We Are Not Our Losses With Julie Cluff

On Mother's Day 2007, Julie Cluff was driving the car that rolled over, killing two of her six children and injuring a third. Since that day, she has wrestled with the identity of "the mom who lost two children." In this episode of Coming Back, Julie and I are talking about how our losses do and do not define us, how traumatic grief can cause PTSD, and how Julie has shifted her spiritual beliefs to come to terms with that life-changing car accident.

Transcript

Julie,

Thank you so much for being an avid listener of coming back and for writing me to be featured on the show.

So we'll start where we start all of our shows and have you share your lost story with us.

Okay.

Well,

In 2007,

I was traveling across the country with my two youngest children who were 12,

10 and 8.

And we left Texas early in the morning and about mid-afternoon,

We were hitting the border of Mississippi and Alabama.

And we were enjoying our trip and just a lot of fun,

Really looking forward to where we were going and what we were going to do.

And I suddenly,

Everyone fell asleep in the car,

Unfortunately,

Including me.

And I do not even remember being tired.

It was Mother's Day and I remember my daughter saying to me just before this,

You know,

Happy Mother's Day,

Mom,

I love you.

And then the next thing I know,

I open my eyes and we're in the median and when I tried to go back up on the highway,

I was in an SUV,

The cars,

It started to roll.

And unfortunately,

My two youngest children were thrown from the car when that happened and my 12-year-old and I were still in the car in the front seat.

And unfortunately,

My daughter Carrie,

Who was 10 and my son David,

Who was eight,

Did not survive the accident.

And it was devastating as you can just imagine.

It took quite a while to kind of come back from that.

That devastating loss on Mother's Day with my three youngest children and my 12-year-old son had to have emergency surgery.

We were actually all taken to,

Carrie and David were taken to one hospital,

My older son and I were taken to another hospital and I didn't even learn of their fate for a few hours.

I was left on a striker board waiting for emergency care and eventually someone came in and told me that they didn't make it.

That story just absolutely breaks my heart and as you were telling it,

I felt like,

Of course I wasn't there but I feel like I was watching it in slow motion.

And there's just there's so much that happened in the course of,

I mean literally less than a day and I think so many coming back listeners can relate to this fact of literally everything about my life changed overnight.

Yeah,

For sure.

I mean,

As soon as the car stopped rolling,

I actually lost my eyesight as the car was rolling,

I hit the top of my head and so when the car stopped rolling,

I couldn't see anything.

I could hear my son next to me crying but I couldn't hear Carrie and David and I remember thinking,

My life has changed forever.

I knew no matter what the outcome was,

That our life was changed forever.

Yeah,

Yeah,

I'm hearing that really strongly in your voice too.

I want to know,

The first hours,

Maybe the first day even,

What was in your mind?

What was swirling around in your brain?

Well,

It's devastating to think about but I remember when I could see again but I was hurt enough that it was impossible for me to get out of the car to go see what was happening and we were in a smashed car and I could see out over what it felt like was I was looking out over a field and I could make out.

They were so far away from me.

I remember thinking they were so far away and I couldn't get to them and people had stopped and there were people on the side of the road by them and there were people bringing out blankets to kind of shield them from the sun and I just and I remember and this is really hard to say but I remember yelling over and over again,

I killed my kids,

I killed my kids and it's hard for me to think about having said that and I think it's also just the fact that my 12 year old son was sitting there in the car with me and that breaks my heart that he had to listen to that.

I hear this instantly in your story and when you emailed me,

I witnessed this for you too of instantaneously I am responsible for this and that is a story that so many of us will never have to live that life and God like you would never sign up for that life in a million years.

I just I get chills saying that but like oh my gosh.

Yeah for sure and I just I and that that weight was on me for months and years and it was hard to take that heavy weight off.

It was hard to kind of come back after feeling such responsibility but my experience with other people that have experienced loss is that we all feel somewhat that weight maybe not to that extent where it's so obvious that it was my fault,

The accident was my fault,

It's a one car accident.

There's no one else to blame and we always want to try to blame someone right unfortunately and so there you know there was no there was no saying it wasn't my fault so it was but I do find as I talk to people everybody has a sense of responsibility regardless of what their role was in any type of loss unfortunately.

