Grief Works With Julia Samuel

Julia Samuel was fed up with people mentally and emotionally attacking themselves in midst of their grief. So she wrote Grief Works, a book that not only normalizes grief, but reminds us that we all grieve differently. This week, we're talking about the uniqueness of English grief, the reality of feeling grief as an energy in our bodies, and Julia's Pillars of Strength that hold up grievers in the midst of the storm.

Transcript

Julia,

Thank you so much for joining us on Coming Back Today.

I'm so thrilled to have you here from across the pond.

I know we have a lot of listeners in the UK,

Which is very,

Very cool,

To talk about your new book,

Grief Works,

As well as kind of what led you to becoming a psychotherapist and working with grief on a regular basis.

So if you could please start us off by telling us your personal lost story.

Well in a way mine is in relationship because both my parents,

My mother and my father,

Had significant losses by the time they were in their mid-20s.

My father had her father,

Her mother,

Her sister,

And her brother had all died,

And my father,

His father and his brother had died.

So they were kind of very English and old school and never talked about the people that had died,

But in the not speaking about them through our upbringing,

There were these black and white photographs.

We didn't even barely know who the people were,

But of course I think it imbued me with a kind of unspoken loss in my system.

And then when I started volunteering as a therapist,

I was immediately drawn to grief.

And at that point,

It was unconscious.

It wouldn't be anything to do with my own upbringing.

But now I look back.

That must have been a very important early influence.

Yes,

Absolutely.

And I'm kind of fascinated by this,

The grief of unspoken loss.

And I kind of picked up this theme,

Reading your book Grief Works,

That holding everything in very tightly is,

I don't necessarily want to say an English form of grief because we see that kind of nationally and internationally,

But can you talk about how English grief is maybe perhaps different from other cultural griefs?

I think there's a historical context which is influenced by World War.

So you know,

We go back more than 100 years,

Queen Victoria was the kind of poster woman for grief.

She made grief and grieving and all the ritual of mourning very fashionable because she never went out of her widows' weeds after Prince Ali got died.

So that was then sort of set a trend and everybody wore black and purple and grey.

And then the two world wars killed hundreds of thousands of men and everybody in both wars was grieving someone they loved,

A husband,

A son or a father.

And so there was no capacity,

All the deaths happened whenever we patricied,

There were no funerals.

But also there was a kind of biological striving to survive,

To get on with life,

And no one really could grieve.

At the same time medicine began to actually be successful and death was taken away from the home and into hospitals and into mortuaries.

So there was a kind of big social change that happened and I think it meant societally people managed but emotionally if you think of your bandwidth as a kind of string,

You have kind of joy one end and pain the other end,

If you block your capacity to feel pain,

You incrementally also block your capacity to feel joy.

So your emotional depth is narrowed,

Your bandwidth is foreshortened,

So you can function fine but your openness and kind of open-heartedness to receive and give feelings,

Whether they're love or sadness,

Is much less.

Does that answer your question?

Yes it does but I like that a lot because I think grief is influenced both by what society tells us to feel about grief but also in these smaller microcosms what our families tell us that they believe to be true about grief and grieving.

So I'm curious to how you went from a family that kind of carried these unspoken griefs to becoming someone who speaks about grief so candidly and is so open with all of your experiences and the experiences of others by proxy with grief?

I mean I think the more,

I mean as a therapist I think the drive to become a therapist was I get so much from the connection to others I'm always much more interested in what's going on in them inside than what they look or are doing on the outside.

So I think the work kind of gives me something and the more I've worked with people who are grieving whether it's the death of a partner or a child or a sibling or a parent the more fascinated I've become in the whole process but also why I read the book was because I came you know 25,

28 years of doing this I became increasingly frustrated and angry that there is so much ignorance about grief and so that not only were people suffering because someone they love had died but they were feeling they were doing it in quotes wrong because they weren't getting over it as quickly as everybody else expected them to.

There's this unbelievable sense of you should be getting on after a few months and so people return some of their existing pain against themselves like they you know should be doing this better and they would self-attack when they're already hurting and so I wrote the book and the hope that it gives both a very personal experience of what it's like to grieve but also some basic understanding of what to expect from yourself.

I think one of the most interesting aspects of your book for me is its format.

I haven't picked up a grief book yet I've read a lot of grief books but I definitely haven't read them all.

