and we have other people who talk about how they haven't had any real feeling of actual
pleasure since 2020.
They haven't had a feeling of real lightness because of one or a million things that have
happened to them.
I got a lot of stories about people whose people died during COVID from COVID, not just
from COVID, but who couldn't go to funerals, who couldn't hug loved ones to go through
such an important ritual of saying goodbye to somebody who died because of all the limitations.
It was so messed up and so many people are still sitting with it because we are in this
andcessant like we must move forward to survive mentality.
Hi there, grief growers.
Welcome back.
My name is Shalbi for Scythia.
I am a grief coach, two-time author and founder of Life After Loss Academy and I have helped
thousands of grieving people stop feeling stuck, lost, broken and alone in the aftermath
of grief and start building lives that they genuinely love from the lives lost force
them to live.
This not only includes death and death of adjacent losses, but also losses like divorce
and breakup, major diagnosis and as we'll discuss today all the types of losses that came
with living through a pandemic.
Here on the show we believe that grief is not something to get over, it is something to
grow with and alongside and that by treating grief less like a problem to be solved and
more like an invitation to live more deeply in our human bodies and lives here on earth,
we can create meaningful lives that are rich with all of the memories that we carry, the
weight of all the struggles that we faced and the preciousness of what it means to be here
on earth right now in this moment.
Today on the show I have the joy of sitting down with Rebecca Sofer who is one of the co-founders
of modern loss, to talk about the five year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic I cannot
believe it's been five years either.
We discussed why good leadership is vital in seasons of grief and crisis, we talked about
some of our fantasy grief rituals that we would love to see on a larger scale for the world
to honor COVID loss and how to live inside what she refers to as the third wave of COVID
which is not another mutation of the virus but the third wave meaning the lifetime effect
of the grief of the pandemic.
Here's a little bit about Rebecca.
Rebecca Sofer is the co-founder of modern loss which offers creative and candid content and
community surrounding the long arc of grief.
She is the best-selling author of the modern loss handbook and interactive guide to moving
through grief and building your resilience and her other book modern loss candid conversations
about grief beginners welcome.
Her work has been widely published including in the New York Times and BC Thank and Time
Magazine and she speaks globally on loss and resilience.
Rebecca is a Peabody award-winning former producer for the Colbert Report and Columbia University
Graduate School of Journalism alumna.
Rebecca I am so excited to talk to you and just be in space with you again because something
that just happened is the fifth anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, the beginning of COVID-19
and we live in a world where so much is happening all the time as my wife says all the time all
the time.
It went so under acknowledged at least on my radar and I'm a person who has lost somebody
to COVID and I know that so many people who I interact with who are on my social media
who are coming across as clients and students everybody is like where is the acknowledgement
that this was actually a big deal and I've always seen you in your work in modern loss
as like a beacon of COVID like a holdout almost like standing on this island being like
hey we see you this is important it matters it is the greatest loss event of our lifetime
and I would just love to speak on what it's like for people who do not feel honored or recognized
as this five year milestone goes by and also how people who are supporting people who've
lost somebody to COVID can continue to support the friends and family in their midst and continue
to treat it like it was something significant that happened because it was.
It was hugely significant and I think if you're somebody who doesn't think it notably changed
your life in 152 different ways then you're not paying attention.
