narrator: have you ever suffered a personal crisis? whether it be the death of a loved one, a divorce, a serious illness, or the loss of a job? dr. ann kaiser stearns: there's something powerful about somebody who could have such unimaginable pain and yet declare, "my choices are not all gone." narrator: noted psychologist and best-selling author, dr. ann kaiser stearns, shares her personal stories and guidance about how to heal. dr. ann kaiser stearns: you know, you have to be patient with yourself. you have to be patient with yourself because what grief and healing is about, is all about going forward and going backwards. narrator: and become a triumphant survivor. dr. ann kaiser stearns: triumphant survivors know you can't survive for a month when you're hurting, you survive today.

narrator: join us for living through personal crisis. dr. ann kaiser stearns: thank you. buenos dias, buenos tardes, buenos noches, pick your favorite time zone. and tonight's presentation is in spanish, i hope that's okay. i wish i could be bilingual but you're lucky, i speak only oklahoman. bereavement. bereavement comes from the word "reave" which means to be dispossessed, robbed of something precious, something rightfully our own. when a woman has a mastectomy, when a woman or man loses a job, when we watch our parents age and the life goes out of them very very slowly, when parents lose a child,

when we face our own death, when a dream is shattered, there's so many different experiences of being robbed, dispossessed of something precious. looking at those kinds of losses that we face, a loved one's death, a divorce, a broken love relationship, a serious illness or accident, financial crisis or job loss that so many of you are going through now, family estrangement, being victimized by crime, abuse, betrayal, a loved one's mental illness, a loved one with a drug addiction or alcoholism, a shattered dream. all of these plunge us into a painful period of adjustment. if you look at this quote from hemingway, "the world breaks everyone. then some grow strong at the broken places."

i've had the privilege of spending my life studying people that i've come to call as triumphant survivors. we know actually, that when there's a significant loss experience that's a crisis in life, about a third of the people who go through that personal crisis are never the same again. they're permanently broken. haven't you known some of those folks? it's been years and years and years since the loss happened and they're still bitter and angry, they hold onto that like a dog with a bone. never able to somehow go forward. well, unfortunately, about a third of those who have a serious life crisis, a trauma in their life, fit that category. another third go through a grief and healing process where they go through the stages of mourning starting with shock and disbelief and depression and anger and guilt and working through those

phases in the mourning process and they eventually get back to the place where they were. but it's the third third of those folks that i was interested in studying and have spent my, most of my career studying. i wanted to learn, who are those people who are the kinds of folks who grow stronger in the aftermath of crisis? nobody will ever say, "i'm glad i had a mastectomy." or, "i'm glad this awful thing happened to me." but people will say, "i'm wiser. i'm stronger. i've grown from this. my life is richer." and that's who i've wanted to study. what is it they have in common? what kinds of attitudes do they have? what kinds of decisions do they make? what kinds of turning points? and what can we learn from them? so i've had the pleasure in my career of more than

30 years of studying resilience and resilient people, of studying these people that i call triumphant survivors. and tonight we're gonna look at those folks and we're gonna see what the lessons are they have for us. triumphant survivors, as they live through a personal crisis. triumphant survivors refuse to remain in the victim position. i went to detroit to do a radio show during lifetime talk radio. right after that northwest airlines crash where everybody in the plane died except one little girl who's mother put her body across the child. and i will say one of the most, that was in the 1980s, and i'll say that one of the most meaningful experiences i've had in my life was doing a live radio show with three

women who took their loved ones to the airport that day and heard the plane crash as they drove away. one woman took her husband, heard the crash. another woman took her daughter, son-in-law, and grandchild. unimaginable. another woman took her pregnant daughter and beloved son-in-law. i don't know her name, i don't know where she is today, but she taught me something all those years ago, and what she taught me was this: she said, "i don't know how i'll ever be able to deal with the loss of my daughter and the baby she would have had and the son-in-law i loved so much." but she said, "i'll tell you one thing. i'm not gonna make a career out of suffering." and that's a lesson for us all.

triumphant survivors find a sense of determination deep inside. i grew up in a little town in oklahoma. four thousand folks lived there then. there were two of everything, two first grades, two second grades, two, you know. and basically, it was kind of, you know, there were i think 56 kids my age. okay, and it was kind of like having 55 siblings. everybody knew everybody and maybe you grew up in a small town. and what happened was you knew the kids younger and older. well, i had an experience when i was in the sixth grade that i think is why i'm here with you today. ernie thomas was in the fifth grade. and ernie thomas got leukemia when i was in the sixth grade. he went to our church.

