at all in my family.

And it was not something that my parents were intending to attend the funeral.

And I had a long discussion and helped them understand that for me,

They had lost their grandson.

But they had a choice as to what our relationship was going to be.

But I needed them to be at the funeral.

And so my mom consented to come.

And to my knowledge,

The only two funerals I ever know that she went to were my sons and her own.

Her own was obviously as an involuntary participant.

And she died in December of 2014.

And in many ways,

Her death was the easiest one for me that I experienced because my mom had been physically deteriorating for the last 20 years of her life.

She had severe kidney and liver failure and just had really lost a complete quality of life.

And so as much as I missed my mom,

It was really,

For me,

And in my situation,

I know that it's not true for others in their situation.

But for me in my situation,

It was much easier for me to see that my mom had been released from her pain and that she was no longer suffering and living in that place.

But that was in 2014.

And in the most recent grief events that I think are still very much a part of who I am and I'm still kind of living with and through is in January of 2017,

My 39-year-old sister lost her battle with metastatic breast cancer.

And a week later,

Actually following the funeral,

My dad went to my sister's funeral,

Came home,

Said he wasn't feeling well,

Went to bed,

And had a heart attack and died in his sleep that night,

Eight days later.

So people talk about someone dying of a broken heart.

In my dad's case,

I think it's arguable that that is exactly what happened.

So in a quick sense,

That's kind of my grief story.

And that has shaped really everything I have done.

Every one of those events has really changed me in ways that I don't know that I would be the person I am today without them.

I kind of feel like all of those events brought me.

And they've been,

At times,

Very painful.

But at times,

They've brought me great growth and great strength.

So that's the short of my grief story when you ask about it.

I'm wondering,

This is so wild to me.

I guess something that hasn't been shared on the podcast before is this phenomenon of,

I actually wrote down,

Death didn't exist in my family.

I've heard of families not wanting to talk about death or using euphemisms or kind of trying to fluff it up,

For lack of better phrasing,

But never a situation where there was such looking the other way or denial that it existed.

And not for a bad or a negative reason,

Because when you said,

We weren't going to my grandmother's funeral,

I was like,

Oh,

You must have had a crummy relationship.

And no,

That's not the reason.

It's just that death doesn't exist.

And I'm wondering how you went from that being your reality to being able to speak to your parents about the importance of their presence at a funeral,

At a memorial,

And now to be a person who is so just vastly open about all the losses and all the deaths that you've experienced.

Well,

I think the bigger turning point was when my second grandmother died,

And I didn't share that as part of my grief story because there's so many elements to it,

But she died right shortly after I graduated from college.

And I got a phone call from my mom saying my grandmother had died.

And it's difficult to explain to people that even though she was my grandmother,

I in fact lived with her from age five to 18.

So in many ways,

She was more of a mom to me than a grandmother.

And I asked my mom,

Can I come home for the funeral?

And her answer was,

Yes,

You can,

But we're not going to the funeral.

And at that time,

I was a struggling college student and didn't really have the money to come home.

So I ended up not going to my grandmother's funeral.

No one from my own family went.

And it felt very strange to me,

The whole experience.

And it led me down a path of really dealing with grief in a very negative sense.

I delved into alcohol very seriously and delved into some drugs and spent about two years of my life in a place of really kind of darkness,

Really running from the grief.

And it wasn't until about two years later that I finally went to her grave.

And that in and of itself to me,

Just the event of going to her grave and acknowledging that this was real,

That this was not,

You know,

That this was,

That it wasn't just that I hadn't seen her,

That it wasn't,

You know,

It wasn't fake,

But seeing her name carved in that stone and,

You know,

Finding it in the,

She's barely at Arlington Cemetery.

And finding her on the map of where she was located and just going to do that,

That freed me and really was a turning point where I kind of stopped going down that negative path.

And it was kind of a realization that I was,

That maybe a lot of what I was doing was hurting because I wasn't allowing this to be real.

And so for me,

I started kind of acknowledging my grandmother and started talking about it with my brother and even talked about it with some of my cousins.