You know I know a lot of people who died from COVID my best friend said goodbye to her
mom in May of 2020 through an iPad because she was in the ICU and then a couple months later
the same thing happened to her husband's mom I am related to people who have long COVID
have had my own personal struggles with this terrible livers and I think that so many people
like you say in the modern lost community so let me go back for many years I was working in
this grief space and I was talking about how we have to talk about grief and how it doesn't
have to be this like tiny little niche thing that we talk about just in therapy you know that
therapy hour or in like the religious circle or in the hush tones by the water cooler how
it should also be really and mostly be something that we talk about out loud out of the shadows
in a let it all hang out way because we all go through it right and for many years it was an uphill
battle for me to convince the people who didn't get it yet why we need to talk about it and convince
them why it's not a morbid or morose thing to talk about because I don't believe it is I think it's
very life affirming to talk about grief and loss and then COVID hit and I want to say that when I look
back I literally feel like it was from one day to the next that people viewed the work that that
both you and I do as less of a you know niche experience and more of an oh I get it this should be
on CNN kind of conversation because everybody understood suddenly what grief feels like even if
it wasn't through death loss we all understood what it feels like suddenly to wake up and not understand
what not just like next year might look like for you or next month but what four o'clock might look
like in your day we were thrust into a grief space we had our coping mechanisms that many of which
we had spent years building and honing and perfecting ripped out from underneath us and seemingly at
least in my recollection of things which let's not go by that because I don't think my brain has worked
since March 2020 correctly my the community of modern loss ballooned because all of a sudden we had
all of these people who not only were yes like going moving across that long arc of loss maybe they
had a loss 10 years ago 20 years ago last year last month but now we had all these people coming back
to us who had free triggered losses like they were having all these things come up as a result of
the pandemic and then we had all these new people who were like what is grief what is this loss thing
how do I move through it and so yes since the very beginning I had been beating the drum of we are
in a time of enormous grief and loss and if we don't take something meaningful from this piece of
crap experience that the world is being handed right now you know tease some meaning out of it that
hopefully might make us somewhat more empathetic toward each other I don't know what we have left you
know like this is our opportunity here we are five years later and I can't believe I'm saying this but
we're in a country where a lot of COVID protections and restrictions have disappeared have vanished where
a lot of people are going about life if they have COVID and they're like okay whatever I'm going to
go to school I'm going to go to work not really thinking about the fact that there are immunocompromised
people out there who are absolutely terrified to commune with society when there are spikes in the
illness because of what might happen to them and we have just so many people who are wondering whether
they're going insane because they themselves have had people die close to them or they themselves
are living with a long-term illness which is now you know long COVID that we have so much left to
discover about with regard to treatment and how it works and they feel marginalized they feel
invisible because our country and our world is very much set up for these thank you next mindset I
think that you know there's a certain amount of like kind of dialing down that we have to do in
order to move through life because life is very painful and we're taking a lot of painful things
with us but I also think that there's a real danger in not contending with real enormous grief
that hasn't really been fully examined and respected and dissected five years in
mostly because we're still watching the dust settle around everything that has been lost
not just the people who have died but the myriad ways in which our lives have been rattled and shaken
and changed as a result of it all and I give everybody credit we do get the long tail we we
deserve many years to start dealing with this but I think we're not really doing it in the way in which
we should I think we can do a lot better to make people who are dealing with physical COVID death
in their lives and just real COVID loss do them the service of respecting and honoring those losses
and making them feel seen in them it's really hard to move through something difficult unless you
feel acknowledged in that thing yeah I was literally gonna bring that up you wrote a wonderful
piece for NBC and I can't believe I'm saying this I think it was written in October of 2020
the first six months of the pandemic and you have this lovely quote that says there's no healing
until grief is processed and it cannot be processed until it is acknowledged and you literally
almost just said that word for word and I kind of want to I want to sink into some fantasy space for
a second because I feel like this is an element of grief that we don't often do but please
let's call call yeah right take me away from all of this take me away um but in this piece something
I loved is that you were already dreaming of putting together something like a million mourners march
or some sort of uh national or global acknowledgement of the losses from COVID and as of the fifth
anniversary of COVID we've now lost seven million people worldwide to this virus and that's just
what gets reported to the World Health Organization so chances are the toll is higher so I think if we could
put you in a time machine and I'll invite listeners to answer this question as well and go back to 2020
when this was first starting and then also come back to the present and sit here in the now
what if you had infinite power in the world and you knew people would go along with it um what would
