Living In The Baby Steps With Katie Huey

Katie Huey's dad was fine until he wasn't. A sudden heart attack took him from her family in her early twenties and Katie was plunged into a year of spiraling confusion, compounded by both her and her husband's unexpected job losses. We're talking about Katie's faith (how prayer often looks like gratitude lists), what the experience of grief is like as an introvert, and how her blog, 52 Beautiful Things, changed in the aftermath of her father's death.

Transcript

Well,

Katie,

I am so thrilled to have you on the podcast this week.

You and I met within the Modern Loss Facebook group,

Is that correct?

Yeah,

That's where I found you.

Awesome.

Yeah,

We connected in the Modern Loss Facebook group,

And Modern Loss is a place where I post a lot of articles over to the Shelby for Cithia page or even reference them in the email blast that I send out.

And you sent me your story,

And I was just so interested in how you produced something that is so beautiful from your loss or so reflective.

And I think that's really interesting.

I'm excited to share your story and your work today.

So Katie,

Welcome to the show,

And if you could please share with us your loss story.

Yeah,

Thanks so much for having me.

It's wonderful to connect with people who are interested in talking candidly about grief,

So I'm honored to be here.

Well,

My name is Katie,

And it's kind of like an AA format.

You're like,

My loss is or my qualifier is,

But in March of 2016,

My dad passed away unexpectedly.

He was seemingly fine the night before,

Had dinner at my house,

And the next morning,

Actually had a heart attack and died at my parents' house.

And in the midst of that immediate loss,

Lots of things happen.

Family comes and surrounds you,

And then everybody leaves.

And in that everybody leaving process,

About a month after my dad died,

My husband was laid off from his job.

And then a short month after that,

I was actually let go from a new position that I had taken to.

And not only were we dealing with a loss of epic proportions from a loved one,

But also our financial stability was kind of ripped from under us too.

So 2016 was definitely a year of spiraling,

Compounding confusion,

I guess you could say.

And then you add a big pile of grief on top of that.

So that was where you start,

I guess,

In the process of unemployment.

We spent a lot of time with my mom and my brother,

Who they actually still live in the same house,

And it's wonderful that we're in the same town.

But I just kind of call that time period where we would sit and stare at the wall a lot,

Cry a lot,

Not really know what to do,

Which I think is very natural and also very unsettling.

So it's been almost three years,

We're coming up on the three year anniversary,

And as I look back,

Lots of things happen,

But living in what I call the baby steps,

I think it's been a process of getting our confidence back while learning how to adjust to new normals.

And I guess I can talk about a little bit my writing and how that's helped me to kind of intertwine throughout this whole process.

I had actually started a blog in the beginning of 2013.

I was a young 20-something,

And I had just gotten engaged,

And we were planning a wedding,

And my grandfather died.

So as kind of a way to cope with that,

I started writing this blog,

Which I call 52 Beautiful Things,

And it's my attempt to find good things that the world has to offer when things feel a little bit chaotic.

So I write each week just about things that I find to be delightful or healing or charming or things that I'm thankful for.

And it's been evolving.

So I had three years of content before my dad died,

And now I'm coming up on three years more of new content.

But it's really been a space to find healing despite the chaos that grief brings.

I think it's interesting,

Too,

From an introvert's perspective,

You get to share your heart online,

And you don't really know how people are reacting,

Can kind of hide behind a screen.

But I've had a lot of people really resonate and say thank you for sharing this process.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's something that I'm picking up on through your work as well and just kind of reading all the places you are.

I know you have the website.

You have a bit that you write over on Medium as well.

And I want to kind of – I'm drawing a loop in the air with my hands.

I know you can't see me on this end of the mic.

So I kind of loop back to this kind of cluster of losses of your dad dying suddenly and then your husband losing his job and then you losing your job.

And the first question that popped into my mind was,

What happened to your faith?

And this is not like a religious question,

But I feel like most of us kind of walk around in the world with this belief that like the world is inherently good and if I'm a good person,

Good things happen to me.

And like – or just like faith that there will be a job tomorrow or food on the table or like some kind of ground or like structure.

