"Heartcore" Grief Science With Candyce Ossefort-Russell

Candyce Ossefort-Russell went from having a healthy husband to a dead husband in a matter of two months. A bizarre heart-consuming virus was at the root of it all, taking Candyce's husband out of her life forever on Valentine's Day, 1992. Her loss drove her to become a therapist where she sits with others in their darkness and does a boatload of research on the biological science of grief and grieving.

Transcript

Just a heads up that due to tech glitch on my end,

My side of our conversation this interview today is a little bit harsh and fuzzy sounding,

But I've done the best I can to smooth it out.

So let's get to our interview.

Well,

Candice,

Thank you so much for joining us on Coming Back this week.

I'm so excited to have you here on the show because one of our grief growers in the private Facebook group shared what I like to think of as viral medium article entitled,

Want to Support Your Grieving Friend,

Five Truths About What Really Helps.

The instant I read your writing,

I knew I had to have you on the show.

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

My lost story is that when I was 30 years old and my son,

My first and only child was 11 months old,

My husband,

Who is a healthy,

Fit 39-year-old runner,

Became suddenly ill a couple of days after our baby's first Christmas.

And on New Year's Day,

I had to take him to the emergency room because he had shallow breathing and I had to drop him off at the emergency room while I ran home to call my mother who lives in a town that's about an hour from me.

My mother came to watch my son while I went back to the hospital and it took them the whole day to figure out that this healthy,

Fit runner was having heart problems.

And a cardiologist came and told me if he didn't make it through the night,

He wouldn't be surprised.

And yeah.

And so I went from having a healthy husband to two days later being told he might not make it through the night.

And then he did make it through the night,

But that then led to a phase of progressive heart failure.

He turned out to have had a virus that attacked his heart and essentially just ate his heart muscle.

And so a week after going into the hospital,

He was put on a ventricular assist device,

Which was essentially an external artificial heart.

Having done that,

That permanently destroyed his actual heart,

Which meant he had to have a heart transplant.

And so we were then waiting while he was in the hospital in ICU for six weeks,

Waiting for him to get enough strength to undergo transplant surgery and to get a donor heart.

And then the big story was that on Valentine's Day,

The day that we had gotten engaged five years earlier,

I was visiting Marty,

My husband,

At the hospital.

And one of the nurses ran in and interrupted us during our visit and I was kind of angry at first,

But she burst out that we got a donor heart.

So we got a healthy donor heart on Valentine's Day,

Isn't that?

It's like the irony of getting a heart on Valentine's Day.

And so everybody knew this young dad in the hospital waiting for a heart.

So while they were preparing him for transplant surgery,

All the doctors and nurses and therapists and everything were coming by his hospital room to say,

We're so excited for you after what you've been through,

This is going to be the easy part.

And then he went into surgery and he didn't survive.

In the wee hours of the morning of February 15th,

He died in surgery.

And so that was just shocking.

We went from this roller coaster of,

He's not going to make it through the night,

Then he did make it through the night.

And then they had all kinds of hope that he would be okay.

And then he didn't survive the surgery.

So walking out of that hospital was when I walked into a world that was forever different.

I feel like,

Just like this analogy of the roller coaster,

I feel like the literal wind has been taken out of me.

I talk about grief so much as this instant plunge into darkness and it's irreversible.

What was going through your mind,

If anything,

Walking out of this hospital,

Walking to this 11 month old baby?

I mean,

I'm like,

You've got dependents,

You've got family,

He's got all this crashing down on you,

I'm sure.

I just remember the feeling when the surgeon came in and said he didn't make it.

I just remember that it was kind of like a shocking numbness.

It was like terror and a shocking numbness all at once.

Walking out of that hospital,

I still remember it was winter.

And I live in Texas,

So it's not intense winter.

In fact,

I remember there were these bright yellow and purple pansies planted outside the door and it was a bright sunny day.

I just remember not understanding how the sun could be shining.

I didn't understand.

I didn't understand how there could be sun and how cars could be driving down the street.

The fact that the whole world hadn't come to a complete stop was mystifying to me.

It was very disorienting to know my world had ended and walk out into a sunny,

Beautiful day where everybody else seemed normal.

