Understanding Emotional vs. Intellectual Communication // Grief Recovery for First Responders with Rochelle Jones

I'm pretty sure so far every guest we've had on this podcast is one of those people. Rochelle is just another person that does that. That's why I wanted Rochelle on. There's a lot of places we can go in this conversation.

I don't know where we will go, but I just know that Rochelle lives and breathes the grief recovery method. She helps a lot of people with this method and she also has applied it in her own life, helping her own heart. Without any further ado, Rochelle, thank you so much for being on. The podcast.

Oh my gosh, Cole. I feel really privileged and honored to be here with you. Thank you for inviting me. Absolutely.

So let's start from the beginning. I always think that's a fun place to kind of cover. I guess fun is the wrong word. So we're talking about grief.

But an interesting place to start is I know that you trained with one of our trainers and a key kind of person in our organization, right? Our VP Ed Owens. I know you trained with him in Seattle years ago. And you also brought your husband who also got certified in train at the same time, which is always as a trainer.

It's always an interesting. We have to juggle. But again, we're all four couples come in to get certified together. So that's possible.

There's some new answers on how we have to do that. But again, we don't have time to get into that. But let me ask you this, Rachelle, right? Can you tell me a little bit about what led you to get certified in the grief recovery method?

And also, like what led you to have your husband come along? Or maybe he kind of drove the train on getting certified? I don't know. But let's just start there, right?

What was first brought you to this work? Yeah, that's a good question. I'm going to back up just a little bit from there. Sure.

Back in the day of my husband and I, we married at 19. We went into the military. In the military, I was a surgical ICU nurse. And part of my duties was to be part of the suicide awareness team.

And educating and helping people identify signs of suicide, what they should say, what they should do, a plan of action for them. And then after 9-11 and many years, after that, actually, we got out of the military. Started a different life as parents. And years later, I received a phone call that my father had died by suicide.

My biological father had died by suicide. And I realized, for one, I was knocked down. I was laid out flat in my spirit. But I'm a one who's pretty good at putting on my face and just going through the motions and still meeting all the expectations that I'm supposed to meet.

So once the kids were at school and my husband was at work, I would sit and just grieve, heavily, and cry, maybe stare into space. What I realized, for me in my belief system, I was praying. I was reading my Bible. But what I realized is that my heartache wasn't going anywhere.

And I knew I couldn't live in this foggy, fuzzies state for very long. So I remembered that I had heard a talk and picked up a pamphlet about two years before. It happened to be for this grief recovery method. I held onto it thinking, oh, that seems to need a like to learn that one day.

So it was actually from my own grief that I called the number and was looking for help. And I knew in the phone call for help, I heard almost audibly, oh, you're going to teach this one day. There was something that said, but I will never know what it was that seemed like this is it. This is good.

And so I went through a week, the eight week group by myself, but I went through that first for myself and my husband was actually there to learn how to support me. He decided to be in the class as well to learn how to support me through this loss. We had other losses. We didn't know how to navigate Mary at 19.

We came into the marriage with no tools and skills. So he wanted to know how to support me and we went through that. It was hard, difficult, and amazing. And then I loved it so much that I started.

I knew I wanted to train. So my, my, or become certified and my specialist, my personal specialist, she would speak with me a little differently because she knew I wanted to pursue this when it was my turn. And she told me I had to do all the all the grief work I could find first. So I did.

I spent a year. I would go back every week with maybe two or three completions that's probably confusing language ready to go. And I did that for a year, waiting for my husband to get on board. You know, he's sort of nervous.

What are you talking about? You're not going to be with the family. You're this day at home. The parent.

What are you going to, what are we going to do? You know, the family's going to go into chaos and then we went to a movie. Whatever that movie was, there was something in it. And they walked out and said, oh, I see why you want to do this.

You have to do it. It makes sense. And I wasted no time. The next day I scheduled it, you know, my first certification.

And I went through with Jocelyn was my first time training. 20 people in the class. I had been using grief recovery for myself for a year. Solidly. Reading the book on repeat.

I'd ordered the CDs. It was the only thing that I listened to besides, you know, Bible things or preacher, you know, things, A. Assermons. And did the helping children with loss in the middle of that with my own son?

I was just all in right away. And he, when I went to training the next year, it was my goal to train with every trainer. So the next year was how I met. And that was my second training where my husband came along.

Our marriage was tough, you know. 19, no skills, a bunch of unresolved emotion from our entire life, broken families. So we came in with our own huge amounts of unresolved emotion that we usually weaponized against one another. And so we were still in trouble at that time. And he said, I want to go to training with you.

And that's how we ended up in Seattle for my second training. That might have been actually my third year because the second year, I think, was when the advance came out. That was my second training. And then I went to the one in Seattle as the third.

And that's how we got going. And he's actually trained a second time since then. Yeah, no, that. And before the call, we kind of talked about things we could cover.

And so I, first of all, again, I am so grateful for me. And I've said this before on the podcast, I am so grateful that both my wife and I have been through this method and done the work on past relationships, on past, on parents, on past romantic relationships. Like to clear as much of that energy as you can, to fully be present for today with your spouse or your partner, is such a gift, right? And I frankly, I don't know how couples do it without these tools, right?

Hopefully they have some other tools that are working for them. But as we know, unfortunately, with the divorce rate that we have in this country, unfortunately, we know that most of them can't do it in the long run, right? And again, we know that that's because most of us have a mountain of unresolved grief. Let me say that again.

Most of us have a mountain of unresolved grief that we don't even know is grief, that society doesn't tell us is grief. And with the best intentions and with the best hearts, we go into these relationships trying to make them work. This is not an attack on people or individuals. It's really an attack on the lack of knowledge we have in society.