Yeah and that's a good description of responsibility feeling like a weight because there's something about loss that inherently belongs to us and nobody else.

I'm wondering how you went home after all of this happened how the weeks and months kind of unfolded going home with this news kind of coping along with your 12 year old as a witness to all of this as well just what did returning to I don't even want to say like normal life because there's nothing normal about it anymore but how did you get back into the world again because you guys were out on a trip too.

So we were taken to a hospital in Mississippi not far from where the accident was and it was a Sunday it was Mother's Day so it was a holiday and I overheard one of the interns saying that he was just amazed that the particular doctor that was there was there to help my son so my son had a severe break and he needed emergency surgery and the doctor that was there was actually the hospital was named after his family and the procedure that my son needed was a procedure that he had pioneered and so I don't know what else you call that except for a miracle and he was able to to do that procedure for my son but we didn't tell we didn't tell James that the kids were gone until after he got out of surgery I in fact right after I found out they wheeled me in to to talk to him before we were both on stretchers gurneys whatever you call that in the hospital but they will they willed me in so that I could talk to him before he went into surgery and and I basically just put on a brave face and was just like sending all the love and well wishes to him going into that surgery so we we didn't tell him until after he came out of surgery after a few hours wow yeah and we were so far from home and and like I said we had family and friends that just converged and we we had a hospital room where my son and I they actually put both of us in the same room and then it had an unusual setup I don't think I've ever seen anything before this like this or after but outside of our room was like a little reception room so it was almost like a double room but the room in front of us was like a reception room with couches and chairs so our family and friends just gathered there and were right there to support us and we were in the hospital for five or six days I can't remember the exact but then it was trying to get back home and one of the doctors didn't want to release my son and the other one who was the one that did the emergency surgery he basically said look this family needs to get home they have a funeral and sad circumstances but we had to set up a van in order for my son to prop up his leg and and drive back home which was which was tough which was tough it was about nine hours I think back home with him in that position and me and all of my trauma of having driven a car it was hard to even get back in a car yeah yeah that was a question that's popping the front of my mind is what was it like to get back into a car again it was super hard in fact I I suffered from PTSD for months and it was it was about three months before I really started driving somewhat regularly and even then there were limitations of what I was willing to do I think this speaks to like a larger conversation that needs to happen in the grave spirit in the world in general of all of the things that can give us PTSD I'm remembering as you're speaking a conversation that we had on the show with Megan Devine who could not go near water for a long time after watching her partner drowned and not being able to find his body after that and so she suffered from PTSD after that experience as well and I think it's so important to acknowledge that this is these events are things that our bodies remember and that our spirits remember and that our brains remember and can really interrupt the flow of a quote-unquote daily normal life for sure for sure you know in a lot of ways it was almost a blessing that I was hurt because I I had an excuse even more of an excuse to really take my time in trying to get back into life which you know really I mean honestly it was three years before I really felt like I was part of life again but just having that injury it just it gave me permission to not try to be strong for everybody around me to have an excuse to just go lay down in my bed it was really it was really kind of a blessing I think to have been injured even though I wasn't injured severely obviously my spirit was far more injured than my body but it is like the PTSD is like your your body thinks that you're still in the middle of the accident you're you're not you're you're not able to really assimilate the fact that you're that you're not in the middle of the accident anymore and then there's all that worry and concern that goes forward like this could happen again because like I said I didn't feel tired at all like I have absolutely no recollection of even having the slightest fatigue.

This might be phrased odd but I'm wondering how you have managed to file this whole experience this whole responsibility of the experience in your brain like where does it belong you know three years later five years later seven years later where does it belong in your mind now this grief and this story?

