the one thing you can't control is if you look like her.
And when I'd walk into a room, that would bring them to their needs.
I would say something or do something that they'd say, "Oh my God, do that again."
Say that again when you said that you look just like it.
And I was searching maybe for people to turn their head when I walked in the room and
say, "Oh my God, you look just like it."
Because I wanted that.
[Music]
Hi there, grief growers, and welcome back to the show.
I am so delighted to be here with you today.
If you have been growing alongside me in my work for a while,
welcome back. And if you are new to me and my work, hello.
My name is Shelby Fersitia.
I am a grief coach, two-time author, and the founder of Life After Loss Academy,
which is an online program that has helped dozens of grieving people stop
being lost, stuck, broken, and alone in the aftermath of devastating loss,
and start building lives that they genuinely love from the lives that
lost forced them to live.
This includes not only death-related losses, but also divorce,
major diagnosis, and every other loss that changes your life.
Here on this show, we believe that grief is not something to get over,
but something that comes along for the ride of our lives.
And that is never more true than in my conversation with today's guest.
On today's episode, I'm speaking with Cara Belvin, who is the founder of Empower,
a nonprofit that matches children who've lost a parent,
with adults who've experienced parent loss.
It is the grief version of Big Brother's Big Sisters
that is changing the way kids move through life after loss.
We are getting into the blessings and the curses of looking like a loved one who
died, sometimes your grief is worn on your literal face.
Why parent loss is so incredibly life-changing, especially if you experience it at a young age,
and the power of mentorship and friendship to transform isolation into connection.
Here's a little bit more about Cara.
Cara Belvin was nine years old when her mother, Kit, died of breast cancer.
She founded Empower in 2013 around her dining room table,
as a grassroots movement for kids and young adults impacted by parent loss
to get support for that loss from others who'd experienced the loss of a parent,
and word quickly spread about her work.
Thousands of inquiries came in from people who wished for an organization like Empower
when they were growing up.
Today, Empower is an international nonprofit with thousands of volunteers
across the globe.
Cara holds a BS in Psychology from the University of Connecticut and an MS in Psychology
from Texas A&M University.
Her efforts and work through Empower have been featured on CNN,
the Today Show, ABC, PBS NewsHour with Judy Woodruff, and more.
Cara, thank you so much for coming on the show.
I am delighted to have you here to talk about a super, super unique grief experience,
and that is looking like your person who died.
I wrote an article about this probably, I'd say at least five or six years ago now,
and it was called Seeing My Dead Mom in the Mirror,
My Biggest Grief Trigger is My Own Face, and it went semi-viral on Medium,
which is a blogging platform, and I knew when I connected with you that this is something I wanted
to talk to you about.
So, welcome to Grief Grower, and I would love if you shared your own story of losing your mom,
but then also as you're aging, looking more and more like the person you lost
and how that's affected and informed your grief.
Yeah, that's such a great question.
I don't think I've ever been asked this question.
In this grief space, I've talked about this with my family and friends forever,
but I so appreciate this question.
And then I'll try not to cry, but everybody needs a good cry, I cry.
So, if I cry, that's all right.
So, yeah, I look just like my mom.
My mom's name was Kit Murphy. Kit Murphy Guzzy.
And so, my name is Kara Guzzy Belvin.
My mom was Irish Catholic from Boston, like pretty, you know,
traditional big Irish Catholic Murphy family in Boston, like you read about,
and that saved me.
You know, after my mom died of breast cancer, when I was nine years old,
I would remain so close to her family, but I looked like her, and that was triggering for them.
And so, I was acutely aware of that as I was growing up.
And even now, I'm 48 years old, and I'm a mom to a son and a daughter.
And my mom was a mom to a son and a daughter and a wonderful husband.
And so, not only do I look like my mother, but I actually,
I've emulated a lot of my mother's personality and characteristics, and just also kind of life
circumstances. She was a teacher, I became a school psychologist.
And I think a lot of us girls who lose our mom young, we do that.
I wear high heels because my mother always wore high heels.
I wear big earrings. I love costume jewelry because she did.
She was a girls girl. She had a million girlfriends, so do I.
And so, there were so many ways that I was really trying.
I think I was purposely trying to emulate my mother,
but the one thing you can't control is if you look like her.
And what was hard, I think, for my family, and I really have a lot of empathy for them,
and who I'm talking about specifically is my mother's sister,
her best friend, my aunt Patty.
And then it was her brothers and their wives.
It was my mother's mother, my Nana, Nana Kay.
And it was her best friends.
And when I'd walk into a room, that would bring them to their needs.
And that will make me cry because I felt bad about that.
I felt like I was making them feel bad for many years.
I would say something or do something that they'd say, "Oh my God, do that again."
Say that again when you said that, you look just like it.
So I grew up for decades. I heard that, and I knew that, and I was proud of that.
