Surrendering To Grief With Lila B

Lila B never expected her boyfriend's Type 1 Diabetes to kill him. But when he didn't come home from the supermarket one day, she was devastated when a search and rescue mission found him in the lake behind their house. She'll guide us through her "pink light" visualization for grievers and we're talking about her meditation podcast, Daring to Be Happy.

Transcript

So welcome to the show.

I would love to start off where we start off all of our interviews and have you share with us your lost story.

Sure.

So in 2008 I was 28 years old and I met a wonderful guy and it was amazing and lovely.

And it was kind of like at that age where I hadn't had a lot of boyfriends in life and I'd finally met this guy and it seemed to click really well.

We moved in together and I was getting up to close to 30 and I was like,

Yes,

Finally like my life is on track.

I'm winning.

I've worked it all out.

And yeah,

And then he died.

So yeah,

We'd been living together for three months and he was a type one diabetic.

Obviously that had always been a part of our relationship,

But basically he had low blood sugar,

Which is a common occurrence enough for a type one diabetic,

But it was just one of those situations where he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And unfortunately I was talking to him and he was in the supermarket and he was starting to get ratty and show signs of experiencing low blood sugar.

And he even said that to me and I was like,

Well,

Hun,

You're in the supermarket,

So grab a bottle of Coke and you'll be fine.

And I called him two minutes later and he was driving home from the supermarket by that stage and he still didn't sound right at all and he didn't come home.

And so what that's then led to a almost 24 hour search for him involving all the emergency services and we live in a small town in New Zealand around a lake and his vehicle was found in the lake and he had,

Yeah,

Unfortunately by the time they'd found him,

Had died.

That's horrifying.

Yeah.

And so it was like,

Yeah,

My entire life just was blowing up.

What was that day like for you?

Surreal.

I was the first person who knew something was wrong.

I was the person who had to tell everybody else that something was wrong.

You know,

I had to call all his friends originally.

It was like,

Hey,

Have you seen Glenn?

Did he call him?

Is he at your place?

And you know,

Within that first day everyone was saying no.

And I was like,

Oh shit,

I'm going to have to call,

You know,

An ambulance,

But I don't know where to send the ambulance,

But that's what he needs right now.

And then,

You know,

Police got involved.

I called my parents who lived an hour away and I'm like,

Something's going on.

And then,

And then I had to,

Probably the worst cause was I had to call his parents who lived three hours away and just say,

I'm not sure where your son is,

But he's in trouble.

And then the next day,

It was amazing.

It was actually,

There was actually a huge amount of really beautiful moments that like in the afternoon when the confirmation came through,

My house just filled with people.

And I looked around this room and there were his friends from the other side of the country were there.

And I'm like,

What are you doing here?

How did you get here so fast?

But they had all dropped everything and come the night before or made their sad making their way there the night before.

And so there was actually a real huge amount of love that even then I could appreciate that.

Yeah,

Like this was something very extraordinary going on.

I'm really surprised that you said that because I was expecting you to say the day after was just awful.

And of course,

I imagine it was more than awful.

But for you to have said there was actually some beautiful moments in there shows a lot of great clarity on your part.

The day,

The day of the day after even the week after,

And a lot of ways was easy,

Because there was nothing to do but react to you like,

Obviously,

In those moments,

You stop worrying about whatever you were going to do next week or what report you had to write for work or whatever.

It becomes really simple.

And it was simply,

And I didn't realize it at the time,

But I was actually super present because there was no other place I could be.

And that made it easy.

And even the night that evening when all my friends were there,

I remember being on the couch with my two closest friends.

And I remember saying to them,

I was like,

If I knew that this was going to be the worst part,

I think I'd be okay.

Because I am okay right now.

But I have a feeling that it's going to get a lot worse than this.

And I was right.

So talk about that worst part,

Because that's another great moment of clarity and insight that you had that the day of the day after is not the depths of it.

Yeah,

I don't know what the worst part was.

There was just worse periods.

You know,

In the aftermath,

There were little dramas and difficulties and things that came like six weeks,

Three months,

Six months,

12 months later.

I think that's what was harder.

Absolutely.

That makes sense.

And I think that's some really good insight for new grievers as well who are listening to this podcast that the day it happens is absolutely catastrophic,

But you're not crazy and you're not abnormal for continuing to grieve or continuing to be in a very dark place.

Three months,

Six months,

12 months later,

I still have these dark periods that just crash over and I'm,

Let's see,

Four years away from my loss and you're farther than that as well.