And so to me,

I started kind of healing that way and started to realize that,

That what maybe I'd grown up with wasn't right.

And just is,

It just wasn't what wasn't going to work.

But I didn't really,

I guess,

Understand it fully until my son died when I,

You know,

Just,

It came all of the things that I had then learned previous to that told me that this was not going to be in the shadows.

That as much as my wife met my parents in September,

My grandmother had literally died the August before.

My grandmother,

My wife did not hear my grandmother being spoken about that year,

Even though she had died literally four weeks earlier.

And it was just a kind of an interesting thing where she was thought that was so odd and strange too.

But for me,

That was just life.

But when my son died,

And I realized this was just so monumental,

I don't know that it was any,

At that point,

A realization,

It was just a realization that what I had done was just completely wrong.

And that it couldn't,

It had no hope of success.

So I kind of went down another,

Another path.

And then I struggled with that.

I found the Compassionate Friends about,

Probably about two years after Noah died,

I was invited to a Compassionate Friends meeting.

It's a grief group for the people who have lost a child,

Grandchild or sibling.

It's a self-help group,

Actually the world's largest.

And I found through that,

That other people talked about their loved one and other people acknowledged their loved one.

And that a lot of the pain and disconnection and what I thought was craziness and made no sense really wasn't.

It was really quite normal.

And through that,

I came to realize that all,

Much of what I had wanted to do with my life no longer held a purpose either.

I had originally graduated business school and my goal was to,

To,

You know,

Make it in corporate America.

And I had been busily doing all of that when my son died.

And I kind of lost all interest in that and nothing really seemed to matter.

And then a friend of mine who does grief work,

His name's Alan Peterson,

He'll actually be on the Grief Cruise with us.

He goes around and sings and performs and brings hope and healing to people around the country.

We were talking about what his future wanted to look like.

And we got talking about the fact that we wanted to develop a grief support program that really could be brought forth to larger audiences.

And out of that,

We spent a lot of time and effort and brought a group of about 25 people into Auburn,

California.

And we produced something called the Walking Through Grief Support Series,

Which is now in about 250 locations across the country,

Including Fort Bragg and the Iroquois Nation in a variety of different hospice houses.

And it's a nine part program that helps people realize some of the realities of the grief journey through actually bereaved people telling their stories and connecting,

As well as grief experts kind of tying all of that together.

And that led me once that was together to realize that what I really wanted to do was make a life out of being involved with helping people in grief,

Which led to all of the other things that I did the formation of the grief toolbox,

The ultimately becoming the board of the president board of directors,

The compassionate friends,

The founding the journeys of hope grief crews,

The founding the International Grief Institute,

Founding share their life,

I mean,

Just a variety of different pieces to realize that what I wanted to do was kind of change what for me,

You know,

You say you've never met anyone who grew up in that reality.

I think,

Because I grew up in that reality,

I actually have met when I share that with other people,

People have pulled me aside and say,

You know,

I also grew up in that world,

You know,

It's different variations of it and different themes of it.

And it can be,

You know,

Anything from people who acknowledge death,

But only want to talk about the,

You know,

They're in a better place and all of the,

I'm not saying there aren't really positive pieces and my personal belief structure,

I believe those things,

But there's also a pain associated with it.

And,

And both sides are,

You know,

Grief is,

Is a marriage of the pain and the love.

And if you deny one side of that,

You're not really allowing yourself to feel all that is there.

And so with that,

I've come to learn that there's a lot of other people who are feeling,

You know,

Have grew up that way.

But there's other people that grew up different ways,

And we all grieve differently.

And so I just wanted to provide those tools and resources for people to be able to find the help and hope that they needed.

I love all of this.

And it's such,

It's such a process of becoming this person.

It's like,

We don't,

You know,

Learn,

We can share our stories,

And then overnight flip,

I'm gonna help everybody in the world who's ever dealt with grief.

It's,

You know,

These one foot in front of the other steps of this helped me.

So maybe if I share it a little,

And maybe if I partner with this person and found this and get started with this,

And,

And it's just grown to something that has such a wide ripple effect across the world,

The work that you do,

It's,

It's very,

Very cool.