And so the first question that immediately popped in my brain as you started speaking is whoa,

What happened to her faith and all of that.

Interesting.

Well,

I think that's a great question.

I think I was raised – actually my dad was a minister until I was in late elementary school so very much had a Christian foundation.

Oh,

Interesting.

I'm sorry.

I'm laughing at this.

But I call myself an intuitive grief guide because I feel like I'm more than a grief counselor in that I just have these like nudges sometimes of like I need to ask a question this way.

And so your dad was a minister.

For a bit.

Yeah,

When I was young and my parents actually did children's ministry and I was very much kind of a youth group kid and kind of coming of age in college,

You start asking a lot of questions about what do I believe and what don't I believe and my background is in sociology and social justice.

And so you ask a lot – I've always asked a lot of questions of like if God is good,

Why does so much pain exist?

And so when pain becomes personal,

Those questions become very personal.

And I think we've had a lot of discussions,

My husband and I and my family and I came to this place of,

For me,

I don't know why God causes this pain,

But I'd rather do this with a higher power than without.

And so I think in the midst of all those swirling messes,

It was faith because that's what gives you survival.

And I'd rather find comfort that for me,

It's Jesus,

But it doesn't have to be for everyone.

You know,

The comfort that Jesus's presence can bring and there were a lot of Bible verses,

You know,

Just like Jesus is with those who are mourning and he sees your tears.

So it was kind of a clinging desperation of like,

Holy crap,

I hope there's something bigger than me because I got nothing.

And I think when that was true for my husband and my mom and my brother,

Like the most important people in my life,

We were all kind of clinging to each other.

So it's been really wonderful to see how God has provided.

And I know that sounds a little bit cliche because there's also very real realities.

Get life insurance,

Life insurance is a life changer.

But in terms of my faith,

I think it almost brought me back to more of my traditional roots.

I think I had a lot of questions about Christianity,

But some of that black and white fades away and you're just like,

I just really need a higher power right now.

I like that explanation of it because I was also raised in a Christian home and I kind of went the total opposite direction where I was like,

Well,

If this happens,

Then God for sure has forsaken my entire family.

And I hadn't really been practicing like spiritually like three or four years before my mother died.

And so it's an interesting,

I just love how you phrase this,

I'd rather do it with a higher power than without.

Like if you're going to give me the choice to grieve with faith or without faith,

I'm going to pick the one with.

And that leads me to kind of a different question.

And that is how did faith look in the midst of all this?

Or I guess I'm kind of swirling around in my brain,

Like how did your prayers change if you prayed at all?

Or how did faith look with other people?

Like I imagine like showing up to church and sometimes singing songs about,

You know,

How great God is and all that,

Did you believe it or did you have a different song?

Like I'm just kind of,

How did grief transform your relationship with Jesus?

It's a good question.

I think,

You know,

Before my dad died,

We weren't necessarily in like a let's go to church every week practicing faith that way mentality.

Not that there's nothing wrong with church,

We just weren't going on a regular basis.

I think prayers certainly change.

There's a time,

You know,

For pleading,

Kind of down on your knees where you are beating your metaphorical fist against God's chest saying,

What am I supposed to do?

I think too,

It also,

Prayer looked a lot like gratitude-less.

I don't know where this practice came from,

But for me,

It's writing down all the things that are going okay.

And maybe that was probably not in the immediate aftermath.

It's funny how trauma kind of blocks things out of your brain.

But we certainly were not a part of the church community in the sense that we had all these people of faith to go get support from.

It was interesting though,

Because my dad was a minister in the community and then he also had his own business for 20 years.

So there were a lot of people who really were grieving him on a kind of public way,

Which brings up a lot of old stuff when you're a family of the church,

And then all these people from the church come back 15 years later and you're like,

Wow,

I haven't talked to you in a long time.

So I think,

Going back to your original question,

You start to see really interesting webs of connection that relationships bring,

Which can carry their own baggage,

But also just a sense of trusting that these people were put in your life for a certain reason,

That they can come back in different ways.