And it still happens and it still crashes over.

So I want to know a little bit of history from you of loss in your life or dealing with lots leading up to this.

How equipped were you to face this when it happened?

Had you ever seen grieve or loss before?

Nothing significant at all.

My grandmother had died when I was 14 years old after about a five month illness.

Yeah,

No one really that close to me had died.

Although in saying that,

One piece of clarity,

And I might be jumping the gun here on some of your questions,

But one piece of clarity I did have quite early on was that although it really sucked,

Obviously,

And my life was a mess,

I knew that I couldn't let this huge massive thing mess me up forever because I was still way too young for that.

And that was even more depressing.

Talk about that concept of being way too young for this to ruin your life forever,

Or maybe I'm making that a bit of a dramatic statement.

No,

No,

That's exactly how I would put it.

There's something in there to be said about age,

And there's also something in there to be said about grief not stopping the course of our lives.

I'm really curious as to how that came to you.

Where were you when you first had that thought?

Well,

It almost goes back to when you asked if I'd had any experience.

One thing that stuck in my mind around that was when I was about 14,

A kid I went to school with died.

He was accidentally shot in a hunting accident.

And it was a small community,

And I kind of regularly heard over the years afterwards how his parents had really struggled to move on and to find peace.

And they were still very—they hadn't yet found forgiveness for the other hunter who had done this.

Even though that wasn't someone I was overly close with,

I had been to school with him and I went to his funeral.

I think it was that that made me realize,

If I hold on to this really tight,

It's never going to get any better.

It's never going to get any easier.

Even though I didn't want to be with anyone else right then,

I couldn't think of anything worse.

I knew that at 30 years old,

I was still young and I still had a chance at life,

At another relationship,

At the chance to get married,

To have babies,

And all those things that had felt being ripped away from me in that moment.

Because of that,

It wasn't that I wanted to push through grief,

But I wanted to surrender to grief fully and completely in the hope that there would be some resolution on the other side and I would be able to move on and move forward with life.

I love that phrase that you just used,

Surrendering to grief.

Is that something that you actively decided to do or is it something that just happened?

Yeah,

It was definitely a bit of both.

I was consciously kind of… I let go some bits and pieces.

I let go quite a bit of work and I was able just to spend quite a bit of time going inward and just putting myself number one and being really selfish in that or self-interested in that because selfish has such a negative connotation and I don't think it should.

I'm not sure I'm going to word this correctly,

But how did you keep your grief constructive or how did you stay conscious in it?

I don't know.

One thing I did also do is we had just been living together alone on our own in a three-bedroom house and we were going to get a roommate in for the winter,

Which we hadn't yet organized when he died,

Which was probably quite good.

My friend's sister was coming to town and I actually said to her,

Do you think your sister would be interested in maybe staying at my place because she was someone I knew,

Someone I trusted,

And I knew that she would be understanding and give me the space if I needed the space.

It was actually really perfect and she kind of came and went and did her own thing,

But she was there for two or three months and she got a puppy.

That was really nice to have that.

To have other living beings in the house with you.

I'm not sure if that's an answer or not.

Just how did you continue to stay conscious in grief?

When we're alone,

Grief has the potential,

Especially around the beginning,

To just wash over us and render us totally,

I don't want to use the word useless,

But just like we lay there.

Paralyzed?

Yeah,

Paralyzed.

Yeah,

So I did get a little bit of professional support first from around that three or four month mark.

I saw someone and she just kind of,

And I think it was only two or three sessions,

I think she was maybe just checking for post traumatic stress stuff.

And then it was around maybe nine,

Ten months later that I was just feeling… It was almost that point,

You know,

When you kind of get a bit sick of being sad.

Yes,

Absolutely.

A bit over your own crap.

You look in the mirror and you're like,

Are we done with this yet?

Yeah,

And I remember one of my best friends at one point said to me,

She's like,

Are you all right?

And I'm like,

Yeah,

I'm as good as I can be.

I was like,

Why?

She's like,

Oh,

Because you've kind of stopped talking.

And I'm like,

Ah,

I just really figured that you were really sick of hearing about it because I'm kind of sick of hearing about it.

She's like,

But if you still need to talk,

I'm like,

Oh God,

Yeah,

I need to talk.

Oh,

What a wonderful friend.

I love that for you.

Yeah.

So I did get a bit more professional therapy for a couple of months.

And then later down the track,

I worked with life coaches and things quite a lot and then meditation.