and in those days, everybody who had leukemia died, today most people with leukemia survive and have lives and are treated. but he was going to die. and when i was writing one of my books, i interviewed my cousin charles who was ernie thomas' best friend, and charles told me about the day ernie thomas learned that he had leukemia. charles said there was a pounding at the door, ernie thomas had run across the wheat fields to my cousin charles' farm house that was near our farm house. and he opened the door and there was ernie thomas with a bunch of books in his arms, pounding on the door. and charles went to the door and he said, "charles, i've got to talk to you. the doctor told me i've got leukemia." and as they're walking in, charles' friend, ernie, puts all these books on the table. they're boy scout manuals. and he says, "charles, the doctor says i have

leukemia, i only have about a year to live, and i want you to help me find out how many merit badges i can earn between now and then." determination. and about a year later, ernie thomas was laid out in an open casket like they did in oklahoma. he was wearing his scout uniform, he had a sash. and he had a bunch more merit badges that day than he had the day he found out he was gonna die. triumphant survivors are like that, even if they're young boys and they have a short life. he lived a full life, the life he had. he had that sense of determination. and today as i talk to you about triumphant survivors, i want to share with you these wonderful lessons. i've interviewed hundreds of people in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of interviews and i've studied resilience for a long time and what

we're gonna look at is, what are the attitudes of people who live through a personal crisis triumphantly? what are the decisions they make? what choices? what strategies for healing? and we're gonna learn about that today and grow stronger as a result. this is a powerful quote if you know who wrote it. gordon livingston is a medical doctor, he lives in the state where i live in now, maryland. and in a wonderful little book i recommend, "too soon old, too late smart," if you know that he's a twice bereaved parent. unimaginable. it is hard for me to imagine wanting to live if i lost my two children. here's a person, a doctor, a psychiatrist who spends his whole life helping other people, and yet what he has to say is, "we are never out of choices, no matter how desperate the circumstances.

all is not lost. we are not dead yet." there's something powerful about somebody who can have such unimaginable pain and yet declare, "my choices are not all gone." as we talk about how people live through a personal crisis and we look at triumphant survivors, one of the things i learned was from robbie risner. robbie risner was a prisoner of war in vietnam. he was there for seven and a half years. he, like senator mccain, was savagely tortured, went through tremendous pain. and as a matter of fact, he was the ranking officer in captivity. he was a colonel at that time and since he was the highest officer in captivity, they singled him out for especially painful torture. and what they did was stretch him out on a

concrete bunk so that his hands were shackled and his knees were held down and his ankles were shackled for so long that his skin wore away from, you could see his openly exposed bones. a tremendous suffering and torture. and robbie risner told me, "i asked god, help me get through one more minute. make me stronger 60 more seconds." triumphant survivors know you can't survive for a month when you're hurting, you survive today. kind of like people do who are recovering substance abusers, you know, one day at a time. and when you're grieving a loss, you just get through the first weekend when your love relationship breaks up or your marriage ends. you get through the first anniversary of your wedding anniversary. if you lose your mother or dad,

you get through your first mother's day or father's day. losing a child if you're a christian, christmas is a horrible time. it is so important on those religious holidays and those times of family gatherings to know, i've got to plan ahead for the tough days. and i've got to deal with the pain in small segments. telling about robbie risner again, haven't you had the experience where you really respected somebody and you hadn't seen them, maybe you read their book, and so your image of them is of this giant size. i don't know if you've ever been to the wax museums, but it's very interesting. you know, de gaulle is this enormous tall guy. and gandhi, who's one of the greatest human beings that ever lived is this little person. well i had read general risner's book and i had interviewed him and i was so surprised when i went

to interview him, i expected him to look like president john kennedy, you know, and be tall and bold and lots of hair and all of this stuff. but he was much shorter than me and much taller and much bigger as a human being than i could ever be. and as i interviewed him, it was interesting to me to experience his humility. haven't you known people who've been hurt in life and they feel like, "life owes me." they have this attitude of entitlement. i went to texas to interview him and when i travel to interview people and write and so on, i spend my own money and i'm pretty cheap. so i was staying, i won't say the name of the place, but in, i would call it, pretty much the world's yuckiest hotel in austin, texas. it rained in the room.

and it was one of thosthings, you flipped on the light and, you know, the cockroaches went like that. so i really outdid myself for cheap. and i hadn't met general risner yet and i was all excited, i'd never met a general, i had read his book, i just admired him so much. i went down to the breakfast room to meet my first general and interview him, we sat down to eat and they brought this food. if you had children who played with pretend food, that was what it looked like. it was like little rubber eggs and, you know, little cardboard bacon and i'm thinking, you know, i'm sure i'm having a children's meal, a plastic meal with this famous person and general risner said, "isn't this a lovely meal? let's bow our heads and thank the lord." and then i thought, you know what, i wonder what the man ate for 7 and a half years while a prisoner of war. entitlement.