The format of it was so that they were personal stories in each segment so you would have parent loss and there were three personal similar but different stories and loss of a sibling and three personal similar but different stories and they had running things that were similar and all but the stories and their growing up circumstances and what they the myths that they believed to be true about grief and even how they treated themselves and others in their lives were all very different and I really really liked this kind of looking in the window of someone else's world of grief because some of these stories I read and I was like oh my gosh I totally resonate with that that's exactly how I grieved and for others I would look at them and be like oh my gosh I don't even know what that's like but I have seen someone else grieve in this way and so I think there was a broader understanding that was brought to me of the ways in which people grieve by your book that I found really really neat and really helpful I wasn't expecting that when I opened the cover I wasn't expecting all these small personal accounts of and I loved it and I'm kind of wondering what maybe if you have a top three of like the biggest pieces of misinformation that we have about grief or that walk into your office what are the three biggest pieces of untruth I guess surrounding grief that you see there are so many I think maybe the the top one is that you need to forget and move on you need to get over it and get back to your life and I think it's about remembering and adapting and changing internally where you have to re-engage with life in a different way but the loss of this significant person in your life changes you know people often talk about a new me but also it's never about forgetting it's because you the love they said this point too is the person has died but the love that you feel for them hasn't died that stays alive in you and that will stay with you for the rest of your life and I think often people get very confused by that like are you know am I holding on too much should I be you know pushing them away and I think paradoxically the reverse is true that by allowing them to be part of our life through telling stories or cooking their favorite recipe or wearing their bracelet or playing musically loved it allows you to find expression for that love that still exists and that gives you energy to then get on and live your life that is without them if that makes sense yes yes absolutely and we talk about on this show a lot that well I maybe I've never phrased it in this way but grief is an energy that needs to go somewhere well it needs to move I think and and I felt a lot of this in your book as well that kind of starting to see the cracks in the armor or the breaks in the stoicism or kind of the beginnings of the crumbling of a facade is very helpful and almost very helpful because then the grief is moving it's not sitting I know you can't see me but I'm doing this motion where like my two fists are in the middle of my chest and like locked in here and and that emotion I think is so familiar to so many who are grieving of if I just hold all of this in one place it won't move and it won't affect me and and the opposite of true is that grief is this fluid experience that that needs to be lived through us it's almost like another it's like the words of us it's yes say that again it's almost like the weather that you have to let it come and hit you like the storm and what I talk about in the book is that you need to develop I talk about them as pillars pillars that support you to weather the storm but you can't block the storm so I guess the third mistruth is that is about the pain so I people are kind of I can't bear this pain this pain you know I've got to stop the pain and will do anything they can to block the pain and doing very much in the way that you're talking about Shelby I say none of us want this pain but pain is the agent of change pain is the thing that forces you to let yourself know the reality that this person has died and you know when everything's tootling along very happily and we're content nothing changes because why would it pain is the thing that forces us to feel uncomfortable and that we have to adjust and so the armoring it's often the things that you do to block the pain that do you harm as opposed to being kind to yourself and developing systems that support yourself that let you weather the pain let it run through your system and change you and reshape you in some way what's the first thing that you say to someone who's afraid of change they look at it and they they see it they know they'd be better off if they learn the tools to weather the storm to make the changes but they're just not willing or maybe ready to take those steps yet how do you walk them up to that ledge well I would accept that that's where they're at I wouldn't try and wrestle them to the edge I would hold both this is where they are now they it's seems too much and that they need to listen to themselves maybe they can know what they can manage and what's right for them and also if they kind of feel forced to do something you instinctively a defensive I would acknowledge this is where you're at and this is I absolutely respect that and I would also hold the other idea that at some point and maybe we'll get to this and maybe we won't that you can allow yourself to try this out in a different way and then I might make a suggestion of what we might do with looking at a photograph or writing a letter to the person that's done or going for a walk and talking about the person inside so they begin this new relationship with the person that's done yeah I like that a lot because it's it's softer it's a softer introduction to the notion of change because when so much is already changing to acknowledge that we need to change or pivot or or be doing something different can be totally mind-blowing so maybe I don't want to change right now but I could do that one thing maybe next week yes I kind of want to pivot in this moment as we're talking about coping with grief because you mentioned a couple of times in the book using kickboxing as an outlet for releasing what you take home from your clients and I want to talk about how you discovered that how how it helps you and if you have any other coping mechanisms as well because I know for my work as a podcaster and a