But I was a blonde. My mother was a brunette. Blue eyes, thick, dark, black hair,
straight. And I was a blonde with curly, curly hair because I'm half Irish and half Italian.
So I look more Italian than I do Irish.
So as I got older, I was trying to look more like my mother.
I realized I was dying my hair.
I was straightening my hair.
And I was searching maybe for people to turn their head when I walked in the room and say,
"Oh my God, you look just like it."
Because I wanted that. Growing up, I felt bad.
I looked like her because I felt bad for my dad and my aunts and my Nana.
As I got older, I really leaned into that, I think.
I felt like another way to honor her.
So that served me well, but I understand when people say that's hard.
And I think it's hard because it's hard for you or it's hard to watch other people grieve.
Yes. Well, and I think you're speaking to so much of this sense of,
it's a blessing and a curse because it's something that we can't choose.
I look like my mother as well.
We walk into a room and we remind people of who they've lost.
And yet we are our own individual persons living our own individual lives.
And so feeling like we can differentiate ourselves from our mothers can be tricky.
But then also to look in the mirror and be like,
"That's the person who gapers to me. That's the person who loves me more than anything."
Yes.
Is so comforting at times.
It's comforting and terrifying.
And I remember speaking to Hope Edelman about this on another podcast years and years ago.
But it's also surreal to surpass the age that a parent was and watch yourself age in ways that they
did not get to. And so to also live through that experience, I'm not there yet.
My mom died at 52. I'm 32. So I've got about 20 years to go.
Still, God willing.
We know as grief professionals that aging is a gift as opposed to a curse.
But kind of watching yourself go through these same milestones.
I'm remembering my sister and I both look like my mother.
My best friend joked, "She'll be when your mom had children. She just hit copy paste."
And then just like, "Made kids."
Your dad was not involved.
But I remember my sister.
Both at different times in our lives have walked into hairdressers to your point
with a picture of her mother and said, "Make me look like this."
For me, it was a couple years ago.
My sister just got bangs. This sent my mom had bangs her whole life.
My sister just got bangs this summer.
And we're like, "Holy crap, you look like mom."
And so some of it's wonderful.
Some of it's horrendous.
And I'm just so glad that you're speaking about this because there is this
guilt or this inavoidance of making the people around you feel terrible,
but also remembered.
And then you also feel that you were a legacy bearer in some way because you literally bear her face.
You bear her face.
You bear her legacy.
Those are undeniable facts.
And I don't, I want to really be sensitive also to some
girls who lost their mother, maybe if the relationship was strained.
There's a motivation to maybe not dress like your mom or not look like your mom.
I understand all of that.
I'm saying for me personally, it really served me well.
It served me as a legacy bearer.
I feel so grateful.
I look at my mom and I think,
first, I can't believe she went through what she went through.
She knew she was dying.
My mother was sick for two years.
She knew she was dying.
She asked all of her family and friends to help my dad raise us.
And they did.
All that she asked and more, which is such a beautiful way of looking at life.
I've surpassed my mother's age.
My mother was 37 and she left behind a nine-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy.
So undeniably.
And thank God for hope at home and hope at home is my childhood hero,
my child's, you know, my favorite.
And she educated me time and time again on all of these things that I didn't know.
I didn't spend my time researching and writing.
I spent my time particularly over the last 10 years as a social entrepreneur,
you know, building a nonprofit, you know, building a mentor program for kids in grief.
But hope that God, she explained those things to me and she explained them as neon ages.
And what's surprising about neon ages, and I often do share this with some of my friends,
you know, maybe my age who lost their mom, I say, okay, careful about these neon ages.
Undeniably, you may be shook to your core when you turn the age that your mother was when she died.
That's undeniably.
The year leading up to it, you may have some pretty high anxiety.
That feels like it's coming out of nowhere and then you realize, oh, this is why.
Yeah.
You will have, you know, if you have children and they are the same age, undeniably age nine or age
13 for my son and daughter should have been my neon ears.
But here's the thing in grief that like trips you up every time is those weren't my,
my neon ages. When I was 35, I had a regular mammogram, as I always did, because I was screened so
thoroughly. And my mammogram came back fine. The results were normal and the oncologist told me to go
home and I lost it. And I cried. I had really like an anxiety attack in her office.
And she was such a good doctor. She knew me this while. She knew my history and didn't have to
bring a file out to know that she said, "Carra, that was it. Your mother was 35 when she was diagnosed
with breast cancer. That was the age." She said, "You thought I was going to be diagnosing you with
breast cancer today." And I said, "Yes, I did." And I got in my car. I think I'd, you know, picked up a coffee,
windows down, sunroof open, like, you know, like, jerrym for choir, like Tom Petty moment. I'm like
singing in the car ride home thinking, "Oh, this was my rebirth. I didn't share my mother's
fate. I'm 35. I have my son and my daughter and an amazing husband. And here I'm living."
