The Mindfulness & Grief Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

When Faith Wilcox’s daughter Elizabeth began to complain about knee pain, her doctors thought it was just growing pains and she would be fine. As her pain continued, she was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer that affects pediatric patients.

Through 10 months of treatment, Elizabeth remained positive and supportive of the other patients. Ultimately, Elizabeth passed away just one year after her diagnosis. In her grief, Faith was able to find moments of comfort and peace despite the things that were beyond her control. 

Nature has always been restorative for Faith. Walks in the woods and time on the beach helped restore her mind and spirit. She also leaned into her circle of friends, who provided additional support.

Faith discovered one of her biggest relief strategies when she started journaling, after her therapist recommended she start writing to help get out some of her bottled-up feelings. Faith has since written multiple books, including Hope Is a Bright Star: A Mother’s Memoir of Love, Loss, and Learning to Live Again and has started a journaling program to help others who are struggling with grief. 

Hospice is a service that provides physical and emotional support for someone who is in their last six months of life. Hospice is a comprehensive team of support personnel that includes family members, healthcare workers, a social worker, chaplain, and a bereavement specialist. A nurse will come in and check on the patient multiple times a week to make sure their pain and symptoms are being managed and the patient is as comfortable as possible. A social worker and bereavement specialist can help you and your family members with some of the tough questions that come along with end-of-life care. 

Beth's new book, Some Light at the End, details helpful strategies for those whose loved ones have a terminal illness or have recently passed. She can speak to:

• Mental wellness: Strategies to counteract anxiety, panic, and depression while living in hospice care for both those dying and their loved ones.
• Handling grief: Lessons from a hospice expert who has seen countless people through grief, and tips for your personal journey.
• Hospice 101: While in the early stages of grief, it's impossible to research all of our options. Beth details the questions we don't even know we need to ask and how to advocate for ourselves.
• Mobilizing: Hospice care happens at lightning speed. Beth details each step to save us from becoming overwhelmed and stressed.

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BIO

Beth Cavenaugh is a certified hospice and palliative care nurse and educator with over 14 years of experience in caring for terminally ill patients. She has been a registered nurse for over 24 years and holds a bachelor's degree in nursing from Creighton University. Beth has supported hundreds of patients and their families at inpatient units, in-home settings, and behind the scenes in hospice care. Compassion, patient autonomy, and transparent communication are at the core of her care philosophy. Beth hopes to demystify death and dying so this powerful moment will be embraced as a normalized and celebrated life event. She continues to work in hospice and has a private reiki practice to support physical, emotional, and spiritual healing for adults and teens. Beth lives with her husband in Portland, Oregon, where they have (almost) successfully finished raising their three kids. Learn more at BethCavenaugh.com.

In episode 43, New York Times-bestselling author Adam Mansbach talks with us about his new memoir, “I HAD A Brother Once,” which details his grief of losing his brother by suicide a decade ago. As a writer, he struggled for nine years before he was finally able to write about his brother. Although Adam is known for his very successful novels, his new book is written poetry-style with dramatic storytelling about his life. In it, he shares how his brother David felt he had to wear masks to hide his real self and the importance of removing the masks of shame and guilt to save lives. 

David’s death happened during a very exciting and stressful time in his life. His incredibly popular book “Go the F*** to Sleep” had just gone viral. In the midst of celebrities reading his book on social media worldwide, and conducting interviews 10 hours a day — David died. Adam suddenly found himself both struggling with loss and success at the same time.

In Episode 42, Dr. Amy Novotny shares her emotional journey of living with a mother that was bipolar and suffered from borderline personality disorder, being tutored by her throughout higher education, and eventually losing her to cancer. The grief left Amy struggling with an unexplainable physical illness that she was eventually able to overcome, and now she teaches how to ease your physical pain when grief is stored in the body. 

Amy developed a method called PABR, which is a technique to help your body overcome the fight or flight response that can occur during the grieving process. During our interview, Amy walks us through her basic technique for breathing and relaxing your body position so you can start getting some relief. 

Want more free resources? Email Amy Novotny at amy@pabrinstitute.com and mention this episode of Mindfulness and Grief Podcast to receive a consultation. 

In Episode 41, Daniel Hess talks to us about his struggle with losing his cousin after a long battle with cystic fibrosis. Daniel was only 9 years old at the time. The trauma of losing his best friend at such a young age created a void in his life that he has since tried to fill with creativity to keep the memory of his cousin alive. 

Daniel began writing poetry as a way to cope with his feeling of loss and to stay creative throughout his young adult life. It’s been a place of solace for him. A place to express his dark thoughts and feelings in a safe environment. He has recently written a book, “Just a Boy Blaming Himself,” as a reflection of looking back through the pain of his childhood experiences and how they have shaped him into the person he is today.