It blew my mind when I knew I was going to get to meet you in some capacity.

And I was like,

Oh,

My gosh,

This is,

This is so cool.

And I'm wondering how you walk people into that space from denial into,

You know,

Having permission to talk about their loved ones or permission to talk about the marriage of the love and the pain.

Well,

I guess I would borrow a term from Alan Wolf,

And for those who don't know,

Alan Wolf is a really one of the leading experts in grief and loss,

And he uses a term called companioning.

And I truly believe that it you when you talk about how do you lead someone there?

I don't think you can lead them.

I think what you can do is,

Is,

Is you can be there with them.

You can listen to them.

When the opportunity arises,

You can share your hope,

What you found,

You can share your reality,

And you can be non-judgmental about where they're at and allow them to feel and be where they're at.

Grief is a matter of this.

To me,

There's really three key aspects to your development in grief,

And you're really in control of all three.

It's an attitude of,

You know,

Actually wanting to find hope and healing.

And I can tell you there were times in my grief journey when I didn't want that.

I wanted the pain.

And then the next piece is what I would call the B is belief,

And that is believing,

Even if you don't have a clue how it's going to happen,

And even if you don't know what steps you need to take,

But believing that there is hope for you and believing that there is,

That there is something more here,

That there is something,

Some way for you to come together.

And then C is the choices,

Being willing to make those choices in your life to try different things.

You know,

There's so many different ways that people can grow and find that joy and find that ability to come together.

And there isn't one answer.

And what's going to work for you may not work for me.

And what part of what worked for me and part of what works for you may work for someone else.

And it's that ability to listen to it all,

Take what works for you,

Give it a try and just put it aside.

If it doesn't work for you,

It doesn't.

It's,

It's,

You know,

Be willing to make those choices to do that.

And through that,

You know,

Kind of companioning them with them and being there with them,

Sitting there and,

You know,

Compassion,

The word compassion is a mix of two kind of brute words.

And,

You know,

We all think about what compassion is,

But it is,

It is the calm and the passion.

And passion best way to explain that is to think about like passion of the Christ or the pain.

And so it is sharing someone else's pain is literally what compassion means.

And so to be able to share that with them means to be able to be there with them or to walk through them,

Walk through and with them with their journey,

Not leading them,

Not pushing them,

Not pulling them,

But really walk through them and offer thoughts and hopes and suggestions.

But be willing to allow them to make the choices when they're ready and be willing to allow them to go down the paths that are right for them when they're ready.

I just want to take a second and honor some of the people who companioned with you in all of your losses.

Well,

There's,

There's a bunch of keywords.

I think,

You know,

I look back and one of the,

Probably the bigger ones in her influence on me,

And she was a key element of the whole,

You know,

Walking through grief series is Dr.

Darcy Sims,

Another leader in the kind of the grief and loss world,

But her ability to share her loss of big a her,

Her son who died at a very young age and her ability to take her education.

She had two PhDs and be able to present really complex ideas in a way that had nothing to do with the complexity of it all really shared a lot in my journey.

And she was a really a key element in that companioning of my journey.

Another key person in the companioning of my journey would be a lady by the name of Dr.

Gloria Horsley,

Who actually runs the open to hope foundation and with her.

Joke the very first time we met,

She was teaching a,

Um,

A,

A session at a career conference on anger.

And at that point,

Um,

Anger is what drove me.

I was an incredibly angry person.

My son had died from complications of a.

Blectomy that ultimately led to the boil down to being,

Um,

A medical error reality.

And so I had a tremendous anger at the doctor and in a room of about a hundred people,

She was telling us all that,

You know,

We may not always feel this anger,

That anger didn't have to be all of our journey.

And then we had a choice at some point to put that anger aside.

And I remember telling her that she was crazy that,

That I would be that person too,

Because anger drove me for a good while.

And it was there.

And it was,

I was so angry,

But instead of.

Looking at that as a negative,

She allowed me to express my thoughts and they followed up with me and we connected and ultimately became really great friends.

And so I would say she was a key companion.

And then there's literally hundreds of people I met at the compassionate friends that shared different pieces.