And for whatever reason, no one cares to point out that unresolved grief from your past is a huge problem in relationships, right? And a day to day. So anyway, I love that both you and your husband have been through this work numerous times. I love the fact that you guys came in through the community program, which is amazing, and then got certified.

I think that's a great route for many people to go. And then I think we've touched on this, and maybe we haven't, but your husband is also in law enforcement. And I just worked with a group of law enforcement officers in a certification a couple of weeks back. And as you know, first hand, those families have a lot of challenges, right?

There's a lot of pressure put on families of people who are in law enforcement. And also, as you know, as well with your husband and the military. I mean, you guys are, you know, there's a lot of unresolved stuff just from your service to this country and to the community. And thank you for all you guys do, first of all.

And second of all, I just love that he had the courage to show up because I know a lot of law enforcement officers, right? They're dealing with a lot of stuff, right? And we tend to, I've seen, we tend to cover a lot of it with either humor or sarcasm, right? That kind of gala's humor.

And then unfortunately, you know, a lot of us deal with it through alcohol and other kind of distractions and stuff like that. So can you talk a little bit about just again, being kind of a family where there's first responders in there. How specifically has it helped you guys as a couple? How has a grief for Carvey Method like practically helped you guys?

It's almost as though there are pockets and they're all important. And I see how they touch and connect. The method for one thing for our relationship, I do believe the unresolved emotion we brought into the relationship was going to cut our time short, shorter than maybe it would have been otherwise. You know, broken families, I'd been sexually abused for a couple of years.

I never felt safe. I never, you know, I always sort of waiting for for the shoot to drop. And so I had to work through all I'd moved 16 times by the time I was 14. So what I realized recently is that moving all the time, I never really had to jump in and address my mistakes or address should have what it could have because I was always gone.

And there wasn't really the opportunity and there was no texting, you know, back in the day. The quick text, it was a full phone call which I was not good at. I wasn't, it wasn't really something I did. So I learned that I, I realized I learned to conflict avoid big time and that wasn't going to work in our home.

A marriage doesn't survive well with that. So I really had to dig on a lot of the things I brought into the relationship and set those down. They, they had such intensity on me, but I didn't know I went forward kind. I thought that if you were just kind, you know, treat others the way you want to be treated, but that's not actually true.

It doesn't always come back at you the way that you sent it out or the way at least you thought you were sending it out, right? So when we would struggle, it didn't make sense to me. I thought, but I'm nice. And it should be better.

I actually needed different tools. I needed to see where my hotspots were. I'm see where I was maybe too reactive or too wound tight or I just needed to set a lot of my own energy down that I had brought into the relationship, my unresolved grief. And then I started to respond to him differently where I was reacting a lot.

The drinking was a part of our family once we got into the law enforcement side of things. And I became very reactive. And I remember telling myself, oh, well, good for you. You, you've got a voice.

You never spoke up for yourself. Now you have a voice. Good for you, Michelle. Keep it up.

And I got a louder and louder. And that wasn't working. And we separated for five months as a single mom with two kids. That didn't work.

So eventually we found our ways back together. And I'm sorry, Michelle. Can we can we stop there for one second? So so what I heard you say and tell me if this is accurate, you got a piece of advice from someone or somewhere that said you just you need to have a voice.

And you equated that to just essentially taking all this unresolved energy. And now when you have a voice, it's it's maybe an overreaction. Oh, for sure. As a huge overreaction.

And it was never just about the thing. It was about the loss of safety. I felt with the thing. But it was really about a loss of safety and trust that I had been carrying from a lifetime of experiences.

So the thing today was the reaction was about everything that ever felt similar on the inside. I had to deal with that. I mean, that's not a healthy way to be just so reactionary all the time, reactive. I had to work on that a lot.

And that helped me meet today differently. It helped me go forward with curiosity. Wonder it helped me always always go back and find where the the emotion or the grief was for me. And it's usually because I think of an event or a moment should go one way and it doesn't.

And it hurts me. And so then I have to go back and discover where where does that come from? And does it actually have to be the way I thought it would be? So it's me constantly reevaluating my ideas of right all the time.

And then when I do the grief work, it helps me settle down and be willing to accept another idea of right, which may be part of my husband's and it may be we can arrive at a new idea of right together. But if I'm so willing or just fiercely clinging to what I thought it should be and you now need to adjust to the way I thought it should be, we're not going to get very far. So dealing with all of the old stuff was so helpful to help me really step into today. And then of course I always have new parts of today being in a law enforcement family.

He grew into, he didn't start off that way. But he grew into, I need to protect her. That's probably too intense for her. That's probably too emotional for her.

That's probably too something. Oftentimes it might be too much for him and so having to relive it might be too much. But what would always happen is a distance. There was an energy shift that would happen in the home and there would be a distance.

There would be no connection, no words, no something and no amount of me noticing that and talking about it would bring it out or make it better. So I took the route of grief recovery usually to help me settle down and become an even better and more safe listener so that when he would bring out little pieces, I could, I could meet him with the little pieces he was willing to bring out and not poke and dig for more. We'll tell me the whole thing but what happened. But you know that sort of inquisitive, it's aggressive.

It's safety for me. And it feels like you're being interrogated, right? And whenever you kind of realize, oh, there's spotlights on me, it's like you kind of want to shut down, right? Definitely.

I definitely do it myself. So it helped me meet these moments of law enforcement life, which is going on about 20 years. It seems like we've lived so many lives. How do you live these many lives?

But so it's helped me show up for him differently. And when he feels safer in our home, then he's willing to address his own hard spots, his own hot spots. And then I can also be responsible for my own fears because he is law enforcement. He's hated this for getting dressed in the morning.

He's hated for getting dressed and going outside. His life is in danger. Yes, or all of our lives are in danger. This is at a different level of danger just because he got dressed.