You know it took me a long time it took me a long time to come to terms I was really blessed with a husband that was super forgiving and did not blame me never ever ever verbally expressed any blame because the reality is nobody would ask for this nobody would do anything like this intentionally and to finally finally come to come to the terms that and I know everybody doesn't agree with this but I really do believe like it was their time it was their time to go and as hard as that is and as hard as we don't want to as much as we don't want to accept that the alternative is as painful as not and I've come to learn that you you get to believe what you want to believe and so for me I truly believe it was their time to go that and that and I also believe that I'll be with them again so that's comforting so that's those are some of the things that have helped me to come to terms with it but it didn't happen overnight it seriously took months and years and I went through a couple of years of therapy and rapid I MD EMDR for PTSD and and I think that that helped me but you eventually just have to come to terms you know and one of the things that I think really helped me too and one of the reasons I share my story is because because we lose hope in these situations and one of the things that gave me hope was that I had been through a painful divorce several years before this I had lost my brother to suicide several years before this and those were horrific hard things but I came back like I I went through this terrible time and it felt hopeless at the time and it felt difficult at the time but then I was able to I was able to come back I was able to live a life of joy again I was able to come back and live a life of purpose again and I think that gave me hope even though this was so much more devastating than either of those even though those were devastating this was so much more devastating and so much harder to come back from but I think I still had that hope because I had come back from other difficult things before I I did have that hope that if I hung on and I continued to work towards healing that I could come back and I could be better and I could once again enjoy my life again I think that's really incredible that you say that because it's almost like these previous devastating losses gathered themselves as evidence that like look this is possible exactly and that's why I share my story is because I think a lot of times the messages that is given the messages that I see out there that are given to mothers who have lost children is your life is over you're always going to be grieving you're always going to be in devastation the rest of your life and that doesn't have to be true that doesn't have to be the case Can you speak more on these these concepts of believing that it was their time and believing that you'll see them again because I I can hear some mothers listening to the show who've lost children who's like no don't tell me that because I don't believe that's true for me and I think it's so important in our grief that that people don't tell us what the purpose is but that we discover it for ourselves and I'm just really curious about how you came to that place for yourself because I experienced the same thing with my mom I don't know that I would ever say that it was her time but I know that I wouldn't be where I was without having to survive and continue to live after her death and I also believe that I'll see her again but these are things that like if somebody came up to me at the funeral and said that I would have punched him right in the face It's not the time to go up to someone and say look they're in a better place you're gonna get to see them again it's just it's not the time those are those are all wonderful and great and and we can believe that at some point down the line if we choose to but it's right after something like this happens is not the time to to be talking about that because I really think that the person that says that is they they have our best interest at heart they really do want us to feel better and they want to offer things to help us feel better and in their effort to help us feel better that helps them feel better as well but the reality is it's not the time we have to have the time for grief we have to have the time for assimilation of the loss and the adjustment and everything else that our brains have to wrap around it and and so while those comments are all well and good and I always feel that way too when I talk to to my audience because because I do talk about this I never want to be another person telling them what to do I had I think we have too much of that sometimes when people are grieving there's a timeline that the general public will give to a greever and basically you've got a year and then after the year okay it's time for you to put your big big girl pants on and get moving and that's and we can't put a timeline on something like this but at the same time if we're ready if we're ready then then we can hear those messages and and so I just speaking to my own personal belief one of the things that carried me through was that I had a pretty strong spiritual practice and and I think a lot of times what happens is when we have a spiritual practice whether that's attached to a religion or if it's meditation or whatever it is a lot of times when we have a spiritual practice and then something devastating like this happens it interrupts that spiritual practice and too many times people put down the spiritual practice altogether out of anger out of frustration out of that feeling that this shouldn't have happened or or God is is not good or is angry with me or there is no universe that's out for my better better better meant and that is a natural reaction for us to feel that way but for me I felt certain because it had helped me in the past go through my other losses I felt certain that I needed to continue my spiritual practice even may even if it didn't look exactly the same as it did before I continued that and I think ultimately that really helped me and that helped me to to come to terms with the fact that maybe it was their time to go and and that I would be with them again and I and that might not be comforting for some people but it was for me I can really hear that in in the way that you speak there's like there's like a foundation to that for you in your words which is really cool and I'm curious to know how the loss of your two kids changed or altered your spiritual practice or and and or maybe if there's still a part of it for you today in some sort of ritual or or component yeah I I think it altered it in that you know right after when we're we're in we're we're in raw grief there's a lot of confusion there's a lot of our mind feels muddled and there's there's a lot of confusion