How to Recognize Grief in Different Life Events - Part 2 with Thera Storm, LCSW

But you were mentioning you're working with Bobby Rill, who's one of our instructors and you're in the training, you kind of arms crossed right and you're like, I'm here as a professional, right? I'm here to get tools to help other people, which is very noble and great. Don't get me wrong. But it takes everything we have as instructors in that training, when people say that, which I hear all the time, it takes everything I have not to start smiling and laughing right there, like maniacally, right?

I'm like, okay, great. Well, I think we're going to be able to get tools for, you know, for you for your clients. Now, here's a, here's a pro tip if you're listening and considering our training, I'm going to whisper this. We will not certify you unless you're willing to do your own work.

Right. And, and we know that everyone that comes to our training, if they have been a human being longer than, you know, a couple of years, all have plenty of hundreds of agree from their past. Right. So anyway, let's pick it up from there if you're good with it, right?

You're, you're kind of like, I think you're in day two now and you're, you're realizing, right? So like the, because look, we all come into this training with armor, right? Like you said, you walk in, it's a semi-circle of chairs with a bunch of clean x-boxes everywhere. It's, it's kind of a daunting, intimidating scene.

And so a lot of people come in with armor. I would say everybody, right? Um, and everyone's looking for the holes, by the way, they're all looking for the holes in the method. They're, they're looking for the outs, you know, that's natural.

By the way, my dad created this. And when I was in my first four day training, kind of right around the same time you were, it was really affecting you. It started affecting me. And, and I'm kind of weighing my options, right?

And I'm like, should I leave my old career? Should I do this? I'm watching this work for like 15 people in this room. I'm seeing what it's doing to me.

And in making that decision, am I going to continue my father's life's work? Am I going to dedicate my life to this too, right? This isn't one of those things you come back from, right? It's like, I want to carry this message.

So anyway, I'm weighing all this, this math in my head. So you better believe I was trying, I was the most skeptical dude you could ever see, right? Because I'm, I'm like, wanting, I, I know it's working, but I'm also like trying to figure out, oh, no, there has to be some other thing that I'm not seeing. There has to be a pitfall.

There has to be some other thing. And obviously 12 years in, I never found that, right? And that's why I keep doing this. But let's pick it up for you, Tara, where your day to it's really starting to like affect you.

You're, you're now seeing, okay, wow, I got some work to do too. And, and you're realizing, wow, there's intangible losses there. So do you want to first kind of define, you know, what you, what you take is like intangible losses. Just so the audience is kind of on that path with us.

Yeah, I, I would like this word intangible loss, because it means that it's not tangible. You can't, you know, grab it, touch it. It's not necessarily a person or a pet who has died. So, now I've had tangible losses that were pretty intense.

My grandmother was murdered by my aunt in 1998. So I was graduating high school. So like, if I had the, before grief for recovery, if I had to tell you about the losses I've had in my life, I'd say at this very tragic loss with my grandmother. And oh, yeah, grandpa, maybe, you know, but I would have really not had many deaths.

And so that was kind of my main identification of grief and loss, but as I'm, or as grief for the loss. So as I'm doing this method around day two, what was showing up for me were actually other losses that weren't, there were more like losses of identity, support, and safety that were more emotionally impactful than my grandmother's murder. Now, I want to be very clear about this. If, if you don't know me, I really want this to be a safe place where I can be honest, emotionally honest, and say that not having support around and starting my period when I was 15 had more emotional impact than my grandmother being murdered.

Now, you might think, oh my gosh, that doesn't make sense. But all I know is that intrinsically, I mean, if I feel my heart, my gut, like that had more effect emotionally than my grandmother. Now, if I look at the relationship with my grandmother, it was very complete. I didn't have the, I wish I said this, I wish I told her I loved her, I wish I visited her, our relationship was very complete.

So even though there was tragedy around the loss, the relationship wasn't incomplete. And it wasn't unresolved grief with my grandmother. Does that make sense? Yep.

Well, I just want to really briefly say this, like the beauty of grief recovery is terror gets to work and operate from her heart, okay, in her life in, and that's it. I don't get a vote. You listening on the podcast, don't get a vote. And that's the beauty of grief recovery is like you get to work on what you want to work on and you get to decide what broke your heart and what broke your heart here and what felt like it broke your heart the most and like none of it needs to qualify with anyone.

And it doesn't have to go through some intellectual, you know, flow chart. Okay, all it has to do is make sense to you. Yeah, I just, right. So I did more impactful.

I love, I love for you to just tell the truth about yourself, like this courageously, right? Um, you know, I, I love my grandparents and I lost my grandparents, you know, at different times in my life. And like the loss of one of my dogs max in a really tragic way, absolutely impacted me more than the loss of a grandparent. Yeah, but cold, this is a canine and that is a human.

And again, I don't need your flow chart. I just need to tell the truth about my story. And that's it. Right.

And if we could do that more as a society, wow, because what, what, what people, instead of just hearing what Tara said and being like, can I give you a hug? That's, when I hear that, that's all I want to do. Can I give you a hug? But here's, that's not what people do.

You know, most people, oh, no, but Tara, like, you know, what, let me tell you why I should minimize that. Oh, most people, what, the opportunity is the first time I've said it, like I say it with my clients when I demonstrate the graph, but I've never said this publicly because it's something that I feel like I need to justify and explain like even that still comes up, right? By the way, how you said, like we're not, you know, again, people wouldn't get the opportunity to even have a response because I would keep that close to the best. Right.

Right. And you're right. I mean, people, unless it most people, I hate saying absolutes, but people like you or me who have done a lot of grief for cover work can be very, very emotionally honest and not need it to make sense or qualify for other people. That's another gift that I get to give that I get to receive from doing grief recovery is I get to live my life as an individual and tell my truth.