You just want to walk around and grab them by the collar and be like,

Don't you know?

Right,

Right.

Oh my God.

Have you and your husband talked about the possibility of this happening?

Not specifically.

Actually,

I mean,

I had quit a graduate program when I had my son to stay home with him.

And my husband,

Marty,

His father had died when he was 18 years old.

So I guess it was when I was pregnant,

We decided that if I was going to stay home with the kid,

That he should get more life insurance.

And so in that respect,

We talked in the abstract of if something ever happened to him,

Which is weird because what 30-year-old person thinks ahead to buy life insurance in case something happens?

I thought that was an incredible amount of foresight.

I know.

But as far as in the hospital,

I think that's one of the things that I learned from having lost Marty is that that's one of the things that there's always those little things that you look back on and feel guilty about no matter how much anybody tries to reassure you you shouldn't feel guilty.

And one of those things is that I was holding it together to still take care of a nursing infant and then go visit Marty in the hospital and all that.

I could not allow myself to comprehend or know that he might die once he survived that first night.

I was certain he was going to live.

And I think there might have been times that he was scared and worried he might die.

And I just didn't open myself to talking to him about it because I mean,

He didn't indicate it.

It was I'm assuming maybe he did,

But I myself did not allow myself to know in those weeks in the hospital that he wasn't going to leave the hospital.

But since then,

I had another friend die of cancer a couple of years later and I walked right up to the edge with her and we talked about everything because I learned the hard way that you don't ever want to have those kinds of regrets.

Oh,

I love that.

Thank you.

I'm curious what you did then for his remembrance,

His service,

His family,

Where special songs played.

How did you honor him and his life?

Part of what happened when he died was I felt like my old self died too.

And my old self had been a very compliant sort of people pleasing kind of person.

And I felt like Marty was the only person who really knew me as the real authentic person that I was.

And when he died,

That whole compliant facade just shattered and I didn't care about pleasing anybody else anymore.

However,

It took a few weeks for that to kick in.

So immediately after he died,

He was cremated and we had a memorial service.

And that memorial service,

I did my best to honor him the way I could,

But he wasn't that religious of a person and his mother was very religious and my parents were too.

And so he was his mother's only child also.

So I feel like the original memorial service was more for her than for Marty.

I tried my best to honor him within it,

But this woman who had lost her husband and her only child,

I felt like needed to have the kind of service she needed to honor him.

And then I actually,

My son was just a baby and so he wasn't going to remember any of it.

So I actually saved Marty's ashes for four years,

Three years,

For three years.

And when my son was four years old,

I wrote a memorial service for Marty that included music and poetry and memories and stuff that fit him,

That fit me.

And I got him a burial plot and I hosted a memorial service three years after his death that was really the right one that was for him and that my son,

Who was then four,

Could participate in.

And I wrote that whole service from beginning to end and it was very meaningful.

So we did two things.

This is something I've never heard of before,

But it seems like there's a lot of permission in this to continue to hold on to things,

To not have to move through so quickly,

To get rid of the ashes so quickly,

To only have the one and done memorial service.

I'm wondering if you can speak more to this idea of having permission to hold on until we're ready to let go or maybe even this idea of letting go in pieces.

Yes.

That's definitely something that I'm very grateful to my family and I also,

I went to therapy right after my husband died.

I had been in career transition and talked to a therapist just about that stuff before he ever got sick.

And so I had this person who turned out to be an amazing life-saving resource who,

Between my family and this therapist,

Were just going with me through the process.

So I had a lot of permission to listen to my intuitive process and there was nothing in me that felt like any of this advice about closure or getting over things or stupid phases of grief made any sense.

So I really just trusted myself and the phases that I went through.

And now I am a therapist and I study this stuff and I help people and I really see there is no magic timeframe for this stuff and grief takes its time.

And I don't mean time heals all wounds because it doesn't and it's not just a matter of the passing of time,

But it does take time to do your healing.

I know I felt pretty much in shock for about a year.

I had certainly moments of feeling a lot of feelings,

But I was pretty numb and out of it for about a year.

I mean,

I was functional.

