I Faced 8 Major Losses in 6 Months — Here’s What Saved Me

So Casey, usually where we get started is just kind of the question. I think it's always interesting to learn what brought you to the grief recovery method because that can be so varied as well. But what what initially brought you to the method? Yeah, so loss.

So I was living out in Colorado, which was my dream state. I had worked really hard to get out there and I was living there for a couple of years. And all of a sudden my life kind of crashed really quickly. I had eight major losses and in six months and was out of place where honestly I did not want to live.

I had a life, you know, made so much sense and then all of a sudden within a couple months absolutely didn't and I was just covered in waves of emotion and grief. And I felt like someone had just thrown a web blanket on me and yeah, so I was living in Colorado, which again was a dream and I had friends who said, hey, come, you know, move to Kansas City. I have some things, you know, we can help you here. And I was like, okay, cool.

I'll be here for you know, six months to a year. And it's been eight years that I've been in Kansas City and just forgot to move back. But I started seeing somebody who knew about the grief recovery method and I had been doing all kinds of mental health work for years and a lot of things like helps just scrape the pain off the top. I had many losses before this, but someone yet told me about it and it was the first thing that I felt actually really helps and really worked and made a difference.

And actually before I even did my work, I opened the first page of the grief recovery handbook and in that it's, you know, I'm going to paraphrase, but it was like, you know, you don't wake up one day and say, oh, grief, I'll make it my life's work. I felt this like gut check that it was like, oh, I am going to do this, make this my life's work and I hadn't even processed my own pain, but I knew very quickly already that this is how I was going to help people and I was going to help myself first. And so, yeah, Kansas City has been amazing and I did a lot of my own losses and processed those first, you know, you can't just like they say on airplanes, you know, you have to breathe in first. You know, healed my own heart and took a couple of years there and then decided, okay, I'm ready to start helping other people.

So, yeah. And case, let me ask you this. So, well, your first introduction to the method and thank you for that. First of all, just telling us a little bit about your background.

Your introduction to the method was, was that with a specialist locally or did you was at the certification straight away or how, you know, what was your first personal work with the method? How do you do that? Yeah, so I started seeing a therapist who did the method. So, I started to be careful just general therapy and then when I started sharing my story, she was like the method is going to be the thing that helps you.

Yeah, so then I, yeah, then I actually did like went through and then a couple years later, then went through and went through the certification process and it went even deeper. So it was, it was great. Yeah, that's, that's, I think that's a great entry point into our work. You know, often we'll have people in the certification training who just kind of found us online and want that certification to help others, but don't know a lot about the method and that's doable.

But we kind of have to show you and you have to experience the method and kind of almost proved you that the method is of value, you know, in that four day training, which can be very intense for people and then other people again come to us to get certified and are well aware of the method and has been through the method. Again, people are welcome no matter which, which kind of door they come through, but again, it can be, it can be helpful to kind of already have that faith and that belief in the method because you have already experienced it, you know, just purely through the personal work first. So that's, that's always a strong way to come to this work. So I'm glad that you linked up with that therapist there in Kansas City.

Let me ask you just curious how between the time that you moved from Colorado to the time you were doing the method. How long, how much time had passed in between those two events? Maybe, maybe six months. Okay, okay, gotcha.

And so not not a lot of time and you're kind of looking to your your feel I'm going to paraphrase and correct me from wrong, but you're kind of bleeding to death emotionally, you're looking to to help help help alleviate that. And so your thought is okay, I'm going to go into therapy and then in therapy, it's like luckily, right? I'm so grateful that that therapist was trained in this method who could identify. Hey, this is unresolved grief and like, let's let me introduce this tool to you.

So would you be willing to tell us any, you know, any of the losses that like you mentioned, there are kind of eight losses in Colorado. Could you talk a little bit specifically on kind of what what you're going through? Yeah, absolutely. First was Colorado, you know, that was my first dream of living there and I had just come out of an internship there and I had this hope that the internship would tell me what I was doing with my life and help me, you know, prepare for what was next and unfortunately, it didn't, you know, it gave me amazing tools, but I had these hopes dreams and expectations.

And then I had, I had found out that I had an endometriosis, which I also have another health issue and between endometriosis and the great disease that I have my chances of having children and, you know, having healthy safe pregnancies that it just makes it a little more complicated. I then went to, I was listening to the speaker talk about missions work and most of my life, I really wanted to be a missionary and, you know, heard him talk and started doing some research about, you know, okay, what what country am I going to go to if I decide I want to go travel the world and get back into these things and because of my health another crashing realization that because of my health, I would not be able to live in other countries. So that was a hope dream and expectation again for my life. I then found out that my dog had passed, which at first to me pet loss, I didn't understand.

I didn't get it until it happened to me and there was a point where I was, you know, going to go visit my dog and go say, buy and we had to put my dog down first before I could go say buy. And to me, that was a really surprising, it was surprising how painful it was and my dog was my best friend. And so when my dog died having all these losses, not having her for comfort, that was really hard. Then I had, there's this kid named Kyle and he was like a little brother to me.

He had struggled off and on. He had some major grief in his life. His dad had a heart attack and died in front of him when he was just 13. And then from there, he really struggled and know how to work for the pain and he got very much into drugs was in and out of drugs, in and out of rehabs, in and out of hospitals, in and out of prison and was doing really well for a while.

And then he had a really bad relapse and the people who he was with just left him. And so he was in a coma for a couple of months and had an inoxic brain injury. We weren't sure if he was going to make it, weren't sure, you know, just had no idea what was what was next. He did come out of the coma and he was not the same.