All right.

So I think I'm ready to crack into that with you.

When or how did that come to you?

What happened to bring it into your life?

Well,

I actually started talking about it within a few weeks of Glenn passing.

And I was talking about it with one of his best friends who happened to be a meditation teacher.

I'd met him briefly just before he traveled from New Zealand to Spain to meditate for six months full time.

And then he came back and he's like,

Yeah,

I'm a meditation teacher now.

And I'm like,

That's kind of cool.

And I had been told that Glenn had actually done a meditation retreat in Thailand years before we met.

By the sounds of it,

He had found that hugely beneficial for him at that time.

And I know he was at that time getting over quite a long term relationship.

And I hadn't really ever talked to him about that experience in great depth.

But everyone had said that they had really kind of had a really positive or been a really positive experience for him.

So about a year after he died,

I went to Thailand for a month.

And I looked for a meditation retreat.

And I went to this 10-day silent meditation.

And it was kind of like this kind of pilgrimage type thing,

Because I knew that this is what he had done.

And it was kind of a disaster.

I found it really difficult.

I think I know now,

I understand what was happening and why I experienced what I experienced.

But being in Thailand at this Thai monastery with these Thai monks who had their own version of English,

I wasn't really getting the support and the understanding to my questions that I needed to really understand why.

Because I honestly,

I felt worse than almost ever before.

Knowing what I know now,

I know that when you give yourself that space,

Literally,

To sit down and rest more in stillness,

It allows the body to heal,

It allows your mind to heal.

And so what happens is your body releases stress through the forms of a lot of thoughts.

And they can be uncomfortable.

So there was that.

And then I kind of came home and I was like,

Yeah,

I'm not totally sure this meditation stuff is for me or not.

But it kind of kept niggling away at me.

And eventually I went back to his friend.

Because when he first talked about it with me,

At that time,

He was kind of explaining how it allows you to let go of your thoughts and feelings and emotions.

And I'm like,

How can you tell me that what I'm experiencing right now isn't real?

And I should just let it go.

It's like pretending it never happened.

Like he never happened.

Like our relationship meant nothing.

It just seemed really detached and cold-hearted.

Yeah,

Almost insulting.

Yes,

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Like,

How dare you say that this is all something in my head?

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

That's probably not quite what he said.

But that's what I heard in my presence.

So eventually he came down and he taught me this meditation technique over a weekend course.

And that was fine.

And it was a really nice,

Relaxing weekend.

And we were supposed to meditate for 20 minutes,

Three times a day.

That was like the homework.

And I was really bad at the homework.

I would sit down and I'd meditate and I'd last about five or 10 minutes.

And I'd be like,

This doesn't really feel like it's working or it's a bit boring.

I should really get out of bed and get going for the day.

And I didn't kind of connect to this next event to meditation at the time until actually a long time later.

But about six weeks after I learned to meditate one day,

I had this really profound experience,

Which I call the enlightened washing line moment because I was hanging washing on the line.

And I don't know what kind of day I was having,

But I appeared to be in my head and thinking a lot and comparing my life to that of my friends,

Our friends who were all at that stage where they were getting married and buying houses and having babies.

And so I was playing this huge comparison game,

Which is never good.

And all of a sudden I saw all my conditioning.

Like I saw a lifetime of conditioning on how I thought my life was supposed to look in order to be successful.

This whole story is,

And I think it's pretty typical,

But I was sent to a good school so I could go to university,

Get a degree,

Get a good job,

Climb the career ladder,

Meet a guy,

Get married,

Buy a house,

Have babies,

Preferably in that order by the time I was 30.

That was my story.

And so everything had been going according to plan right up until that moment that he died and then I'm constantly going,

This is so unfair.

All my friends around me are living the life that I was supposed to be living.

And while hanging up the washing,

I just suddenly saw that it was all,

Can I swear on this show?

Absolutely.

It was all bullshit.

And the only person holding me to that story was me.

And I had always felt like it was an external pressure that was coming from others.

That's what they expected my life to look like.

And I suddenly realized that nobody really gave a shit.

They just wanted me to be happy and not sad anymore.

They just wanted the best for me,

My friends,

My family,

Who had been so supportive and so loving.

And I realized that the only person holding me to the story was myself.

Yeah.

And that's so real for griefers because grief just comes into your life.

And when I was first starting doing grief as a business,

I would call grief the ultimate pivot point because it just comes into your life and forces you to change direction.

You don't really get a choice of what the direction is.