And I care way, way, way less than I ever have about what you, what you, you know, have to say about it. A lot of time when we can lead by that example, we can, like you said, we can make it safe for other people to do that too. Right. So that's, that's kind of a sidetrack, but I just wanted to, again, I just wanted to honor you for saying, telling the truth about yourself.

And, and again, just again, not compare, but say, hey, let me tell you a little piece of my story where like I felt the same way, where society wouldn't judge those two losses the way I am. And I don't care because I need to do the work for me because one is feels like my heart shattering at 1000 pieces and maybe one doesn't, it feels complete or resolved. Right. So anyway, please, please continue.

That's good. Just kind of with your story. One, you know, another thing, you know, if someone's, oh, you're, you know, the product of divorce. So when I look at divorce, that's on my timeline, my parents got it, they sat me and my, my twin sister down as they were getting a divorce.

We were like five years old. So think about the language. We're getting a divorce, getting. So in my five year old brain, I thought a divorce was a new car because a divorce to me sounded like, wow, it sounded like a catal mack.

A Buick. Like the word divorce sounds like a fancy car. Totally makes it. Five year old.

Well, I'm not the brightest bulb in the bottom. You know, because my twin sister knew what it was, but I, I had never heard that word before. And so I remember going to my neighbor's house, Miss Brenda, and this is in the panhandle of Florida. And I was like, Miss Brenda, we're getting a divorce, you know, and Miss Brenda said, run along Tara.

You don't go talking about that. And I thought she was jealous of our new divorce. We were getting, right? So, wow, divorce is a very short line on my graph.

Like I, and now I'm a, people will understand what that means, but there was not a lot of emotional impact around that because I remember not getting it. The longest line, the biggest emotional impact for me is when my father married my stepmother. So that union is when I lost my dad, even though he's still alive. So identity changed, support changed, the, you know, the, my, the relationship.

And there was a, and then there's these so many just memories that started coming up of where I didn't feel seen, heard, supported, validated. But I didn't have that language, but I internalized it as I'm ugly, I'm stupid, I'm not worthy. And then if you listen to the last episode, it was then I had headgear in a biinator. And then I was walking into a school and they thought it was special needs.

And then, you know, I didn't make the volleyball team, but my twin sister did. And then I started my period, right? I didn't know how to navigate it. So I'm using washcloths because I didn't know how to, like, call, I hope you never have to get a period.

And you won't, because biologically, that's impossible. But when you're a young woman, and there's this sexual dirtiness shame around it, like, there was, it was very confusing for me. And I didn't have a safe place to navigate that. Or I felt like I didn't have a voice to talk about that.

So those intangible losses were absolutely shaped my value system, my identity, yet I never would have thought grief was a word to describe that. I just would have called it a bumpy childhood, a shitty stepmother. Wow. Yep.

Yep. And so, and I kind of just, I want to go through, really briefly, I wonder how many of the losses that you mentioned, right? Which you and I are looking at as grief events, as loss events, how many would what society qualify as grief, right? Just just out of what you just covered, all of those things, probably not even the divorce they wouldn't look at as grief.

Certainly they wouldn't look at having, you know, having your first period as a loss event. That, that, that, you know, they would just, again, they would minimize awkwardness in school. Oh, you just dealt with some awkwardness in school. I've had a retainer too.

Right. Like, so, so we're missing all of that. But we know from, from last episode and now, this is, these are all massive emotional events from you losses grief, right? And everyone of my female clients will say, when I share this and like, this is a safe place, I'm sharing my timeline to kind of model for you.

And they say, oh my gosh. And one client said, Tara, I needed a bra when I was a teenager, my parents didn't talk about it. So I use a bathing suit top, like a bikini top as my bra. Like, but I act like it was the cool thing to do, and wear a bikini top to school every day.

But I need it. And so like, and she was just like, oh my gosh, I've never been able to talk about that in a lens of grief that like I, I compensated, I adjusted and people said, oh, you seem like a well adjusted teenager, but she was horrified and felt so unported. And so I have so many stories like that that emerge around our adolescence, which again is why have a heart for, you know, all humans, you know, just having a safe place to, to talk and need support. Yeah.

And what this makes me think of is like you, I agree, this should be mandatory in all schools, you know, at some grade, I haven't figured out which grade, but grief recovery, these tools, these skills, everyone should have because again, whether or not when you're 20 or 25 years old, you think you have a lot of grief, like we kind of already know you do. But, but even if again, if you're not going to qualify with a lot of grief, the other huge benefit that this work gives people and they don't really understand is it gives you an ability to emotionally communicate with someone on a whole different level, right? The reason I'm bringing this up is I wonder how many of those losses you had, like let's take, let's take you, you're having your first period, for example, right? And like I think you just touched on like a lot of women can relate to that being a loss, that's a loss.

By the way, news flash, right? I'm going to cover it. The definition of grief, right, is conflicting feelings caused by the change of or end of a familiar pattern behavior. So if your body has never done this before and now your body does this new thing, guess what?

That is grief, right? If your body has never produced a baby and then you've had a baby and now you have a baby and you've never had a baby before, guess what? That's grief. If you have never lived with someone and bed wed to them your whole life and then one day you do, guess what?

Getting married is grief. But everyone wants to focus on the positive. Oh, you're becoming a woman or oh my god, you're a new mom or what a beautiful baby or oh my god, we knew you guys were going to get married forever. That's all great.

Keep all that. But if no one is talking to you emotionally about the conflicting feelings in all of these different examples, then you're not feeling hurt, then you have to bury that stuff. Then you feel like something's wrong with you just because you have those feelings, right? All these things happen because no one knows how to emotionally communicate with you.