Again,

This sounds cliche,

But God really does work in mysterious ways.

One of the answers to my prayers,

So my dad was an insurance agent and he had his own business and obviously as a result of him no longer being alive,

They decided what to do with his business.

The agent that kind of acquired most of my dad's business hired me on,

And so I went to work in this new agent's office for about a year and a half,

Which looking back was like absolutely crazy,

Absolutely crazy that I would go into this space and work with all of my dad's old clients.

I love that story though about you going to work for his insurance company and literally taking on his client load,

And then these clients are people who.

.

.

Caleb Wilde is an author who came on coming back last year in 2018,

And he is a funeral director who was raised in a Christian faith,

Kind of lost along the way,

Thought he was going to be a missionary and then joined a six generations long funeral home business.

He talks a lot about in one chapter how we ourselves,

But everyone who has ever known the person who we loved is like a mosaic of them.

So everybody kind of has all these like sprinkle shards of information,

So they have stories about you that your dad told them in a certain way and you have stories about your dad,

Of course because you were raised by him and related to him and all these other things.

So if you put all these things together,

You can almost reconstruct a whole person again even though they can't appear physically.

So I definitely resonate with that idea of you kind of get it where you can.

You get the exposure to your loved one however you possibly can and whether that's asking people to tell you stories as you're selling them car insurance.

I mean,

So be it.

Right.

Yeah,

It was definitely a gift and looking back a very bizarre gift,

But I never would have seen that side of him otherwise.

And I'm very thankful for that opportunity and thankful for the agent that worked with me and thankful to my dad's clients.

I think it was certainly challenging even though I didn't start working there until about three months after my dad had died.

People still did not know what had happened and so I just look back with like amazing strength that I could be the one to tell these people what had happened and that dad was gone.

And I think there's power in using those words yourself.

I wrote a piece about it actually about why therapists make you say like,

My dad Roy Chrisman died on March 18,

2016.

Just saying that over and over and over again until it seeps into your brain and your bones and your heart.

Yeah,

Because it is something that starts off as unbelievable.

Right.

And then goes into well maybe because there's no proof that they're around anymore.

Right.

And then it becomes a very,

I mean,

If you'll pardon the expression like a dead set reality.

Yeah,

To be the messenger of that information is definitely a very,

Very heavy and just large.

It's a tall order.

To ask of a daughter especially.

I want to get into your writing for a little bit because you had 52 Beautiful Things pre your dad's loss and then post as well.

And on the show we talk a lot about the loss and regaining of creativity or creative outlets after a loved one dies or after we experience major loss.

And I think the biggest piece of that is whether or not we feel like we're putting ourselves into our work anymore.

And so I'm not entirely sure how to phrase this,

But I'm wondering if there was a point in time where you feel like you lost your voice or that you couldn't write or the words wouldn't come or if there was like a pivot where everything sort of changed direction or if you were like,

I'm just going to keep this down the path I've been going and hold it as like a steady practice,

Like something to cling to that's consistent and normal in my life.

Yeah,

Those are a lot of good questions.

I think my blog continued to be a safe space for me to express things.

Interestingly,

I was a very dedicated personal journaler.

Like,

You know,

I had journals from the time I was 15 until 27.

And for whatever reason,

I have stopped writing pen to paper in a journal when my dad died.

And I haven't really gotten back to that.

So it's something about the truth of putting those words in a personal place I haven't been able to do.

Ironically,

I can type it out and share it for the world without having a problem.

You're like,

It's that whole using a pen as an instrument thing that's really hard.

Right,

Like ink to paper makes it more real.

I don't know if that is what's tying me up.

But so from a creative perspective,

I think it's curious.

It's almost like I,

I know it's so true to myself that I kind of have to share with other people.

And there are many,

Many,

Many Monday nights where I click publish,

And I'm like,

Holy crap,

That was too vulnerable.

I don't care.

You know,

Or I get really nervous about how people are going to perceive the posts.

And sometimes I can tell if it was a little too much,

Because people don't like it or don't comment.

And other times,

You know,

When you're a little more or a little less raw,

People engage a little bit more.