you have done to acknowledge the grief that's coming up in the world and and what like fantasy world
would you create now I hate saying it's a fantasy world but what fantasy world would you create now
to acknowledge and honor all the crevars that um even more so are feeling unseen and unheard today
that's a great question shall be and um I want to think about it and I'm going to answer I think in two
parts I think the the bigger part is going to be the second part of your question which is like what
would I you know if I could franken design a fantasy reality in which we're living right now um I think
part of that reality on the one hand is coming true and I say that in a way that is hopeful
and optimistic because I can't deal with like zero well I can deal with zero optimism I don't have
a lot good right now but I do have hope I always have hope because I can't move forward without that
um on the one hand we are seeing a lot of things coming to light we are finally starting to see
COVID folded and woven through narratives in artistic expression and I think that it took years
for that to happen with many people and I'll give you an example um Rachel Bloom who
you know my crazy ex or crazy ex girlfriend I'm always aware you're not it's not my crazy ex
girlfriend it's crazy ex girlfriend she had this musical comedy show on the CW and she's so
funny and so wonderful and her writing partner Adam Slesinger who was um one of the guys from
Fountains of Wayne this hugely talented songwriter he died from COVID in I think late March 2020
at the latest early April 2020 and it was when her own newborn daughter was in the NICU
after being born and talk about an absolute mind-buck that required time to you know I guess reflect
upon before trying to make sense of any of it um and she has this wonderful show that I've now seen
live twice called death let me do my special and it's all about her going there and how she spent
so long trying not to go there and there's a character there only other character in the
you know the performance is death the actual character of death and he's like wow
why don't you tell me the hard thing that happened in March 2020 and she's like oh my god totally
you know like I had this special and I was really scared that it wasn't gonna go on because there
was a pandemic and he's like go deeper and then you know pushes and she's like well I had this baby
and she was in the NICU and that was really scary he's like aha cool cool go deeper and he finally
gets her to get to the nut of it all which is that her friend died from COVID V1.0 and it was an insane
time and she talks about it and she goes there and she talks about you know the things that I talk
about all the time which is like how can you move forward or find meaning for many thing really hard
unless you sit with it for a while you know how can you release some of that pain and anger and
confusion unless you really sit with it there's really no way to do it and so that's just an example
of one of the things that I am seeing that is you know people who are putting things out there you
know there are albums out there there are a lot more you know specials out there you know Mark
Marin has something on HBO from Bleak to Dark which is like one of my favorite specials and he
talks about losing his partner during COVID during a pandemic not from COVID so you're gonna see
a lot more of that coming down the pike and that's like my hopeful thing because I think that really
people were frozen for literally years into trying to figure out how to process this and the other
hand I did a survey of modern loss readers and we have readers all over the world thousands upon
thousands upon thousands and I put it out there a month ago and I said listen I want to know how
COVID has changed your existence five years on and it's going to be unattributed I'm not going to
use your name be honest and I cried when I read the responses because so many people are still
mentally in that moment of deep pandemic lockdown and lifestyle and they haven't been given a chance
to share those stories with someone who really wants to hear them there's a woman who talked about
how she gave birth during that time and how it was the most screwed up birth experience that she could
ever imagine because she had to do it alone her husband wasn't allowed in the room with her you
know there was very limited visiting hours her mom couldn't meet the baby for more than a year
and how that's just sitting inside of her and talked about all the isolation that she felt as a new
mom stuck at home with no one to hold the baby help her give her a break that expector someone in the room
and that is just one of the hundreds of examples that I had sent my way of course then we have other
people who talk about how they haven't had any real feeling of actual pleasure since 2020 they
haven't had a feeling of real lightness because of one or a million things that have happened to them
I got a lot of stories about people whose people died during covid from covid not just from covid but
who couldn't go to funerals who couldn't hug loved ones to go through such an important ritual
of saying goodbye to somebody who died because of all the limitations it was so messed up and so many
people are still sitting with it because we are in this incessant like we must move forward to survive
you know mentality if I could franken design a reality that was present day it would be a reality in
which we have designated a national day of mourning for covid victims and not just like a national
day of mourning but you know for for people who died but really like for grief for covid grief for the
pandemic and made it open to if it feels like grief to you it is people and what I wish for a national
covid day of remembrance is maybe a way to honor not just our people or our pets or our own losses
but to have some sort of tradition where we do something that really feeds that need for nourishment
that we're living with in our own ways as a result of the pandemic like did you have to move
because you know of the pandemic uh guess what fun fact I've moved twice wasn't in my plans I've moved
twice you know partially thanks to covid um and I miss a lot of like my former community