Aging is a gift. So it wasn't 37. My neon age was 35. And then growing, you know, in the neighborhood
we are in Boston, little girl next door to me turned nine years old. And I'm very good friends with her
mother. And it killed me because I thought she is so vulnerable, this little nine year old girl.
This beautiful little girl, sweet, wonderful family. And I love her mom. And I just kept praying
nothing would happen to her mother. And my children were much younger than her at the time. So her age
nine was my neon age. And those are the things that trip you up in grief. It's like, I don't know how
many books you could read or, you know, to educate yourself and to prepare yourself for that. But
that's part of what trips a lot of us up. Grief comes in waves or there's triggers.
Thank God we're talking about that. Thank God I know I didn't grow up understanding what a trigger was.
Thank God the younger generations in your part of the younger generation, you understand it,
you talk about it. We didn't do that in the 80s. We didn't have safe spaces, Shelby, right? Like,
you just moved on. I mean, my mother died and the pictures came off the wall and we moved forward.
And you got good grades and you were college bound and you were going to be a division one
athlete. Like, there was this pressure. I say the pressure served me well because I can't be
graduate from my father. I love my father more than anything and for everything he did for me.
But those are the kinds of things I think that trip us up that surprise a lot of us who've lost
a parent when we were children or as a young adult or untimely. You know, because my grief is not
more shiny or more important than yours. Hard things are just hard. So I lost my mother when I was
nine. Everyone would say, God, that must have been so hard. But it's hard for any of us, especially
when you lose your mother, your mother's everything. Yeah. And thank you for speaking to
looking like your person who died may not always be something you want. I love that you spoke to
moms with or girls with strained relationships to their mothers. But I'm also thinking of other
instances where I've had clients or students in my online course say something like, I look like
my biological parents who I never met, never knew, but all I knew was that I wasn't I wanted. Or I look
like the father who abused me or the grandfather who shunned me. Like I look like people I do not want
to look like. And so there's this resistance to carrying their presence, their impact on your face.
It is it is very much a physical manifestation and an escapable one of grief. People talk about,
you know, the body keeps the score or Mary Frances O'Connor like the grieving body. Your body
carries grief, but sometimes so does your face. Your face actually carries your grief. So thank you
for speaking to. Yeah. This is not always something that feels like a blessing more often. Yes.
Then occurs. And God love that doctor. That folks who don't know the term neon years, this is
something from Hope Edelman's work where there's like a flashing neon number in the future that gets
closer and closer as you grow closer to that age. And for some people it's a death date. And for some
people for care, this is what I call a in life after a loss academy, a date of knowing, which is usually
a date of a diagnosis or for instance for other grief events like 42 is the year we found out my dad
was cheating on my mom. And so getting to 42 is a milestone in my marriage with my spouse or something
like that. And so dates of knowing information about a grief event, not necessarily death dates can
also be neon numbers or neon ages in your life. I love that you brought that up.
I love that you're putting a name to that. I've never even heard of that to see this in our space.
There's like you can never have enough of this information. But now that you know that it can
again, it may bring anxiety, but it also may bring anger and rage. You know, I've been kind of
fixated on this. We were serving girls for so long, not yet serving, you know, not serving all genders
who've lost a mom or dad. So I have an interesting, you know, historical at empower. But I always wanted
to serve boys in particular who had lost a mother or father because what I saw was, you know, men raised
in a, you know, boys don't cry world become men's rage. And you making those distinctions, especially
for men to understand what those neon ages do, they do bring some anxiety, they do bring depression,
they do bring anger and rage. Sometimes we just don't know it. We didn't have a, we couldn't
put a finger on it. Yeah, absolutely. So grief gorgeous is a new term for you.
Dates of knowing can also be grief events as opposed to just birthdays or just days. In case you need
another day to keep track of. Sometimes dates or ages of knowing are things that can just serve you
in terms of awareness as well. I do want to pivot to exactly where you're going, which is supporting
grieving kids who've lost a parent. And this is the work that you do at empower, which is the
nonprofit that you founded. And I want to get into why exactly the loss of a parent is so life
changing. I think there's so much in our media and so much in our culture. I remember I did a podcast
episode years and years ago with Janet de Christopharo from the Duggy Center. And she's like, why is it
that every Disney princess and every superhero is either an orphan or has lost one or more parents?
And there's kind of the sense to have like, well, if it's too complicated to storyline, the movie
ends up being more than an hour and a half. And if you have too many relationships to explain,
sure, that's I think that's a cop out by Hollywood.