And just because he went outside, just because he thought, I need to support my family and keep a roof over their head and food on the table. That makes him a threatening person and a target. So I have to deal with my fears all the time. Otherwise, I'm jumpy and edgy.

It's woven into our family cold. There's no way to avoid grief recovery method helps me be so aware of me. And that's the biggest thing. And then it helps me show up better for them where they are.

That's really a big thing. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I kind of knew part of our conversation as the least was going to go here because it hurts my heart to know how many families.

And I know there's a distinction. Maybe we can get into that. But whether you have military families or law enforcement families or first responder firefighter families. I know how many families are struggling truly.

The wife, the husband, the kids. And they literally have almost no tools. And it just that hurts my heart. And so that's why we continually cover this topic when we can on this podcast because there are other tools.

I'm not saying ours are the only ones, but they are effective. They're effective. So let me ask you this. In terms of like you really got my attention when you said he started kind of like coming home and there was just this distance between us, right?

I'm imagining that as and again, I'm not law enforcement, but I'm imagining that is because he is seeing stuff and experiencing stuff on the job and having the kind of harden his heart to the realities of what he's dealing with day in and day out. A is number one is that accurate. And number two, if it is accurate, how long into the job did you see the shift in him? If you can remember.

That is a good question. I would say, well, yes, he first the first part of that. He did have to harden his heart. I mean, that's survival as a nurse as well, especially in the ICU.

I knew I never wanted to go ER, but in the ICU, same, you got to harden your heart to certain things because you need to function. I remember when I was young, and they put me in the ICU, there were there's a mixture of military and non-military. And one of my favorite nurses and she was hard and mean, but I knew I wanted to learn from her. You know, it's something about me.

It's not afraid of the hard part always. And she, we were the code team for the hospital. And we were the, we're not just the code team for our floor, but the code team for the hospital. So if there's a code blue, somebody's flat lining, they're dying.

We grab our cart and we travel through the hospital to run that code. And I remember when I was new, we're trained like crazy. And I ran to the cart and I'm running to the code and she ripped me up. Absolutely not.

You don't do that. You slow down when you're running, you're not thinking, you're quick and you're not, you're not paying attention to what you need to do when you get there. You're frantic and you're in a panic and your mind isn't working well that way. And so that helped me sort of like soft, I'm a faith, I please softball my whole life.

I know your family's baseball, right? And you know what happens when we're, we're going for the ball. We're leaning in. We're too fast.

We're going to pull it left. It's going to be foul every time, which is a problem I always had. I learned. Or I'm going to hit a chopper to the shortstop into a double play.

Yeah, that's exactly exactly. But we dig a little bit. Yeah, pull back a little bit, right? Yeah, I got to, I got to hit off my back leg.

I can't hit off my front foot. Exactly. So what that was, that's how I understood it is to settle down and hang back. And I think for him, I can't speak entirely for him.

I can't be inside of him. But the way I understand it from my perspective and what I've heard is, is that he has to turn his heart off a little bit. He can't be fully heart engaged. Grief for cover, he's actually quite conflicting for him.

Because at home, he's trained to see the heart and understand and respond to the heart. But then he can't do that, even though they're still humans. He's got to see the, the need of the moment. And it's not tender emotion.

Sometimes it's danger. Sometimes it's scary. Sometimes it's protecting this person or that. And he's on the freeways.

I don't know if you've ever played on a freeway, but it's really not something we do because it's scary and dangerous. So he does have to close off a part of his heart because that's survival. He's not thinking as well if he's living here when the moment calls for his head up here. He's got to think about what to do.

He's got to be watching every detail. So he does have to close off part of his heart as survival, but he's still human at the end of it. So it does create a conflict within him. Just humans in general, just first responders in general, of I had to close my heart for the day and when am I supposed to open it?

Because when I came home, there was chaos happening. This child was going through that. That child was going through that. There was this and there was that.

And then oh my gosh, we've got it. We've got to go to bed because I've got to get up super early and do the whole thing again the next day. And so there wasn't a time for me to open my heart and take some of this stuff out. And then it can build up.

So I guess that's my job as this helper to notice when the buildups are happening. And I'm pretty good at creating pauses in our life where we can catch in. We camp all the time. We camp about 15 times a year, honestly.

So he can have a moment to take some of that stuff out and bring some of the unresolved emotion out because to live to live with his heart guarded. So nothing in penetrate that's going to take away from his concentration and his safety and his ability to get home. Well, you can't live that way. I mean, you can, but it's hard to live in relationship with a heart closed and not connecting.

And me being me fully heart open all the time ready to go. I mean, we really can butt heads. That's my job as his helper to recognize when this is building up and we've got to go camping. Get away, phones are off, electronics are off and we're just outside and we take a lot of walks.

Which is a little bit, I don't know if you're familiar with EMDR. I had to do that years ago before I knew the method for my abuse stuff. But that's how that was discovered. It was the EMDR.

She would take walks and she would recognize that she felt a little different. She felt a little better. So we do a lot of walks, which will get the process started. And then I can, you know, be a heart with ears for him and let him take out some of the stuff that he's been guarding.

And I'm shocked at how much can build up. But anyway, so it helps me recognize. It helps me not be defensive. It helps me to be soft.

It helps me to listen. And that's how it kind of works for our family that I can be his helper. I can't reach him and pull this stuff out. But I can create pockets of time where he can sort of unload some of that first responder stuff that builds up.

And then also it can build up in me. I can be scared knowing that dang it, that is what he's facing. See, I knew that was going on at work. And then I can, you know, get my heart with ears and deal with my buildups that happen as a result of what he is going through.

So yeah, you can use it all all over the place. It helps us cope, live, survive, thrive. Thank you for that. I am grateful that you that you have those tools.

Now, let me ask you this. I know that we have a lot of people who are in a relationship and they out of the couple are the only one that has done the grief recovery method. And they have found for themselves. It has been helpful and they apply it.