it's understandable when we're first hurting that we feel like life does owe us something. but as time goes on in a few months, we need to get beyond that. you know, life isn't fair. it doesn't make sense. some of you have lost a child, others of you have lost a parent when you were a child, my parents lived to be 96 and 89. it isn't fair that some people lose a parent when they're a child and some people have cancer and some people have another illness and another illness and a death and another death. so life isn't fair in that way and you can understand why we have a sense that life owes us. but triumphant survivors know i've gotta get beyond the sense of entitlement, because if i hold on to a sense of entitlement, i'm gonna impair my ability to heal. triumphant survivors. you know, we aren't made to live by ourselves.

we aren't made to deal with life's problems and life's blessings by ourselves. we're made to live in community. one of my favorite people that i love to read about and i love to read her books and poems was anne morrow lindbergh, the widow of charles lindbergh, the famous aviator who was the first, of course, to solo across the atlantic. and i remember seeing her interviewed in an interview where the interviewer was saying, you know, "mrs. lindbergh, you're so known for being strong and brave." and he was referring to the fact that their first child was kidnapped and murdered. and he said, "mrs. lindbergh, tell me, has suffering made you strong?" and i remember anne morrow lindbergh threw her head back and laughed and she said, "oh my dear mr. cavett!"

she said, "suffering doesn't make people strong. suffering breaks you down. what makes people strong is the love, the caring, the kindness you get from other people when you're suffering." one of the things we know about resilient people is that they are able to ask for help, they're able to receive help, they're able to give help. it's a very profound part of being a resilient person. finding someone in whom to confide. diane bliss: friends i'm diane bliss and isn't it wonderful to know that we have to live through these things but we can get to the other side. stay tuned because a lot more valuable information will be coming your way and perhaps this dvd will be something that you would like to have for that pledge at $75 or the book on which this entire wonderful program is based can be yours for a pledge of $90 more on that in just a little bit.

but now let me take the opportunity to welcome dr. ann kaiser stearns to public television. dr. stearns, dr. ann kaiser stearns: thank you, thank you so much. diane bliss: thank you for being here with us. dr. ann kaiser stearns: thank you very much, my pleasure. diane bliss: dr. stearns we have the marvelous opportunity to be sharing this information with public television audiences, why after all these years of work have you come to public television? dr. ann kaiser stearns: well i've been a fan of public television for a really long time. if you came to my house in baltimore you would find the do-op tapes, you would find uh, macneil lehrer's briefcase you would find peter, paul and mary album and all the brain programs that i show to my college students. i believe a great deal in public television and for the pleasure of being a part of this i thank you so much. diane bliss: it is marvelous to have your insight, you have been a teacher, a researcher and a practitioner for over thirty years in this whole area of people going through crisis and so much of the wisdom that you put

into the book is now being shared, all kinds of different crisis that this applies to. dr. ann kaiser stearns: yes one of the things in my research that i noticed right away is that when we go through many different loss experiences we go through the same kind of grief; job loss, financial crisis, a divorce, a death in the family, shattered dreams, so many different crisis experiences require the similar healing process. diane bliss: and that entire process is unfolding and thank you for your material, we're going to learn a lot more about the thank you gifts that will help in your process as well, but right now the process of supporting public television is first and foremost, make a pledge. dan alpert: thanks diane. hi, i'm dan alpert, i wanted to share with you the ways that we can say thank you at public television for your support of the programming like living through personal crisis with dr. ann kaiser stearns this is the dvd of the program that will really take you through the story of rebuilding after a loss,

it's our thank you gift to you, it includes not only the program, but also a whole other hour on healing, how to heal and the third section with questions and answers from actual studio audience members who's stories may resonate with you. at the $90 giving level we have for you the book, living through personal crisis, where dr. stearns takes you into a deeper dive on the different uh, issues that she presents here, it's a compassionate guide for surviving the difficult events and helping loved ones and friends of yours who may be undergoing a difficult time. so that's a $90 thank you giving level. a the $150 level, this is an interesting item, it's the mp3 player that we have called living a fulfilling life it includes an hour interview with dr. ann kaiser stearns and then sections on beyond crisis, surviving financial loss, seeking supportive people, finding meaning in suffering and ultimately living a fulfilling life. you can take it on a walk with you and you will find that your mood improves and your approach to how