You know, he couldn't walk, couldn't talk, couldn't feed himself. Still had, you know, some spicy personality of his, but he just was not the same. And then he died two years later. But going through that, that was hard for me to watch him, but also watching my brother, who was his best friend and his sister, Kyle sister, who was one of my best friends watching their family go through it.

It's a different kind of loss to watch some of your favorite people go through loss and not how to know how to help them. And then I had my friend Josh who he was like another little brother to me and he completed suicide on New Year's Eve. And these were all again within a couple of months of each other. I also was dating somebody and him and I were supposed to get married.

And like three days before we were supposed to get married, I had a hunch and asked to see his phone and found out he had been cheating on the most of our relationship. So, I laugh because it's not funny, honestly. And it was really painful and everything that I knew, all of the things that, you know, seemed normal and natural and healthy in my life got completely flipped upside down. And because of that, it actually, you know, kind of shook my faith, which that to me was, you know, a huge loss as well.

And so, yeah, then found the method, but those were, yeah, a lot of the losses I was struggling with all within a couple of months. Yeah. Well, first of all, do you accept hugs? Yes, I do.

Okay. Well, I know it's just over the Riverside FM plug, but anyway, I'm giving you a hug. I can't imagine, you know, what that was like for you. And again, like every one of those losses is heartbreaking.

And then you jam them all in together over a course of a couple of months. I truly can't imagine what that was like for you. You know, my heart goes out to you. I want to appreciate your honesty being courageous enough to like tell a bunch of listeners on a podcast about your heart with the goal of helping other people, right?

That's super heroic. And I appreciate the courage that it takes to do that. So thank you. A couple of questions kind of came to mind as you're kind of going through this like really hard part of your life.

And so I guess my question is, obviously a couple of those losses like society right will teach us is grief, right? But when you were when you were kind of like man, Colorado is not working out for me. I'm going to move to Kansas City. Were you connecting all of this with grief or were you kind of just kind of overwhelmed and like, wow, this is like my world is crumbling.

The reason I ask because I think you know, you know, and I know because we've been doing this work long enough, the vast majority of people, a lot of the time are grieving, but they would never use that word. They're unaware that grief is the thing that they're drowning in emotionally. And so they're looking for other terms and they're using other terms. And so often that's a bad plan for us because again, if we are misdiagnosing what we're dealing with, then we're going to mistreat it, right?

If we don't even know that grief is part of that equation, it's going to be really hard to go find some grief program to help sort sort through those feelings. So were you were you aware of of grief being the major issue you were dealing with or was it was it not until you kind of started working with your therapist that was like, hey, there's some grief and loss here and like, like, let's look at that. I know that's kind of me rambling, but is it is like right how clear were you it was grief or did you become more clear about it once you got to Kansas City is my question, I guess. Yeah, moving actually was one of the most shocking losses.

I didn't realize that moving was a lot. Yeah, because to me, even though, you know, it was hopeful and it was exciting, you know, I tell people, tell clients all the time that moving actually is one of the biggest losses sometimes because. You are saying goodbye to things like your grocery store, you're saying goodbye to your neighbors, you're saying, go buy to your home, your comfort, it's just a huge change and then if you're changing cities completely to you're changing your community, you're changing friendships, you're changing, you know, you're trying to figure out a whole new city. And on top of, you know, all of the other grief, no, I had no idea that moving was a loss because to me, it was, okay, this is it's a good thing.

It's a positive thing. I'm trying to move forward, not realizing that there were things I needed to say goodbye to. Yeah, no, that's a great point. I know for me in 2010, my wife and I, we moved from Los Angeles to to Ben Dorgon and we were like this outdoor couple and it was like our dream to live in an outdoor place.

But again, right, even if you're moving to a place where it is your dream, there's like a ton of grief that comes along with that and most people unfortunately, they just stuff that right because they, you know, everyone wants to focus on, hey, you're so excited, you got to the place you wanted to be and no one wants to help you sort out that grief or really identify it. So I appreciate you bringing that up. And in 2020, we moved again from Oregon to Idaho and kind of again, further pursuing our dream to get deeper and deeper into the forest is our goal. And we did it, but it's like unfortunately, like not shortly after that, my dad got really sick with cancer.

I'm going back and forth. I like regret moving when we did, but I'm excited to be in this beautiful place that like, you know, so I can relate to that. And it's and again, it's kind of like I, I, I, I, I'm curious about your take on this because it's like, again, I'm so I'm so sorry to hear about your friend, you know, with the suicide and your and your dog and, you know, all. So we have a couple of deaths in there, right?

So clearly, like most of society would like, yeah, you're grieving those losses, right? But you mentioned all this other things, loss of health, loss or change of your hopes, dreams and expectations around the internship and the career, you know, and a bunch of stuff between, you know, the, the death of this relationship and fidelity, loss of trust. I would imagine those things, right? You weren't qualifying as grief yet in the story.

Is that accurate? Yeah, no, I had no idea. I just knew that I was really sad and hurting and nothing made sense. Yeah, and, and I can relate like because I've had, I have a lot of losses similar to those ones, right?

I have some in my loss, my lost history graph, I have loss of health, I have loss of hope, dreams and expectations. I have loss of trust and romantic relationships and stuff. And the reason I'm spending a little time on this for our listeners is because if you took away the deaths that Casey had endured in that, right? She is still has an entire backpack of unresolved grief and loss, right?