grief worker in the city of Chicago sometimes I tell people I feel like a container like my job is to literally be a container for these people's experiences and so you have to have outlets for that I'm very curious about how you discovered yours and maybe if there's any more that didn't appear in the book yeah so I mean I certainly discovered very early on from seeing clients that grief is in the body they feel it in their bodies and they transmit signals that hit my body that come into my body and that's often why people don't cross the street and say hello to you in their breathing because they're frightened of the discomfort of the disturbingness of what you feel when you're looking at someone who's usually distressed and and you can't fix it you know you have to stick with them um so I felt that in my body you know very very early on when I was working and I just tried different things out so I I did yoga and that was sort of like tip I found it frustrating and I was still stuck with this comfort in my stomach and so I tried other other exercises and then I find kickboxing and that was like yes oh my god as I punched these pads and kicked and kind of released some of the because anger is an expression of hurt it's like oh you're hurting me and the kind of sense of like an internal shower I felt after that was an amazing amazing thing yes I like that a lot and it's kind of a a nice I like it because it's a balancing contrast between grief therapist and kickboxer and you're like all right there's got to be somewhere that's dynamic that's in motion as opposed to I don't want to say there's a passivity in sitting and listening but there's definitely a more controlled you know it's an internal space it's not an active motion coming I just loved reading about it in the book because I'm like yeah those two would go together that's exactly what I thought I was like that would go together they are it's a brilliant balancing because also sitting and listening my attention is completely on the other for the other my emotional energy is entirely focused on the other person and I kind of calibrate myself to attune to what their needs are so I can respond accurately to where they're at and then kickboxing is basically all about me so that I can you know I can think about myself and be in relation to myself physically and psychologically and let myself go as opposed to kind of manage myself to you know moving my hands together like they're moving through a river so I can listen to the music and respond to the other person this is and I also I can be totally insensitive and thoughtless and you know all the opposite of what you're meant to be when you're a therapist the other thing that I I did sort of mention in the book but not that clearly is that I what I watch and listen to so I never watch scary or bleak films I only watch things that have happy endings stories that have happy endings or are funny and I think again that's like the sort of rebalancing of my day job so where you know there are no you can't sort people out there's someone's died that is not fixable and the work is to find a way of living with it so I watch Modern Family you know where they always have a kind of resolution sit around the table together and laugh at the end of the episode and that releases me from the tension yes I actually did an entire podcast episode on finding grief in my favorite TV show which is the Golden Girls and I feel the same way I tell people I'm like I need a lot of fluff in my in my everyday life I need more fluff than average person yeah and everyone wants what sort of sends me links these maps to by the sea and gives me these incredible devastating memoirs of people of loss and I I really I that is not where I need to go yes and you're like I appreciate you but I'm gonna go turn on Modern Family now yes I like that this book it seems like so many books on grief are born out of frustration for what exists in the world and maybe a desire to have a bigger conversation and I'm wondering even logistically kind of when this book came around as an idea for you how it gathered itself into this collection of stories how you chose which stories were in the book which ones were not so kind of this whole knitting together process how did that happen for you for grief works pretty amazing actually because I an agent came to me and asked suggested I write a book and I was not at all keen and then literally about four or five months later it was like an email popped into my head which was you know and how I look at that idea of writing a book again and I remember I was walking around my kitchen and the title and I was writing things down for the title and the title literally just appeared Grief Works and you know it has three meanings which is that if you do it it works and you adjust that it's hard work physically and psychologically and that the stories are stories of grief their works about grief so it has three levels oh I just got chills I love it yeah and Freud Sigmund Freud who was the kind of father of all therapy was the one who first talked about the work of grief so it kind of ticked so many boxes and then the only way I understand grief is by through the experience I've learned through the experience of other people so the only way I could really talk about it and I did it for the proposal was telling stories and then those stories I worked with some from the past which had remained in me and they were live in me I had no idea I'd remember them so clearly you know I never used a note I never used another person's book I just sat down with my laptop and they came from my being and so you know obviously things were altered so they wouldn't be recognizable and sometimes I'd bring in little instance from another but they were some of them were two or three stories together but they were just in my system waiting to be written and then other ones were existing couples or people I was working with now and I could record them and so I used that so it came very organically it just and the structure for the book was totally just waiting to be I knew it would be stories and then very naturally it would be rather than circumstances of death or particular themes it would be by relationship because that's what I'm most interested in is my relationship with the person and their relationship with the person that's died so it was a real lovely pleasure.