am i going to get through this and what are my next steps will all be better off. dr. ann kaiser stearns: vividly imagine that in six months, a year and five years you are feeling much better. you no longer carry the unhappy emotional baggage surrounding the circumstances of your lost job. dan alpert: but put them all together and we have for you what we call the triumphant survivor package. at the $265 level, you will get the dvd, the book and the mp3 player, with our thanks and our appreciation as you improve your life. diane bliss: dan alpert has just suggested various giving levels, but the fact that you give to public television is the important action step that we're asking of you right now. and speaking of action steps, dr. stearns, you have taken the time during your busy career to sit down and write this book. the original version sold over a million copies and now you've revised the book for today's times. dr. ann kaiser stearns: mm-hm,

i had the pleasure of going all over the country giving lectures and doing media appearances and many people came up to me and told me their stories so i wanted to add some of their stories into the new edition of the book and i also wanted to share with folks how you can be empowered in the aftermath of adversity. this is not just about pain, it's about getting through the pain, in fact i titled my book living through personal crisis because you've got to go through the crisis to get to the other side for healing. diane bliss: that is very, very uplifting and encouraging because there is another wonderful outcome at the end of this process, but it is a process that you share with us, a very real process and there are very legitimate steps a person goes through, we're going to hear more about that as you continue your lecture, but dr. stearns we're so thrilled that you're on public television and i'm so thrilled that you're watching right now, won't you give that pledge at the $90 level to have

this newest edition of dr. stearns book? or at the $75 level for the dvd? and we're going to talk a little bit more about these items, but right now dr. stearns, let's go back and hear more of what you have to say about living through personal crisis. dr. ann kaiser stearns: we need humor in this world. can't get by without it. i've had the pleasure of teaching about 800 police officers and police leaders in my career and i can tell you, and i've also spent about 10 years teaching doctors. people who work in such high pressure, facing all kinds of crisis and facing death, facing so much of what's harsh in life. you can't do it. i've also taught funeral directors. but neither can we deal with a personal crisis in our life without a sense of humor.

one of the books i read was by manny lawton. manny lawton wrote a book called "some survived." he was a survivor of the baton death march of world war ii. you may remember that in that march across the philippines, 11,000 soldiers died while being marched across the philippines to manilla to be loaded onto cattle cars to be sent to concentration camps for the duration of the war. i was reading manny lawton's book and he was talking about getting to the platform after 3 days, on the train platform. he's watching people being loaded onto cattle cars kind of like matchsticks, you know, in a matchbox but just standing upright next to each other. it's 100 degrees out there and he said he saw a person who was looking left and right and he

later learned that the guy was looking for people with a sense of humor to get on with to stand next to. and i remember putting the book down and thinking, holy cow, you know. here's somebody who just stepped over 11, 000 dead bodies on his way to the train station to go to the concentration camp, he's looking around for people so he can get on the train and crack some jokes on the way to the concentration camp. it's a powerful statement about, you gotta have it. you've gotta have a sense of humor. and if we don't have a sense of humor we need to find the people and make a decision, who am i gonna stand next to in that car? what kind of people will i surround myself with? i'm gonna need some people who have some light-heartedness. serendipity.

you know, you're troubled about something and maybe you're channel surfing. other than public television, when i watch television, i'm not expecting some big message from the universe to help me. but sometimes you're channel surfing and just when you need it, just at the time when you need somebody to say just what you need them to say, there it is. or maybe you're going through a book, maybe it's one of my books, and the words jump off the page at you and somehow call to you. well that's what serendipity is about and those of us who are people of faith tend to think that that's maybe one of the ways god works. i'll tell you a story about myself. i got depressed when i was 39. i didn't know why.

i was divorced but i was dating a really nice guy. i had been promoted by then to full professor, my goal was to be a full professor by the time i was 40 so that had happened. and i had just moved from what we call row houses in baltimore to an individual home and i had new wallpaper on the wall, and everything was fine and i was depressed. so i went to another person like me with a phd in psychology and i said to her, you know, i don't know what's the matter with me. i'm 39 years old, i just feel old. well, she was about 75 and she wasn't very sympathetic. she said, "old? too old for what?" and i said, i don't know why i feel too old, i just feel too old.

so i remembered going home and it's weeks later, i'm still trying to figure out why am i depressed, everything looks nice in my life, but i, something's wrong. i came to call this, by the way, friendly depression. you'll read about that in other people's books, but you'll read about it in mine. friendly depression is like a wake up call. it's a little voice that comes to you in the night when something in your life needs to change before it's too late. so i was having this type of depression but i didn't know what needed to change. so one day i went to my mail box and there was, i don't know, time or newsweek or something, and i'm walking up my driveway and there's a cover story on the magazine and it's about women in their late 30s and early 40s, people like me, who had delayed parenting.