If you took away the deaths that I was grief and again, we're not ranking them, we're not minimizing them. So please don't hear that. But what I'm simply saying is a lot of the time, you know, we may work within a 19 year old or a 21 year old or a 22 year old and they'll say, you know what, I don't, I don't really know what to work on because I haven't had a lot of deaths in my life. And as soon as you can show them, there's over 40 different life experiences that produce feelings of grief very quickly.

It doesn't matter if you're 19 or 20 or 22, we have another person with a bunch of unresolved grief in their life because again, there's over 40 different things that that are life events that will produce feelings of grief. And if we don't have tools to resolve that grief, then it's unresolved grief, right? And then it is crippling its life limiting, it robs as a choice, it weighs us down and all of that. So, you know, again, thank you, Casey, for spending a little time there.

So, so you, you go over here and I was the same way, by the way, I never, I never thought grief, what a concept I'll dedicate my life to that as far as I knew that was my dad's plan and I was always rooting him on, but it wasn't until I started doing my own personal work that I really started doing my own personal work. That I really saw the value of both for me, but also the giant void that we have in society where people are not being reached with these tools like nearly enough. And so I did the same thing I pivoted and I was like, you know what, I'm dedicating my life to this too. So, if you don't mind, let's, let's shift to that part of your story, right?

So you, you do the work personally with your therapist, you, you are finding relief and healing and all that good stuff there. And then when, and you said, I think you said, was it a couple of years later when you decided to after like a, sounded like a substantial amount of personal work, then you decided to get certified to help others? Yeah, so I actually, it's funny. I was nannying part time and was working for a therapist, different, you know, different therapists, but working for her and her and I just started talking about different things.

And I was telling her about this program that really helped me and healed me and I was like, I don't really know where to get started and what to do. And she believed in me was like, hey, Casey, you need to do this work like you are sharing your healing and your passion. This is important and you can need to share it with other people. So she really spurred me on and encouraged me and then I decided, okay, I, you know, I need to do this and she actually, she helped me get an office and just really believed in me, which was cool.

And so I, you know, had a year long dream and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna save up, but I'm gonna, you know, get ready. And I just was so ready that I hit all my goals within like three months because I was like, wow, I'm gonna do this. I'm ready. Like, yeah.

Wow, you hit your goals in three months. That's awesome. Yeah. Okay.

And I know like you had, you had touched on before you were like, you know, one of your passions is mission work. So, you know, I'm imagining that you really knew already how much you wanted to like one to one help people make deep connections meaningful connections. And it's like, wow, here's a, here's a vehicle in which to do that right in a way to be a grief recovery method specialist. So, can you tell us a little bit about, you know, I guess what I'm getting at is when I got certified, I didn't have, I don't have a mental health background.

I was doing a completely different line of work. So when I got these tools, I, when I got these tools, I was still unsure if I could do this, right? Because I wasn't formally trained in this. Did you have any sort of formal training or did you have, was that similar to you where you were just like kind of learning about this or had you worked with people in different capacities around like counseling or anything like that before.

Yeah. So I had gone to school for a year and everything I wanted to do did not need schooling. You know, I potentially wanted to do therapy, but I wanted to do more like inner healing work. So therapy sounded great, but it was very different.

I wanted to, I was helping people in church settings and non church settings just, I did 10 different of my own personal healing programs because I wanted to feel better. I was like, how do I, you know, do all these things? And so with that, I used that knowledge and education to help other people, but I didn't really have formal training. I knew that I just wanted to help people and I didn't know how.

And so yeah, finding this was really cool because that's how I instantly knew I was like, I've always wanted to help people. And now I feel like I actually have the tools. I feel like I'm, I'm ready and I know I can help people feel better. Yeah, yeah, that's great.

And in the, in kind of the pre interview, we talked a little bit about some of the clients that you're working with now. And kind of a, so can you again, honoring confidentiality and all that, but can you kind of just generally speak about, you know, some people you're working with right now. Yeah, so recently it's been such a blessing that I have a couple of sweet older ladies probably in 70s and 80s that are coming to me and they're showing up and saying, I have so much pain and I want to do the work. And the thing that I hear all the time is I wish I would have found this so much sooner.

And I love encouraging people that of that because we always say, oh, someday or when things are bad enough or when, you know, tragedy hits, then maybe all do the work, but we don't need tragedy to show up to do the work because there's so much, you know, this built up grief that comes. So yeah, a couple of, you know, clients that are a little bit older and it's just so cool watching their bravery to look over their, you know, decades of life and pain. I also have a couple of clients, I have a passion of really helping women who have been through miscarriages and actually a couple of men who are helping their wives go through miscarriages. Of course, it's their loss too.

And it's my favorite when they say like, oh, it's their loss and I'm able to encourage them that, yes, it is their loss, but it's also your loss. And it's, you know, of course, what we call an intangible loss so we can't feel it or touch it, but we know that it is very tangible that, you know, baby was very wanted and loved and hoped for. It's not just processing just, you know, however, the few weeks that maybe you knew that you're pregnant, it was those hopes, dreams and expectations of, you know, a child you've been thinking of this child or hoping for this child for, you know, however long. So that's been really cool to help people with.

Yeah. Another thing to is helping people with their health and their body image, you know, I'd mentioned I had some loss of health. I had two years where I went to over 20 different doctors and they all told me completely different things or said you're young and healthy and you're just fine, you're great. And I was like, I know that's not true.

