good morning. and welcome to mosaic. i'm honored to be your host this morning. we're joined by two wonderful experts in the field of grief to have a morning conversation about what grief is and why it is important to attend to and what grief resources we have in the community. i would like to introduce you to our guests. you're a licensed clinical social worker with 40 years of experience. and you have a healing weekend for families in mourning and founder of a unique program that was begun called next

steps for mourners, a grief care service for folks that come to the chapel for services. and we have a doctor who is a certified grief counselor with over 25 years of experience in the field and has developed and interesting work called degriefing. which we'll talk later. welcome. let's jump in and start with the basics. what is grief? and why is it important that we attend to it? >> that's a big question. grief is, in my mind, the normal response that everybody has after there's been a death. grief is also a response to any kind of loss to some extent and we can talk more about that it's a universal life experience. it's something that is important, i think, to attend

to and there are professionals now that provide grief care who are also in fields from therapists to rabies to phd doctors, clinicians and so it's a very -- it helps to have a community to support someone through grief, specification -- professional as well as the lay community. >> and grief accumulates in the body and often time when we're working grief individuals, we need to understand and work with this emotional buildup and fresh loss stimulates prior loss and we hear this from individuals. something may be stuck in their gut or heart on their sleeve or their heads in the clouds and

butter flies in the stomach. and they tell us how the grief is affecting them. when we talk to grieving individuals, we need to listen to their languaging. >> in your vast experience in the field, over 60 years together, i'm sure you've seen a lot of different changes in which people understand grief, talk about grief, willing to share their grief and all the different ways in which the mow call itties of supporting -- models of supporting somebody. what are some of the changes that you've seen in which our culture faces grief and supports grief? >> one of the things that my career has expand is the beginning of grief as a field

of research. it started with elizabeth cooper ross. she was a doctor and worked with the dying and she began to bring grief work into a professional realm. in the beginning, grief was thought to be a very individual experience, so people worked with those that worked with it with work with individual therapists. and then it's more of a peer peer group counseling. and then led to professionally led groups. and we have done this, within a community of strangers, a grief camp weekend experience, a retreat experience and i think now all of those things come to bare and are very well used and well respected. it's take a community. >> so we've seen a development of scaffolding of support for

every individual as they go through grief. everybody feels as if their grief is individual to themselveses only but yet we all go through. >> exactly. >> and it's realistic in many people's minds because they set a model as the right way to agreement and the truth is -- to grieve. and the truth is we all grieve uniquely according to our own sense of self, our lives, stories and other losses, our cultural upbringing. with the internet as like what you've seen from the changes with the on line support groups and organizations creating rituals, such as breast cancer awareness month, to honor people that have dealt with this. >> one of the things that it

makes me feel of is grief work and grief care and support has become much more normalized among the community. and that is really, for instance, the next steps program that we created at the center. and with the internet and the web, it's brought it into a broader scope. >> thank you for starting a wonderful conversation. we're going to take a quick break. please join us in just a moment.

welcome back to mosaic. we're in the midst of a wonderful conversation about grief and grief resources and the field of grief two our

guests. welcome back. we were talking about the interesting growth of the field of grief in which people have come to understand that they can get support for grief all the away from an individual experience with say a therapist all the way to a community experience, for example, the grief and growing weekend that you and i cofounded that is available to folks once a year and the ways in which people experience grief intern fallly in different -- internally in different ways. i'm wondering with that, can you jump in and tell us what you have developed in terms of degriefing? >> degriefing is a oxymoron. there is no way to degrief. my way is to use grief as the most unavailable untapped resource for personal transformation. by working each individual and finding out from them where did

they ache? where do they feel the presence of this so uncomfortable emotion and making it not the enemy but a fuel for us to look deeply inside to recognize how we want to honor the lost loved one, what we need to know about this emotion and how we can use this as a period of time to reset our personal dreams our hopes and our life goals. degriefing has sparked many conversations. is it possible? and then a conversation around what is grief what does it feels like? it is common to all humanity. it is in fact as universal as the smile for many years we used the mod delve talk therapy -- model of talk therapy to deal with our grief.

each person finds outlet to express rather than repress, express this emotion and feel. >> what i love about this approach, and i think it evolves from all the stepping stones of the past work that has happened with grief, what i love about this approach it does do what is so important it normalizes grief and it allows it to become a transformative experience for anyone at any age no matter how young or old, it allows grief to be used in that way. i think that is an important communal response. >> i've done five-day degriefing in a community in new mexico. i've worked with families,

couples, schools, mayo clinic. in our professional medical education is my belief is we don't give medical professionals enough information. often times they're in the throws of caring for others needing to while the feeling. when we are in empathetic communication with individuals and families deal with loss, there's a part that is being empathetic an open to experiencing them and the truth of where they're at. it's now been named by the therapeutic field as the physical expression of an accumulation of empathy. we need to learn about self care because to be in service to others, we really must -- it's no longer appropriate or glamorous to operate in marttor dome. it's about self care to serve from the heart. >> i like this conversation

because it brings grief the way it has gone from the universal experience from the individual into the community of those that provide grief care and what it means and how this affects grief caregivers that are impacted personally and professionally as we all know by providing this kind of service. >> absolutely. it's a calling for. more me it was a calling after the loss of my husband living at the living dying project and working elizabeth cooper ross. and what i learned myself during the second year of grief is i had a sensation in my body that i could not identify and it became a personal quest of understanding how to love him. how to reassign him a place in my life and in my heart and learn to take care of me. this is one of the most commonly asked questions. what can i do with this