they'd been going to school and getting their profession started and kind of like, oops, i forgot to have children. and so i turned in and i was reading it as i walked up the driveway and i was reading along. it said, you know, that we're born with all the eggs we'll ever have and by the time we're in our late 30s or early 40s our eggs are getting old, and i remember hitting the magazine and saying, that's it! and i went back to the shrink and i said, it's my eggs, that's what's old. so then i had to figure to get a baby? i became seethed, possessed you could say. it's a very long story but i did not want to marry what's-his-name. i come from the bible belt in oklahoma.

you do not have babies without getting married especially in my generation. if that weren't enough, i was teaching at catholic loyola college and my students were priests and ministers and rabbis and nuns and i was teaching counseling to graduate students. there were just a bunch of reasons it was not a good idea to have a baby. but i wanted a baby. and serendipity for me happened in the grocery store. you know, you men, i don't know where it happens for you guys. but we have these enlightened moments, at the hairdresser's, in the lady's room, right, and at the grocery store. okay? so i'm at the grocery store, in between the carrots and the cabbages, and somebody comes up, who i've taught maybe 15 years before. i have no idea how the subject came up, about me needing a baby.

i don't think she knew i had old eggs. but somehow it came up and she said, did i know that you could be a divorced, single person, and adopt a baby from the third world? and i left my groceries in the cart, and i remember running to my car, and that was it. that is how i was going to get a baby and not what's-his-name. so when you adopt a child, the pregnancy is pretty long, it was about a year and a half, and i became a happy mother of a baby girl from india, who weighed five pounds at two months, when she was put in my arms for the very first time. my depression went away. now you'll hear me talk a little bit later on

perhaps, that when you need medicine for depression, it's really important to take it because some depression is biochemical, and you can have all the friends in the world, and you can make all the changes in your life in the world, and your depression needs medicine, okay? but sometimes, your depression is friendly. you don't want to take medicine and make it go away, you want to look at it, what is it, that i need to do before it's too late. i'm so glad that i had that serendipitous experience because a few years later, i would have been too old for them to allow me to adopt a child. that went so well, and i wasn't depressed, that three years later, i adopted my second baby from india. and they're wonderful young women now. what is it you need to do before it's too late? what kind of depression that you have might be friendly?

and might be telling you that something needs to be changed. living through personal crisis means that sometimes we get stuck. and almost all of us do, in a grief and healing process. we get stuck in depression and we stay depressed way too long, or we get stuck in anger and stay angry way too long. or we get stuck in guilt and we just can't seem to get out of that. it is so important when you are in a healing process, to track down, what's going on? what is that about, so that you don't just carry on with this long, long depression, or long, long period of guilt. but you go for help. you know, priests, ministers, and rabbis, that's what they do, they help people deal with guilt. and if you're not a spiritual person who would go to someone like that, counselors. that's what counselors and psychologists do,

to help people. why are you holding on to this guilt? i remember when i was doing counseling years ago, i had a young woman whose husband had died in a plane crash. and she came into a whole lot of money because he had a life insurance policy. and i remember how hard it was for her to believe that she wasn't somehow a bad person because she felt like she profited from her husband's death. and she said to me, in a counseling session, she said, "it feels like death money." so sometimes we get stuck, you know, in guilt for something like that. finally, i helped her put that money in a savings account, for her child, so that she didn't have it anymore, and could keep living the way she was living and not feel guilty about going on back to nursing school and going on with her life in the way she had planned. but triumphant survivors, when stuck,

look for ways to understand why they're stuck. and move out of it. along those lines, i'd like to talk about releasing encumbrances. i was a senior at oklahoma city university, and i was walking across the campus, and i saw my favorite professor, his name was dr. waldo stevens, wonderful man. and as i walked across, and our eyes met, out of the blue, dr. stevens said to me, "ann, if you were going on a long trip, would you pack a suitcase full of bricks and take it along with you?" now i wish that i had been such a co twenty-year-old, right, that lights had gone off and i had gotten that, but i had to tell you it was years later, lots of therapy, you know, lots of stuff, before i had a clue what he was talking about.

so basically, i just sat in his class on a regular basis and dr. stevens had picked up some kind of anger and bitterness in me. and basically i was sending myself to college. at that time, there was a different attitude about sending boys and girls to college, my father sent my brother to college, i sent myself. i worked hard and borrowed money, and had a pity party frankly. and a lot of anger about it, a lot of resentment about it. and he could see that, and he could see that it but i didn't get it. so i kept putting bricks in a suitcase. and then uh, years passed, and i got married and i got divorced and i had a second suitcase full of bricks, i was working on a samsonite set.