You know, how do I, how do I fix this finally had a doctor who was like, you're actually extremely ill. You need to go to the hospital immediately and I had to do radiation treatments had to be on bedrest for a year. And when I came out of that, you know, I it was one of my biggest losses and that was an intangible too because I'm still alive, I'm still okay. And it still affects me every single day.

And so helping other people. I think people's actually relationship with themselves is one of the hardest to do their relationship with their body because they feel like. If I can't control my own body, if I can't control what I can do, then what can I control? And so that one is I love helping people through that, you know, I've a couple of people in sports.

This has actually come up a lot too where people in sports who, you know, let's say, you know, soccer, for example, I was going to be a soccer star. I trained for this. I've hoped for this. This is what I was going to do for my whole life and then their adults and it doesn't happen.

And okay, who am I now? And so it just brings up so much grief and so much, you know, all those hopes, dreams and expectations of what they thought their life would be. And now they're trying to figure out who they are moving forward. But it's always still just sticking in the back of their head, hoping.

You know, that someday they'll know what they're supposed to do, but haven't actually processed the pain that's come from it. Yeah, yeah, that that that's definitely part of my story too. I can relate to that. Well, that's so cool.

So you're working with all these different clients. Obviously they're from different backgrounds, different ages, different losses. And, you know, that's another thing that's a misconception out there in the public is that, you know, Casey, you have to have the exact same type of loss or the exact same life experiences I do for you to help me. Right.

And that's another thing we need to dispel, you know, out there in society is, is that we need to have the exact same type of loss. Right. You're kind of telling me the pre interview, like you're working with these ladies from an older generation and they're like, what is Casey? No, what is Casey?

No, about my grief. Right. I'm 78 years older, whatever. So, you know, can you talk a little bit about that?

How did how did you build trust with with people again from a different direct. Different generation, maybe assuming you don't have the same type of losses. Like how do you connect with a client when when maybe they have those things in their mind? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a lot of things.

One, it's not pretending that I know everything to say. I am one step ahead of you. That's, that's it. You only have to be one step ahead of someone to be able to lead them.

And so, hey, I don't know what you've been through and I don't know how you feel. And I know when I had these losses, I wish that I had tools to help me feel better. I love that in this program, we get to share our story, we get to share our losses. It is about both of us.

Well, yes, of course, we focus on the client. It's I get to share, hey, this is my story. This is what I went through. And I know it's not the same as you.

And I think that I have some hope for you. And as humans, we love hope. And so, it's just I love that they're, you know, they're bravery of getting to trust me. And yeah, I don't say, oh, I have all the answers or I know exactly how you feel.

I say, that sounds really hard. And I'm here to listen and I'm here for you. And thank you for letting me hear for your heart. And people we love to be heard and to be seen and cared for.

And so just showing up as a human as a heart with ears and saying, I don't have all the answers and let me care for you. Yeah, I love that. That, you know, the and what I, what the takeaway for me, right, is what you can bet is like, there is a real humility in this work that I just love. Right.

Because it's, it is not, hey, we're the professionals and you're the defective person that that can't undo this thing that you've been caring for 10 or 12 or 20 years, right. We're just saying, you know what, I don't know what that experience was like for you. But I know that when I had this experience over here, these tools were helpful. I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, I say at best I can be really good at articulating these tools and showing you examples of how to apply these tools.

And absolutely, I don't know how you feel, but but my goal is to help share these tools with you so that you can apply these tools and and work through whatever you need to. I'm going to be there for you, but, but again, that humility to be like, you're right. I have no idea what you're going through. You know, and that, and that goes for if I'm working with a client that also lost his dad to cancer, right.

I will still answer with that. I will tell them, you know what, I have no idea what you are going through. Now again, if I, if I have a sense that they want to hear something, I'll say I'll, I'll let you know what I was going through. But, but really I want to, I want to hear more about what you're going through.

And so again, I'm not, I'm not trying to compare. I'm not trying to, to say I understand how you feel. I'm trying to come from a place of like, of, again, humility, like you, like you touched on, right. It's, this isn't about being an expert.

It's about having some tools that we really want to share with you. And, and like you said, right. Yeah, I like that too, right. Like one step ahead.

But, but again, this is, this is, this is very much just like here, right. Like, so anyway, no, that, that's great. So with those ladies that were from a different generation, right, things like the lost history graph, right, where you say, okay, just listen, hear me out here. I know I'm, I'm some, you know, young person.

But, but again, right. This work really humanizes each other because it's like when I, when I display or show share my lost history graph, all of a sudden, yeah, maybe 20 or 30 at the time or now 40 at the time. But you can see I have a whole lifetime of grief when we look at it through the lens of 40 different life events that are grief. And once you see someone who has shared with 20, 25 different life events that are very, very heart breaking and are all real.

It's like, I don't care how old you are. You're going to view that person as a fellow grieving person, right. And you say, oh, you, you do understand you may not know the specifics of this loss, but you understand pain. You clearly have pain.

And again, it's not about ranking or, or who scores higher on the unresolved grief chart. You know, of course we don't have anything like that. It's just about relating that we all have pain and we all grieve at 100% of what those losses are for us, right. We say this time and time again, but we need to move as a society as a community, we need to move away from this ranking of grief, right.

And there isn't like this, there isn't there, there shouldn't be and there isn't this ranking of like you have the most grief. This person's that medium grief. This person's that a little bit of grief. It's like, no, no, we all have heart, we all have heartbreak.