I don't mean I wasn't functioning,

But my emotional state was very shock-like for about a year.

And then the second year,

I started feeling so much and the people around me wanted me to take antidepressants because I was feeling so much and I was like,

I'm finally alive again.

Don't you dare shut me down.

No,

I've been waiting for this.

That's right.

And then I was angry for about a year.

I was enraged with the universe for about a year.

Things take as long as they take.

I was grateful I didn't have to leave the house we lived in together.

I took my time going through his belongings and then a couple of years after he died,

I suddenly had to get out of the house.

So I sold the house and moved and I just did everything on my own timetable with lots of support.

And I can't tell you how much it means to me that I had that support to take my time because I really kind of re-knit my very being from the ground up in that process.

Oh,

I just got chills.

What a great phrase.

I re-knit my being from the ground up.

Oh,

I love that.

Because the other thing that I write about a lot too is that when we have a major loss like that,

Especially a traumatic loss,

Like when you lost your mother at such a young age and me losing my husband in the middle of a life where it was out of the order of things,

You not only lose the person,

Which is a huge piece of the grief,

But part of what happens is it shatters the way your identity and yourself is organized.

There's a whole bunch of science behind this and the coming apart of how I thought the world was supposed to work,

The coming apart of who I thought I was in the world,

All those things,

That is another aspect to the loss that takes time to heal.

And we don't talk about that very much.

It's about kind of like,

Well,

You get used to the fact that this person is gone and you move on.

It's aspects of your whole identity that have come apart and have to be put back together.

Yes,

Absolutely.

And I'm leaning into right now the story that was at the top of this article,

Want to Support Your Grieving Friend.

Can you like retell the Sadie story for people who may not know this?

Sure.

So this was just a few months after my husband died.

I was talking to a friend who I'd been – Marty and I had been couple friends with Sadie and her husband before Marty was sick.

In fact,

They gave us a baby shower when I was pregnant and everything.

After Marty died,

I was talking to her and she said,

You know,

I always heard about how sometimes when people are widowed,

Their friends kind of leave them behind and don't want to be around them anymore.

I always thought that was terrible but you know what,

Now I understand.

And I was just like sort of taken aback and wondering what in the world – I was like,

What?

And she said,

Yeah,

It's like it's uncomfortable for me to be around you because it makes me realize something like that could happen to me and I don't want to think about it.

Maybe we should talk about something else.

And I just was reeling.

I just had no idea how to respond to that.

I was just like,

You think it's uncomfortable for you.

You try waking up in my bed every morning.

So I wasn't really friends with Sadie after that.

Yes,

I think this happens so much in grief.

I literally lost friends after my loss because they're like,

I don't know how to be with you when you are this sad.

Or like it was overwhelming to them and it was like this is too much for me.

And I was like,

It's overwhelming for you.

Like you don't understand.

I just want to tear my hair out and be like,

Are you crazy?

And I scream at them.

I know.

Yes.

And it just like boggles the mind.

And they're just like this – the lack of comprehension there is so strong.

But I really want to speak to this because it's so true for so many people who are friends of grievers is not knowing how to sit in the sadness or make space for it or whatever other phrase you'd like to use for it.

And the rest of this article,

The Want to Support Your Grieving Friend article is the reasons why we struggle to do this.

And then the best part about it for me was actual tips for how to do this because even grievers can tell you what not to do.

And we spoke before we started recording today about the concept of grief shaming,

Where society shames grievers for grieving.

But then grievers also turn right back around and shame family and friends for not treating them being with them the ways that they need.

And we're like,

Well,

I was just trying to help because you even said in this article,

I was like,

I knew my friend Sadie was just being honest with me,

But my God,

That was terrible.

And so I really wanted to get into – I'm going to make this a two-parter for us.

How you channeled this loss in your life to become a psychotherapist and educate yourself in a way that helps others and then how this has formed into the science of being better people surrounding grief and loss.

Okay.

So I was in career transition when I had my son.

My undergraduate degree is in computer science and I realized four years into it that I really hated it.

And so I had gone into a psychology – a research psychology PhD program before I had my son.

And it was so all-consuming that when we decided to have a child,

I decided to put that PhD program on hold and then my husband died and everything changed.