And if they have, I love that they have, they will show up on my time. I promise you those events wouldn't have shown up if I had it. Yeah. And that's where I'm going with it, right?

It's like the other thing that that is a great gift of grief recovery. You touched on this in the last episode, but we kind of ran past it. I say this in every one of my trainings. If grief doesn't color your whole world view today, it might give me four days and you're going to see grief in places you never saw it before.

So I know if I have some like nephew who's graduating high school, the night of his graduation, if I go to his graduation, then I go to the little party afterwards. I'm going to be the only guy in the room that says I'm so proud of you. You got that partial scholarship. You're doing you're crushing and baseball and you're doing amazing.

I love you. And also, like I remember, like for me, when I had to go to California to to Baylor to play baseball and I bleached blonde hair and hoop earrings and I thought I was M&M, that was a very awkward, very scary time for me when I got to Texas. And I'm like competing for a position with guys that are four years older than me, arguably maybe on steroids. You know, like it's it's like a whole different ballgame.

And like I had a bunch of like hurt and worry and and fear and was I going to see all these old like guys that I knew my whole life. Like is any of that going on for you? Because I'm the only person in the room that's identifying this kid's grieving. This kid is grieving right now.

And no one's going to catch that but me. So I better go make him feel connected if he wants to. Okay. Now he may be like, oh, thanks Cole.

Like yeah, let me tell you about her. He may know I'm good. Like again, I'll leave it up to him. I'm, but I want to give them the option of process those feelings if he wants to.

Because otherwise, like what are our young people doing graduation night? They have these feelings. No one hears them and they overdo it without call. They overdo it with drugs.

And we have an uptick and drunk driving deaths. And we have an uptick and like fights where, you know, it ends up someone getting killed or you know, whatever these things that happen to our young people, it is grief underneath that you guys. And I'm not yelling at Tara. But like it is grief.

Like how are you doing? Like how are you doing in just a genuine like open-ended question way? Because we ask close-ended questions all of the, like when I Carly, my daughter, you know, I see people go, oh, you're moving to Portugal. Are you excited?

Uh, she can only answer yes or no. Right? Because that's close. Right.

Question. You're graduating high school and you have a scholarship. Are you excited? Yes.

So then you're an asshole if you say no. If you say yes, you're giving them what they want. But then you're not getting a chance to process or explain out loud. You know, it's kind of conflicting.

I'm a little scared. I'm a little excited. I'm a little, you know, hopeful. I'm also, you know, apprehensive.

Like we get to use these words, which again a lot of us don't have a vocabulary to describe what we're feeling. But if these, these, I'm really committed to trying to, you know, teach open-ended questioning with parents and then just our youths because when we have that, are you excited? You know, and I get this too and I'll tell people I'm like, well, there's, I'll answer the way I want to answer. But, you know, do you notice that?

We tend to, like, ask these yes or no questions. And that's it. Oh, yeah. No, I think that's great you're doing that.

And absolutely, like I try and do that as well. And even, and yes, I agree, open-ended questions should be the norm. But, you know, even watch what people do even with closed-ended questions. It's always closed-ended to the positive.

Aren't you excited to do this? Yes, yes, yes. Right? It's like, it's even if it was, it even if it was a closed-ended question, but you kind of gave them room.

Like, are you excited for this? Are you scared for this? Like, even that would be better, right? But again, I think the best is open-ended.

And then another thing I, I'm sure you do, and I like to do this too, is look, kids are smart. Kids, by the time they're seven or eight or nine, they figured out what adults want them to be, right? And so they try and do what the adults do. And so they don't want to show pattern, pain or sadness, right?

They don't want to show those emotions. They've been told if you try to go to your room, if they've been told that, you know, 10,000 times. And so the other thing I want to do, whether it's an adult on an airplane or a kid that's graduating high school, I want to go first. I want to, I want to show them a little bit about how I have unresolved feelings from some event, right?

It's almost like you're like you're winked. You have a decoder ring. It's like, I have unresolved grief too, or I did around this topic, do you? Because again, it's much easier to connect with someone on an airplane.

This happens all the time. You know, again, what do you do? And usually I've just got done talking for four days about grief. So I'm like, I can't have four, I can't have four hours in in coach class, you know, on the plane, talk about grief right now.

So usually I'm like vague or I've, I've had the question. But if, if I'm like, Hey, I just sense or intuitively know this person needs to talk about it. I'll go, I'll go, you know, I'll go there. But when I do, it's like, Oh, where, where you when I needed you, right?

Again, the implication is I don't need you anymore. I'm used to that. That's cool. We'll talk about it.

But I always want to make sure I'm like, yeah, you know what? Like I know when my cousin killed himself, like after about a year, I thought I was good. But what I realized is I just stuffed all that anger and all that pain down and I really wasn't good. And it was affecting my other relationships.

So, you know, I want to tell them a little bit about me and that like I struggled with grief longer than our prescribed three days, you know, I know, you touched on an Instagram post recently. It's like, you get three days and then you better be back at your role and be a perfect, you know, whatever you do for work or you better be a perfect parent or whatever you get three days. And so when people can't do that, they, they have to go underground. But anyway, let's, I want to go back to you, Tara.

So, you know, please continue with where you're going. I want to say something what you're saying. I love this about the grief recovery method over traditional psychotherapy. So in therapy, your train to be kind of unemotional, your robot, the person doesn't know anything about you personally.

In the grief recovery method, you share your timeline. Like you can make a commitment to honesty and privacy and confidentiality in this method. And what I love about that is that it opens so many doors for people to explore these intangible losses and their own story because it's this, almost like this sea saw I see happening where like I disclose, they're more comfortable disclosing it. It's this beautiful dance that takes place where if I were like, I don't know how do you feel about that, you know, I don't have any heart or emotion.