so it's very difficult to concentrate on anything and where I used to be a scripture reader when after the kids died like I couldn't understand what I was reading because I just couldn't focus but I decided that it was still worthwhile for me to attempt to to attempt to read things that were inspirational even if I couldn't understand it and and so that's what I did I would just pick up my books that in the past that inspired me and I would just read and I wouldn't read for long and sometimes I would just hold the book because I just think that there's power just in in holding the book I love that visual I don't know why of just someone who is so intensely intensely grieving the loss of her kids just picking up a book and holding it like I don't even know if I can crack the spine today but maybe I can just hold it right like as if it will somehow infuse me with hope or encouragement or strength or any of these things that we try and start to grasp for and the aftermath of loss like where is it where has it gone how can I bring it back possibly create it for myself but that visual I get chills because I I do this too sometimes I'll just see titles of things in a bookstore and I'll just put my hand on the cover the book for a minute not thinking I can absorb all the information although that would be like world's coolest superpower but but just like because oh look somebody put it in words and it's there out loud and it's there if I need it yeah a very cool comforting thing for that so I want to kind of move into how your kids were honored at their memorials and maybe in the months after their losses and kind of reacclimating to to life without them physically present and then maybe how they show up in your world today yeah you know the interesting thing was is that I homeschooled my kids for several years so I was homeschooling at the time of this accident and my oldest daughter was in college and my second oldest daughter was two weeks from graduating from high school and leaving for college and then I had another son that was 15 and then these these three children that were in the car with with me and so we went from a family of eight at home because my daughter had been home for spring semester my oldest eight at home to four at home and it was pretty devastating especially since I that's what I did that's what I spent my days was teaching my kids and for them not to be there was pretty huge pretty huge and one of the one of the advantages of that situation was that I had my boys home and we were able to grieve together in some ways when I say together I think we all grieve differently so I know I'm always cautious about saying we grieve together because I think everybody grieves individually it's an individual experience for sure but at the same time we were able to just be there together and I think there's strength in numbers there were challenges in that as well because I was very I very much was invested in their education so I wanted them to have a good education but I was grateful that they had that time where they didn't have to go straight back into school and act like everything was normal because it wasn't and and the accident happened in May so we had the summer too where we had some time to to get through that but I it's hard to even explain the difference I mean my daughter Carrie was just a the sweetest girl you would ever meet she had so many friends and my my son David was rambunctious as they come we he was a card we have so many stories we say that the book no David was written for him I don't know if you're familiar with that book but there's a picture book that no David and it's got this kid doing everything he shouldn't do when he always said he was the inspiration for that book but yeah it was just it was just a really sad lonely time and it just took time to to adjust but there were there were things that I did you know I mentioned before I mentioned the spiritual practice which I really did feel like was super helpful then the other thing that I did was I I sought professional help I I really I went to a counselor and I I sought that help that I needed one of the other blessings for me was that three months before the accident a couple of my neighbors had invited me to start playing tennis on their tennis team and as soon as I was physically able I got back out there and started playing tennis again which was so healing because I was moving my body and I was around friends and that's one of the things that happens after loss is that you get disconnected from people and some of that has to do with the way people respond to what you've gone through and some of that has to do with the way we respond to what we're going through where we we pull away so that was that was hugely helpful for me from a emotional and physical and a social aspect I did I had a couple of friends that had experienced major losses that were willing to listen to me without judgment and that was super helpful I did have a therapist just a oh I want to say it was three weeks after the accident my husband had the whole family go and meet with this therapist and I remember him saying don't be surprised if you have bizarre thoughts which I thought was really helpful to understand that that was just normal yeah so those were just some of the things that I did that I'm glad that I did I was able to talk about my kids from the beginning I never I never had that I never experienced that where I was I didn't want to bring up their name I know that happens for some people but I did continue to talk about them we continued to share stories and that was very healing it took us a long time to decide what we wanted on a headstone and and get that all together and and I but I've never been luckily luckily I guess our family has never been one that visited the grave often and I say luckily because we've moved hundreds of miles from the there since the accident and so it's it's sometimes it's hard because I think I can't I don't have the opportunity to go visit their grave but the reality is when I lived 10 minutes down the road I didn't visit their grave very often because I never felt like they were there like their bodies are there but the thing that essence that makes us a living person wasn't there that's really interesting that you say that because I know I think it's it's spot on that you said that everybody's grief is different because some people are like this is where I'm walking every single day for a year year and a half two years is to visit their graves and then some people like they're in the ground and you know maybe once a year maybe you know in five or six years but not really and all of it is perfect like there's no judgment on how often like how often you visit a grave site is not a judgment for whether or not you're doing grief well.