And I had – because like I mentioned,

My husband had bought life insurance.

I had a period of a few years that I could luckily take the time to just grieve and parent my child and sort through what in the world I was going to do with myself.

But I didn't have enough money to live without working forever,

Just for a few years.

And so I just grieved and I wrote – that was when I really started writing for the first time.

I wrote about my grief.

I wrote about my response to the culture about grief and being in therapy with this therapist who just went into the darkness with me and walked all the way through with me just changed my life in a way that I don't know what I would have done without her.

So about five years after my husband died,

I realized I needed to become a therapist.

I was no longer interested in research psychology.

I wanted to be in the nitty-gritty of sitting with people in their dark places.

And so I did go to graduate school at that point and became a therapist myself and now I've been a therapist for about 20 years.

And I wrote my master's thesis about grief and it was really – it's just been a very – having gone through this loss and then coming through to helping people with grief has sort of led me – it led me to this place where I can't tell the difference between work and art and passion and love because to read about the theories behind all this emotion and everything really helped me like kind of – I guess I think I knew that my process was something to be honored.

I knew that it had changed me in a way that made me a better person and a more capable person of sitting with people in hard times.

But I wanted to have like the words to validate that to the universe,

To the world.

So rather than just my experience matters,

I wanted to be able to articulate this to the world to have an impact on the way we see grief.

And so my master's thesis was more from a sense of depth psychology like Jungian perspectives and spiritual perspectives on this grief process.

And then for the last 20 years,

That has tied into an amazing burgeoning of emotion science and neuroscience that explains a lot of emotion theory.

And so I have really been looking at emotion theory through the lens of grief to really see how the way our brains are wired and the ways our need for attachment in the world explains why grief hurts so much and why it lasts so long and why people have such a hard time knowing what to say when they face someone who's in that kind of pain.

So it's become this lifelong integrated journey for me to study all this stuff and then articulate it in words in order to both comfort grievers because it makes people who are grieving suddenly not feel crazy to know that this makes biological sense what they're feeling.

And it also helps people who want to help grievers understand what they're seeing in front of them and also understand why they're having such a painful reaction to their loved one's pain.

And my other piece is that I trained therapists because I just got lucky and I found a good therapist who was willing to go with me.

But there's a lot of misinformation in the psychology world about grief too.

And so many therapists just kind of face grieving people and try to force them into the five stages of grief.

And the therapists themselves don't know how to help.

Yes,

It's insane.

There are a lot of – yes,

Yes.

There are so many therapists.

I mean,

Graduate schools,

That's all they teach about grief.

And so I have this passion of training therapists to be able to sit with people in the darkness and go down and through it rather than trying to rescue them from it.

What a great – that's another lovely phrase,

Go down and through instead of trying to rescue.

That speaks to me so strongly because it is this,

Are you going to diagnose me?

Are you going to go on the journey with me?

I'm kind of laughing at a lot of the science with grief because I'm sure you have like some favorite subjects or favorite topics or favorite facts that you like geek out on that you've learned so far.

What are your favorite or like most surprising insights that you've gleaned from this emotional science research and grief?

Let's see.

For grievers,

I mean,

One of the things is the polyvagal theory of the nervous system,

Which talks about how we are creatures essentially,

Right?

We sense in the world with our bodies whether the world is safe or threatening.

And when our gut perceives threat,

It sets off our nervous system either to go into hyper arousal like heart beating fast and shortness of breath and anxiety kind of symptoms or if the threat is intense enough,

It causes us to go into a collapse state,

Which is a state of kind of paralysis and numbness and even dissociation.

And what I find – Being dead from that kind of a better phrase.

Exactly.

That's exactly what it is.

And so essentially,

What I've sort of pulled apart is how when you lose a loved one,

It causes your whole nervous system to perceive threat all around you because it upends so many things.

Like the person that you are turning – used to turning towards,

You turn towards them and they're not there and that lack is perceived as dangerous.

And all the roles that you depended on them for are gone.