Again, I don't know how other therapists are, but I kind of envision, you know, the way that we're perceiving where cardigans and we don't have a soul. I don't know. Like so, I love that about this, the method in my practice because it's not me putting the highlight on me and I get to talk about myself, although I would love to because that's just, I mean, it's a wonderful thing when we have a safe place to talk about ourselves. But in that session where I get to say this is what loss looks like, these are my intangible losses.

And you know, I've shared them so much. I have so much completion around them that I'm not crying. By guarantee the first two days that I shared this at the the institute when I was going through my training, I was a bucket of tears. It was my first time ever saying out loud that I didn't make the volleyball team and my twin sister did.

And there's a lot of emotion around here and that's on resolve because I was probably dismissed and I was searching for identity at the time in my life and it wasn't given to me. And you know, so that's why I just want to say how it's different than psychotherapy when you're engaging with a specialist. Yeah, it's funny, right? I always try and have this caveat in here because I work with I think we attract honestly the the therapists that are on top of their game that that want to be honest and say, you know what?

I care about my clients and I have a hole in my game and they're and like I'm feeling that whenever we go to grief, I got a hole in my game and I care about being excellent. And so they come and see us every now and them every now and again, you know, someone will slip through the cracks like that you're talking about where really the plan to be yeah, I mean, the plan for mental health for them, their career path was to distract from their own stuff. They're interested in the topic because they have a bunch of unresolved grief and loss right and and their way of keeping that door closed is continually focusing on other people, right? Like that's not a that's not like a secret, right?

I mean, we know a lot of people in mental health that get into it because they're hurt. They're broken, hearted, right? They they they're searching for answers. And I love that, right?

Anyone that wants to to do some some of their own personal work in a society that really promotes watching the Kardashians and judging them or you know, watching reality and like feeling good about yourself because you're not that like that. So anyway, again, anyone that wants to get into this heart centered work, I love them, right? The problem is it's like like you're saying some of the stuff that they teach in my opinion is insanity. It's like I get this question quite a bit like, Cole, how do you build rapport?

Like build rapport again, like I don't use these words, right? I'm like, what are you talking about build or they're like, you can build rapport so quickly. And I'm like, what? Like a spread.

I don't even like, yeah, I'm like, what do you mean? Right? And then and because I again, I'm not I'm not trained in in mental health stuff. So I don't know any of this stuff.

And they're like, well, you're not like the first time I heard a therapist say you're not allowed to self disclose or I don't I can't self disclose. I was I thought they were trolling me. I'm like, wait, wait a second. Like, but your line of work is like connecting with people, right?

Now, like you said, so again, I don't this is not, hey, I'm trying to beat up the the profession. We actually train the ones that are like, you know, the ones honestly we have trouble with in our training are the ones that have been out of school for like all of seven minutes. And they're like, this can't be right. Like this is not in the book, right?

And I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, just try it. Just try like the therapists that run with this, they've been in the game for five or 10 years or three years. And they're like, yeah, this is how it plays out. And this is how I'm going to connect.

And I want I want more to like, so usually we get to work with with those folks. But you know, I have a YouTube video coming out of talking about big mental health, you know, it's like there's big pharma, there's big agriculture. Well, guess what, there's big mental health. And in my opinion, it's going in the wrong direction, right?

And guess what, there's also big grief. Like there's big organizations I call big grief. And like their whole business model is you stuck in your grief and you coming to the annual events and you being a griever and you and that's your identity. And it's it's it's incentivized to to be that.

And they don't even look for us though. They don't look to do the method. They don't want to well, you know, it's it's funny. They invite they usually invited my dad or Russell to all of one conference.

And then they had to go to forever because they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, these guys are talking about like living your life and going on to live your life however you want. Like you're not the perennial griever. And this is the whole part of your story because they want to work in, you know, at the end of the day, Cole, I I'm aware of my own mortality. We work in grief.

I'm very aware of it. And I choose human connection over bullshit rules. You know, I think to the other thing that's that that I love about a work and people that really do our work a lot, you can just tell this about them. There's there's a there's a level of humility there that I just love, right?

It's like I can just tell you have you have a tremendous amount of humility. Like I have a tremendous amount of humility like in terms of like I don't have the answers. I'm not this like magical like priest class person where you talk to me and I solve it. Like at best, I can just make it safe enough for you to like use these tools.

And hopefully I can articulate them enough for you. You're doing all the heavy lifting. You know, and and that's kind of the relationship we have with people. It's much more, you know, if you wanted to get technical, it's much more peer to peer.

Yeah. I, you know, I'm not I'm not I'm not an expert. Like in fact, like the books at a sixth grade rating level, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed. Like all I know how to do though is like I promise you I can listen to you and I cannot judge you and I cannot compare and I can't and I'm not going to minimize and and from there we can do tremendous stuff.

But I have to tell you a little bit about me. And that's what so many people are missing, right? Is that a little bit of self-disclosure and really quick. I want to turn it back over to you.

But last thing is like you said, if I'm unfinished with my dad's death, then when I tell you a little bit about me, I'm going to run for 30 minutes because I'm unfinished with my dad's death, right? So that's the other thing is if you haven't done the completion work, then a lot of the time when you self-disclose, yeah, your client is going to be like, and then they made it all about them and they talked forever about their thing. That's like, yeah, because they're incomplete, right? So as specialists, we teach each other, like, hey, you better go do that work so that you can do a little self-disclose.

And then you and then I like to tell people, I forget to tell you that it doesn't mean I'm unemotional. I've just it's I'm so empowered and clear and complete that I'm not in tears when I'm sharing this. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't emotional when I first did the work. So I don't want you to feel like you need to be stoic when you share yours.