But yes,

The path that you were on no longer exists and you have to pivot and go in another direction as a result of your grief.

And your story looks totally different.

And we're pissed.

Like we're all pissed about it.

And we're pissed about whatever happened to us,

Whether it's a death or divorce or diagnosis or what have you.

We're also pissed because our story doesn't get to happen anymore.

Like we lose the hopes and dreams and expectations that we have for ourselves and for our futures.

And that's the bullshit story that we're looking at is that,

Oh,

Man,

This is the story that I created for myself that doesn't get to happen anymore.

And we're mad when these things get torn away from us.

Yeah.

And so that was a huge… The washing line was a huge pivot because suddenly I realized I was completely free to do whatever I wanted.

I'd been trying to buy a house because that's what I thought normal,

Responsible,

Grown-up people did.

And I realized I didn't want a house and a mortgage.

And so within two months,

I had quit my whole life.

I had packed up my house.

I had quit my job.

I had rehomed my… I had temporarily rehomed my dog and I'd gone traveling.

Were you scared at all of embarking on this path instead of the previous story?

By that point,

No,

I wasn't because I was so done with trying to still maintain these old standards I was trying to live up to.

I was so ready for adventure and I was just so ready to just tip my life upside down and see what fell out.

And I'd already had flights booked to the UK and I simply moved.

And it was only supposed to be for a one-month holiday.

And so I just moved the first flight forward a few months.

And my sister was living in London and I started there.

And I thought,

Oh,

If I'm going to travel,

I should try and maybe do something productive.

Something that a lot of my friends had done was super yachts or worked on super yachts.

So I was like,

Oh,

Well,

I'll travel Europe and I'll see the world on a boat and it'll be amazing.

This will be my new career.

And it didn't quite work out that way,

But it was a really good start and it gave me something to do.

And so I had an amazing few months training in the UK and living in the south of France,

Near Cannes and Monaco and working on a few boats.

And it was actually the hardest work I've ever done and it didn't actually really suit me.

And I was still carrying this.

At that point when you're in a totally new environment and making new friends who don't know this previous story and thing,

It was kind of like this deep,

Dark secret.

That there's something that these people don't understand about me.

And I didn't intentionally hold it back,

But I would generally pick my moment when I would share this thing that was still a big part of my life and my process and my decision making for doing what I was currently doing.

I want to ask a question that we ask all of our guests on coming back and that is,

What was it that helped you come back in terms of people or resources or events or what have you?

Two things.

The first was a book that that roommate gave me,

The one who moved in after he died.

The one with the puppy.

The one with the puppy.

Yeah,

The one with the puppy.

She one day came home with this book and she's like,

I heard about this book.

I think Oprah talked about this book and she just gave it to me.

And it was a book called Heartbroken Open by Christine Kalson.

So Christine Kalson is the wife of Richard Kalson.

Now you might not know that name,

But you know his books.

He wrote the series of books called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff.

And so he died and he died on a plane flying and she got a phone call saying,

Yeah.

And so she wrote this book and she'd written a lot of the Don't Sweat the Small Stuff books with him.

So she was heavily involved in all that.

So she wrote this memoir about her experience of grief through that.

And she had these really beautiful,

It was probably the first kind of new age spiritual book,

Or non-religious but spiritual book that I'd read.

And because I wasn't religious at all in my adult life.

And I didn't,

Like it wasn't really something that was in my awareness at all.

And so Christine's book started to delve a little bit more into that.

And she had four kind of key chapters or lessons,

That type of thing.

And it was really beautiful.

I remember like I joined her website group and I had these four little words printed off and stuck on my bedroom wall.

And I really found,

When my roommate gave me the book,

I just went to bed for the day and read the whole thing at once.

It spoke to you that strongly.

Yeah,

Yeah,

I went to bed and cried and read the book.

Yeah,

It was great.

But no,

It was,

It was actually very cathartic at that time.

And it really resonated with me because I had tried,

I'd found it like a couple of grief books,

But there weren't a lot out there.

They were hard to find.

I found that for myself too.

Because it was the loss of a partner.

Yeah,

Because it was the loss of a partner,

I really resonated with it.

And she was really like open and,

Yeah,

Just the starting of this kind of spiritual awareness was starting to come through for me.

And so what was that second resource as well that helped you come back?

Well,

The second resource was the meditation practice.

And so the technique that I learned was called Ascension Meditation.

And it's taught by the Ashayas of the Bright Path,

Who have teachers all around the world.