Let's help each other with this and stuff. And again, I love what you said too. I mean, there's not a better example of that. And like you said, the husband trying to comfort his wife who had the miscarriage and also reminding the husband you're grieving at 100% of what the relationship was for you.

And yes, your wife had this little baby in her womb and and there's a completely different relationship and experience for her. But you are also, you also lost a child and we can help both of you, right. And we don't have to rank it and we don't have to say because we're working with your wife, we can't work with you, right. Everybody does have room to do their work in this, right.

So, you know, again, thank you for doing the work you're doing there. Also, I'm Casey. I'm really excited to talk to you because I know I know that you actually like again and reaching your goals. Can you tell us a little bit about the kind of center you're creating there.

I know you're doing really cool stuff there in Kansas City. Like, can you talk a little bit about the center you've created. Yeah, absolutely. So there's some of these things that are still in the works.

So, okay. Well, then yeah, we'll just dream. We'll have the whole vision. I want to hear the whole vision.

Yeah. So, um, I was working with, you know, a couple of therapists and that's also something I love to do is work with therapists because what we do is so different than therapy. But now I just started, um, it's called brave and co. So brave and company, which I actually have the word brave tattooed on my arm.

It's got a hard to keep. Yeah. Yeah. I love that name.

No, that's great. Thank you. The word brave means to be afraid, but to do it anyways. And I think a lot of times people will show up and they're very afraid and they're like, I have no idea, you know, what life is going to look like now.

And I don't know if I can heal or if you can really help me. But I'm going to show up and I'm going to, you know, do it and then to be able to put someone's putting their trust in me to help them heal is huge. And so, um, we are trying to buy a center right now. It's, you know, in the works and I have done, you know, one on one for years.

And I've always wanted to do, you know, more groups. And I've done groups before, but not really had as much of the space. And so with this, I also want to have, you know, a center for resources that people can come and they have questions and, you know, all different kinds of grief. We want to, you know, educate.

I, there's a couple actually people that have, you know, I have told them about the group recovery method and they're getting certified. And so wanting to work with them and to do a little bit more training with them and, you know, help them. Like peer supervision, where if they have questions or they're, you know, wanting certain clients, you know, just kind of even doing some of an exchange where, hey, I have close friends that I would love to refer to you and you're going to refer your friends to me. And I just, we also want to do, I just, I love grief education as well too.

So even just getting people in the building and saying, hey, what is grief and what isn't it, you know, so many people, oh, I don't really have grief. And then, you know, then we start talking and I'm like, you just named five things that are potentially grief, you know, and you can't heal from something if you don't know that it exists or that there's paid from it. So that's just some of what we want to do. Yeah, just I want to do more and bigger, you know, I've done some great work.

You know, just in small capacity and now it's I, you know, want to just help as many people as I can to show, you know, Kansas City, like, hey, you don't have to, you know, feel this way that you can feel better that you can work through your pain and. Yeah, so that's some of the things some of the hopes of green well, let me as you move forward on in that you let me know when you when you have the grand opening you let me know and hopefully I can be there. No, that sounds, that sounds incredible. And I think you have the right idea.

I think. I think, you know, working in partnership with therapists that you that you trust in the community, it's a great it's a great way to work together because again, there's a lot of stuff that that counselors and therapists do that that they do wonderfully that we don't do that is not a scope of our work. And some of the best partnerships I've seen are therapists and grief recovery method specialists in in the community and and and they can refer clients and when their client is working clearly on a grief event. You know, the specialist can really help out and when there were things that that client needs to work through that aren't grief related it's like, so that is really great that you're doing that with people there that that you're working with.

And yeah, and I'm excited for you. Oh, absolutely. Go ahead. Can I add something to that?

Yeah. Something that's also really cool too is a lot of therapists that I've partnered with even some of them have worked with their clients for 10 years and they will come and do their work with me and doing their own, you know, their own grief work. They will bring up things that they're like, I've never even told my therapist this before. I've never actually gotten this deep and then they go back to their therapist and their therapist is like, what got into them?

You know, you they are now sharing things with me that they've never shared and things that they did not. No, or they've never discovered we're actually there. It just I just love that the method brings things out of people that they didn't know existed or forgot existed or you know, a lot of times they can get focused on what's going on in their life right now without actually looking back at the painful things that. You know, brought them to where they are now, so it's really cool.

I just love that partnership where it is. I love getting to help people really see all of the pain that is there. And yeah, so I just thought that was really cool. No, I'm glad you brought that up.

As you were talking, I kind of got an aha moment and you're right. Like when when therapists specifically do their personal work through the grief recovery method, really cool stuff can happen and they're looking at it through a different lens than they have been traditionally trained in. And I would say right now because because mostly the personal work I'm leading people through is during the certification training, I would say that over probably 50% of the people I'm working with right now are are, you know, active therapists and counselors doing their personal work and like you said, it's very cool to have them number one do that personal work because they're caregivers and the loss and the pain is stacking up for them, right. As it is for all of us in society, but but obviously they're in the trenches and they and that stuff adds up and that's that stuff can stick to us.

And so whenever you give an opportunity to somebody in that line of work to do their, you know, do their own work is great. And again, my hats off to anybody you, me and all of these people that are willing to do their own personal work because unfortunately a lot of people in these worlds, whether it's coaches or therapists or pastors. A lot of people forget to do their own personal work, right. And you get into this and you're after your, your focused on other people and it's really easy to forget that you're a human being having a human being experience accumulating loss and hurt.