All these things,

It's like – So,

If you think about the quote,

Symptoms of grief that people feel after a loss that make them feel crazy where they don't feel like eating,

They can't sleep,

Their heart pounds,

They feel dizzy,

They feel numb,

All those physiological symptoms that you feel after you lose a loved one,

All of that makes sense because it's just your nervous system responding to threat.

And so,

For people to realize that these symptoms that can be so intense that they've never felt before and they can last so long that it comes from that perception of threat and the environment that is caused by this person having gone missing that it just makes sense that that's what your body is feeling.

So,

The other piece of this nervous system thing is that we also can feel threatened by the threat.

So,

If we get scared of our feelings,

It makes the feelings become detrimental to us and they can turn into depression and illness.

But if we feel safe with the feelings we're having,

They're just feelings and they will move us towards healing and take us in the direction of exactly what we need in order to heal from this huge wound that is loss.

So,

Our culture that shames grievers actually sets grievers up to feel bad about their feelings and be afraid of their feelings which is the very thing that can cause the feelings to become illness-inducing and depression versus if we could encourage people to know that the intense emotions they're having are normal responses of their nervous system to this situation that they're in,

Then their feelings will just flow through them and lead them towards the very actions they need to take in order to heal.

It's just this layered layered,

I can't be with you because you're sad.

Oh,

I should be afraid of my sadness.

No one wants to be around me.

Oh,

It'll pass in time.

You shouldn't be this angry.

Oh,

I should be afraid of my anger.

And so,

The threat becomes a threat and so it's like this meta threat level.

Exactly.

There are so many layers to this and it's just I love this that there's science behind it because not only is there validation of somebody sitting across from you saying,

This is normal,

Actually that happened to me too and it isn't ridiculous how we respond to each other sometimes,

But it's their scientific proof of this is how our bodies are made to react to grief and if we're afraid of ourselves,

It only becomes stronger.

Even their own emotional states can scare them because they're bigger than any they've ever had before.

Yes,

To feel things at this depth is mind blowing.

Yes.

Yeah,

And overwhelming and very scary.

Can we kind of flip the tables for a moment and talk about some interesting science facts for those either watching grievers,

Helping grievers,

Related to grievers,

But maybe not on the first lines of a loss?

Sure,

Sure.

So,

The science that I've really seen that really makes sense to me is about the attachment system.

We humans have social brains,

Meaning we are wired to attach to each other from the time we're born.

We're wired to need to have the people we love close to us as much as possible.

And so,

Part of the attachment system is the caregiving system.

This is a biological reflex that we all have wired into our brains.

So,

What that caregiving reflex is,

Is when we see someone we care about who's in pain,

Our biological reflex is to protect them from pain.

It is a reflex.

It's kind of like we can't help it.

You see somebody you love who's hurting and you want to help.

You want to make the suffering stop.

Anyone who's a parent knows that with a little kid,

Right?

They're in pain.

You want to make the pain stop.

But then you run into something like death.

And so,

You're looking at your loved one who's grieving and your biological reflex is causing you to want to protect them from this pain,

But you can't.

Because the only thing that would make that pain stop is to raise somebody from the dead,

Which you can't do.

So,

What's happening inside the person who wants to help is this conflict between two parts of them is that it's the sense of a biological reflex pushing them to fix it and the utter realization that it cannot be fixed,

Which generates a feeling of helplessness,

Which is deeply unconscious.

I'm not saying people are walking around thinking,

I'm so helpless,

But that's how it works.

So,

That to me is what people are responding to when they say the stupid things they say because they don't know what to do.

They're having this internal sense that they want to help.

They feel helpless.

So,

They just say things to try to fix it.

The impulse is to fix it,

To say,

Why don't you get out more?

You're not getting out enough or you need to do your grief work.

Going through your grief steps will help you get over this faster.

He's in a better place.

Time heals all wounds.

It's helpful for grievers to know the science of people watching grievers too because our impulse is to just look at them and be like,

Well,

You weren't doing it right.

And then they're like,

Well,

I'm just trying to help.

And it turns into both parties being more walled off to each other as opposed to more sympathetic,

Because I was so angry at everybody else in my life for not understanding.

I'm like,

Why can't you understand that this is so – Me too.

Yeah,

And just me too,

Yes.