There's this there's this sense culturally where we tell people losing a parent is life changing,
but we don't talk about how like what is the impact of losing a parent? I would say under the age
of 21 under the age of 18, when you are still forming yourself, we're always forming ourselves into
people, but especially when you're reliant on a parent for yes, knowing how to be in the world. So I'd
love to talk about your work with empower. What is it? And then what makes the loss of a parent?
So definitely how long do we have this is okay. Here's the thing. Here's the sitch in Hollywood. I'd
say, you know, Cinderella's mother on her on her deathbed, she said, have courage and be kind. So
when I started this nonprofit, have courage and be kind was the quote that was on everything. I was
trying to make everything really colorful and bright. I didn't want it to be black and white. I wanted
everything to be colorful for the children that were enrolled in our program for many reasons.
My life was in black and white. I mean, that's the truth, but it was, but my I still saw the
beauty in the world after my mother died. So I was blessed with I didn't have jealousy or envy for
my friends whose moms did not die because that's very common. I don't know where it was or in my DNA
and my bones, I didn't feel envy or jealousy. I had this sixth sense that my loss was very unnatural,
but I knew as I grew and met and my world, you know, got bigger that I would meet other women who
knew adversity and who whose trauma or tragedy was more in sequence. Mine was so out of sequence.
Right. So there was just kind of an understanding, but yes, I mean, why do we love the story of
Cinderella or Elphaba? I mean, the wicked 20th anniversary came up and I was nominated for
like the Elphaba award. Why do we love that? Why do we want to see that like we're unstoppable?
You know, when the world stopped when our parent died and your parent is everything. Again,
a strange relationship or not. I mean, I always say when I look in the mirror, you know, in a tough day
and I want to remind myself I'm strong and I can get through what I say straight in your crown and
remember whose daughter you are. My mother was no bullshit. My mother was she was, she would tell you
what's what and I loved that about her. She had in her high heels, Kit Murphy, in her high heels and
she was gorgeous and smart and funny and loving. And yeah, I want to straighten my crown and
remember whose daughter I am because, you know, my mother didn't really put up with a lot and I love that.
But the loss of a parent and the reason why I actually started a nonprofit method, I suggest
anyone go and start a nonprofit. There's plenty of really beautiful, especially, you know,
childhood bereavement organizations around the country that exist and so, you know, there's
many to support, you can volunteer your time and donate your money and support other great
orgs in the space. The reason I did this was because I looked around and recognized this one thing
wasn't really being done and that was mentorship. I would have loved when I was younger, growing up
to have met like a 40-year-old woman who survived the loss of her mom. So growing up, I never met
another girl whose mom died, which was like living on planet Mars and I never met an adult woman who
had survived it, right? So, and I'll talk about that when we, you know, talk more about youth mentorship
and for, you know, children grieving and why it was so unique. I didn't know, no one was really
doing it. I didn't know today we're still the only nonprofit that had that idea that's,
saw that value in youth mentorship. But all the science says, you know, you see, you can see
yourself in someone else's, in someone else and someone who is further along on that journey,
is really impactful. It reminds you that you'll survive it. So, but the loss of a parent, we do know,
I mean, there's a little bit of research not enough, but the research out there does suggest that an
early loss. It does, you know, it makes you, it puts you at risk and it is a loss that comes with,
you know, higher risks of anxiety and depression, school absenteeism, behavioral problems,
illicit drug use, unplanned pregnancy, we know that. But I didn't know that growing up because it seemed
well, there's life in this death and, you know, and, you know, everyone's going to lose a parent. I
think that what we didn't recognize was just how painful the loss of a parent is and then how
oftentimes it's compounded by a world going on around you as normal as a young person and how you
are trying to keep up with that life going on around you as normal and how exhausting that is.
So, for me, I describe it as like a one-ton brick on my chest. I thought about my mother every minute
of every day, like a lightning bolt. So, those around me out of love maybe didn't come out and try
to help or support or, you know, talk about my mother's loss out of love because they didn't want to
rock the boat or remind me of something, you know, look like I was having a good day or I had good grades
so why rock the boat? But I, I unfortunately learned rules that said, like, you're not allowed to
talk about this year. And so, for 20 years, I did not talk about my mother. It was a most painful
event and I was moving through the world and I was putting one foot in front of the other and I still
had a beautiful childhood filled with friends and my dad was funny. I had a funny house and lots of love
army and family and friends around me and my brother to support us. You know, the kind of friends
you read about beautiful community in the Connecticut suburb, a beautiful future head, but I was in a
great deal of pain. Is that something you hear from the kids in Empower 2? Is like, I just
wish I knew somebody who's like, also looked like this because adults are child, it seems like that
isolation or the sense of being other in a world that's moving on as normal seems like such a big
yes. Such a big deal. Yeah. I knew I was on to something. I mean, 10 years ago, I started this and
even before it was a mentor program, it was just an event on Mother's Day. I thought I would bring
teenage girls together on Mother's Day because that was such a lousy time for me growing up and I
recognized that the two months leading up to the day were the were almost worse and so it was that
anticipatory grief. It was that like you talk about those those dates and it was an isolating time
and I was trying to understand especially because I started my career as a school psychologist. I
tried to understand really developmentally why is it so isolating to lose a parent and then you
really peel it back and some children are actually embarrassed that they've lost a parent. And so then
you have it's the snowball effect after the loss. It's the lack of you know, open and honest
communication. It's these rules that say you're not allowed to talk about this. Number one, number
two, you should be over it by now. It's been two years. Yeah. And those things in sight rage.