is it a day where I try to reconnect with that community you know is it a day where did you have a parent
who died from covid like can you is it a day where you really honor what you lost with them you
reconnect with their memory or their people who maybe are no longer in your life you know is it just
something where you missed the sense of touch for so long that you just have a big party because
that is how you are creating ritual around something that you lost that that was that has affected you
so deeply just you know DIY ritual here um but I I think that we have to carve out a day in which
we have kind of an invitation and really maybe a mandate to do it and I really don't think there
should be work on that day yeah I agree with that I don't think it should be on a Sunday um I don't
think it should be on August 30th like grief awareness day I I don't really understand why it's you
know on a day when when really nobody is like really physically or mentally available but um
you know in my mind it's you know early March and that's where early to mid-March and that's when
it happens um additionally I wish that we were in a world where places of employment have now adopted
bereavement policies that really recognize the real grief that people live with where you know
something meaningful that has come out of this awful time of years long layers of grief that
people have a guaranteed five days of paid leave from a job if they have a loss um and maybe they
can take them in non consecutive ways that they're promised that they're not going to lose their job
if they have to take some time off that we you know have cut each other break a little bit more
and don't ask for say a death certificate to prove that there was a loss in the work like
funeral pain flutter or whatever the heck um that you know that we ideally honestly haven't gone back
to a mandated in office uh work situation which so many places have gone back to um you know even
though we've proven that we can be quite effective being flexible you know inflexible geographic
situations uh because a lot of people are still dealing with the added layers of identity and
responsibility that they've had to take on as a result of the pandemic um you know they've moved to
be closer to family members for that support or to support family members who are ill who they're
caretaking you know like I wish that we are in a world where we had more permanent flexibility
and more cutting the cutting a break of to people um in addition to the formal
uh recognitions like national days of mourning um and you know I wish we were there um
and many of us are there many of us I think I'm not talking about me I'm just talking about a lot of
people I've met have become really deeply much more empathetic over the last several years
there are a lot of incredible human beings out there who are helping people even if it's just
by showing up for one person who needs them in a deeper way because they have a better deeper
understanding of what grief is as a result of COVID but if you look at the headlines
it's a real frickin bummer you know you can't get free COVID tests anymore through the mail
they got rid of the long COVID you know research project which maybe in some ways sure was
not being effective who knows but in other ways I don't know shouldn't there be a lot of funds going
towards something that probably uh I don't know billions of people around the world are suffering
from right now um we are just you know not honor not honoring it in the way in which we should be
yeah well and I think that's a perfect segue into my next question which is like how
you have opinions on this and I have opinions on this but like something you wrote about in your article
in 2020 was how important it is for leaders to demonstrate that grief is important
and when they don't what they relay is a message of your grief doesn't matter
buck up and get over it it's not so bad at least at least and if you don't fall in line with that
or that doesn't line up with your experience of reality is there's almost this like especially
surrounding COVID-19 there's this gas lighting of it's not so bad I don't understand why it's
such a big deal for you and so I'm hoping you can kind of again to do a kind of too pronged approach
of like acknowledging and validating like it was that bad and it continues to be that bad and also
speak a little bit on the importance of leaders I'm talking our president in the United States but
also world leaders in acknowledging the weight of grief at large COVID war pandemic just on a
large large scale can you just repeat the first part of the question yeah just acknowledging to
to grieving people that it is as bad as you think it is despite what a leader might be telling you
about what's happening I don't love using the term gaslight because I think it's like a hashtag
you know just like hashtag trauma you know like oh you didn't call me back I'm hashtag traumatized
we've taken therapy lingo into real life but like yeah I think there are certain situations in which
you can gaslight someone and I think it's like you know we talk about it in the grief space all the time
which is when you use say toxic positivity like oh come on you know like it's not all that bad or
like look on these bright sides or at least it's not this like at least right like anything that
starts with at least is never going in a good direction for somebody that's you trying to make yourself
feel comfortable not the person who you're trying to supposedly comfort or be there for um you know
things like yeah minimizing a virus and and all the tentacles that come out of it that are endless
really that affect every you know every aspect of somebody's life and can um to just like not acknowledge
that like while that may not have happened to you you're aware that that is happening to the other
person and while you may not understand that firsthand you care enough to try to to me that's the
mark of a good leader I mean because I don't think any of us know everything I mean it please show
me someone who does and you know even in modern loss when I'm writing I always say look I only know
my own personal experience and that's why modern loss is a community endeavor it's for people to