And it is allowed them to have a happy and joyous life, even though life is painful and not always goes according to plan and all that good stuff. But really, they're the only one in the relationship with these tools. Right? So let me ask you this.

How beneficial do you think it was? And I know he's not here, so we can't speak for him exactly. But how beneficial do you think it has been for him to have been through the method? For him to have been exposed and learn how to emotionally communicate versus if you were just trying to be a part of this marriage with him having not been read in at all with the grief recovery method.

Yeah, a couple things. So my husband has certified twice. And he's married to me who lives and brings this. This is just it's like a, you know, drinking water.

It's just who I am. So yes, he's been certified twice, but it's not infused into his soul the same way. So there were a couple of years where it was just me. And I guess now I like he would he did go through the method at least on a personal level.

But there have been moments in our life cold because I took it differently than he did. And there have been moments in our life. There are moments in our life less so now where it did feel as though I was the only one who was aware of the method and had gone through it. Patterns and habits that we've built over years to help us survive, they're easy to come right back into place when when there's chaos and hardship and new grief moments.

So my go to is grief recovery method and then my spiritual belief system. And his is his patterns and methods for a lot of our our marriage in this grief recovery window. So what I could say is for me in my perspective it was it was difficult and it would send me back to the drawing board. You know, we have that ps tool.

It would send me back to the drawing board constantly to reevaluate my ideas of rightness so that we could go forward with a sense of we and I would be willing to hear him out. I think for him as well because eventually he does, if whether I'm pounding on the door of his heart or something, not physically obviously, but when I'm pounding on the doors of his heart, would you please do something about this? I could see it. Now he is at least more willing to, you know, take a walk along walk with the dogs and run through some things and let that stuff surface.

Whereas before he absolutely would refuse to let it surface that he would have died. He couldn't handle that. That's too intense. So I think when there's just one person, they're the only one who's gone through the method.

It's still so helpful and effective because we I had a lot of build-ups from my own fears of what I would see that he's going through. What I could imagine or what I would see from the news or all the things and I have to deal with my own fears all the time. They can run like crazy and then I'm acting out. I have a sharp attitude.

I have I'm kind of short. I'm sort of withdrawn myself. There's a whole lot of emotion in it builds up like wildfire within me. So I am pretty certain that one person can still make a huge difference in their family by dealing with their own build-ups of emotion.

The hot spots can come pretty frequently and then also our own sense of rightness. That's usually where I have to work. So if there's only one person who's using the grief recovery method in the marriage on either side, you can deal with your own ideas of rightness all the time and develop new ideas and be willing to hear someone else's ideas or create ideas together of what rightness should look like as you go forward for for your relationship. My ideas of rightness are coming from you know living with my parents or what I saw in a movie or you know a friend's relationship.

So my ideas of rightness they're about me and being willing to untie me and see if there's a new idea that can be just as effective but different. When one person is doing grief recovery method, I still think it's it could be so helpful for a marriage because we don't realize that it's often about our ideas of rightness that's really hurting us. The reason I wanted to kind of go down this rabbit hole a little bit is because so again let me give you an example. So this is a couple of weeks ago.

I'm doing a zoom certification and there are 18 people there and 15 of them are literally on the call the whole four days wearing a badge right. Some of them in bulletproof vest, some of them doing the entire training in squad cars because that's where they feel safe and private right. Other ones in the in the precinct trying to like tell people to get away and be indistracted but we did the best we could with what we had right and we had we had incredible incredible men and women doing this work and look I know that these 15 men and women who again are dealing with very tricky difficult stuff on a daily basis. They're probably not going to be the most where their emotions on their sleeve grief recovery specialists we have ever had right.