Because it's hard to understand like why would I be so rageful after my mom died of breast cancer?
Like it you know, people get sick and die after all. Like no, I was enraged that she died. And
so you kind of think about what is it that makes it so isolating and what is it that makes it embarrassing
or what you have this social component that a lot of kids at Empower have you know, they're
shaking their heads. Yes, I knew I was on to something because every time I would speak about my
experience from 30 or 40 years ago, a room full of children in this day and age were shaking their
head saying that's me. I'm just the girl whose mom died. So socially you do become the girl whose
mom died or the girl whose the boy whose dad died. And that is a label. It's hard to shake. And the only
way you really stand tall, put your shoulders back, you know, stand two feet tall or I say after
every kid leaves an event at Empower and you know, every child who's matched with a mentor, I swear,
I see them come in with their shoulders shrugged. They are standing two feet tall afterwards because
they know they're not alone. And I think all anyone ever wants to know is like I'll survive this. I'm
not the only one who's going through this. There is life after loss. I'm going to survive this because
I can look around the room and realize I'm not alone in my grief. There are other kids powering
through too. They're tripping up all the time too. They're getting it wrong. They know one has the
right way to grieve. But to know that someone else somewhere else in the world is going through this,
I thought was really one of the most beautiful empathetic, you know, supportive ways that you can
help a child of an early parent mom. Yeah, I want to really get into the mentorship aspect of
Empower because I had never heard of this until I was introduced to your organization as well.
And we do something similar in my online course Life After Loss Academy. It's for adults 18 and
up because we talk about wheat, we swear words a lot and talk about other components of grief like
sex and coping through food and alcohol and relationships and all these other things. And so it's
definitely adult only over in Life After Loss Academy. But there's an exercise we do when we talk about
building a life that you love from the one that lost forced you to live where I ask people to
choose at least five grief role models. They can be celebrities. They can be fictional characters.
They can be people in your lineage and your ancestry. And I really ask them to drill down into
as a person what about how they express their grief or carry their grief in the world is admirable
to you. And then can you embody that for yourself? One of my ones that I wrote about in your grief your
way is Betty White who took her love for her husband, Aled Luddon, who was a game show host to die.
I think of stomach cancer. She channeled his memory into every character she played including
in the Golden Girls when she had to reenact the death of her fictional husband Charlie. And so as an
actress, she put her grief into her art. And I was like, I like the idea of putting grief into your art.
And so now as many opportunities as I can, whether it's music or painting or theater or dancing,
I'm like, how do I put grief into my art? And so that's just like a guiding question based on a
fictional meant I've never met Betty White. She's gone now. But this idea of having someone to look up to
who carries their grief with them every day is such a profound concept for a nonprofit. And I'd
love to know like how did that come to you? And then also kind of as we're winding down the conversation
to how do people get involved with with power? If they either want, if they have kids in their life,
they want to connect to a group or if they want to become a mentor themselves, if they're an adult
that's far out from that loss. Yes. Well, let me start with that. Let me say if you are 25 years old
or older and you have had the experience of losing your mother or father to death at any age
and to any type of loss, we would love for you to consider being a mentor. So that's simply going
to our website and hitting the inquiry button. And I'll put that in the show notes for everybody listening.
Thank you. And why that's important. Why is that a hard volunteer role? I think it might be
hands down the most meaningful thing I've ever done. But hands down, one of the most emotional
volunteer roles I've ever had was mentoring girls like me who I understood where they were going.
I understood, unfortunately, very painfully, I understood how hard the road ahead of them might
end up being. Right? Exactly. So that's hard to hold space for a child like that. I'll tell you the
origin story. Empower is kind of a classic founder story. I started it around my dining
table when I was raised millions of dollars. All of our programs are free of charge.
And so I was really, I mean, I was talking to anyone who would listen and I was garnering support
and mobilizing volunteers to do this one thing to show up for kids who lost a parent.
And it came in the form of two things. It was events. It was events on Mother's Day and Father's Day.
It was events in the summer at Beach Party. It was a cooking class and actors' workshop.