And why can't you understand that this is so painful and all-consuming?

And they're like,

Well,

My peer group was mostly like,

Why don't you just drink because we're all 21.

What else do you do?

Come to this party.

Exactly.

Focus on your thesis.

Go back to school.

All this other stuff.

One day this will seem small.

And I'm like,

Well,

That's not today.

And so I would discount people majorly,

But I didn't understand what they were going through on their end was this literal,

Internal,

Unidentifiable anguish of watching me struggle but not being able to fix,

To do anything about it.

And yeah,

That just having to sit and watch is hyper painful.

It requires a lot of kind of effort on the part of the person who wants to help to notice that's what they're feeling and then stop and simply say,

I don't know how to help.

I want to help.

I care about you.

I don't know how to help.

To me,

That's so much more helpful than jumping in to try to do something that's not helpful.

And so for people to be aware that that's what's happening and that it's okay to respond with,

This death has humbled all of us and we are all in pain and we don't know what to do.

Let's be in that together.

That brings us together in humanity.

So I also found,

And for grievers out there,

I did find that there were definitely people who did rise to the occasion who were there for me.

And going through a major trauma like that does kind of separate the wheat from the chaff,

So to speak.

I lost friendships with people who couldn't show up,

Who I thought would have been my friends forever.

And I gained new friendships and also deepened friendships with people I didn't realize had the depth to really show up.

And so it rearranges a lot of stuff.

That's another layer of loss that you go through,

But over time you end up knowing that the friends you have in your life are the hardcore people that you want to go through life with.

Yeah.

I heard you say hardcore,

But I heard hardcore.

And I kind of like that.

I like that.

I do too.

Yeah.

I'm going to take that.

Yeah,

Please do.

I love it.

I love coming up with new phrases for grief.

I'm looking at some notes that I was taking in your story,

And I want to touch on really quickly before we sign off for the day on the concept of memorializing anniversaries,

Death-iversaries.

It sounds like Valentine's Day was and still is a hyper important day to you for you and your husband because that was the day that you were engaged.

But then all of a sudden it became a nightmare of a day.

And so I'm curious as to what you did the first year out,

The second year out,

If things have changed over time,

If you ignore it,

If you do something on purpose because of it,

If you hate Valentine's Day.

I'm just so curious about how not only an anniversary,

But how a holiday has changed for you.

Yes.

Well,

That's interesting you asked that.

You might want to go on Medium and see the article I posted on Valentine's Day this year.

It's called 12 Things I Learned About Love When My Husband Died on Valentine's Day.

Well,

Definitely.

I'm very much for doing things on anniversaries.

It really to me,

Ritual really helps to hold and honor the emotions that we have.

And on the first Valentine's Day after Marty died,

He used to buy me a dozen roses on Valentine's Day.

It was kind of cliche,

But it was very special for us.

I went and bought a dozen roses for myself on Valentine's Day.

I had a babysitter for the day and I went and visited 12 places that were our favorite places to go.

I left the rose at each one of those places.

Oh,

I love that.

The second Valentine's Day,

I was in that place of anger.

I took his ashes and I went out to the graveyard.

I didn't have it.

I wasn't buried yet,

But I went out and I put roses in the graveyard next to his ashes and I stomped them into the grass.

I just stomped those roses into the grass.

I was so mad.

I was so mad at the universe.

So I just like – I mean,

I dug those roses into red paste into the grass.

I've tried to do something on Valentine's Day every year,

But then I did remarry 11 years after my husband died.

I found the right man.

When I remarried,

I decided that I would reclaim Valentine's Day for him.

Since Marty actually died on the wee hours of February 15th,

I kind of own that as Marty's death anniversary so that I could have Valentine's Day with my live husband and the 15th for my dead one.

I was trying to do something.

I think that's really important and important too that we give ourselves permission to change the script as time goes on because the rituals don't always feel appropriate every single year.

Yes,

Sometimes you're in a rage space.

Sometimes you're in a gratitude space.

Sometimes you're in a kind of a mellow – like a heart space.

Yes,

Absolutely.

I'm hearing you on that.

Thank you so much for sharing your new and old rituals with us.

Yes.

Thanks for asking.