I've worked with you know 18 people in fatigues literally on military bases and hangers right but but grief recovery can be effective at because right at the end of the day all of those guys that think this worked and retained them and we're kind of told by their commanding officer you hey you're going to be at this training right by day two and three they're doing incredible work yeah on letting go of the stuff that dad put into them you know or they're part of this childhood that they wish could have been different right and and they're doing amazing work and they're communicating stuff they would have not really probably had an opportunity to communicate and they're doing it to people they trust their peers right and it's just a beautiful thing and so you know I guess uh an edin of I have talked about this right it kind of seems like in a lot of these first responder jobs that are that are you know male dominated it's usually the wife that is willing to go do grief recovery work right and then we hope she comes back and says hey you know your your hands not going to fall off if you do this work like this is okay it's not all uh shocker us and yoga instructive stuff right it is accessible to again men women it's acceptable to first responders it's accessible to the you know air force uh jet mechanic as well as the navy seal front line you know combat guy it is accessible to everyone and and I guess really what I was just trying to navigate or learn more about is yes can it be done with one person in the relationship having these tools like it can be done right but but did you see any changes in him after doing you know a couple of goes of grief recovery um right was there any kind of like for like I'll speak for myself before I got to grief recovery uh I again I there was no way you would ever see me cry under any circumstances right and I grew up in the grief recovery household where my dad was teaching tears should be as normal as is laughter I mean I grew up with that yeah but I still had enough input from society that says you're not a man if you cry right well through grief recovery not and not the first go at grief recovery but through several goes of grief recovery I will tell you that everybody in my family has seen tears come from my eyes and I'm really proud of that and I'm glad and I think they they benefit from that now that is not to say that I cry and get into the fetal position on a weekly basis right I'm good for like one or two cries a year maybe and that's usually around like a loss that I've had personally or if you if you've shown me a movie where there's like a special needs person in it and sports if you put that combo together you know then tears are coming to those are the those are the times I'm crying right that does not mean that I didn't benefit from grief recovery that doesn't mean that I don't know how to process a motion I just don't do it through tears you know I said this in a training a couple of weeks back do not equate success with grief recovery on the amount you can get people to cry you know I I have seen people who are way way unfinished with grief right but they can cry on on on cue you know and it looks really good that does not mean what we have emotionally communicated and complete to what we need to communicate right and so my whole thing is how do we get both the men and the women participating in grief recovery how do we get not only the wives of the police officers or the husbands of the police officers I don't really care but how do we get the other the the person that's that that again like you said that is dealing with society at its worst a lot of every week which is probably hard to hard to deal with like you know I don't know I don't think humans are designed to see what we're putting what first responders see on a day I mean I have a friend who's a paramedic in Santa Monica and this is years he didn't trust me at first with this stuff right when I first met him is just a fellow kind of like husband of a our wives our wives are friends and but it took him years to like really trust me you know there was a of him and me saying stuff about grief recovery where now he'll call me sometimes and just I know he's he's wanting to a process something he just saw and the stuff he tells me is absolutely heartbreaking that he has to see weekly you know and again I can't imagine what that's like for somebody sorry I'm kind of going ranting right now but but I guess what my point is as has and and again if the answer is no that's cool to I'm not fishing here right the answer is no that's okay but have you seen any changes in him with grief recovery after getting those skills that you think were beneficial to him specifically as a first responder yes well the first 10 years we didn't have grief recovery of our law enforcement life it was okay it was the second 10 got you okay that's helpful I think in terms of the timeline yeah I think that that helps so he has a childhood and then our military time and then the first half of his law enforcement time where you know childhood was children are seen and not heard not invited to talk or anything like that from the way it's been described to me and then the military is much the same there is a you know a grand in barit you know if you have a true ailment they'll throw some motor in at you and then you're you're a wimp you're a wini for your loser for going into the clinic you're not allowed to talk about the things because then you're the weak one you're the one holding back the mission oh you can't deploy and so there there's shame and things that go on with that so then he went into law enforcement and it's very much the same so there's the attitude there's this like you got to be brave even my female friends who are in law enforcement who who we've built relationship with you can't say ow really there's not time for it you got to get hurry up and get to the next call and you do that for however long are you on eight hour or ten hour twelve hour shifts you know there isn't time for it you can't lose your stuff you can't let the emotions flow out while you're on shift because now you're putting yourself your law enforcement brothers and sisters and the the innocent bystanders at or bystanders at risk because your emotions get in the way of you thinking really sharp and tight to handle any safety situation so that is really deeply embedded in where the grief recovery method has been helpful only in the last ten years but we're talking about undoing 30 years of already built in information of don't talk about it just keep going bury it in so the last ten years what I've noticed and it wasn't immediate or there's like pockets and then it it's lost and then it comes back and then it's lost well yeah and that's and that's and that's what I'm sorry and that's what I'm getting at because I remember the first time I did a completion letter three days later I'm at home and Ashley's in the other room and Ashley has never seen me cry or anything and I'm reading a book and I and I get emotional and I start having a tear and she's in the bed next to me and I'm like oh shit right that was my gut reaction like I can't have my my my woman see me crying so I get up and I I casually go into the living room I close the bedroom door and I go into the living room because it feels good I want I want to have this emotion I'm working on it I keep reading and and tears come out and you know she couldn't help herself because she's smart and she saw what was going on so she cracked the door and she's like she and she opened the door and I'm on the couch reading and I have some tears and she's like is everything okay and again my gut instinct well I wanted to cover at all costs but I'm trying to create a new behavior yeah I just I I'm tutively new holding everything in for you the for the entirety of your life is probably not a good plan right I knew that so I wanted to kind of change anyway I and I but instead of hiding it I told her the truth I said oh yeah there's just there's a really sad part in this book and I just kind of got emotional about it and she goes okay I love you now again she what she didn't do and what I heard you say earlier on the podcast is you just she just did like she's smart right she did like a little thing and then she goes I love you let me know if you need anything and she closed the door and went back in she didn't rush over and put a flashlight on me and say honey let's talk about your feelings now right none of that stuff would have been received well she played she played it perfectly right was like okay I love you boom and she's out and then I could still you know and so that's what I'm saying right is like I didn't do grief recovery and then turn into this like emotion on my sleeves person but there are bits and pieces that I can remember that I'm so glad that I had those new tools so that's kind of as getting at Rochelle