It was these events aimed at their interest. And I always say, you know, we had a celebrity chef in
Boston teaching the girls how to roll sushi. They didn't even like sushi. It had nothing to do with
sushi. It was Jimmy Lang, this amazing chef donating thousands of dollars of time and food and
in space to bring girls together whose mom's died in a room, roll sushi. But also he was a man who had
a really beautiful story. And I wanted him to tell his story of, you know, first surveillance and
survival. Although he couldn't relate personally to the loss of a mom, he had adversity and he had
a lesson to share. So I was always trying to teach, hey, we're all in this together. Again, your,
your loss is really out of sequence, but you will meet other people who have had great loss and pain
too. And they'll draw strings from you. Why this was important 10 years ago, I looked around and
realized this wasn't being done. And I went to Big Brother's Big Sisters. They sort of knocked on
their door, you know, metaphorically and actually literally and figuratively, I should say, not
done the door. Big Brother's Big Sisters here in Boston. And I said, why don't you make mirror matches?
Why wouldn't you match a girl like me? A nine year old whose mom died of breast cancer or a 17 year old
girl who lost her mother to suicide or a sudden illness or sudden death? Why wouldn't you match her
with a woman like me who could relate to the loss of a mother? And I call that mirror matching, well,
they don't do that. And they've been around for many years as they are the guru. And so I very
arrogantly said, well, I'm going to try that. I'm going to make it myself. Yeah, I'm going to do it
myself. And so, you know, you look around in the room and I was wondered why somebody didn't do it.
And then I realized I was somebody. It's like this cheesy Pinterest quote I still have up on my board.
And I did. And I put a lot of the cheese bricks though. Oh my god. It always does. I mean,
every cheesy cliche, it's always right. My kids are 17 and 14. I'm like, here's a cheesy cliche,
but I promise you it's true. It's right. So what I did was I, in 2017 now, I built the program. I,
I built, you know, 75 page policy and procedural model. It's very safe and responsible. And it emulates all
the big brothers, big sisters who's been doing so beautifully for youth all over America for close
to 100 years. And the idea was to first recruit mentors, which is not easy, right? How can you
recruit a woman like you and I to really hold space for a child? And the reason why I knew it was hard
was because the very first babysitter I had when I moved to Boston, we moved in from downtown Chicago
and to the young girl whose mother had just died, seven, many of the heart condition, unknown heart
condition, a healthy woman. And I watched as a lot of people in town didn't really come around out
of love. And I realized, oh my god, not much has changed. It's, you know, my mother died 30 years ago.
That's how it was back then. Come on now. I thought we were so much further ahead. And then I realized
I could befriend her. I could take her out for ice cream after a bad day. I was taking her back to
school shopping. And I loved it. And when I was out and about doing that, other women were coming up to
me because they knew who she was because it is the truth. Unfortunately, everyone does know that the
girl or the boy or the non-binary youth who just lost his mother just lost their father. You do know,
especially in a small community, and it rocks you to your core. And so they were kind of
building a program for me. They were saying, well, tell dad I'll do that. Give him my cell phone number.
I'd love to take her, you know, from their shopping. And now, especially the women who had a personal
lived experience, they were saying, my mother died when I was in high school or my mother died when I
was in elementary school or my mother died my freshman year of college, I know what she's going through.
And that really became the impetus, you know, for building this mentor program. And again, I think,
you know, we are really quick to recommend therapeutic services. And I hope every child finds
their way to therapy individual or group. I'm a huge proponent. I hope that they find their way to
peer support through events like Empowers or on Mother's Day and Father's Day in our events.
There are bereavement camps in the summertime that, you know, kids can access for free. There are center
base support groups. My idea was the opposite. It was community-based. It was non-therapyutic. And it was,
I wanted to take every day women, you know, like you and I, and have them build support for the child,
not a clinician. Because unfortunately for me growing up, what I realized was the only one who did
talk to me about my mother who died was the school psychologist. And quite honestly, it was a hit,
it was a hit mess. We didn't connect. So I didn't really have any resources growing up. And I don't
big-rood anybody for that. I'm just saying it just was what it was. And I think a lot of other lay
people around me that could have been supporting me, especially women in town who also had lost
their mom. I would have loved if they, you know, came to my rescue or took me back to school shopping
because they would have been outside my family nucleus where in the dressing room, my answer,
grieving my mother. And they're, I'm coming out of the dressing room in my new first day of school
outfit. And they're brought to their knees because I looked just like my mother. And they're a problem
dress, a wedding dress. I looked just like my mother on my wedding day. And so that was hard. I wanted a
mentor outside my family nucleus who wasn't there, who wasn't grieving my mother, that I didn't have
to protect. And I didn't have to, you know, be heartbroken watching, grieve. I wanted that woman
to be my mentor. And I wanted her to say, I remember what it was like when I hit those milestones,
like graduating high school. This is one of the most common, you know, conversations we have in
power with hundreds and hundreds of children enrolled each year. But we have thousands and thousands
of volunteers. So the girls and, you know, girls boys, non-binary youth have any parent loss there.