but finally i realized that if you hold on to those burdens and you keep blaming people, you're not gonna grow. and when i teach to my college students, i say, you know, awful things happen to all of us and lots of awful things happen to some of us, but none of us will ever get beyond it unless we make a decision, "i've got to let that go." i've got to forgive. you don't have to forgive for the person who wronged you, you have to at least forgive for yourself to feel like your own heart and soul has freedom again and can go on and live your life. but it's a hard lesson to learn, isn't it? it's hard to let go of those grievances that we have. but it honestly is, dr. stevens was right, it's like packing up suitcases full of bricks, and carrying them around and trying to have a life.

one of the things that we do as we live through a personal crisis, if we want to be a triumphant survivor, is to find meaningful ways to say goodbye. you all know i think the value of cemetery visits, and memorial services and funeral services, and donating money in a loved one's memory, doing good deeds as a way to honor a person that you've lost. but there are so many other ways that we can find a way to say goodbye. one of my experiences was with a woman in denver who've had a mastectomy. and after a presentation i gave, she told me that she had written a letter, a goodbye letter, to her breast. and she said, "you know, i'm going to miss you.

you know, you've helped define me as a girl and a woman, i nursed my babies with you, i made love with my husband with you, but i want to live, i don't want to die, and i have to say goodbye." a man i met, after a presentation to pharmacists in indiana, told me that he had to write a goodbye letter to the bottle. he said he was about to lose his pharmacy, he was about to lose his wife and kids, that his drinking initially was something he did to let his hair down and relax, and over time it became a best friend. it became a better friend than his wife, a better friend, more important than his children, and it was starting to jeordize his complete life with her. and so he said, "i had to say goodbye," and he said, "i wrote a letter and i said, 'you used to be my friend and you turned on me.' and i'm going to say goodbye."

it's a powerful thing to find someway to say goodbye. but you need to remember, you don't have to be afraid to say goodbye because it doesn't mean you're dishonoring, it doesn't mean you're forgetting, it's a decision that you go on to live your life, but you never forget that person that you've loved. you know, so many things in life that are meaningless, there isn't any meaning to losing a child to a drunk driver, losing anybody you love. it's absolutely meaningless. we have a saying in psychology, that our job is to help people with s.o.c.: sense of coherence. i've got to find some way to make sense of some things in my life even when there isn't any sense. there isn't any sense why some of you lost a parent

as a child, i was blessed to have my parents who lived to be 89 and 96. there isn't any fairness in why some people have cancer and this person and this person and this person. and some people have a suicide in their family and then another tragedy happens and then another tragedy. and then a job loss. you know what i'm saying. life doesn't distribute things in an equal kind of way. and there are so many things that just don't make sense. and what we know is that we have to find some kind of way to make peace with those things. what will the meaning be that i get out of this experience? how will i learn something that is beneficial to somebody else? what can i gain from this pain that can do something that will help others? which leads me to another issue about triumphant survivors and that is that people who are resilient,

get involved in helping others. look at mothers against drunk drivers. the terrible tragedy of losing your innocent child to a drunk driver, they have changed the laws across america. those bereaved mamas have changed the country. and we are finally catching up with some of the countries in europe. we still have some ways to go, of intolerance toward drinking and driving. whatever the crisis that we're going through, whatever the loss, one of the ways to redeem it, one of the ways to say, i'll turn this into something that is bearable, is to turn it into something that teaches you something that can help someone else. diane bliss: this program is filled with so many insightful messages from dr. ann kaiser stearns and

one of the things i just took from it is finding meaningful ways to say goodbye, such a critical point, but by saying goodbye you're able to move forward, well i hope right now we're going to say hello and that is with your pledge of support our volunteers will gladly talk to you and see how much you enjoy public television and the kind of gift that we can offer to you to say yes, i'd like to get that message from dr. ann kaiser stearns. a lot of you are calling about the dvd and dr. stearns, this is a lot more than just the program, i mean you went on for three hours of total content here, why don't you share with our viewers at home what's on the dvd, what are you going to get? dr. ann kaiser stearns: well i would love to do that, one of the things uh, i wanted to do was to experience the viewers who were on hand when i gave this presentation and let them tell their stories, so there's about an hour worth of people telling their personal stories.