That's and that's a great that's a great way to to set it up with clients. That makes sense because you're right. A lot of the time when I'm sharing stuff, I, you know, I'm complete with it. I try and be emotionally connected with it by telling them emotional words and emotionally the feelings in the moment I had them.

That's how I kind of try and connect with it. But you're right. Like someone's first go at the relationship graph for the completion letter. It's going to look a lot different than me explaining it, right?

So now that's a good point you bring up for sure. So if you're good with it, let's I love to stay on intangible losses again because I think it's such a key part of our work that so many other programs out there on grief, it's completely not it's totally unnoticed. It's not at all even an option for people that come, right? But like with your story, it's like, wow, these are some of the biggest like heartbreaks I had that I needed to work on, right?

To kind of be who you wanted to be. So in the last episode, you talked about something that was like fascinating to me and heartbreaking to me, which is you're you have a twin sister, right? And you guys had very different kind of experiences just based on who you guys were and and kind of your physicality and and all the different, you know, things that happen. And so one of your intangible losses that you talked about was was and again, I'm paraphrasing, but but I want you to get into it.

But was feeling like you didn't measure up, right? That you were less than those kind of things. Would you mind kind of going there with, you know, putting that together in a way, connecting that with grief, right? And then kind of what you did to work through that stuff.

Yeah. So, you know, this baseline also with this character in my life, which is this new stepmother that was, you know, emotionally abusive. And she never like said, you're unworthy, you're stupid. But she'd say like, if I made all aides, she's like, oh, well, you know, your school isn't that hard.

Or she would like dismiss my wins, definitely looking back some narcissistic, you know, personality traits there. But because I was needing a win, I started competing with Teresa. So, you know, if she made the volleyball team, I didn't make the team. She, you know, in high school, valedictorian.

And I was number three, right? So it was like, I was always just a couple steps behind. So like, and it's this, um, if it's dichotomy or it's like I'm in this position of being happy for her. And sad for me at the same time.

So like, if anyone's going to beat me in valedictorian, which by the way, I still identified as stupid and ugly and unworthy. Even though I was excelling someone in school and I, you know, played soccer, things, but my, how I identified internally was that I had to compensate for my ugliness, my unworthiness, my shame, this, you know, not feeling, um, whole or perfect, you know, whatever I was, I don't know how I'd identify that, um, not feeling supported or confident. I think a lot of teenager experience. But, but I would compensate for those feelings by working really hard.

So I would go to all the social events or I would, you know, I wanted to try to get number two at least, but I was number three, which is like a sucky position because there's valedictorian someone else in there, you know. But, um, so there was this, um, and then she got a scholarship to go to University of Florida. And I went to University of West Florida. And this like, a lot of that went away when I wasn't, I didn't have this other human that I was kind of competing with, but also socially doing all the engaging.

So she was very, very shy. Um, had a lot of social phobias. Um, and so she really struggled in college and then I was okay, doing okay in at University of West Florida. And then she was able to join the ROTC and was thriving there.

And she graduated and she was a lieutenant, uh, Lieutenant Colonel. She was a, um, first lieutenant in the Air Force. I guess second lieutenant, next lieutenant. Terese deployed in 2004.

And so, do you know, I don't know if you know this part of this story, but there's this, um, kind of a santangible loss of like even being separated. Like, does that make sense? Looks so, so we're going to two different schools. Um, so that, you know, see changed again, no one died.

But that pattern of me kind of being her little social person, but then also me needing her, like we, we had this like, Yin and Yang, like we kind of work together because we were so different. It worked together as a team. So being separated, um, was a loss, by what I've known to call it a loss at the time. Um, but when she was in the Air Force, she deployed, and this has been things in Baghdad.

We're very kinetic. A lot of, um, suicide bombers and whatnot. And she was about 10 feet away from a suicide bomber in the green zone in 2004 and was almost killed. So at the time, I had just graduated college.

I was working on for Kathy Ireland, who's a, was a sports illustrated model. And I was like doing marketing. Oh, I know Kathy Ireland. Yeah, she was an important part of my, uh, yeah, my young team in my teen years.

I was her assistant brand manager. I worked with the furniture was being manufactured in Alabama, that's close to Pensacola. And um, Terese was, I, we've got the phone call that she should survive. And they flew her to Texas where she was being treated for burn, burns all over her body.

So her like ear was ripped off. Kidneys last-cerated. The whole thing, but the thing that really affected her the most are these burns all over her body. And I quit my job and I lived in the Fisher House outside of the, the hospital.

The Brook Army Medical Center is a big army base. Were they mostly treatment? So she was a female who um, was Air Force. So they were like Air Force female.

Like we don't know what to do with. Oh, and they treated her medically. But this is back in 2004 where there wasn't a lot of resources. And I would go there every day and cold.

I wish, I wish I knew then what I know now. Because I didn't. I was in marketing. I was 24 years old.

Like so I, she was grieving her body. She was grieving her health. She was grieving her career. She was grieving what she thought would be a successful deployment.

She was grieving this, this protective bubble that 24 year old people have around themselves and we don't get her, right? Like that burst. But I didn't look at it from a grief lens. I was like, you're a hero.

You're lucky to be alive. All the thing, the silver lining statements that we say because we have to be positive and you can do this and she went into a dark deep depression. And so again, on my timeline, you see twin sister bag. Oh, your sister was killed.

No, she lived. But that's, I mean, that's a big emotional impact because it was like this loss of this perception of a safe world. Yep. And again, right?

Another loss on your lost history graph on your grief graph that most of society would be like, wait a second. That's not grief. She lived. Like that's where that would stop.