When two health scares hit Katherine May’s family, she was forced to slow down and learn a valuable lesson — staying busy doesn’t always mean you're doing something productive with your time. The idea of wintering creates the opportunity to slow down the pace of life, observe as it transitions from one season to another, and find hope in the next phase of your life. 

Katherine also discusses the issue of the “get over it” societal norm we have in regard to grief and children, recalling her own experience as a parent seeking help for her son through a difficult time. She believes that building resilience includes confronting hard truths and the emotions that come with them, not pushing everything down, and concealing feelings. Wintering consists of a period of isolation where you allow the silence to teach you and prepare you for the next season. 

Neil Beresin never set out to become a chaplain. In fact, he worked in the nonprofit world for 20 years. But everything changed for him when both his parents became ill and passed away within 5 weeks of each other. This devastating loss changed the trajectory of his life. Neil is now a chaplain and counselor specializing in grief, loss, and transition, and he uses poetry in his healing work.

During our interview with him, Neil shares how poetry has brought him peace and understanding even in the most troubling times. He shares with us the value of reflection. When you slow down and allow yourself to absorb the words of a poem, you are giving yourself a gift. Reflecting on the language and the metaphors used in poetry can bring tremendous comfort. The sound and music of poetry has helped Neil to provide intentional grief support to his clients, and we hope this interview helps you as well.

Sally Hill Mills learned to write children’s books by writing with children, as a creative writing teacher in elementary schools in Albuquerque. She learned from kids what keeps them interested in a story – relatable characters, obstacles that have to be overcome, and action. 

Her first book, Jimmy: Toughest. Dog. Ever. grew out of Mills’ experience as a special education teacher. She saw that kids who left the room for “special” classes or who had visible disabilities feared being labeled and not belonging to the larger group. When her real-life dog died, Mills realized that, as hard as it would be, her dog’s death offered an opportunity to take the character, Jimmy, on another, even more, difficult journey: through grief and loss into recovery and re-connection.  In her second book, Jimmy: Toughest Times Ever Mills drew upon her own experiences with childhood grief to write the book.  Kirkus called this book, “A lovely, resonant, child-appropriate tale about loss and the cycle of grief and healing.”

It’s hard to feel like a superhero while amid tremendous grief. But through her work composing Superhero Grief: The Transformative Power of Loss, Dr. Jill Harrington shows us how we are more like superheroes than you might think. Each superhero that you can think of has experienced some level of trauma that they’ve had to overcome. While their superpower may seem more significant than yours, the motivation to stand up and put one foot in front of the other is the same, whether you can fly or not. 

Jill walks us through some of the flaws in superheros that also make them human like us. Superheroes are not always perfect. They make mistakes. Superheroes struggle with the same emotions and consequences of decisions that we as normal humans do. Each story has an element of love, survival, and reminders of our continued connection with the ones we lost.

After 27 years of marriage, Marla Polk found herself dealing with the sudden death of her husband. Losing her spouse creating a hole in her life that she didn't know what to do with. She tried to turn to her friends, her work, books -but nothing seemed to help her. She then decided to start journaling through her grief. What started as a way to document stories of her beloved Randy for future grandchildren became a firsthand account of what it was like for her to walk through the grief process and discover herself with him.

Marla writes openly and honestly about how painfully long the process of grief can be. She describes herself as a normal, middle-aged woman with a career, friends, and an average life before everything changed with Randy's death. The aftermath left her feeling uncomfortable in every situation of her life. She was easily agitated especially in the first year. So when she couldn't do anything else, she turned toward writing.

She encourages anyone going through grief to give yourself grace, especially when unforeseen triggers can derail your emotions out of the blue. One thing she discusses is triggers. You never know when something may trigger your emotions. So give yourself grace. You can be in the middle of doing something completely unrelated to grief and all of a sudden you will start crying and that’s okay.

During this interview, Marla also shares how surprised she was by how differently everyone experiences grief. She found herself judging others who were close to Randy for not missing him enough. Likewise, she found herself being judged as well for not meeting their expectations of grieving. She was also surprised with how many well-meaning people said uninformed things to bring comfort.

Marla continues to remember Randy in subtle ways. He enjoyed painting and photography so she has a piece of his artwork in every room in the house. She commissioned someone to make a quilt from his neckties. She periodically visits his things in storage and decides which items she's ready to part with and which ones she wants to hold onto a little longer.

About Marla Polk:
Marla Polk is the author of Grief Survivor: A Love Story and a communications coach specializing in helping those in broken relationships heal through communication tools she developed as a mediator. She is Managing Partner for Resolution Solutions, a conflict resolution consulting company. She is the President of the Board of Directors for a nonprofit, the Abilene Palm House, that mentors at-risk individuals and works specifically with women who have been survivors of violent crimes. Her hobbies include writing authentic, raw, and funny commentaries about her grief journey.