And there are others that are along the journey.

And I think that the beautiful part about it is honestly,

Many of the people that,

You know,

When you say to honor them.

Many of them,

I don't remember their names.

I don't know their names.

I,

They were there for me at a time when I didn't have something to give and allowed me to be.

And I think when someone is really doing that companioning,

Oftentimes it isn't something that you receive praise or acknowledgement or connection with because the person you're there may be in a place where they are so weak and hurting that they're not able even,

Even though you're there with them.

They're not consciously aware of the fact that you are,

But the fact that you are makes all the world of difference to them.

I cannot say that any better.

I think that was just perfect.

I kind of want to move now into the bereavement cruise because you are one of the head honchos,

For lack of better phrasing,

To make that a little silly.

But I want to know the story of how the bereavement cruise got started and how you and Linda Finley both work on companioning others who are grieving on a boat.

Well,

To me,

You know,

A bereavement cruise,

You tell someone about that and the first impression is that the two just don't go together,

That they're too,

You couldn't have two more diverse concepts that are there.

And I think there is a point in someone's journey when that's true.

The two,

The two are not,

Are not together.

I mean,

There's an early part of your grief when,

Like I said,

You know,

I didn't want to feel better.

I wanted to hurt.

I didn't want to see anything but that pain.

And,

Um,

But when you're at the point where you're starting to recognizing that there is a belief that there is hope to be found,

Even if you don't know where it's going to come from,

And even if you don't understand it,

Then to have an environment where you can be completely relaxed,

Be around other people who understand and can share your pain.

And in the same moment,

Literally in the same sentence,

You can go from laughing to crying.

And you can tell half thoughts because people understand because they,

Even though they don't know your story and even though they really don't know you or understand you,

They truly understand that they don't understand.

And I think that's the biggest gift because so many people think they understand.

And so they offer advice and direction and all these other pieces,

But to be in an environment where people can just share.

And then they can have the intensity of learning from people like yourself or people like Mitch Carmody or Linda Fowl or Linda Finley or myself or any of the 20,

You know,

Grief experts that are there.

And you can connect and hear these pieces of advice and hear different directions,

But not be obligated to take any of it.

And then right after that,

You know,

Spend the night dancing or going out to go to a nice restaurant or going to experience a beach that you haven't seen before allows for that.

Really what grief is,

Is that dance between the joy and the pain.

My wife refers to it as the grief shuffle in a joke.

Oh my gosh,

I love it.

It is,

You can't,

You can't really have grief without both,

But it can become this beautiful dance.

And the grief cruise is really an environment to foster that and allow for people to have all of the beauty and pampering and experiences that everyone thinks of as a cruise,

But also be able to honor love,

Respect their loved one,

Be able to do things like we have a beautiful,

Beautiful service of remembrance.

We do a metaphorical candle lighting.

You can't light candles on a ship,

But we do have the glow sticks.

We walk around the ship and we really acknowledge it.

You know,

We've had people who have done burials at sea,

And that is just a really,

You know,

One of my most powerful experiences was one of our guests,

Or two of our guests last time actually invited myself to attend the burial of both of their husbands.

And it was a really just a beautiful experience.

And the cruise,

The captain's down there and you're at a private part of the boat and you release your ashes into the sea and there's a ceremony around it.

It just is a very powerful experience and just the freedom of what me,

You know,

The birth and the life and all of the metaphors and symbolism that the ocean brings to us as a culture and as a people and all of the connections that are there,

You know,

Juxtaposed with some of the pain and suffering of what is the grief journey,

I think allows for all of that.

So really what happened was,

You know,

I had been dancing around doing a grief cruise,

But I am not a travel agent and I don't know some of the logistics at all.

Linda had put on a grief cruise,

But hadn't really hit some of the numbers and pieces she got.

And we connected and realized that we both really brought a lot of pieces to this puzzle.

And that's where we decided to make this not a one-time event,

But a regular event and something that,

You know,

We have the one coming up in March of 2019,

But there will be more coming up from that.

And our ultimate goal is to have multiple a year and ultimately to have it be not a portion of a ship,

But an entire ship.