You're excited? Because you lived. Yeah. Yeah. 100%.

Wow. I didn't know that part of your story. Let me ask you this. In terms of let's go to grief recovery.

You've discovered grief recovery. You've discovered that this, this relationship with your sister, you've been grieving your whole life, right? And it is, it's created all of these different ways that you, your belief system about who you are and you know, things you're struggling with, you know, are directly related to this relationship with your sister. Can I ask you, well, first, let me ask you this.

I don't want to assume anything. Have you done the grief recovery method on the relationship with your sister? No. No, but like, I mean, reframe that.

I did about a year and a half ago on a napkin. Have you ever had that moment where you're like, oh, I need to do this now? And you grabbed the newspaper next to you and you just, so I hadn't done it. But when we were leaving San Diego to go to Rome, Italy, because my husband got orders to, yeah, Italy, we had an aging dog who was almost 15 years old, about 80 pounds and hip issues.

And we, the vet was like, the most humane thing is to re-home her. Like, do not put that dog on an underbelly of a plane going to Rome, right? And we're going to live in this apartment at six stories up. And I asked Teresa to take Fizz.

And she said no. And she said, just put her down because she's, it'll be the easiest thing. And the surge of pain, I felt, for that lack of reciprocity, when, you know, our relationship was, you know, I, I, you know, quit my job and I did these things. And, you know, but not that I did it for, for some type of payback, but just it hurt so much to be in a situation where I wanted my dog to be in a loving home.

But, you know, I was trying to navigate all of that to the point where like, I guess I might stay behind because I don't, it was such a hard thing to, I don't know if that makes sense, but it was like, no, it absolutely does. Oh, the surge of just let down. And it was that grab the napkin, take the pen, go on that whole, that journey of that relationship and do that work. Yep.

So I could, yeah, stop crying as I was walking around in the neighborhood and praying for a solution with the dog. So, yeah, that's your question. I did a method. Yeah, you did it.

The napkin, the grief recovery method on a napkin, which by the way is, is perfectly acceptable. And I have definitely done graphs and different work with this on very kind of oddball. Whatever, right, a bowl materials. Yeah.

No, that's, and, you know, and again, I want to get your thoughts on this. But when you say like, you ask your sister to take your dog who you deeply love, right? And, and she says no, right? And I think for most people who are dog lovers and love their dog in a position like you, there's going to feel like there's a punch in the gut.

No doubt about it. Like this, you know, our siblings said no to this thing. We really were hoping they'd say yes, too. So I think anyone is there.

But what I got from your story, when you, when you use a term surge and you used kind of like feeling I felt behind that was that's an indicator for us, right? For the listener. Oh, wow, we have a lot of incompleteness in this relationship. Right?

Because of course, like I just said, you're going to have feel let down. You're going to feel hurt if someone won't take your dog when that's really important for you to take their dog, especially when it's, you know, your family. But, you know, we know when there's a bunch of energy behind that and it's, it's even more than that, right? That's just an good indicator that you have incompleteness in a relationship.

I just want to point that out to you that I had that and I was like, bro, I need to do that. And like that was my muscle memory was to do the method when I. Right. And that's where I was going.

Yeah. That's where I'm going. It's like you're illustrating such a practical way to do this. I think a lot of the time the critique is when I talk and I learned, knows I can talk a lot.

But people are like, well, what do I do about it? What's the solution? Right? And like I promise you, like there's a lot of practical tools in grief recovery.

But really most of the time when I'm talking on social media, it's like we need to illustrate the problem for people. We need to educate people. You know, I cannot give you the tools in a one hour podcast. Like you need to come see us for four days or you need to go see Tara for seven weeks.

But like we're going to give you the tool. Like trust me, there's there's nothing more practical than that there's this method. I mean, I'm biased. But anyway, what I love is that you just gave a practical like practical example.

You have the wear awareness and the training to understand, whoa, like there's some incompleteness here because I just felt a whole lot more than just you're not going to take my dog. Right? Okay. Okay.

Now now I know I'm incomplete in this relationship meaning I have unresolved grief and loss and emotional pain in this relationship. So now my practical next move is I'm going to go grab this relationship, right? Like you went right into action with very practical ways to do it. And I didn't lift the air pit again.

I didn't have to paint anyone. I already had the tools. I already had the method. So I have to, you know, it is part of the tool box, which is really, really cool.

Yep. Yep. And I and I agree. Like and there, you know, again, there's a lot of things right in this world that like if someone comes to me and says I'm dealing with this, this or this, like I'm going to be like, Oh, you should go, you should go talk to Thera down the road.

Like she's qualified. Like I try and stay in my lane, right? But there are so many things that you can utilize grief recovery with where you don't need to see someone weekly. And you, and you can do it on a napkin over here and then share this part with a trusted friend and, and really the work quote unquote is all of two hours, you know?

I know that sounds crazy and you're like, Cole, what are you talking about? Like this, this is going to take me years and years to do. It's like, it'll take you years and years to work through a lot of your whole lost history graph, but it's not going to take you, it shouldn't take you years and years and years and years to work on your relationship with your dad or your mom. Like, you know, and again, people that are selling you on that idea, I would just be wary of that because I don't, again, like the last episode, we want to overcomplicate things.

We want to have specialized people for every single thing we do in this world. And it's like, again, I just, I think there's a lot of like not ideal things that are happening in society because of that, right? It's like, I don't want you, you know, yeah, go ahead. I was just, yeah, you're talking, you know, I did the method and this was magical.

So I did the method on my first dog who passed away at 15 and a half years trooper. And I say I was more, you know, connected to trooper. We had more of a bond, but I did the method and it still felt something still felt and incomplete. And I realized I needed to do the work on the vet.