share with each other I'm not like the figure out here I'm just like the person who's kind of like
leading it and setting the tone and like trying you know like sharing the content um I think that
a real mark of a good leader is someone who doesn't try to um be little people for struggling in
something very real make them think that they're not strong enough they're not doing it right
you know for me that's just really an extension of like everything that I always say about loss
which is you know when you have this metaphor that I hate right which is like
I talk about it in my in my in my newer book the modern loss handbook which is like we have this
way of talking about grief and hard things which is you know we approach it from this like warrior
metaphor like it's a battle that has to be won and that you're gonna vink wish it you know like she
had cancer and she fought really hard and she lost the battle I mean did she or did she just like die
from cancer because cancer is just really fucking awful and doesn't care who it kills and doesn't
decide who it's gonna kill you know um does that mean that she didn't care to live as much as the
person who is in remission it doesn't now some of these metaphors may not bother everyone and that's
totally fine I'm I don't care I'm just talking about how it sits with me and a lot of people who I
talk to because a lot of people do walk around feeling less than or like they're not doing it right
because they're not doing it in the way that society tells us that we should do it they're not
vanquishing the aggressor which is in in this conversation grief you know well there's no
there's no vaccine for grief it's something that you just have to wake up and do and screw up or
maybe do a little better and go to sleep and wake up and do it again and that is the way that it goes
and so leaders if they can't acknowledge that that grief is folded into the not only of the human
experience but the life experience of anything that really lives you know then I I don't know
I don't really look up to that very much I think you have a lot of people who feel really invisible
even if you're someone who likes a lot of what that leader stands for you know grief is not political
it's just not I mean sometimes I get DMs saying like why you gotta make it political and I'm like I'm
literally not I'm actually not I'm I'm not making it political if you hear me talking about how
I would like to have gun reform that's because I believe in preventing unnecessary grief
from traumatic gun violence because I've met enough families whose lives are never going to be
anything remotely close to okay according to them because of it so yeah I'm not making it political
this is a very human subject it's not Republican Democrat or even Libertarian and I I wish you know
it's it's I think it's other people who are making it political yeah I love you just said something in
one way that I say in the exact opposite way because I tell people grief is political but it's not
partisan and so I think politics and grief everybody has politics whether you participate in the
political machine or not is up to you really fair enough and grief happens to everybody whether
you participate actively in the experience of grieving or not and how you vote and what you do
in your community determines what types of griefs you will and will not face in some part there are
things you cannot possibly predict coming even though people predicted things like COVID coming
that are influenced by by what you do politically and so I think saying a similar thing but
entirely a different way grief is not political and that it belongs to everyone and grief is
totally political and that it belongs to everyone yes you are totally right um copy print yes
but it's trademark it shall be yeah totally I mean you're right um
yeah I mean it's tough times and
you know the range of loss out there is so deep and
it's just this real humbling moment when you realize that hundreds of people are willing to
lay bare their true raw candidate experiences with something really hard to you that they feel
comfortable enough with you that you're not going to sensationalize their stories or you're not
going to like you know share their names like you they trust you with those stories and I
don't take that lightly I take it very seriously that people trust me with those stories
and I do wish that everyone who was grieving had some feeling like that from somebody in their lives
and I do wish you know in my fantasy world that they felt like that in their society about their
society at large yeah yeah and we're just not there we're not there and and I think that leads
perfectly to my last question then we'll talk about how people can connect with modern loss because it
is such an outpost for support even for me I've been following along for so many years but
something that you wrote about in again in 2020 keep going back to this article because I feel like wow
what a piece of journalism to come out in the first six months and then to come to the flow
of how everything was going to unfold at the time we were in a second wave of the virus so people
talked about the first wave and then they talked about the second wave and you're like the third wave
is going to be grief we don't know when it will hit we don't know when it will come but the
kind of aftermath reckoning we will have with this virus is not another mutation of the virus it will
be the grief that we have right as a result of the pandemic right exactly so the next so my last
question for you is like if people are in a place where they now notice whether because of this
show or because of their own awareness of their lives I am sitting in this third wave I am now in
the grief of everything that happened what the hell do I do next or what do I do with this or how do I
cope with this and how do I keep going because the world keeps going and it sucks and we're all
part of this world that's keeping going yes so real it's just like take us through best practices
for third wave because I think that's something all inside of I mean third wave of this is
if it you know as you say if you realize if it's slamming into that what you're really dealing with
this grief then first of all congratulations I say that's a really good thing to try to you know