feeling? how long will it last? one of my premises is to meet each individual where they're at. >> and to tell individuals as we know so often from the participants at the grief camp, i have an expensive private practice focused on grief work, it really is people come and say, i don't want to forget. i don't want to get over this. i don't think i ever will. and my response is it's true, you never will. you found a way to manage the feelings. you find a way to move on with the feelings. it's not about for getting. i don't even like the wore resolving. it's distribute word resolving. it's about learning to live with it. >> a totally agree with that. >> we're going to take a quick break from this conversation. but we're going to let folks know on november 8th, we're honored to have a presenter at a special mourning conference

called the caregiver's quest for healing, working with professionals. it's intended for people that work professionally in the field of grief. it's called a caregiver's quest for hearing, working with grief in a professional setting. it's tuesday, november 8th from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the gate club and cosponsored by the bay area jewish center. if you would like more information give them a call.

none november 8th there's a caregivers' conference. it's for people that work preax

nally in the field -- professionally in the field of green for more information, please give them a call. welcome back to mosaic. we're in the midst of a fascinating conversation about grief with our guests. you are a developer of dealing with grief called degriefing. we were talking about grief is a universal human experience that really, in my mind, nobody gets through life unscaidged. and this -- unscathed. and it stimulates spiritual reflection and it urns for a community response. the field of grief is expanded to much more broadly within a

communal framework. and i'm struck by this pair box that i find and i'm sure do you too and other people in the field fine, even though it's a universal human experience, we still, many of us are stuck when we come into the death of a human being and somebody important in our lives, a father, a mother, a grandparent, a spouse, we think, my gosh, me? how come i'm in grief? like we don't recognize what grief is. and i think it's a fascinate is phenomenon when we don't realize that grief is a normal response to loss. and maybe there are stepping stones of loss and understanding that loss and integrating that loss along our lives, not just when we come to the point is which a loved one literally has died. >> i'm glad you brought to us that. it's one of the things that i eluded to earlier.

grief happens after any loss. as i remember elizabeth cooper ross who we both worked with. people go through a grief experience when they lose their keys or experience loss. what is different, the loss of a human, the death of a someone, it may be a deeper more intense trojecttory to grow from. but i like the idea of expanding it into all sorts of losses because grief does follow everything that we lose. >> i would like to comment. i wear the breast cancer pin. i lost my sister 7 years ago and my husband 27 years ago. and i look at grief in terms of degrees. that the loss of my keys or a favorite necklace has a certain degree of grief. if i can replace it and it has

no major sentimental value, then i can talk myself into this is a moment in time. s from a ring that my sister left for me. if it has to do with a major change in my life like the loss of a husband, a mate, a child, the degree, the impact of the grief is much more profound. i see grief as an accumulation. i see it accumulate in the body and people often are confused. callculturally, we don't have a ritual like mexico has the day of the day november 1st and 2nd. i assist people in creating rituals that are meaningful to them to enable them to

cognitively, physically, emotionally recognize there's been a change. i see all loss as the loss of the familiar. >> it reminds me and explains why some people otherwise may feel they, in quotes, are handling the grief enlike when a parent dies and they move along and like something happens like their pet gets sick and all the sudden they say i don't understand why i can't stop thinking about my father who died eight months ago when all that happened was i lost my keys. so i think the flip side tv is coming to a greater awareness of integrating loss triggers and in ways that loss gets triggered on regular life experience like losing keys. >> and how grief is really a

series of building blocks. even if the person who has had the death in the family at a young age resolves it, which is the word i don't like to use but gets through and moves on and becomes transformed, later it all comes back. inside our heads, we do not have a time line. inside our emotions, we do not have a timeline. we see that. >> so we're going to take another quick break and put a comma in the conversation. but keel come back and resume this wonderful conversation about grief with lee and lynn on mosaic.

welcome back. i'm rabbi wise honored to be your host this morning. we're here with our guests

talking about grief. we do a lot of work together in grief counsel. so let's jump in and ask you a little bit about what you intoned do on the morning -- you intend to do at the morning conference and with people that are professionally in the field of grief like a chaplain or member of the clergy or a volunteer in their particular church or synagogue and members of a church that are in grief. this is a conference for them, making a distinction for people

who are in a grief. people that work with folks that are in grief. >> one of the things i have known about myself when i've experienced loss, there's a little voice that said, you are a professional. do you not know how to work with this? well, the bottom line is i'm a human before i'm a professional and loss impacts me like it impacts any other human and uniquely according to who i am. this conference will normalize that particular particular point of view in the field that grief counselors experience their own grief, go through their own process. and because grief is cumulative and because we are an everyone pathetic communication and -- empathetic communication and we experience the feeling of grief, that care of the body to maintain a skill in our excellence in service to others. so what i'll do is i teach at

uc berkley. i teach body workers how to deal with individuals. reviewing parts and pieces that we've all learned to do the work and then it's a training within a training. each person will get to ask themselves, where do i feel my grief? what are the losses i've experienced? how does that influence my mind and my body. >> we have a minute left before we need to say good-bye. can we say in a moment what somebody who comes to us will get in terms of what they'll be able to do for somebody in grief? >> yes. they'll have a personal experience of being in a group of like minded humanity of other professionals. and they'll receive a resource booklet. i will give resources of books and integrative therapies.

and i define degriefing as integrated grief therapy. it's about meeting each person where they're at as a private person and professional. >> thank you very much for this wonderful conversation. i'm going put a comma in the conversation and encourage you to continue it yourselves. thank you for being with us on mosaic.