And I think things like that need to be said more often because there's so much that the external world looks at us and will judge us for doing or not doing in our grief.

I know honestly I wish that I had owned my experience more and what I mean by that is I wish that I had been more willing to be who I was at that moment and not allow what I think other people are thinking or saying or doing affect me because it just adds additional it adds an additional burden when we do that.

Well who were you that maybe you weren't allowed to be?

Well I just think that when you when you well the funeral we had almost a thousand people at the funeral there were people there that we've never even met we had friends whose neighbors came we had people that flew from all over the country from my husband's work or from places that we had lived previously people came from all ends of the states to be there at the funeral and when it's so when it's a tragedy like that is so public it's hard to show up again because you're because if you show up and you're super super sad then you're thinking in your mind they're thinking I'm falling apart and that I can't handle this which honestly was true let's be real well right and then if if you're showing up and you're stoic then you're then you're thinking well people think I didn't love my kids enough and that's why I'm not upset I mean these are the thoughts that we have about what other people are thinking I think if we're going to be totally honest that's what happens is we we put ourselves in public and we feel like we're in a fishbowl and we it's when we get on stage how do we act we don't know how to act and we become uncomfortable and when we're in that situation where we don't even know who we are and we're in we're in this horrific situation where we're grieving and we're not even comfortable with our own emotions and then we go out in public then what do we do?

Yeah yeah usually it's a combination of like frozen or numb or kind of blunt I'm getting this visual of like a really dull knife like you get have blunt edges all of a sudden or everything seems like people are talking at you from behind a curtain you're like I don't know what you're saying yeah totally that is a thing that totally goes through Griever's mind and you're like well I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't in terms of showing emotion or reactions or things so it's like how do I convince people that I've got it all together but still to be gentle with me because I'm grieving absolutely I think that's so valid that you touched on that something I want to move into is your perspective of yourself as a human maybe as a mom as a woman going around in the world as a wife kind of before during and after this accident happened because from my perspective listening to your story I would think like in the blink of an eye that you would lose all faith in yourself to operate in the world to be to be capable or to be protective there's a lot of things coming forward that's like it sounds like maybe a lot of those identities shifted or changed as a result of this happening absolutely I think it's one of the most devastating parts of a loss is our loss and confidence in ourselves because it's like your your foundation is pulled out from underneath you and so you have to rebuild the foundation it's a process of rebuilding that foundation and what I understand now more than I ever understood before is that my foundation needs to be more about the qualities of who I am rather than the roles that I play in the world.

Can you say that again that's lovely.

Well I just I really really come to understand this is that who we are as people we are individuals with qualities and things that we are trying to develop and we are you know I think of myself I am creative I am responsible I am diligent I am I am not the business owner that's not who I am that's a role that I'm playing I am not I'm trying to think you know whatever whatever titles we give ourselves that is not truly who we are truly who we are is those qualities that we've developed in ourselves and that's where our foundation is.

That's just so well said and something that's so hard to comprehend in the aftermath of grief because for a lot of us for most of our lives we have been aligning who we are with identities like if I am not this who am I now right it's a theme that came up a lot in season four of coming back and just in season five as well is who are we now if we are no longer this and so kind of that that fumbling renegotiating process of having to build up the foundation under ourselves again is a lot about who are we really or who are we still or who are we not anymore and having to discard those identities that that no longer serve us or suit us or align with our nature.

I'm curious to get into a lot of the work that you do now as someone who coaches grieving people and as a grief recovery specialist and as someone with your own podcast as well so how did how did that journey begin?