kind of flip the script a little bit instead of like oh my god this is grief like I am destroyed no
more like commend yourself for coming to this realization because that's a really powerful thing
to do for yourself like that's a milestone I can't even tell you how long it took me to get the
red support for myself after my mom was killed in a car accident I mean years actual years to build
my team which were not all like clinicians a lot of them were just like people in the world you know
good humans yeah yeah good humans and so if you're if you're laid bare with all this stuff and you're
like I this is grief and it's because of this that it's because of my burnout it's because of
my dead cousin you know or my professor who died um you know from covid or or or the miscarriage I had
during the pandemic or the fact that I had to become an online kindergarten teacher and work full
time as an attorney on zoom for a year you know this is all grief you know so congratulations you're
realizing it and then what are you going to do with it is the next question like you have a choice
now which is are you going to figure out um how to respect and acknowledge and examine
this grief or are you not and I highly suggest option a because if you do then you
contend with it and you figure out what parts of it are the real triggers for you because there
are triggers like there are in life everything is a trigger a potential trigger um you know you could
be going about the day and maybe have some sort of meeting that reminds you of a meeting that you
were having in deep covid or you know just reach for the bottle of syrup in the grocery store and be
taken back to another hard moment when maybe you were ordering from insta cart for three months
because you couldn't go to grocery store and you were overwhelmed right so you have to figure out
like how are you going to acknowledge this how are you going to examine it and what help are you
going to get and I always recommend as somebody who is not a licensed professional mental health
worker um get some professional help you know do it you know that one of the things that I think
is is a huge upside of the pandemic it's almost weird because a lot of the virtual stuff has kind of
retreated but online therapy is still very readily available you can still very readily do grief sessions
on zoom on the phone what not so if you can't get to someone in person there are ways there really
are get it for yourself um I think that a grief counselor or you know any if you feel like you know
if they can probably correctly um ascertain whether you're dealing with trauma as well and
potentially refer you to a trauma specialist maybe on top of it you would like some cognitive
behavioral therapy to help with behavioral things that are coming up so that you can you know
rework um how you try and react to things when they come up um but that's like using your agency
to help yourself and it's getting a sounding board that doesn't have any judgment to attach to it
and that's the beauty of getting some real counseling that works right um it's somebody who isn't
coming to the table with any biases or any other like shared memories like a sibling when you're
talking about a mom yeah they have different memories and arm roommate and you're talking about a
friend just go get someone who doesn't give a crap and just gives a crap about helping you you know
yes but beyond that it's in really figuring out how to level up for yourself figuring out where
your greatest needs are are you struggling at work then figure out how to help yourself at work figure
out what the ideal situation is for you in your professional life and try and figure out if you can
ask for it and no one gets everything they ask for but a lot of people get some of it so is it that
you might need a more flexible work schedule or maybe there are productivity hours that are
better for you that have shifted from what your productivity hours used to be or is it that maybe
you'd like to request some time off and yeah it'll be unpaid you have to deal with it that sucks
but isn't unpaid time off with a guaranteed job better than maybe no job so maybe there's a way
to work with if you are at a company that has HR many people don't have that many people are
self-employed or at smaller companies or not even working at all but is there a way to just kind of
ask say I want to stay here you know I want to work here is there a way that we can do it you know
that can happen with like me feeling like my needs are being met so that I can really show up fully
I think that you really would be surprised by how flexible companies are willing to be with people
but they are waiting for people to go to them with it and that's not there
onish shouldn't be on you but it is now of course in the rest of your life which is your social world
you still probably have to date and probably have to be a partner probably just have to be
happily single or the apparent you know be with your friends you know what do you need from them
think about it do you need friends to support you and show up for you in ways in which they are not
do they know that so first cut them a break and assume that no one can perfectly into it
what it is that you need and we have to do that because I don't want you to cut off your friendships
I don't if they're toxic ones I want you to cut them off but most friendships are not you know most
friendships people I think generally want to show up for somebody but they don't exactly know how
and they are waiting for some sort of direction so are you having a really hard time are you really
having a hard time right now who is it in your life who are the friends who can take having a real
earnest tough conversation go to those first give them the chance to show up for you in return
and then go from there while knowing that not everyone is going to be able to hang with all of your
hard things and that's not necessarily a personal reflection of you yeah yeah it's that everyone look
at what we're talking about everyone is going through an overwhelming time right now so you might
have people who just might be able to show up for you in ways within their capacities at any given
moment but try and think about the fact that that still means that they're showing up for you like