i gave a presentation about an hour long, another presentation, called how people heal, and in that presentation i wanted to differentiate between a normal grief and healing process that involves depression and other stages of healing and the kind of grieving process that may get complicated as a result of severe depression, how do you know when the depression you have is too much and you may need medical help, perhaps you need medicine. so, that presentation, how people heal, focuses on let's see, can i evaluate my grieving process and see am i on course in a normal kind of way or are their some complications where maybe i need some medical help. diane bliss: dr. stearns, this is incredible information for all different stages of people in the grieving process and whether it's you, yourself or perhaps a friend and you say to yourself, i just don't know what to do, i don't know how to help, perhaps giving them the

dvd, dr. stearns, is a step in the right direction. so if you'd like to pledge and get two of them we'd welcome that call right now, but right now it's your turn to support public tv, with a pledge. dan alpert: because you never know when you're going to need the lessons dr. stearns brings you, this is a great time for you to make the contribution to get the dvd at the $75 level, to go deeper into the materials with her book, living through personal crisis at the $90 giving level, to be able to have the mp3 player that has different sections on it that will help you to improve, uh, your response to what is going on, what the particular crisis is, how you're going to build the survival strategy, how you will actually become a survivor, or to get all three of them at the $265 level. you know it occurs to me that here on public television we are always presenting to you news of the world, and sometimes that news itself is troubling, sometimes it effects us in our own personal lives, we talk about the economy, the economy effects us in our own personal lives with job losses, with losses of friends,

friends who's jobs are lost. well, what we're trying to do here with public television is not only tell you about the world, but help you develop survival strategies for that, help you develop strategies by which you can, not just, you know, complain about being in a bad place, but actually move yourself towards a better place. and if we can do that by presenting you dr. ann kaiser stearns' uh, program here, then we are doing our part. you're doing your part when you allow us to make more of that by making your phone call to this public television station with the dollars we turn into programs. woman: our son was killed in iraq on christmas eve. dr. ann kaiser stearns: oh, this last christmas eve? woman: uh, 2008 so we just a year. dr. ann kaiser stearns: oh, i'm so sorry. woman: thank you. and we grieve very differently. dr. ann kaiser stearns: uh-huh, men and women do tend to grieve differently. woman: you know, and i see these traits in us, as far as survivors, but how do we help each other, pull through this? dr. ann kaiser stearns: uh,

that's really an important question and one of the things that happens in families when you're both grieving the same loss, lots of times you're grieving in different ways at different times. diane bliss: we've heard a lot more about the dvd and there's three hours of material on the dvd, and dr. stearns, this revised edition of your original book, this masterpiece, living through personal crisis, that's available for a pledge at the $90 level, but you're holding something that is very new to public television, why don' you introduce this to our friends at home. dr. ann kaiser stearns: well, i'm quite tickled about this because uh, you know, we live in a modern day where everyone has little ipods and i wanted folks to have something they could uh, have all together here, with messages of hope and encouragement and strategies for healing right here. (on mp3 player): it takes practically everyone, a long time, to learn to cope with change and get a new show on the road.

i have to admit that uh, the first segment, beyond crisis, uh, is something that i was, uh, i've listened to myself, uh, in a hard time, i remember i was waiting for the results of a breast biopsy, sitting in a doctor's office listening to myself, sounds a little strange there, but i was listening to myself and getting some uh, hope and help and comfort and to get centered and that's what i wanted this to be, i wanted it to be uh, interspersed with music, i wanted uh, to give uh, strategies for healing, i wanted to give uh, inspiration and calming advice that uh, you can listen to when you take your dog for a walk or perhaps you have a friend going through a loss and you want to loan this to them so that they can listen to it. diane bliss: and that's for a pledge at the $150 level, which is a very generous gift to this public television station, but if you really want to do something extraordinary for yourself, for someone that you love and for public television

consider that triumphant survivor combo, because that's part of the combo, your book is part of the combo, dr. ann kaiser stearns: right. diane bliss: and the dvd is part of the combo. this is all great money for public television isn't it dr. stearns? dr. ann kaiser sarns: well, and i believe in public television uh, with all my heart. i'm so proud to be a part of a program like this. i've been watching folks uh, people like myself, professionals in the helping profession and i've often thought i'd like to do a show like this, because public television has that kind of integrity. diane bliss: well your integrity will be enhanced as well when you help someone else through their personal crisis, so consider these thank you gifts, consider that pledge and we thank you very much. narrator: for over thirty years of counseling, teaching and personal experience, dr. ann kaiser stearns shares words of encouragement on this preloaded mp3 player for your $150 contribution to public tv.