So I don't feel that I have stopped the creative process,

But my tone and my outlook has completely changed.

And I think,

Of course it has,

You know,

It's the point where everything pivots.

And I think too,

There was probably periods of more desperation where I needed to find good things that were happening.

And now that you asked that question,

I kind of want to go back and read those posts specific to 2017 and see what I was searching for.

It's a little easier now,

My heart's a little lighter.

But I think writing is a creative outlet.

It's almost,

You know,

People joke a lot about like,

Is writing therapy and you're like,

Kind of,

But I just sort of have to get it out.

I definitely sat squarely in that camp,

But I didn't.

I wrote stories a lot as a kid,

But then standardized testing kind of beat the writer out of me for a while.

And I didn't get back into it until after my mom died.

And at first I started writing letters to her,

I felt a need to keep her up to date on what was going on with my life.

And then gradually I shipped to me writing to my future self,

Because I felt like I would come back and read these someday.

And now I just write to anything.

And of course I have my public facing journals that I published,

But I also have some private ones too.

I want to touch on something that you said that I actually kind of unearthed in my research of you and 52 Beautiful Things.

And that is the concept,

You said that journaling makes you feel lighter.

And I noticed this word choice of yours over and over and over again on your blog.

I wrote down specifically,

What did I write?

I wrote whisper,

Air and light.

They show up all the time in your work,

At least kind of from the first glimpses that I could find.

And all these things have such a,

To me they register as being like such a soft touch,

Almost like I'm getting chills right now,

This is a weird thing,

But like angelic,

Like just behind the veil.

And I'm wondering kind of where those words come from for you or what calls you to them to use them in your work.

That's really beautiful.

Thank you.

I think so I kind of have adopted a tagline.

And what I say is because hope floats on whispers and healing can be found in the pursuit of beautiful things.

And I think I've always been more of a gentle observer.

I'm an introvert,

Certainly,

And a very sensitive person.

And I think I struggle operating in kind of our mainstream world because people are loud and we're expected to move so fast.

And I find so much comfort in the people who really like look you in the eye and,

You know,

Kind of put a gentle hand on your arm,

Or just take the time to see people.

And so I often find myself kind of operating in slow motion compared to how other people are choosing to go so quickly through their days in their worlds.

I also think we have choices in our outlooks and our perspectives and our media,

Our subconscious,

You know,

We're trained to look for the negative.

And actually,

Right out of college,

I served in AmeriCorps term working at a nonprofit with youth aging out of foster care.

And I will always remember our executive director saying that many people are programmed to tell you what's going wrong in their world because that helps them get their needs met.

But when you stop and listen to what's going right,

People really connect with you.

And I just,

That was such an aha moment for me.

Because it is it's easy to look at everything that's bad and doomed,

As Anne Lamott kind of jokes about.

But what happens when you like sit down and take a cool drink from a glass of water and say actually,

What's going right?

And that's really what I want to try to capture.

I think that was just the perfect little synopsis.

And I'm going to go back to one other point in our conversation really quickly.

And that was when you said,

I was living in the baby steps.

And I got this,

I'm getting chills again,

But I get this image of just from what you said,

Grief seems to be one of these things that helps us get to where you are,

Which is kind of like slowed down,

Tuned in,

Observing here.

And most of us resent grief for that,

Because we want to be fast and we want to be loud,

We want to be expressive and,

And extroverted and you know,

The life of the party and we want things to be going well.

And I think that one of the biggest things that grief teaches us is that impact is not always big,

Fast,

Loud.

And I just think that's so lovely.

So can you let us all know what you mean by living in the baby steps?

Yeah,

I think the way my family experienced grief,

It was definitely a knock you on your feet,

Like,

What the heck do we do?

And I think grief is exhausting and overwhelming,

And people expect you to move on really quickly.

And I don't know if it was because we went to several grief groups or we're just very therapist.

But asking questions of like,

What can you realistically accomplish today and celebrating the small limbs like,

Hooray,

You took a shower,

Like you ate breakfast,

You got out of bed and you were able to cook a meal.