Well it's so interesting because when when our loss happened there was no Facebook I mean it was brand brand new if it was even functioning at all at that point so it wasn't public in in that social media sense and I and I I've never been one that wanted to be super super open about everything and I was really trying to rebuild my identity and that before the accident I was one person after the accident I became almost 100% the mother who lost two children and that is I wanted to I wanted to rebuild my life in a way that yes I lost two children but that's not my identity and so over over the years I've just continued to live my life and so forth but it was really a couple of years ago when I got very very serious about self-development I've always been a self-development junkie let's just say I've read all the books for years but it was really a couple of years ago when I I started well let me back up just a little bit in 2012 I met a man who had who had gone through some devastating experiences and was then in a position where he was helping other people that were doing that were experiencing what he had experienced without going into a ton of detail but I met him at this lunch and he heard my story and he walked up to me afterwards and he looked me in the eye and he said you're supposed to do something with this and it went right to my heart and I knew he was right but I didn't know what it was and so I kind of went on a search and it really was just a couple of years I actually I actually enrolled in school to go back to school to be a therapist and I just I realized that just was not the answer that wasn't what I was supposed to do and really it was a couple of years ago when I kind of hit on what I was supposed to do and it's just been in development over that time and I've just gotten more and more clear about what my role is in all of this and and I so now I do a podcast for mothers who have lost children build a life after loss is the name of it I have a website build a life after loss and that is my primary function is to to support women who've lost children and I do that through long distance coaching mostly and I do some local work as well and it's been it's really been phenomenal it's been a great experience for me it's it's been a good experience for me to learn how to tell my story in a way that honors my children and honors my experience but is real and I I've I've appreciated the opportunity to be be on the front line with with other mothers who are experienced the pain of loss of a child.

I wonder if you could share maybe one or two tips with us for moms who have lost a child or maybe in a broader lens anyone who's trying to tell their lost story but maybe not quite sure how to honor their people but still kind of protect their hearts I wonder if you have any tips for for beginning to share your lost story maybe for the first time?

Well I think it's I think it's something that develops I think as we as we share we get responses from people and as we get responses then it shapes the way we share I one of the things I really struggled with for the first few years was people often when you met when you meet new people they often will say well how many kids do you have or tell me about your kids and then it was difficult to know do I tell them I have six children or do I say I have four because of for living or do I say I have six children and and to two that are not with us anymore like how do I frame that and it felt like every time somebody would ask me I would answer a different way and I started to come to realize that I answered a different way because of because of the other person like I don't even know how to describe that but a lot of times you'll get a feel for a person and what they are ready and willing and able to hear and not hear and so you know I think it's just a matter of trial and error and I do think like I said before I think it's so important that we just own who we are we own our story and when it doesn't go well when we say something that that maybe we get a reaction that we weren't expecting or we get into a conversation that that maybe is more difficult or that that we just really didn't want to get into that we then don't go away and beat up on ourselves that we don't walk away from that and go what was I thinking you know there's no value in that we just we learn from every experience I think that's perfect and to go deeper into that how do we how do we forgive ourselves when we're grieving for you know letting our boundaries be pressed or maybe going too deep into a conversation or even on a larger level like maybe being the person who carried a lot of responsibility and what happened how does forgiveness and grief start you know that's a that's a hard question to answer I yeah it's interesting because I've because I've come through it but it's just one of those things where we we just have to be really we have to get really really clear about who we are too often I see people they get disconnected from themselves in an effort to please other people or to show up in a way that is going to be appropriate or is going to be acceptable we just have to get really real with ourselves and I think I think the need here's my philosophy our our level of support should be equal to the level of our challenge so if we're going through a really difficult situation then we need to find support because it is individual how we navigate the crisis or the challenge yeah so it's almost like a call to if things are really really hard it's not the time to isolate it's time to call in Calvary exactly exactly yeah and we and we pit so much oh I could talk about this forever but we we too often we we get too wrapped up in the way other people are responding to our loss and it just creates more pain so if we have a really really good friend who's not showing up for us then we then we get we get hurt which is so easy to do because we're already hurt we're like a grieve or someone who's gone through something so difficult they're like a person with an open wound and so when anything else comes in their vicinity that could be construed as as as difficult at all becomes that much more difficult because we're this person with this open wound but as much as we can as much as we can forgive others of what they say and do the better we're going to be at forgiving ourselves and the more we forgive ourselves the better we're going to be at forgiving others.