I'm really just like I'm a friend fan you know I don't go around telling people to like you know
tell their friends to screw off because they forgot their mom's death anniversary I do encourage
people to give people a chance and you'll know when they're really not repeatedly coming through for
you and then you'll act but you know it really is up to us to ask for things it sucks it's not there
yeah but look at the world right now is there anything that looks fair well not only that but I think
we are trying so hard as people to simply make it through another day that for as much as we love
our friends for as much as we love our family so as much as some of us even love our jobs our top
priority for the most part is what's in front of us right now and unless there's a notification or
reminder or an email or a nudge from a friend or a hey on the street it's not what I'm dealing with
in this moment and for as much as I can be a good grief friend I can also be a really bad one
and so sometimes just having reminders even on my calendar of like this person's things coming up
and so remember and if I'm two days late oh my god I'm so sorry I forgot whoever's date sending you
some love and care let's get out next weekend um I'm a big knowledge I'm a big scheduler I'm a big I
mean it is how I remember is every what it's how I remember everyone's birthdays I have a list of
people who I know you know consider mother's day you know season to be a huge trigger and I
specifically reach out to them two weeks in advance that's just what I do you know um and guess what
it takes me total of like seven to ten minutes because everyone knows no one has time for a
home call anymore and if you can have that that's amazing ask for it someone will give it to you
but I don't have time to reach out with a phone call I just start reaching out with a text hey
oh how obnoxious mother's day is happening again you know it's garbage yeah how you doing you know
and that's that's what most people just need which is like just you know knowing that someone else
sees something coming down the pike just like they do and a tacit acknowledgement that that
could be hard and do you need anything you know um it goes so far I mean it just goes back to what I
always say which is like we just need to be able to see and I mean it's really really hard to feel like
you can be compassionate towards others if you're stewing in not having received compassion yourself
yeah it just how I mean put simply it just helps to know that somebody gives a crap about you
and what happens to you and what you think that is in the bible and I hope it's in the bi
hope it's in something that it gets I don't know I actually don't I don't even know that I'm
I'm Jewish and I'm always like I literally don't know any of the of the books as it were so I
like it's in the bible I love it I love it um on the note of mother's day I want to close out our
conversation by giving you like two minutes to talk about a the mother's day gift swap which is
coming up which is run by modern loss every year and then also you just got named I think a best
seller or a most popular or most amazing on sub stack as a newsletter for grieving people
so please talk about where people can find both of those things and I'll tell you if you're
signing up for the mother's day swap you could get me as your partner this is my first year joining
I'm very excited I'm very excited oh I'm available to do it oh I heard it here first that's so fun
I'm so excited I can't wait to match you um yeah so in 2017 I had a newborn literally I had a
eight two-week old baby and I was like you know just sitting and nursing all the time and then I
was doing edits on my book and I was like oh mother's day is coming up in a month like that sucks
because I was a newborn mom phase and I'm like that just sucks because I already had another kid
and I was like wow it still sucks like my I have the dead mom and now I have these two beautiful kids
and you would think that the kids would have replaced the pain from the mom and the mother's day
no no it actually makes it weirder and harder in many ways and it makes it better in some ways
and then it makes it harder in other ways it's just like it's all a mixed bag right and so I'm like
you know I'm on my like like X number of year as as someone living with loss right now with mother
loss with father loss and I kind of want to like take back this stupid holiday that is you know
screwing with my mind every year um and I want to kind of create a ritual so that anything leftover
I can do whatever I want with my time like if I feel like I have done something that kind of honors
not like really my mom's memory right because I always honor my mom's memory and I don't need to
just like spend mother's day having brunch as though I were having brunch with my mom and I love her
and I know that she would be like just please don't have brunch brunch is not my favorite meal anyway
you know but it's not a really for me it's not really about like her it's kind of selfish it's about
reframing it and taking it back for me because I'm still around and also I just also happen to be a
mother and I don't want to spend the whole day in this like days of like God sucks man so what if I
created this ritual where people had this opportunity to feel like they were connecting with their feelings
with their loss with whatever they needed the living people left behind you know needed to connect
with and then they could do whatever else they wanted on that day because they already had something
where they knew they were going to feel seen and so I sent out this form and I was like do you hate
mother's day for any reason uh let's do a mother's day uh modern loss gift swap and I'm gonna match you
with somebody else who dreads this day for any reason you know gen it's modern loss so maybe
normally lost related and uh I want you to send a card and send a gift to that person they're
gonna do the same and let me let me just play matchmaker and like hundreds of people signed up
to my absolute terror because I was like oh now I have to match all these people and whatever
and it was so crazy and it worked and people all around the country sent presents to each other and
they are still in touch and all this stuff and now we're nine years later and I'm still doing it