right like I know that your husband is not Rochelle Jones grief recovery method especially how you roll right but have you seen bits and pieces of that from him after this method where you're like oh man that's grief recovery he would have not been capable of that without grief recovery yes that's exactly that's exactly what I have noticed but that it comes and goes so it's building building scene but where he is willing to okay let me take a walk and actually see what is going on inside of here and then he'll say oh I notice that this happened and this is really bothering me or this happens and this reminds me of this crash I took you know with kids this age in it you know that's really just it's heavy on me right now so it's a willingness to step away from the intensity of the home because there's kids and always something it's a willingness to say okay actually let me go let me go chew on it and then go out and have some moment to try to connect with what's going on and then being willing to say it out loud of okay I did find something and and I see how it's reflecting and you know either take ownership or just let me in a little bit that's been the change is his willingness to step away instead of saying no no I'm fine it's fine I'm everything's good no there's nothing there it's his willingness to hear and then it's his willingness to step away and investigate and then when he investigates his willingness to stay out loud yeah I did find something thanks for noticing versus just going on so it's going to come out differently with everyone's yes sometimes he does have tears though I think before the method he kind of did every once in a while too he's a tenderhearted person not that it not you know but so that's not necessarily new it's more his willingness to get in and just be still for a minute and see okay actually is there something going on instead of me just saying no I'm fine everything's good that's probably the biggest thing that he has changed with the method and the tools thank you and thank you again for being willing to let us into your guys lives a little bit you know the goal again is just for people listening to be like oh well maybe this can help my marriage maybe this can help if if if if we look into this work right um the other thing or shall if if if you're willing again just on the family front because I just think it's so important right um and I want to learn more too I just I'm a student I want to learn more from you as well I have four kids we have a lot going on in terms of family stuff on our side so I know your kids are older than mine so you're further down the road as a parent and I am what have been the kind of grief recovery tools that have helped you as a mom just navigating you know kids turning into young adults that kind of stuff what what's been helpful there oh that's can I say also good job Ashley for recognizing that moment when you're reading and and addressing it but also giving you space to have your moment and have a motion flow so good job Ashley also um I find that having grief recovery method in my back pocket was so helpful when I learned it my kids were three and three and eight or something you know and I recognized oh gosh I've already done things that I wish I wouldn't have um that I'd learned weren't helpful it was very different then when and then this shift happened into teenage or hood so my son is 19 daughter it will be 16 soon 15 currently and what I know she was always he he would just sort of absorb everything and he was in his own way a little specialist to every adult everyone he was around he was he absorbed a lot of people's energy because he didn't know what to do after that and uh but he would watch me and do that and that was amazing to watch and then I saw in ninth grade all the demands shifted we homeschooled when he was young he did eventually go to school so homeschool I mean I'm high school ninth grade it wasn't just nice and easy anymore and he couldn't be the specialist he I saw him get burdened I saw him say because he knows I deal with absolute confidentiality for people and so he would say well mom what about this why can't tell you what's going on because and so I saw him get burdened weighed down with emotion that he didn't know what to do with and that he couldn't guide and help people through a sought and then COVID happened so it helped me with him specifically to help him guide him but listen I there's a shift that happens where you can't tell them what to do they're not five they're not eight you gotta just listen and be there with them and maybe maybe kind of guide them if they're willing to hear it but but I couldn't be forceful and I knew that because of my practice so I could be more on the back end and listen and hey you know that sounds really tough and hear him versus tell him well you know what you got to do you know what you should be doing because that would push him away and he's already by nature when kids get into their their teen ages they're already kind of pulling away and I didn't want to speed that up and we were going through really difficult times around that time and I noticed that with him with my daughter is a little different she's pretty independent and so fifth grade fourth grade she'd have a trouble at school and I would hear her and listen and I'd say instead of saying well you know what you need to do you know I would ask her okay so what are you gonna do do you want some ideas no I got it okay and I would let her I had to be willing to let her do what she thought let her connect with her own intuition and her own ideas of how she thinks you know things can go and let her see how if there was something big and something dangerous obviously I was in there but with the friend troubles and the this you know or the teacher you know told me I did her my homework and when I did you know okay what do you want to do so we can have more conversations and let her develop her own sense of how to navigate situations because there's one day Cole I could die at any second or you know one day I'm going to and I don't know when that's going to be and I want to make sure that she has been trained to navigate situations on her own versus why I'm waiting for my mom to tell me and now she's not here and what am I gonna do because she's like she can't tell me what I'm supposed to do so I wanted both of my kids to to do what they thought was right ask them if they want ideas and let them try their own way and if their ideas didn't work how about now that that sounds really tough that's a bummer I could receive their heartache and then stand them back up are you looking for ideas could I be helpful here and yeah let them have freedom I could deal with my own fears and letting them go forward and that's been huge and now that my my daughter's almost 16 she's actually coming to me him on what do you think I should do here well what's your gut say I just still don't jump right in let me tell you everything I know because that's not helpful I'm not helping her develop by meeting all my needs to make it right and do what I think should be done I need to give her freedom to develop I need to give him freedom to develop so in my home it has been a whole lot with my kids of me letting them have a life as well and grow not just me demanding that it goes my way and I've got all the ideas and I've more trading and stuff to this so just listen that's not helpful it doesn't let them have room to be a human too yeah that's that's great I love that and thank you because I'm I'm literally taking notes right now my my oldest son just turned 12 and and it's not 16 or 17 but it's definitely more like what you're saying and I've been because we we're kind of reading off the same sheet of music with grief recovery I'm I'm kind of naturally doing the stuff you're talking about which is allowing him to kind of think stuff through more and more versus when he was seven or eight you know and kind of handing it off to him to make those choices and you know if if we step back it's like well what do you guys talk about how does this have to do with grief recovery right what yeah like right and and and you said it earlier but like one of the things that's such a gift that I did not see coming in this work is learning how to manage expectations or downright get rid of expectations right because I think so many parents are struggling with that right and also husbands and wives right we have these these expectations on our husbands and our wives that they didn't get the memo about and also they're impossible for that human being to be because it you know that's not who they're going to be or want to be but we you know we we have the inventor head and and obviously we do that with our kids too and so I think what I'm hearing a lot of what you're saying too is also learning how to let go of your expectations i.e. grieving and completing your hope streams and