And I didn't want to, because I was pissed at the vet because of their some negligence and, but I knew instead of writing a bad review on Google or, you know, being doing something like that, the thing I needed to do. And I was resistant was to do the method on the vet. And when I did that's when my shoulder settled and I said it is done. Because I did the work on the on my dog.

I was like, I did the work. It's done. I'm, why am I still, why am I still crying? Am I still angry?

And I was like, ah, okay. So there's this other relationship here that was somewhat brief and not that intense. You know, losses we tend to think, were you close? I haven't complete, you know, I've under solved grief with the vet.

Oh, were you close? Did you know each other? Like we try to, we think we have to justify it, but just a brief interaction with an, you know, an acquaintance can lead to a lot of under resolve grief and we still need to do the work in the method on those relationships. Wow.

Yeah. There's so much impact there. I don't know where to begin, but like you said, you know, we work with people regularly who are like way too regularly because this is a heavy where I'm going, but it's like, yeah, they snuck into my window and then I was raped. And then they left, you know, how, how do I graph that?

Wow. And society, it's like, were you close? It's like, what? No, they have massive grief.

They have massive trauma. They didn't need to be, like that's obviously an extreme of what you're talking about. But you're right. You don't need to be in that relationship.

Yeah. Right. And that's grief. And like, like you said, you have, in your example, the vet, you have a lot of, of incompleteness around someone you barely know.

But guess what? They were making decisions and, you know, sounds like the wrong decisions and you don't have this animal that you love because of it. There are so many people, same thing. I can't tell you how many times, you know, people are grieving the loss of someone, right?

And there's a bunch of incompleteness based on the hospital making a lot of horrific decisions. I have those clients, right? And they, it's like, I'm so grateful they're my clients because they intrinsically know that getting some reward or payout or that's not going to give them closure or completeness. And they know that where some people do, right?

People think, I'm going to leave a bad review for the vet or I'm going to try to get this doctor lose his license, right? And, and, and I think that's a fallacy and thinking, I go, once that happens, then I'll feel, you know, and it doesn't happen. Yep. Exactly.

And that's, and that's, you know, that's what I love about you're like, I did the work on my dog trooper, right? And I still didn't feel complete. Like, when you said that, I was just like, oh, I hope everyone hears that. Then that's the beauty of you going through the method is you know what completion feels like around a relationship.

And so that, that way you can do another piece of your loss history graph. You can do other work and be like, wow, this I don't, I don't feel complete. What is it? Oh, I'm, and again, I, I, I love that you went there because I want a lot of the audience to know a lot of the time we're grieving one loss, but there's incompleteness in other relationships around that loss.

All these collateral losses like my best friend didn't show up to the funeral. My, you know, my step, you know, my in-laws, they said something, like, there's always, it's like a, it's like a pebble that drops into a lake. And there's just all these concentric circles. Like, all of those represent the impact of this.

And so we tend to focus on the primary loss. But there's sometimes more unresolved grief with all of these other things that people we thought would show up for me there. You know, yeah, exactly. And, and like, going back to just your story.

And again, thank you for the courage, just and the honesty that you have Tara because I think it's going to help a lot of people. And so like, I really admire that about you. You're, you're honestly giving us a serious, important pieces of your life, you know, and it's very courageous. So I want to say that.

But like going back to your relationship with your sister, like, yeah, there, there's a lot, there was a lot of grief unresolved grief around that relationship. And then you also identified at times. And it was also the stepmom, right? It was my stepmom.

And like, I have to know how to do work on both of those relationships to kind of feel complete around whatever I'm working on. My dad was my first, my dad was my first graph. I was curious. Okay.

Yeah. If you think about it, it was his role. I don't want to say non-protecting parents. That sounds like a CPS phone call.

But like his insecurity in that relationship or his, how stuck he felt and how miserable the man was, that he was in a place where he didn't protect and stand up for his daughters. And it became more clear as I was going to the grief recovery method. When I was going to the training, I'm watching my husband with my daughter. And I remember being that age.

And I remember some of the things that were told to me when I was that age. Like, you know, I remember I went to hold my dad's hand or crawling his lap. And my stepmom said, she whispers, you look like a whore. You sitting your dad's lap.

And I, I didn't know what that meant. You know, I'm big. I'm big. I'm not knowing words.

That's why I'm big on words. All right. So I went to my sister and I said, trees, what's all the word? She's like, that's when girls and ladies shake their boobies at people.

So, you know, her definition of what that word meant. And so I remember not wanting to be that. I don't want to be that, that, a bad woman. And so, then that stopped.

You know, and, and so like these, these whispers, these things of your identity, that's like, okay, I'm gonna have to compensate for being a, you know, not being a good girl. I'm gonna have to like be friendly and silly. And all these things to compensate for this durveness, this, this shaming feeling inside. And to, to recognize my dad's absence was a huge loss.

And that was my first relationship was, was on him. He's still alive. Yeah, it's, he's still alive. He's a beautiful soul.

He's a wonderful person. And he's recently out of that relationship. So he's thriving. But I, and I think he, even if he, he saw this, he would have tears in his eyes.

And just them, again, I didn't directly go to him with, with this graph. He's never seen it because this work is for me. And I hope that he does this type of work for him and the pain of that relationship caused him and his own identity and how he responded to us. Yeah, yeah, that, that, that's so powerful.

And you know, what, what I really appreciate about the grief recovery method is a lot of people, you know, again, they, they focus on, on the intellectual aspects of like, well, I really have studied dad and I know his childhood and I know intellectually why maybe he, he made these decisions. And again, that's where most people stop, right? And then they, they wait and expect to feel better. And it's like, just because we think we haven't figured out why other people make decisions, right?