And you know, we use every excuse in the book that we're busy or we're focused on others. And it's so it's, it's I love that that like you said earlier, you we're always wanting to put the us, we need to put the oxygen mask on us first. Throughout our career, we're going to be more effective at clients. Client work is if we're continuing on our own personal work, you know, and that's that's a reminder to me and hopefully others out there that have been doing this work a long time.

Like, yeah, it still needs to be applied to you, almost most importantly, right. Or you lose lose side of some stuff. Yeah, I love when I have clients that will, you know, have processed something and they're bringing it up. And then I realized, oh, I haven't processed this yet.

I actually need to go do my work before I can teach them. Because, you know, you can't pour from an empty cup and I can't come from a place of pain and try and help some, you know, I can't have my arm cut off and try and stitch someone else's wounds like I have to kill my arm so that I can clearly help someone else. And so I just love the challenge of when somebody does come up with something that I'm like, oh, okay, that I realize there's some grief there that I haven't dealt with. Let me go take care of my heart first and then I can show you what I've done and how I feel and that you can feel better.

If I can feel better, you can feel better too. But yeah, 100% and that's another thing that I again, going back to the humility of this work. A lot of the time professionals, I'll just use that term broadly professionals. They think it would be unprofessional for you to say something like that, but that is the most human thing you could say to a client is, hey, you know what, I really appreciate you saying that it actually brought up some some stuff that's unfinished for me and I need to go do some more work too.

Like that, that is such a humanizing like partnership there that I love that you do that, you know, and I try and do that as well, right? Because again, that's the humility that we're looking for in grief or covering is yeah, we're just real human beings as well. We've had our own grief and loss. We still have our grief and loss and we're we're using these tools right alongside you and we just have been maybe trained a little bit more of around the awareness of these tools and how to apply them, but we are human beings right alongside you and, you know, and again, I love that we get to be that we don't we don't have to be like the wizard of us behind the green curtain and pretend that we have everything figured out and everything is put together.

It's like when my dad was dying of cancer, I was going through like, you know, arguably the hardest time of my life and everyone at the grief recovery institute knew that I would not be firing on all cylinders, you know, and they all just kind of let me lean on them and and covered a bunch of, you know, pulled a lot of weight that I clearly couldn't pull at that time. And it was just kind of like this understood thing like yeah, Cole's grieving right now. He's not he's not the leader of our company right now. He's a boy that's grieving has dad who's dying, you know, and they I will never I can ever thank them enough for like kind of what they did to kind of just let me be that right then and there, right?

Because how many how many people out there in the world are living this facade where the you know, everything's falling apart in their in their heart and and they're just like kind of pretending that they that nothing's affecting them and they and they're operating at a perfect level and it's like how unfortunately like people do that for years, right? And it breaks my heart that that they that they feel the need to have to do that versus, you know, telling the truth. So anyway, I'm so I get fired up whenever we have these podcasts and I get to see people of like your cow. That that can just tell the truth and admit, hey, I'm doing my own personal work to and you know, that's exactly the stuff we're hoping for, you know, that that our specialists are doing so bravo to you for doing that.

And again, I can't wait for you to open your center and I love to like you said, one on one work is amazing and it's probably the most successful way to to work with clients honestly with this work. But I'm excited for you to get more and more group experience to because there's a magic in the group that you can't reproduce just with one with one person across from you, right? And there is some really, really cool stuff that goes on in the group work. So I can't wait for you to to I know you said you did some of it, but I can't wait for you to do more and more of that and you know, opening a center is a great way to do that.

So, you know, let's let's let's go to the next thing we kind of wanted to discuss, right? And I'm sorry, I wasn't too aware of this thing, but as a community locally, you guys are going through some some real heartache in Kansas City. Would you mind just kind of telling us a little bit more about what's going on? And maybe we can then roll it into again.

How, how would grief recovery come into play around around a situation like this? Yeah, absolutely. So the international House of Prayer recently, their pastor Mike Biggle, there's some big things that came out about him. He, I'm trying to remember the word.

Sorry, give me a second. No problem. I remember what it like he he agreed to he announced it came out that there was a lot of abuse in lots of different ways. There was sexual emotional financial abuse and lots of different ways and they're finding out more and more every day.

There's an open investigation and it's been really painful for the community because there's lots of people who have moved here for this. There's a 24 hour prayer. It's open 24 seven. There's a prayer room going on 24 seven and you know it's a whole church community.

So there are people who have moved here for this who have been part of it. I have close friends who, I mean, they've dedicated their life to this ministry. And so now they're left saying, what do I do? Do I do I stay do I go do I you know, do I move?

And so regardless, having to take a step back and you know, it's a lot of people I've seen they they try and debate it with logic and they try and debate it with different things that might feel helpful in the moment. But don't actually take a step back and say, I really believed in this guy. I believed in this ministry. I believed in the work that was happening here.

And you can still believe in some of that and still really question and hurt and say, you know, what what do I do with this now I have this massive pain point I have this massive, you know, break in my thoughts and my hopes in my, you know, what I thought my future was. And so I think the grief recovery method could benefit so many people going through this and it already has I have some clients that are just trying to you know, move forward and what this is and something that actually had to do with my story a bit too is a lot of times and the book talks about this a little bit. Just that a lot of times we want to you know blame God first for some things that especially comes around ministry or people who you know claim the name of God and what they need to do is process their emotional pain first you can process you know around God with God and some people will say, oh, just you know, pray about it and I think that can be an important piece and I think it's really important to take the time step back look at what has this.