expectations maybe for who that little person's going to be because they don't want to be that right you know just to tell on myself right now just so you guys know I know you guys know I'm far from perfect but let me let me just reiterate that I'm far far from perfect as a human being but like right now my my nine year old soon to be 10 year old he was like dad I don't want to play travel ball next year and I'm like whoa whoa and I'm like trying to keep it cool and I'm like you know and inside I'm like I'm like son the the games changed without travel ball you won't even be able to make the high school team when I was a kid that wasn't the case I could play Park League or some Little League and if I was good I was but that's all changed now you got to play you know you got to play not only uh travel ball but then fall ball and then you got it you know and blah blah blah or or literally you're going to have no opportunity in the game of baseball right that's internally that's what's happening right I'm like I'm freaking out over my nine year old being like maybe baseball is not my game dad and and the reason that I'm telling you I'm not perfect because if I was closer to perfect I would have been like okay great you know make your own decision but instead I'm like still navigating them well let's maybe look at another team next year maybe it was at the coach right like I can't let that go right now so I'm working through that this minute is all I'm kind of telling myself myself on a podcast which is probably a good thing that way I can you know put myself on notice but anyway I think so much of what we do as parents right is we have these expectations and we want the best for them and we think we know what the best for them right and uh and then have to remind myself hey Cole you're uh you're not got uh you never will be god you're not even close to that level and so you have no clue what the plan is for that little nine year old boy so why don't you just love him and get rid of those expectations and yes guide him where you think you can and instill all the kind of morals and all the stuff you think you need to but ultimately uh uh you know it's this this this not your life you know it's his life um and again I think a lot of people would be like what still what the heck are you to how does this relate to grief guys right it really it's this is the method you know this is the method and and that's why we have this podcast is because it is impossible to articulate what the grief recovery method is on a single landing page or some flyer or even a book out there on Amazon right um yes the I love the grief recovery handbook and hundreds of thousands of people have found success with that book but unless you get in front of people like you and other people talking about all the other ways that grief recovery you can navigate this life we're in with grief recovery it'd be impossible to kind of understand it so um anyway I love I love what you're saying about what you're doing with your young adult children and giving them more voice managing and letting go of your expectations um and then the other thing I wanted to kind of articulate that you covered is really what what Rochelle's doing and I try and do is trying to understand in any communication with my children is this an emotional communication in nature or is this an intellectual communication in nature you know if if my son comes up and says hey can you problem solve this with me and figure help me figure out this choice cool we're having an intellectual conversation and we're working from here to understand how to fix some problem okay but most of the time we'll find that our children really are trying to make more of an emotional communication and if I can hear and understand it's an emotional communication then then they can feel heard versus what 99% of the time we do is we we we just think everything is some intellectual conversation with our children and we we miss the feelings they're trying to communicate with us so I know for me that's a gift that grief recovery keeps on giving to me is like giving me different emotional communication tools yeah and so anything like that for you specifically well I know that wasn't a question but and if you want to talk on any of that I love it I love it that is tough about the baseball you had you're I hear your hopes your dreams your expectations are being played with with them I think I want to do that anymore ah yeah I hear that because I hear it because I've been through it too um something I'm hearing too is I'm around people a lot and they they think oh we've got it figured out we know what to do right this this grief recovery method it's it's not it's not the typical ideas of loss that we use this with you know a person a pet a move a job loss you know I've used it with everything money godfave my health all sorts of things but what the I think the secret the it's not a secret but the the thing that we don't expect is it's to to help us with our hopes and our dreams and our expectations that aren't being met the way we thought they would and there's the big over arching this relationship is not the way I thought it would be but there's also the individual moments you know um of baseball or um school you know there was the moment after covid it was the matter of where where's my son going to go back to school he was really struggling where he was it also revealed some other things and neurodiversity and things that we were dealing with that we didn't know we're there initially and um so then it ended up where he was going to go to a certain school and uh I was scared I was scared because that's not the idea but he's gonna miss out on promise gonna miss out on sports because he's a gifted uh cross-country kid what I don't understand how are you gifted at that but he it um there's just there's little there's many ideas that I thought oh no he's gonna be so sad if he doesn't experience that and if we don't do it today then it's gonna set up the whole future and not be the way and then there's no way to go back and then you're just gonna be hurt and oh my gosh and so uh I can do that I can do that quick and I can do it frequently with so many different so many different issues and one of them was that high school thing and um it it's it's it's everywhere cool it's the way he uses time and so for example he's working right now and he's working and he's doing great and he's rising through the ranks he's 19 he's got his commercial drivers license already I mean he's just doing really well at this time the the thing is what was I gonna say about his oh gosh I I lost it gosh darn it leaving on time he commutes yes and I'm military if you aren't 15 10 mats early you're you're wait and I can see I try not to watch very often but when he arrives my phone will ding at his work when he arrives at work my phone will ding and it's like the second that he's supposed to be there are one minute after and I'm thinking ah but that's where the one of those moments where I would try to say what are you doing your girl is your job you're gonna thinking I need to help him so that the future goes just the way I thought but we're grief recovery's helped me in that moment specifically is to sit on my back foot and just let life teach him I can't be his teacher all the time and and say okay well he's gonna figure it out I don't know what it's gonna look like but he'll figure it out so yesterday after two years at this job he came in yesterday I'm gonna have to leave I'm gonna have to leave you know this much earlier I'm just gonna have to make it happen I'm gonna get there because I this is what happened and he shares the situation he's very intense he's he's great and so funny um but that was it that was something he figured out and I was able to sit back and let him feel the pain of learning because learning can be painful and difficult but it doesn't mean it's bad it just means that it was uncomfortable and I have to be willing to let discomfort come their way because it's going to teach them and then the beauty of me letting it happen while they're young and still around me and within my sight and my reach is that I can be there to help them with the grief part the emotion part of man that learning moment was really painful and uncomfortable and I'm not so afraid and pent up but I but the whole future was supposed to go like this and and I'm trying to get you to avoid any extra pain don't you understand don't you stand I understand you should be there 15 minutes really don't you understand too so I can sit back and just let him hurt a little bit and he's learning and he's had some really scary experiences but he's learning and and the grief recovery method the biggest way it's been used for me I think the secret way is me constantly dealing with my hopes and dreams and expectations for the way this moment and the whole future was supposed to go