And I think that there is just an amazing ability to escape reality,

Yet really be in the center of reality on a grief cruise.

I'm so excited to be a part of this.

And I so agree that grief is that shuffle,

Is that dance between joy and heartbreak.

I often tell grief growers,

And I speak about this a lot on the show,

Is that grieving is like holding,

You know,

Enchantment and joy and delight in one hand and pain and heartbreak and agony in the other hand.

And you can never really drop either of the two.

You have to carry them with you for the rest of your life.

And so having that expressed as a metaphor,

But then also in reality on the ship is just is really,

Really cool to me.

So when I heard about it and when I talked to Linda on the phone about it,

I was like,

Oh,

Yeah,

I got to be a part of this.

And that's kind of been the mentality of everybody I've talked to about it.

At first,

You're right,

They have that,

You know,

That doesn't make any sense grief on a cruise ship.

But then the more that you speak about it,

It definitely resonates with people.

So tell me what workshop are you leading on the boat and what else can people can expect from you on the cruise?

Well,

You know,

I am weaving right now.

I'm leaving.

I am leading one workshop and the workshop that I'm going to be leading is finding your direction again.

And that one of the there,

There are so many when,

When a loved one dies,

There are certain losses that are never going to come back.

You know,

When my son died,

I will never physically hold him again.

You know,

When my dad died,

I will never be able to call him up and hear his advice to me and,

And all of these.

And for each one of us,

There are different realities and there are pieces which we did lose.

But oftentimes there are many pieces which we think we've lost.

But we didn't,

You know,

Maybe your,

Your confidence was shook,

Maybe your ability to trust in the world was shook,

Maybe your even your,

You know,

Desire to do certain things may have been lost and may or may not come back.

Some things may not not come back and that's okay too.

But really what I want to do is help people explore to truly acknowledge,

Honor and respect those realities that we did lose,

But to also honor,

Respect and acknowledge those that we didn't lose and to then consciously make a choice.

Do we want to put them aside?

I mean,

You may,

You know,

You may have had a hobby that you loved before your,

Your,

Your,

Your loved one died and you may felt like you lost an interest in it.

And maybe you did lose an interest in it,

But maybe you want to gain that interest back and that's something you can do.

Or maybe you don't,

Maybe that you want to keep that.

You know,

I,

I had a wonderful trip with my son to Prince Edward Island.

It,

To me,

It is the most beautiful place on the planet and I would love,

I love it.

And anybody who's thinking about going,

I couldn't recommend it more highly,

But I never will go there again because to be,

I wanted to stay in that perfect bubble that it exists in my memory.

I don't want it to be something else.

And so what I help people do is,

Is really work on what for them did they lose?

What did they not lose?

And then once they realize what they didn't lose,

What choices do they have?

And more importantly,

What choices do they want to make?

Because just because you have choices in life,

Sometimes the answer we have,

And sometimes people forget this,

That a great choice is sometimes to wallow or to wait.

People sometimes see that as a bad thing,

But you know,

You think about wallowing and you know,

What prime example would that would be like a,

A hippopotamus or something wallowing in the mud.

And,

You know,

When you think about why do they do that?

We don't really think about it,

But one of the primary reasons they do it is because much like our skin,

Their skin sunburns and they can't go down to the local CVS and buy SPS 50.

So they throw mud all over themselves.

And so that wallowing in the mud is actually a protective mechanism is what it is.

They're protecting themselves because that's a necessity.

And why is,

Is this,

Do we then look at something?

If,

If part of your journey is,

You know what,

I don't want to go forward.

I want to just be where I'm at.

And I want to have that,

That is also an important choice.

And it's something that to one that,

To which if somebody is making is,

Is really,

You know,

Can be very beneficial if they're consciously making it.

It's it's where it becomes difficult is when they aren't thinking about it or aren't allowing themselves to be empowered to make that choice,

Then it's still being made and they're still making it,

But they're not getting the empowerment from it.

And so that's what I'm doing.

And then in addition to that,

You know,

I will be emceeing,

I'll be helping with the opening ceremony.