dr. stearns has compiled inspiring stories and wisdom on the subjects of surviving financial loss, seeking supportive people, finding meaning in suffering and living a fulfilling life. dr. ann kaiser stearns: he was loyal to his employer for nearly twenty years, he was a hard worker, highly skilled, yet this man felt used, abused and discarded. narrator: with nearly two hours of inspirational words, this mp3 player is custom designed with a peaceful image to help clear your mind and your heart for a $150 contribution to this station. diane bliss: friends you know it and i know it, public television just makes things better. the little ones, they learn and enjoy and they're enlightened because of public television, it's better for them to watch public television, it's better than you, when you and i watch public television because

we have a nice comprehensive understanding of the world events, when the public affairs programs are on public television. and i know when we watch specials about medical happenings, i take that advice to heart and my physical wellbeing becomes better. and when we're watching important messages like this one living through personal crisis with dr. ann kaiser stearns our whole heart and being becomes better because we know that at the end of the process of healing we will have many new chapters to write. so public television always tries to make things better, not come in one ear and out the other with meaningless stuff in between that's not our style on public television, if you like to make things better as well, become a partner, become a member right now with your gift. make it better. dan alpert: dr. stearns has had thousands of students and now we get to be those students, the beauty of public television is to make available the very best, very most important ideas

of our culture to everybody, freely to everybody. if you can't make a contribution, we understand, but if you can, if you're in a position to do something, this is the time for you to say, i like what you do public television and i'm willing to do my part to make more of it happen. that is the positive future that we're all working towards. your contribution towards that might be $90 to get the book, uh, to go deeper into the subject matter, to have it around when you need it, but, whatever the amount that's right for you, it may be one of these bonus gift levels, it may be something higher, it may be something lower, i can't tell you that, but i can tell you that it's the public support that makes public television great. dr. ann kaiser stearns: you know, you have to be patient with yourself. you have to be patient with yourself because what grief and healing is about is all about going forward and going backwards. you have to expect unexpected setbacks and strides forward. you look at this and you see,

you climb a few stairs and then some tough patches come and you have to back down some stairs. and you climb some more, and over time, you get better, but when you have those, going back some steps, you wonder, am i ever going to feel better? and that is just the way healing is, it takes time. so you have to be patient with yourselves, and you have to be patient with other people. the people you love, who are so discouraged, it's like, will i ever get over this? you have to know that yes, you will, but it takes time. limit time with negative people and maximize time with positive folks. some of those folks you know, live at home, some of those folks are our relatives, some of those folks are our neighbors and we're that person for some of those folks too. i met a woman a few weeks ago actually,

i was giving a talk at a conference for first responders in virginia. and one of the speakers there was the mother of a 25-year-old who died in one of the world trade towers in 9-11. and she said, "you know, since my son died, i just don't have time for negative people." and that's a lesson for us all. there are some folks that you can just about count on if you call that person, you are going to feel worse, as soon as you hang up the phone. right? sometimes you love people, but you limit the time that you spend with them. and maybe you do things in groups or maybe you find different ways to maximize your time. it's kind of like manny lawton about standing, "be careful who you stand next to," you know,

"when you're dealing with hard times." look for those positive folks. forward thinking. it's very, very powerful. athletes do this. sometimes when the winter olympics are on, you will see something like this. you'll see a downhill skier, you know, helmet, goggles, poles, you know, eyes closed, crouched down in the position, he's not going down next, but he's up soon. he's crouched down and his eyes are closed and he's doing this. he's rehearsing. he's done practice runs, he knows where those turns are, he's rehearsing them. sports psychologists know this is very powerful. i tell my students, many of my college students, have never had anybody in their family graduate from college. it is very hard for them to ever imagine that that

could be me. i can enter into that kind of future. and i say to my students, you gotta, every time you think about it, imagine yourself finishing college, imagine yourself graduating, imagine yourself building that life of success. as you expect to experience an experience, so you experience an experience. so we have to watch: what is it i'm expecting of life? and block those negative expectations. because those negative expectations will take us right to those places we don't want to go. a powerful concept in psychology, is this concept of learning to reframe events. one of my dearest friends is a woman named doris. she lives in north carolina and she lost a

son in his 40s to cancer. and he died on thanksgiving day. well, i had a close friend who committed suicide on thanksgiving day. and every thanksgiving, for years, when people came to my house for thanksgiving, my best friend and i had to take a walk and i had to talk it out. i had to sort of, before we go finish putting together the dinner, i had to talk out what was going on in my head, because all i could think about was my friend who died a year ago or two years ago. so i thought i knew what doris was feeling, when she lost her son on thanksgiving day, and i was going to call and be helpful. sometimes you get in trouble that way, right, we think we know what other people feel, so i said to her, "i know it's yr first

thanksgiving since mark died, it must be really hard, so i was just calling to let you know i'm thinking of you." and doris said, "well, you know, hal, " meaning her husband, "hal and i don't feel that way. we're okay with the fact that mark died on thanksgiving." i was just really surprised about this. she said, "you know, mark was a schoolteacher, the students knew how dedicated he was, he was the kind of guy who would stay after school and get on the tractor and mow the football field, and go help put the stripes down on it, and then stay some more and help score, and he was the kind who helped us with our family business. hal and i felt like our son was the kind of young man we were so thankful for, that it was kind of appropriate that he died on thanksgiving day."