because it's not I don't I read the Bible for in my personal life and I don't see my name in it at all I don't see where it says this was the Rochelle way and then you should do everything that she said because she's got to figure it out she's really good at this and it's really a matter of humility am I willing to say actually I don't know everything and I don't know which moment can actually be useful to teach him how to stand on his own two feet and I've got to be willing to let that happen it happened to me who am I to say it shouldn't happen for him yeah so that's where it's been the most beneficial is dealing with my hopes and I had to call Ed before I've called him tearful sad we're not going to make it he's not going to make it his whole future am I missing what am I missing and I hear Ed's voice frequently from that phone call saying Rochelle it sounds like I asked him freely to speak so it wasn't like he was offering advice I said I actually need to hear what you say please tell me because I'm missing something and that's what he said was about my expectations being willing to revisit my ideas of rightness my expectations of how life should go for him and every time I insist that my expectation was the only way to be done I'm I'm obviously he's not going to meet that because it's mine he's not capable at that time I'm telling him he's not good enough and we don't really think about that's what we're doing to our kids when we have an emotional reaction because of what they're saying or saying or doing I'm not talking about the life threatening stuff you know yeah the everyday stuff and so when I have an emotional reaction instead of a response oh okay what's that about for you what happened what were you thinking okay all right I get it and I just have to know on the back end that okay that's going to be useful to teach him something are you open for ideas no got it um letting life teach him but when I decide and I I force the idea that it has to meet my expectations he can't meet them he cannot then I'm basically telling him he's a failure and who does he want judgment from nobody and especially not me so I was really creating a vicious cycle on my own home and then you know discovering that we have neurodivergence in our home that was a really big thing too because then I could even manage my expectations even more I went back to the drawing board I have to go back to the drawing board a lot there are a lot of moments that are very hurtful um scary usually it leaves me feeling scared scared for the future and what it's gonna look like and that's not even here but I can get scared for what might or might not happen as a result of this moment right here and um I've had to I use grief recovery method every single day in some ways because my expectations are are smacked up into a wall just about every day yeah and I'm gonna be alright it's okay if all my expectations aren't met yeah I love one thing I love her shell is that you know we've talked about other people in your life we've talked about your husband we've talked about your kids but really what you have come back to the entire call is the work that you have done internally changing your perspective and your beliefs on this situation right not manipulating or trying to change others and I think that's such a gift and and I know it sounds really cliche to say you know it's an inside job the you know to really truly change uh you need to change yourself internally but but we can so many people can miss that in society right like it's easy to say that it's way harder to actually live that and really understand that like the work and the change needs to be done within you right everyone else is out there doing the best they can now again if the best they can is as hurting you or or or you know you're in danger I'm not saying that you shouldn't extricate yourself from that situation right but for a lot of us in our marriages and for a lot of us as parents we're married to really cool people yeah we're you know we're we're we're I mean look I I met Ashley when we were 16 years old right now she didn't she didn't let me you know take her on a date until we were you know 21 when she thought you know I fooled her into thinking I had evolved from a knuckle dragging a jock in high school I tricked her into thinking I had evolved you know halfway through college but anyway that woman you know at I won't say her name or her age because I'm smarter than that now being married a long time but anyway that woman at her recurrent age right now is a totally different woman that I started dating at 21 years old she is not the person that she was at 21 she hasn't evolved into the person that I had an expectation she would evolve into at her age currently and that's all a good thing and she's really cool and if I would have continually in the last 20 years tried to be driving her towards my expectation of my what Ashley was going to be and what my wife was going to be right I we probably wouldn't have made it this far yeah because that would have gotten really annoying and uncomfortable for her and she would have kicked me to the curb and guess what she's let me evolve into what I I wanted to be over the last next 20 years right and I guarantee you her expectation of her husband is not what it is but we're giving it but we also understand life is good and my partner is good and you know and so many of us I think lose sight in that one of the for whatever reason one of the people that kind of it it really affects me not and I don't want to say affects me but I really feel sad when I'm working with moms who have living estranged relationships with their adult kids you know it's just a sad thing for me right because you can just see the pain and the emotion and the and the want and the desire the desperate desire to have it be separate and that's why I think this last part of our conversation was so important because I hope mom mom specifically but parents in general can hear what you said Rochelle which is like that handoff between childhood and early adulthood and adulthood like we need to learn how to manage that and continue to let go of our expectations because those moms who are grieving these estranged living relationships with adult children they they tried to insert their expectations too harsh over and over and over and over again you know and that's time and time again that's what I see is these these these kids finally getting a fed up with it and being like okay well our new relationship is no communication because I don't want to continue feeling like a failure and I'm done with that and now I'm going to protect my heart because I can't keep seeing this reaction of disapproval from you and it's right it's just a heart broke it's it's heartbreaking on for every party involved right and it doesn't have to be that way so it's thank you for bringing that up I need to hear it as my kids approach that I know a lot of our listeners probably need to hear that and so thank you for being so courageous to tell the truth about how you're navigating that stuff with your with your kids too I can't believe it but it is already an over an hour so we're gonna wrap there but Rochelle I'd love to have you on again you know because I know we'd have another excellent conversation about whatever but where can people find you how can they work with you you know please I want to give you a minute or two just to kind of like promote what you're doing out there and how can people get in touch with you so grief CA grief california but just CA dot com is the easiest way to find me of course I'm on the grief recovery method website as well grief dot net right that's the easiest way um that's probably the best one I work one-on-one for the most part online and then I do two and a half I offer two and a half day workshops or weekend workshops essentially there's one coming up this weekend I only have one left for the year and then I work with the sheriff's department I offer I work with parents um and with the helping children with the last side of things they have a program called veta and la county vital intervention and directive assistance or something and so I work with the adults I can always see you in a veta class those are fun pretty intense an amazing work and it really helps them shift energy in their home usually they're coming because of trouble youth and troubled home life and true and see sometimes court appointed and getting to help the adults in this situation can create a different environment in the home and that's kind of it at this moment I'm kind of slowed down a little at the the the needs of my family are pretty intense so um I used to I've I hit the ground running as soon as I was certified I was full time instantly I can't keep that up at this moment so uh one-on-ones online the two and a half day weekend workshops and then the sheriff's department that's where we are gr