And like I said,

And I didn't realize that Glenn's,

One of Glenn's best friends,

Who I called,

Who I knew as Trevor,

I didn't fully realize that he had actually become a monk when he went into this six month meditation thing.

Oh my goodness,

How fun and interesting.

I know.

And I'd seen on his Facebook,

His name had changed.

He'd added in this name and it was really long.

And it was a complete mouthful.

I couldn't say it for years.

It's Brahmananda.

And everyone just looks in and doesn't know how to say it.

So I'd seen this name appear as part of his name on Facebook.

And I didn't even really register what that was about.

So I learned that technique.

And so when I had then decided to go traveling and I was in Europe and I'd been living in France all summer and the super yacht thing wasn't really working out,

I called him up and I was like,

You said this meditation place you went to was in Spain,

Right?

And he's like,

Yeah.

I was like,

Well,

You know,

I'm in France,

It's next door.

I thought maybe I might check it out for a couple of weeks,

See if I can kind of get the hang of this meditation thing.

And he was like,

Yeah,

Do it,

Go for it.

I flew to Barcelona.

I think for the first 10 days,

It was kind of similar to the first experience.

It was pretty,

It felt a bit traumatic.

But this time I had a lot of support and a lot of teachers who I could turn to and ask for help.

And even if I didn't want to ask for help,

I couldn't stop crying at some point.

So I didn't really have much choice.

And it was just finally giving myself some space to allow some of that deep,

Hard grief to move and to lift.

And at the end of that first two weeks,

That's what happened.

I've almost physically felt grief leave me.

Or maybe not grief,

But the pain leave me.

Because the grief can still be there.

It's only the pain we attach to it that is the problem that causes the suffering.

And that is what I started to learn and discover.

And that was profound.

I want to know from a monk,

If you have a message or a mantra or a meditation that you use specifically when grief comes up the most,

Like,

Do you talk to it?

Do you talk to Glenn?

Do you talk to yourself?

Like what meditation or what part of meditation helps you the most through releasing that pain of grief?

Yeah,

I've actually got a really cool technique that's really powerful.

It's called the pink light technique.

And even if you're not a meditator,

It's really more of a visualization exercise.

It only takes five minutes a day to do.

But it's really powerful at healing relationships.

And anyone that's hurt you basically or anyone that you have difficulties or discomfort with.

And so it doesn't matter if they're alive or living.

You can do this technique on them.

Do you want to learn it?

Yes,

Absolutely.

I've got my hands in the air.

I'm so excited.

Ah,

Cool.

Okay.

Because it only takes a few minutes.

And all right,

Here we go.

So all we need to do is close your eyes.

And just become aware of,

Just kind of tune into your heart center.

And start to imagine loving pink light radiating out of your heart all through your body until you're kind of surrounded by a sphere of pink loving light.

And then all you're going to do is just outside of that pink sphere,

You're going to visualize an image of yourself,

A loving image of yourself.

And when you hold that image there,

All you're going to do is you're going to cover that image in pink loving light that's coming out of your heart.

It's almost like you are icing a cake with pink icing.

So you just cover that image of yourself in pink light,

And then you just release it and let it go.

Bring in the kind of your closest family members.

Say your parents,

Children,

Partner.

Just one by one,

Just have them like standing just outside your pink light.

And then one by one,

You're just going to cover them in pink light.

Another metaphor might be,

I often think of like a pink laser beam,

Like scanning their body from top to bottom.

Then once you've gone through your family,

Now bring up anybody who you have,

Who may have hurt you in the past or you may have a difficult relationship with.

So you could perhaps bring up in this context the person who you've lost.

And then again,

You cover them in pink loving light.

Now if that feels difficult to do,

Simply place them a little bit further away from you.

You can have them standing in the distance.

You can even have them with their back to you so you can't see their face if that's easier.

Place them wherever is comfortable,

Even if it's miles away,

And cover them in your pink light.

And then you can continue to do this with anyone.

You can invite anyone to show up.

So maybe someone pops into your mind who you haven't thought of forever,

In years,

Or seems really obscure.

Just give them some pink light.

Maybe that's just what they need today.

And let them go.

And then when everybody feels like they're done,

Just open your eyes.

And it shouldn't really take any more than five minutes.

You know when your heart's broken,

You're like,

I don't know if I can ever have any more love to give.

And that's a really helpful meditation,

Not only to just coat people that we love in this pink light,

But to remind ourselves that we can always be a source of this,

Even when our hearts are broken.