My intent is that they're really just meeting adults who can relate. And the number one thing we say
is, you know, as a kid, you're really scared to reach those milestones, high school graduation, college
graduation, marriage, children. And in a lot of us want to avoid those things. And we don't find joy
in those things because we've been so terrified to go through them without our parent. And so I can,
I'm the best one to relate to. These girls were asking me those questions, you know, when I was
first starting this program, they let couldn't get close enough to me. They were like, you know,
touching my hair and like, I was like an alien from their planet, but like I existed. And they just,
they had a million questions for me. How did it feel when I graduated high school without my mother?
How did it feel when I got married? How, what was it like when I had a baby? And I didn't have
my mother to come and do my laundry and feed the baby and let me sleep. Look, I survived it. I survived it
and I still feel like my mother is standing right here. I feel like my mother didn't miss anything.
That's how I believed, you know, how I kept her memory alive and her spirit alive. But
were those hard? Yes. And did I agree? Yes. And so to lose a parent is, I'd say, arguably,
you know, the most painful experience for a young person and often snowballs into a lot of
anger or confusion or sad, great sadness, great anxiety. And I just don't think that there's quite
enough understanding around us. Like I said, I think I'd have loved people want us to just move on.
You know, they don't want to watch. It's so painful to watch a child grieve.
Or they don't know what to do. And so they do nothing. And what in power offers is just one way
of saying, here's something to do. If you want to pay to talk about loss. Yes.
Okay, to talk about my loss. Yes. Yes. It reminds me very much of, I wish I remembered this person's
YouTube handle. But I think there's there's a man on YouTube who I think the the user name is like
everybody's dad or like your friendly dad or something like that. But um, kids 20, 30, some things.
We'll submit questions to him of like, how do I fix a toilet lid that's like, wopily? How do I stop
my sink from dripping? How do I? And so he's like a handy man, but he teaches you how to take care
of your home. If your dad died or your dad was never around or your dad just wasn't a handy dad.
And so kind of playing that role of what can I do? I love it. It's like you take your small talents,
you take your small gifts to contribute to somebody who is walking a similar road because he lost
to that. I believe the story. He lost his dad. And so he's like, nobody taught me these things. So
I learned them myself or I had great men to learn them from. And so now I teach them to you.
Um, I want to the last question I have for you is I something I love about in power. And I'm excited
about is as a queer person, I am so thrilled and honored that you have opened up in power to more
than just young girls. I know it used to be empower her. And now it's broadly empowered and now serves
young boys and young, young, binary kids as well. And as a queer person who's married to a queer person,
it's really lovely to see more people like me included in what you offer. My mom, I was 21 when
my mom died. But I had just come out of the closet to her and our our relationship did not end well
on a good note. And so we were fighting when she died. And having somebody meeting older
grievers who have similar or same stories to me has absolutely changed my life. And I'm looking
forward to knowing that your organization is connecting people to the same. But the last thing I want to
ask of you is as you've shifted or opened into this more expansive type of grief care,
grief village building, where do you see the biggest gaps? Like we are missing mentors for
suicide laws. We are missing mentors who are non-binary or queer. We're missing mentors or we need more
mentors who have insert trait here. So we can put the call out over the podcast waves to if you have
the time space willingness to fill in a gap, I would love to make that happen for you.
Okay, I've got like three points I've got to get in here. Okay. So we need mentors of, you know,
we need all kinds of mentors, even big brothers, big sisters. They do sometimes struggle to find
male mentors, let's say we all know that male mentors, unfortunately, are harder to find than female
mentors, right? For several different reasons. There's that. There's also, here's the thing in grief,
Shelby, that I love that you're bringing up in that I love. Look, I had a chip on my shoulder
for the first couple of years. I started in power her. I only started it for girls of mother
loss because it was my story. I knew it well and I knew what I will, I wanted to give the girl
what I so desperately wished I had. So I simply built it around Mother's Day retreats and beach
parties in a cooking class and the mentor program naturally. And the word on the street was kind of
especially here in Boston. I started this one on my dining table in Boston and it grew to become an
international nonprofit and I'm forever grateful for that. But here are some of the things the myths I
like to dispel about grief. A lot of women would say, "Oh my god, I can't wait to, you know, become a
mentor because I'd love to take her prom dress shopping. I have two boys." And like it's not about
prom dress shopping. I appreciate that you acknowledge the milestone. Prom dress shopping is hard
and might make a child re-grieve because they are acutely aware their peers are prom dress shopping
with their mother. And that becomes, that's where part of the isolation is. I spoke at the Teacher's
Union last week in New York City just schools like colleges and I said, "Why is it isolating?