I'll be conducting and working on the service of remembrance.

We talked about as additional to,

We'll have multiple sharing sessions that I'll be running different ones throughout the group,

As well as different of our presenters will.

So we'll have sharing sessions for people who have lost siblings or people who have lost a spouse or people who have lost a child or people who have lost a parent or someone whose grief may be new,

Someone with multiple losses,

Different environments.

You know,

Maybe someone who their loved one died by suicide or died by other potentially stigmatized losses and different sharing session for people to have them.

So I'll be running some of those sharing sessions and I'll be having a blast on the cruise too and connecting with and meeting new people.

And you asked earlier,

Who are those people that,

You know,

Campaigned in me on the journey?

Truthfully,

As I continue to go on,

I find that many of the people who I think I'm companioning are really companioning me.

And it's a mutual benefit that we gain from one another,

Even though we may not consciously be making that choice as we go.

So,

You know,

All of those different pieces is what I'll be doing on the cruise.

I absolutely love that insight from you because it is true.

In reaching for help,

We are also helping in ways that we don't even realize until,

You know,

Maybe weeks,

Months,

Years,

Decades later,

Which is very,

Very cool.

Yes,

Sometimes the people who I am able to walk alongside,

I look at them and I'm like,

Oh my gosh,

You're actually helping me.

And it's just a very cool grief turns into this mutual love and respect and communication type of relationship.

And it's never ever really somebody with a rope pulling somebody else out of the mud.

It's getting into that mud with them and being like,

All right,

We got this together.

Yes.

And I think you said something that to me is what,

You know,

Grief only exists because of love.

You know,

You,

You don't,

If you lost something that you didn't care about,

You don't grieve it.

You only grieve and you only,

It's because of the love.

So really grief is a form of love.

And then,

And I want to be careful with that because then sometimes feel like when they've heard that they feel like,

Well,

If I let go of the grief of my letting go of the love.

And the answer to that is absolutely not.

You can't let go of love.

Love is larger than we are and it will exist forever.

And we,

You know,

It is bigger than we are.

And so you can let go of pieces of the pain and you're not letting go of the love.

It's all still there.

But because you know,

Grief is born and is love that when you're with people who are there and you're in a grief environment,

You're in a environment that really what you're in is an environment of love.

And to be surrounded by people who are able and willing to take some of the,

Um,

I guess,

Facades that we live in our regular society and some of the barriers that keep us from really being,

You know,

The beautiful human beings that we are.

I truly believe where we are.

We,

You know,

When we take apart our fears and we take apart our,

Our,

Our,

Our false learnings and we take apart our misgivings fundamentally we're creatures of love.

And when I look at that and I feel like that what grief does is puts us right there and allows for then multiple people to connect at a point where normally we don't get to because normally to get to a point of love is a big challenge.

But in that grieving world,

When you're working to people,

You kind of jump right there and you kind of come in through the back door through grief.

But when what it allows you to do is connect with people on a level and connect on that real honest,

You know,

Soul level of humanity that I think is ultimately inside all of us.

But we so often hide from or so often have our own facades or other things that keep us from allowing to connect that way.

And that's one of the beautiful parts about being around bereaved people.

You know,

I tell people that one of my favorite things in the world is to go hang out with a bunch of bereaved people and if you've never done it,

You don't understand.

Once you've got it,

You get that to me,

There's very few places in the world where you can connect with people on that level.

And then,

And what that does is open up your soul and allows you to feel that love,

Whether you're the giver or the receiver of that love to be surrounded by it is just an amazing experience.

I have to say you are a truth teller.

You're just a truth.

I use this phrase with one of my clients recently and I said,

You know,

All of us walking around on this world,

We're all wisdom keepers.

We all have some kind of intelligence or wisdom or insight that we keep inside of us,

Maybe not on purpose or conscious or unconsciously.

But being able to put it out there and speak to it in such a way,

You just hold all of these truths,

Especially about grief and loss inside of you.

So thank you for sharing that.

Every time you start talking and go in depth in a question,

I'm like,

That's brilliant.

I have nothing more to add.

It's basically what I'm saying in there.