I mean,

Actually,

Even as we're talking,

I think there's just a lot of pride in recovery.

And giving myself permission to say I can't do this all right now is really important.

I think one of my challenges and anger is about my grief and my loss experiences.

It happened in my mid 20s,

When I was supposed to be doing other things.

I have a lot of comparison envy,

You know,

Like,

I had already gotten married,

But friends who were getting their dream jobs or traveling the world or going to grad school,

I felt like my mid 20s were eaten up by a lot of crying and taking care of my mom and figuring out how to survive.

And so looking back,

I can be proud of what I did,

But I think when you're in it,

You don't realize how significant those little hard things are.

Yeah.

And they take up so so much emotional,

Mental heart,

Energy to accomplish that even to do one or two in a day is like,

Okay,

That's as much as I can muster.

That's it.

That's I'm tapped out at this point.

Right.

And I know you talk a lot about permission giving,

But just to anyone out there doing this right now,

It's like,

Hooray,

You brushed your hair.

Those little things really matter.

They do.

And there's signs that are heartbreaking at first,

Because we remember that we are still alive when a lot of times we want to just curl up and die right along with the people who died.

And yeah,

It's like the phrase that's coming to me right now is like a forced living,

A forced aliveness.

Which is,

I guess another one of the big reasons is that it's so exhausting is that it feels like it's forced to stay alive is a hard thing to do when something so incredibly tragic and heartbreaking is happening.

Like our hearts are literally broken.

And to accomplish the things that we do in a day while we're grieving is really like,

It sounds so trivial.

And there's those little lapel pins and stuff that are like,

Hooray,

You did your best,

Hooray,

You made the bed or like all this stuff.

But I'm like,

But no,

Really.

It's like the fact that I continue to feed myself.

And I was in my final semester of college,

My mom died,

But to like to study and write a thesis and like all this stuff,

I was like,

Hooray,

You did the thing.

So that's pretty incredible.

Yeah,

That's a lot.

Something that I like about your work too is that there's so much perpetuation in our culture of attitude of gratitude,

And that's all we're allowed to see.

But within your 52 Beautiful Things,

It's,

I am seeing these beautiful things alongside of the grief and the garbage and the holidays and like all these other things that are going along.

And that's really comforting because all of a sudden,

It's like you see with both eyes,

You don't have to,

You know,

Just look through one and force others to only look through that one too.

Oh,

Yeah.

There's a very just like a clear eyed picture of life is beautiful amidst the worst thing that has ever happened to you.

And so there's an immense amount of comfort in that,

Especially for me as a reader.

Thanks.

Oh,

Yeah,

I would,

I forget that sometimes our culture is always like,

Let's be positive and like,

Well,

Let's sit in the shit too.

I love that.

You know,

You gotta do both.

I love that.

I mostly like it because it rhymes,

But oh my gosh,

What a great way to phrase that.

You're like,

Well,

There's this reality too.

I want to explore something that you've touched on a couple times and that is your introversion,

Self identifying introvert.

And I'm wondering how maybe that impacted your grief or how that high level of sensitivity or observances impacted this entire journey for you?

Yeah,

Let me think on that for a second.

That's a big one.

Yeah.

I think for many,

Many people,

Grief is incredibly lonely.

And I think that plays into my relationships in many ways.

Because I do feel things so deeply,

A lot of times,

I feel like I carry that by myself,

Just because sometimes I feel like maybe I scare people a little bit with like my observations and things.

You know,

You asked the question about how my faith was involved in relationships.

And I'm just thinking back to that,

You know,

That spring of 2016,

My husband and I actually joined a small group at our church to try to build some new relationships.

But here are the three questions that people ask you when you're meeting new people.

What do you do?

Like tell me about your family.

So maybe it's just two questions.

What do you do and tell me about your family?

And you're like,

We're unemployed and my dad just died.

Like,

I don't want to answer these questions.

And so coming up with creative ways to I think,

Protect myself and share my stories with people who earn your trust,

As Brené Brown says,

Earn the ability to know your story.