That is emotionally irrelevant to our recovery. Right? So like, tear, a little tear, what felt pain and confusion and fear and unprotection. Yep.

That just because you have, yep. That's a lineage of whatever. Like I still need to own those feelings that doesn't make this go away. Right?

And it's imperative that you that you all know is in look at those so we can get complete with them, right? So then we can, we can, we can do things differently or, or again, just have different beliefs about who we are, right? Because if we don't get complete, like, you know, again, I just doing this work, I just, and as a parent, I just, you know, I'm even more confused about the world than I ever was before. Like as a parent and you hear these things that people say to these little people and you're just like, again, if, if Tara doesn't get complete with that language about you're a whore because you went and just sat on Dad's lap, if we don't get complete with that, that is affecting our intimacy with, oh, you know, as adults.

Yeah. Oh, that absolutely has. You know, and it's like, it's so, it's so heartbreaking that more people, that's why you and I are passionate about what we do because, you know, when you do this work long enough, you hear all these stories and you're just like, oh, and, and so so much of what we do is we try and figure out the why or we try and understand the thought process about somebody else and we, you know, again, sometimes we spend years and sometimes thousands of dollars trying to get more intellectual details or facts about other people's decisions. We understand their diagnosis.

Why the events happen? Oh, they had, but they're diagnosis. So it's almost something that gives them, right, you don't get to own your painful part of the story just because they have a diagnosis. That's right.

Yeah. And that's exactly it. And, and, and the problem is, is like, that's where most people stop and they go, okay, I figured it out. And it's like, no, but all of that emotionally is still in you.

Yeah. Like, even on the comments on this video, watch, people are going to be like, no, it was very helpful for me to understand the diagnosis in that. And I'm like, like, I'll reply, that's great. But like, there is in our opinion, right, the bulk of the majority of the work that needs to be done is on how you felt the emotions that you're harboring that are stuck in you because of these events that happen, right?

And it's like, if you figure it out, maybe that's a bonus. A lot of the time we're never going to figure out situations or events or why things happen. We're never, you're never going to truly get in someone else's head and be like, how could you say that to me? How could you do that to me?

Right? And again, we're all about doing things that actually work for you, right? And it's like, and really what that means is the work comes from within you, the work, the responsibility of moving forward, the responsibility of getting complete with past events, like that, that's your responsibility, right? That's why I think it's kind of absurd that people are like, all right, I'm going to finally go to him and I'm going to forgive him or I'm going to finally go to them and tell them how I feel.

And it's like, good luck feeling a sense of completeness after that. Tell me how that goes. Well, I want to, what you're saying reminds me of a couple of my clients and a lot of people we do this were like, why would they do that? Why would they do that?

And they get kind of on this loop of why this person that is heinous, unfathomable act, right? And they're like, why would they do this? And I said, okay, I'm with you. I'm joining you on that question.

Like, I'm with you. However, is that question helpful? Is asking that question helpful knowing we're not going to get an answer? Even if we go to a medium or whatever, let's shot whatever, like, even if we do all the these things to try to get this answer, do we think we'll get the answer?

So we have to ask ourselves is asking this helpful? No, it's bringing me being on this loop is bringing me a lot of pain. So it's almost like we have to reframe like, you know, I may never know why they did this. And it's very painful.

And I'm hurting. But I think when we keep asking that question, we move from pain to suffering. We can manage suffering. Pain, we can't avoid.

Pain will happen in our lives. But we could do some things that add to our suffering. And we could do some things that minimize our suffering. Yep.

Love it. Love it. I cannot believe it, but we're at the hour mark. This is crazy.

This one felt like 20 minutes. Exactly. Yeah. No, I just I want to thank you.

It's absolutely an honor talking to you. Honestly, the whole certification program, like you're the type of person why we created it, right? You've taken this and got certified years and years ago. You've helped countless amounts of people truly, right?

And again, I just want to thank you on behalf of our organization for what you do. I'm grateful for your daughter that she gets a mom like you. I'm grateful for your husband that that he gets a wife like you. And part of that is you, you know, applying these, this method, right?

And and and anyway, so just keep doing what you're doing. Where can people find you if they want to work with you? So I would say probably the Greek Recovery Institute, the web the the website. There's my profile on there.

And that actually I can take insurance through anyone who lives in Virginia and California because as a licensed clinical social worker, I'm panelled with a couple of insurances, which is kind of cool that I can provide this method and work with some insurances. So not all of them, but that website is where people can go. And then also I do have a children's book called Hurt and it's helping or it's equipping children for laws and it's really how to manage that language around laws for little little types around four years old, five years old. But I think I'm proud of that work and that exists on Amazon.

So on Amazon. Okay, great. So we'll we'll try and link that too on Amazon. And you know, again, thank you for being here.

I look forward to the next time we get to have a conversation. Okay, and you have a great rest of your day. And for everybody listening, thank you for for tuning in. And please like, subscribe and really the most important thing on the podcast platform is to leave reviews about the podcast.

That's how we're going to get found by other people. That's how we're going to kind of tell this story and allow the world to see another tool that's highly a highly effective in a world with a lot of distractions in a world with a lot of not so helpful tools. We get to be one of those things that can truly transform people's lives, right? And if you want to be a part of that, if you want to help promote this stuff, if grief recovery has touched your life, like, please, please, please be an ambassador of this stuff and spread it, spread this message, right?

I can't I can't ask you enough to do that. I'm not above begging you to do that just because again, people like Terran, I professionally, we get to watch this this miracle unfold for people over and over and over and over and over again. And it's it's incredible. So again, thank you for tuning in and I hope you have a great day.

And Tara, one last time, thank you and have a great rest of your day. Thank you, Paul.