and so just today I put up the the sign up form for the ninth annual modern loss mother's day
gift swap and I do it for father's day and I do it for the winter holidays and it's you know
is this a sucky day for you so why don't you just get the opportunity to be paired with somebody
else who feels the same way maybe for different specific reasons right different details but it's
all the same this is a trigger holiday for us so I want you to do something awesome for someone
based on their likes and their hobbies and all this send them a gift that like you think they'd
actually like write them a card so that they get a card but also I want you to take back the feeling
of being able to send something to somebody or do something for someone around this day if that
was taken away from you or if you never got to have it in the first place so I just put the form up
the form a sign of form is open I think through the end of Sunday and um I'm really excited to see
what happens it is as I was telling you before we got on the call you know I make zero money from this
I have to charge some sort of administrative fee because like I you know we literally spend like
a long time working on this and pairing people like people are literally paired based on like
oh like two people lost their moms to COVID that might be nice for them to connect it's not just like
I'm like oh two people who are 30 let's connect them um and uh and it really is a beautiful beautiful
wacky crazy awesome experiment and the reason I think it is important now is because a lot of
places that are institutions that you would think would be coming through for you are actually not
it is really falling on us to do it to catch those people who are otherwise maybe not going
going to be caught by the the institutions that that should catch them so you know I do encourage
everyone to give it a whirl and we'll be doing one for Father's Day um and yes I do have a sub stack
which I've been writing for years I think I'm like probably an OG sub stacker uh because I it was
originally on MailChimp and I've been doing modern loss you know work since 2013 so it's been a long time
and I did I got an email last week saying congratulations you're at your number of whatever like
60 what I don't know like 63 in the wellness and health category and sub stack I think that there are
like hundreds and hundreds of wellness and health sub stacks and and great crack the top 100 like
that's cool I'm I that's nice because that that is something that I run for me you know and if it helps
the reader like I wanted to help the reader but that is like the one thing that I reserved for just me
I don't publish my own you know articles on modern loss.com because it's not about me the sub stack is
like it's really my personality and what I think is interesting and what I'm thinking about and what
I think might be interesting to you or help you out and so that's really meaningful um and if you
you know if you subscribe that's awesome and if you pay subscribe that's even more awesome because
it's certainly less than a third of what a rack rate therapy session could cost one single therapy
session for an entire year subscription for for context and you know we do weekly zooms and
there's a lot of connectivity points along the way it's just I think a nice additive for people
yeah and not everybody we talk about this a lot in the work that I do like therapy is
incredible and also people recommend therapy is like your first little handout when you're grieving
is like you should advise you should see someone blah blah blah you should talk to somebody
and I tell you I have seen therapists through the years and I just restarted therapy again last
Friday thank goodness but also things that are supplemental to therapy or more conversational or
more personal stories where it feels like I'm hearing from people who've had similar experiences
absolutely they they they say things that are funny they're willing to swear they're
yeah oh my god and covid look again I think it's like helpful therapy is great like literally
I will never say otherwise it's great um I probably have hundreds to probably more than I might
be even in the thousands of therapists who are subscribers to yes to modern loss because a they
need an outlet and b it's really great for them because they get ideas you know for their
their clients where where they have to leave off you know I mean I provide resources and talk like
you say like I mean therapy can only last so long in your in your daily life maybe an hour a week maybe
two hours a week the rest of it is community and you got to find community in real life virtually
or in your head even just through your own creativity you know you can find community just by
writing an article yourself and so modern loss really is it's a community and it's a movement it is
a movement meant to destigmatize the experience of grief and loss in whatever way that means you know
resonates for you and to help connect people through it all and really across the long arc of it
you know I was just gonna say I was like normally at any given moment yeah yeah yeah
I love it Rebecca thank you so much for coming on grief grower today I am so so glad to talk to you
and just honor this milestone for what it is but also for what it will continue to be moving forward
into the future and I always just love introducing you to people so thank you so much for coming on
thank you for your work um oh yeah you're you're amazing I can't wait to see who gets you in the gift swap
I'm so excited to join and I'll post about on Instagram so people follow along and see who we get
paired with thanks for inviting me and thanks for inviting me to be your inaugural guest that is a real treat
that's all for this episode of grief grower thank you so very much for joining me today
if you're looking for grief support beyond the show you can find free workshops blog articles and
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yours truly shall be for sitya and the theme music is composed by addy goldstein until next time
we see you i am so proud of you and the work that you're doing in the world and i love you
because even through grief we are growing
you
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