I think,

Too,

We just spent a lot of time with like my mom and Dylan's parents,

My in-laws.

You don't have a lot of energy to exert in other people's things.

And friendships change and relationships change.

And I kind of break it into like before and after people.

Like people I knew before dad died and people I've met after and sometimes there are the brave courageous few that walk through it with you.

But I've really started paying attention to who I wanted to spend time with.

And sometimes you're kind of forced into introversion because people are scared of spending time with you and that's sort of a second reality of grief too.

That's definitely true.

And like,

Yeah,

I don't know that I can necessarily speak to introversion in my life,

But I know I kind of became a learned introvert as a result of my grief that harkens back to that kind of a forced slowing down that grief brings with it.

But also,

Yeah,

I kind of became a person that not a lot of people wanted to be around.

And so there's a forced introversion that happens with that too.

Where it's like,

Well,

I guess I'm alone again.

If there are listeners of the show and I imagine there are that are feeling like they are alone with their grief in not a good way,

Because there's being alone with your grief in like a companion way,

I think.

And then there's being alone with your grief in like a misery way.

What would be your message to them?

That's a great question too.

You've got all the good questions.

This is not a where are you from?

What do you do?

Tell me about your family.

No,

I love it.

Exactly.

Well,

Those answers suck.

I think you first have to start with the question,

What do I need?

And I think that was so true in the baby steps phase and in the second anniversary phase and in the recover.

I mean,

I'm not recovered,

But like in the living more normally phase.

Because another really bummer thing about grief is no one's going to tell you how to do this.

And while they can try,

But usually like their solutions don't work.

Because it's yours and it's yours alone.

And so whether that's I need a grief group where I can share with people or I just need a hot shower,

Or I need to identify one person that I'm going to try and see if they are safe and give them a call.

I think it requires a lot of risking your heart to share your grief.

Like I said,

I can share publicly on a podcast,

But sometimes I have trouble telling these same things to my husband.

So really analyzing like moment by moment,

What do I need has really helped me.

And it is empowering too,

Because sometimes we need people to take care of each,

Take care of us,

Take care of each other.

And being able to ask for that is super powerful.

Absolutely.

That makes perfect sense to me.

And there's so much,

I think you get to reclaim a little bit of power for yourself in misery through self inquiry.

Because then it feels like in the midst of grief,

A lot of the time that things are happening to you.

And they're out of control and they're not,

Everything is bad and nothing is good.

And while you might not be able to make anything good,

That might not be within your power.

You can ask yourself what you need and then shoot for that.

Which incredibly for as like flippant as that sounds is something that gives you back just like a smidgen of power,

A smidgen of control.

You're like,

My hands are kind of on the steering wheel again.

And yeah,

I think there's tremendous power in there.

Well as we're wrapping up,

I want to ask you if you could share a resource with us that kind of sparked a seed of coming back in your world.

What was it that helped you come back from your grief?

I think one of the things that brought me the most community and was like this aha of recovery was actually a podcast.

It's called the Dead Parent Society and it's put together out of the Kelly's Writer House,

I think in Philadelphia.

And I also found that on the Modern Loss Facebook group.

But I would go to the gym and I would listen to this podcast and like run and run and just listen to other people's stories.

It's kind of a niche podcast.

It's for writers who have lost a parent.

So it just brought so much comfort that A,

I am not the only person in this situation.

B,

Other people are writing about it bravely.

And C,

You can be on a treadmill and like cry at the gym and no one really cares.

It's a multiple revelations podcast.

Yeah,

So it was really cathartic.

And I think it was also really inspirational for me to realize I can talk about this in a public way and resonate with other people.

I think I crave relationships with people my age who understand what it's like to have lost someone.

I also joined a dinner party table.

And that has been really wonderful too.

I think one of my struggles with my experience is I really want my friends to get it and sometimes they don't.

And that's okay.

But searching for other communities where people get it has been really helpful for me to kind of lift my head up and say,

Other people survive this,

I will too.

Yeah,

Totally.

It's a combination of those two things.

It's the space and it's the support also.

And I think that's a winning formula.