Why, you know, part of this, we have a loneliness problem across America, maybe it's social media,
but let me just tell you in childhood bereavement what's isolating as you are acutely aware you are
different at a time when you don't want to be different." And so I will say like around August,
it was back to school shopping. I missed my mother in August just as much as I missed her anyways
all year long on a Tuesday, but I was acutely aware that she was missing out, that I would never
have this, that my best friends have while they're back to school shopping with their mom in August.
I didn't have someone to sit down and talk about the year ahead and you know like who's going to be
in my class and what teacher am I going to get? That's what my mother gave me back to school shopping.
So that's so you start to lose experiences that your same age peers will have. That's one of the
reasons it becomes so isolating. One of the first kids enrolled when we expanded to become more
gender inclusive, which was always my narrative. My narrative was never it's harder to be a mom who's
you know to be a girl whose mom died than it was to be someone who lost their father who's never
my narrative. It was never my narrative that my brother didn't need help and like boy should just
pick themselves up by their bootstraps and move on. I simply didn't have the money and so we received
a $1 million uninticipated gift from the most generous family here in Boston who said, "I know you
have a model that can scale and I see you want to scale this for all genders and for all parent
laws." So that's why we did what we did. We changed our name from Empower Her to Empower. We spent
some time in like brand and logo but mostly we were just doing what we all knew inherently we should be
doing. So one of the very first mentors matches we made when we expanded was a non-binary youth
in high school. So 17 years old non-binary youth matched who had just lost their father to cancer
was matched with a woman who had lost her father to cancer at about the same age in childhood
and it's the most incredible match but that child made the decision about you know that mentor
match, about gender because every family does it's I'm trying to dispel all these myths like
I never said that every girl whose mom died loves hair and makeup and boys and clothes but my mother's
day retreat started to look like hair and makeup and boys and clothes and I was like oh no no no that's
that wasn't my intent either I wasn't saying that oh the sad thing about you know your mom dying is
like you'll never learn how to do your hair it's like I have a lot of friends whose mom's never
taught them how to do their hair or don't care about doing their hair. So I wanted to be clear about
grief. This was a non-binary youth who was grieving the extremely painful loss of their father
and my goal was to teach them loss is survivable and I mapped them with a woman whose father died
of cancer when she was young because my goal in mentorship is teach loss is survivable my goal
in mentorship is not you know teach you how to grieve you're not a grief expert I say to all the
mentors you're not a social worker you are just an adult who shows a young person that you care
and because you have lived experience even though our experiences are so different gay or straight
or black or white your the experience of grief connects us but still my story is my own you know never
let anyone tell your story and I just because I lost my mother to breast cancer when I was nine
years old I don't have all the same stories as another woman who was nine years old when her mom died
of breast cancer either their story is their story and because of that I you know I keep going back
to this quote I love the compassion tent that says you know in the compassion tent there's enough
room for all of us to you know hold hands and look each other in the eye and say I see you I hear
you my grief is not more shiny or more important than yours in the compassion tent hard things are
just hard and we're all in this together so for me I I knew especially there were there were
children who may be going through times in their life that that were really stressful or painful
and they also were missing their parent right and so that experience of let's say coming out to your
family it would be terrific if you had a mentor who had both experiences both you know had experience
a loss of a parent and going through a you know difficult period of you know adolescents or early
adulthood that you can relate but again my goal and mentorship was you know so maniacally focused on
it's the loss of a parent that we're trying to build community and to make sure you see seen and heard
because you are missing that that additional layers of work that a lot of your peers have
a cushy landing as Clare Bedwell Smith said it put it so well when she was in college and having
lost her mother and father she looked around at her peers in college and thought you all have a
cushy landing and that's what a lot of us miss you know you did the job didn't work out just go
go move home, you know, the boyfriend didn't work out, you break up. You know, go move
home. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. Call your mom. Call your dad. And we just didn't have that.
And so that was my goal in mentorship was I wanted to reduce the isolation you felt
in that and from your peers. They all they have that extra layer of support that you are
missing. It's the fact of your life. I love. It's not about the hobbies. It's not about
the dresses. It's not about the sushi class. It's about the it's about the it's about
the presence. It's about the shared experience. And I see you. I have lived in iteration
of what you have lived. And I just love that that your mission and your work is only getting
bigger. Kara, thank you so much for coming on grief. Go. We're today. I'm so excited to
share your story and the work of empower and I'm just so so grateful to have had you here.
This was really beautiful. Thank you, Shelby. You're doing incredible work.
So that's all for this episode of grief grower. Thank you so much for joining me and Kara today.
If you're looking for grief support beyond the show, you can find free workshops, blog
articles, and my what's your grief support style quiz at shall be for sithia.com/links.
If this podcast felt validating, comforting, or helpful in any other way to you, please
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truly. Shelby for sithia and the theme music is by our own Eddie Goldstein. Until next time,
I 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.
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