That's amazing after being approached to be like well I don't think so a very lovely turnaround.

Amazing amazing and I think it was just not forcing it like I let it just sit there and then it obviously just did its own work and then it just said okay come on I think in the end I thought you're going to regret not doing it give it a go and what else that can happen you know you don't get it published well you know that isn't as a disaster and I'm so pleased I've had such lovely lovely messages from people how it's helped them and helped them understand themselves and help their family understand and that's been the amazing thing is how like it's getting out in the world in the way that I never could just sitting opposite one person in my room from week to week it feels like it's extended my reach in the most lovely way and I feel very very touched by people's response.

Yes it feels like the pillars of strength that you go over in this book are kind of the connecting points between people it puts grief and what we need in grief into language that people can understand and communicate to others what are they can we do a quick like a rundown of your pillars?

Do a quick rundown so the idea is people often talk about having a black hole inside them a hole inside them and so it's building up systems and habits and attitudes that support them to as we talked before weather this storm and so the just I won't go into them each individually and they are on my website which I think I'm going to do a link to there's a sort of full information on my website but there's your relationship with yourself your relationship with the person that's died your focusing so kind of getting in touch with the person that's died by sort of breathing your mind and body limit structure that eight no let's see I'm opening the book right now oh we've got expressing our grief ways to express and time and time your relationship with them I like these because they're different ways of thinking about you know I think in America we still lean on the five stages very very heavily I still see it coming up in like sitcoms and on movies and TV and things like that I'm like why are we still thinking that this you know is the way to go and so to see things like time and self-care and focus kind of portrayed in a different light or even the pillars of strength we think of strength and it's like a keep calm and carry on mentality it's it's the opposite of that it's almost structure or foundation or yes it's the things you need yeah and you know I am a big admirer of Kubler-Ross who's been with these stages but the Lang and people say it was such authority you know I think she's in the bargaining stage or she's in the anger stage and you and I know and anyone listening who's breathing those you can be angry bargaining and furious in in an hour you can guess you can run through all of those you know and you haven't even finished breakfast so you know it's it's unhelpful I think and I think often this thing of this idea of of continue that you finish one and you move on to another it's very mechanistic and what I talk about the whole way through is this ongoing adaptation and process I talk about it as accommodation that you you know there are times that you know maybe three or four years down the line you're not thinking at all about the person's side and then you smell tomato soup and it reminds you of your mum or your partner and you're literally it feels like they died yesterday and obviously the loss is very very intense for the first while much longer than anybody wants but it isn't something that you get over it isn't something that is it is a lifelong process so what is it in your life in your grief that helps you come back the most I think both I think letting myself love the people that have died and finding ways of letting myself love them but also letting myself love and accept the love of others when I am sad or distressed or missing the people that have died so it's it's both but I think love is the only thing that really helps us at the end of the day it's when love dies it devastates us but the only thing that really heals us is love which is a bit of a conundrum it is and yet it's the best remedy for anything in the world it is it's really allows us to rebuild our trust in life and find meaning and hope is through love Well I have kind of a bonus question for you before we kind of wrap up and we tell people where you can find your book and that is in the introductory email that I was sent by you there was this note that you were a very close friend to Princess Diana and I'm kind of just curious about your relationship with her and the feelings that you have about the ongoing grief that continues regarding her death Yes I mean I feel very lucky that I knew her and we had such a lovely friendship and I think it shows the the level of her kind of authenticity and her capacity to love as a as a woman more than as a princess that she still lives on in all the people that remember her and think about her and they didn't even know her but they felt that they did and I think she influences those people well after she died and I think that's an incredible legacy I think it's an extraordinary thing she lived does live on in the hearts of others that remember her and love her still Yes and that's so much of how grief works is that continued living almost in in the bodies the minds the hearts of others Absolutely and you see it in particular anniversaries like this year was the 20th anniversary of that you see it at other times you know and I've been all around the world and there are a lot of places that I didn't even know and I went to Havana and there's a whole Princess Diana garden I had no idea it was there She went everywhere All over the world I love it Well Julia I would love if you could let us know where people can find a copy of Grief Works for themselves also where they can find you your work if you're making any appearances in the near future just what do you got and what's next So you can buy my book from Barnes and Noble is that what it's called in the States I'm not so good in Yes They're all it's in all good bookshops and I know it's in Barnes and Noble you can certainly buy it on Amazon and A books from my website there are lots of podcasts and articles and blogs and the 8 Pillars of Strength and that website is www.

Griefworks.

Co.

Uk and there's also a place where you can this would be for the UK actually to find support for yourself but a way to contact me if you wanted to write me a message and then I have a contract to write a new book at the moment it's called Life Works and it's about how we adapt and change through the transitions of life through the different phases of our life and it's in the very early stages but it's going to be the same kind of format where I do it to your story through my work with that I'm looking forward to the legacy of insight that you're going to be leaving us with all of these books I think they're so powerful in opening up conversations on grief I mean that but also identifying ourselves in the grief of others which is such a cool it's such a cool experience it's so easy to self-diagnose to diagnose ourselves but to reach across and identify with others who are in a same space a similar space in a similar experience is very very powerful so I've so enjoyed reading that in your book and just thank you so much for coming on coming back today and giving us insights on coping with grief and and finding finding love well it's been a real pleasure talking to you thank you so much for inviting me I just one last thing I would add is that friends and family the people who aren't grieving are as important as the people that are grieving there is a section in my book about how friends and family can support me but I think sometimes we leave them out and I think the more the general public have an understanding of what grief is like even if they haven't yet experienced it and of course we all will at some point the better it is for everybody yes if you're not the greever you're going to be in that first second third circle of influence yeah absolutely at some point we're not yes absolutely

Reviews

Thanks so much; it was so wonderful to hear that other people hit all 5 stages before breakfast as well. Very helpful discussion.
Going to check out her website right now!