What has this pain caused for me what is this brain up for me I need to process with this pastor with this ministry process that pain and then usually once you process that pain it kind of it takes the pain from here to here. Actually, so I'm the Queen of analogies they're all really cheesy, but I feel like they're they're great and they work and I use this analogy of a wasp where it's like this wasp is you know, whatever there's a wasp near you what do you do you kind of flinch and you pull back and you're like it's going to hurt me it's going to sting me it's painful I don't want to be around it. But once you process and you do your emotional work this you wasp it turns into a fly where it's still there and you still have to process it and you still have to deal with it. But it isn't this like constant pain point you're not constantly afraid it's going to hurt you.

And so it kind of just helps bring that pain down and so once you do that once you heal a lot of your pain then you can process with God sometimes it's. Sometimes you feel better and you're like oh this actually wasn't God and then other times it's no i'm still really mad at God and how do I process that so that's been a cool thing to be able to help people work through where a lot of people will throw away their faith which. You know that's as a personal choice and if there's anything that's causing pain let's help you work through that whether or not you decide to keep your faith or to move on but we don't want you to throw away your faith that could be a really big comfort for you because of something else that happened in life. Yeah absolutely i'll have to i'm going to remember the wasp and the fly like that and I tell I agree with you you know for.

One of the ways that for and again forgive me I don't know a lot of this a lot of this story but I you know we you see this play out time and time again in all different types of organizations right now obviously we're talking about a faith based one but you know a lot of the time we would qualify this for the larger church as a whole. Is everybody has a loss of trust right a loss of trust in the leadership or a loss of trust in different people unfortunately other people actually have a loss of control in the body if it's it's about abuse right so everyone's dealing with different grief around this but I would say at large let's say the community that church community all have a massive loss in trust in the leadership. And let's say that many of them decide to go to another church if we do not deal with our unresolved feelings our emotional pain the things that that the expectations of hopes the dreams that have been shattered the things we've wish could have been different better or more you know there's all of this underneath the surface of the water there's all of this this like churning water and if we don't know what to do how to grieve and complete all that guess what all guess where we're bringing all of that pain and all that we're going to do is a lot of things that we're going to do and we're going to do is a lot of things that we're going to do and we're going to do is a lot of things that we're going to do and we're going to do is a lot of things that we're going to do and we're going to do and we're going to do something that we're going to do and we're going to do and we're going to do something that we're going to do and we're going to do and we've been waiting so long that we can think of all of that gardenimists and all of that closed offness we're bringing it to the new church that we that we attend right.

So again I hope a lot of people like like you said I hope everybody keeps their faith they just again figure out what the best choice is for them. I'd imagine a lot of a lot of them are going to go and find somewhere else and I and I hope that for them. I hope they get to keep that relationship with God but I really really like for recovery work so we can get emotionally complete with all of the hurt and the pain and the grief associated with that church so that we can be open and free to be a productive loving, open member at this new church, right? Verse, and again, this happens in personal relationships, right?

The divorce rate is what it is because we honestly, we probably have three, four, five, more unfinished relationships that were romantic from the past that we did not complete and we're bringing those into our current relationships. We do this at jobs, we bring past hurt from jobs into our new job, we bring past hurt into our new place of faith. This is all over the place and that's why we say not to be dramatic, this is 100%, I believe this to be true. The grief is an epidemic in our society.

Unresolved grief is a tragic, tragic epidemic and everyone that you interact with on a daily basis has a backpack full of unresolved grief. Now whether they know it or not is there, they're called, but the work that Casey and I do, you get into this work and very shortly you will just see everybody in that airport has unresolved grief. Everybody at that church has unresolved grief. Everybody at the school has unresolved grief.

Everyone on the freeway has unresolved grief and then it becomes like a mission for someone like Casey or me to just, hey, let me share this one other thing with you that really helped me to be free. That's why we name this the feel free again podcast because I didn't know how else to convey the feeling that I had and thousands like me had when they, when they do the culmination of this work, when they get to process a loss and then another loss and another loss. For me, the feeling really was freedom, right? I felt lighter.

I felt free again. And so anyway, thank you for bringing that up again, Casey. I hope your community can navigate that loss. I hope I know you're going to be in the forefront of helping people navigate that who are wanting to do work around that.

We just wanted to point out that a lot of the time our communities are grieving at large, right? It's happening in the palisades in Southern California. It's happening in North Carolina, you know, natural disasters, man-made disasters, made by leadership of a church. Like the list goes on of the pain and the hurt we can accumulate, but the point is, is we don't have to hold it for the rest of our lives, right?

It breaks my heart, but I love the honesty of those gals you're working with in their 70s, who said, I wish we would have processed this 30 years ago, right? And I hope those people that are making that really tough decision to either stick with that church or move to another church or, you know, whatever the case is, I hope that they don't have to carry that pain in that hurt around for the rest of their lives, right? Because it's, they don't, there's, there's tools available to them, you know, and that's why you're doing what you're doing out there in Kansas City. That's why, you know, we're doing what we're doing all over the place.

So we, I can't believe it. We're already at like 50 minutes here, Casey. So is there any other place you want to go in the conversation, anything else you want to point out to listeners or just kind of let us know about? Yeah.

I just, this was actually a wild back in our conversation, but I was just thinking about this visual that I like to share with almost all my clients where it has like a little dog and then it has a big dog and they both step into the mud. And for the little dog, the mud comes up to their neck and then for the big dog, you know, the mud comes up just a little bit onto their paws and it's basically, you know, it, things affect us also differently. And so, you know, we walk in a grief and some of us it's, um, okay, yeah, that hurt and that stung that didn't feel good and, you know, um, and I'm, you know, I'm going to work through it, but for some people that say lost, it can be completely debilitating. And so I think just, um, pointing out that sometimes I, and I hear this all the time from clients of like, oh, it's not that sh-bad or it shouldn't be that bad or people have it so much worse.

And we can't compare, you know, it's, it's so different, you know, even with those sweet little ladies, like I think that's where they, you know, that's why it's, you know, so the bless that they do listen to me because I'm not saying like, oh, I have it all together. It's, I'm saying we all have pain and it all looks different and we all, you know, we're all human and we all need help and we're all hurting. Um, and yeah, all of, you know, our communities, it's, there's so much separateness. Um, and I actually, this just made me giggle, but the other day I had somebody who said she wanted to start seeing me, um, you know, do the grief recovery method, but she was going to start using chat GPT as her therapist.

And I kind of just laughed because I, you know, while we can get tips all over the internet and we can hear all these things, um, you know, there is something that's so powerful about having these conversations one to one or in groups or, you know, let's work together with people and there's something about sharing your story out loud that it, you know, it takes away shame and it, it brings healing and it brings togetherness and like as humans, we are built for connection, like we want connection so much. And so even just saying things out loud, being heard, being seen, being cared for. Um, well, I'm sure, you know, chat GPT has some great things like it's, there's something about hearing somebody else's story, hearing somebody else's pain, being able to pull that and carry that and being able to release your own to another person.

Um, and I have people who are like, oh, I've done work like this similar to the grief recovery method, but they've never done it with another person. And they always say there's something that's so powerful that's sharing my story out loud that journaling is really powerful and good. And there's something about, I'm going to say it out loud, someone who wants to hear and who can hold space for me and who cares and who wants to help me feel better, you know, someone who cares just as much as I do. And so, um, just want to say, you know, the power of that where it's so important to be able to hold space for other people.

Yeah, no, that's great. I, you know, I, I often remind people like, I didn't come up with this five minutes ago, you know, John James, my father, Russell Friedman, a bunch of amazing people that came before us have, have been using this method for like 50 years now, right? And we've helped over a million people and the books in 26 languages and we go to literally any continent on the planet and we can share the power of grief recovery with people. And, and you know, my dad used to say he used to be embarrassed about the different stuff we were, we tried in the early days that did not work, right?

So this is a very refined thing and there are many, many different parts of it by design. There's writing by design. Like you said, there's reading by design by design. There are people listening to you.

There's somebody witnessing that work. And that was all, that was all like figured out and refined a long time ago, right? But, but trust us, we tried different ways to do this. And finally, we found this, this recipe for the method that truly changes lives literally on a daily basis.

And again, I'm so, I'm so grateful that you found your way to this work. And I want to thank you on behalf of all the people that you're helping that I won't meet. My dad won't meet. Russell won't meet, you know, like you're changing your community.

And I couldn't agree more like one of the things that technology has robbed us of is, is community, right? We, we, we talk about how convenient all this technology is and like the truth of the matter is we're all, our, our communities are being decimated, like not to get, be Debbie Downer at the end of this podcast. But like, you know, a lot of our struggles are lack of community, lack of, of leaning on each other. And then again, right, coupled with the fact that we all have a ton of unresolved grief and a ton of emotional pain from our past.

And, and we're all feeling isolated, right? And then we can, you know, you can meet someone like Casey or meet someone like me. And I'll say, you know, we'll give you a hug. And we'll listen to your story without interruption.

And we'll be a heart with ears for you. And we'll be in the moment. They an entire time with you. And, and when you need it, we'll share some of our pain.

So you know that we're human beings too. And we struggled with, with grief too. And then we're going to share some really cool actions for you to do. So you know, if you're listening and this stuff sounds intriguing to you, please take us up on this.

There are literally thousands of good-hearted people with tools that will help guide you in this work. So that being said, Casey, how can people find you if they want to work with you? Yeah. So I am probably one of the rare people where I do give out my phone number to people.

Okay. So that's, you know, something, and people can text me. Sometimes it's, people, sometimes it's really hard to, you know, get the courage to make a phone call and say, hey, I'm a griever. And, you know, it's just when I'm going through, you know, people can text me and say, hey, this is my name.

When can we talk? You know, so it's, you know, I found a verb, but also, you know, with the new building and things, I just started up, you know, Brave and Co. So it's Brave and Co.com. Perfect.

So very simple. Brave and Co.com. And then also, Grief Recovery Casey at Gmail.com is also in the house. So, so we'll, so we'll put both of those in the description on YouTube and in the show notes on the podcast.

So please, please, please, if you want to work with Casey and do you work with clients online as well as in person? Yes, perfect. So if you're listening to this and time zones are, you know, permitting, you know, you can work with Casey because she works via, via online work as well. And then that's another gift that we kind of came up with.

So I guess we'll talk a little bit of technology up to good stuff, but mostly I'm not, I'm not for, for it. But anyway, I digress. Casey, as we close any other final thoughts you want to give to the listeners? No, I just, yeah, thank you so much for having me on here.

I just, yeah, I think biggest encouragement is if you're afraid, it's, it's okay to be afraid. Just one step, you know, baby steps. One step at a time, you know, it doesn't have to be this big, huge jump, you know, just step forward and say, hey, I need help. And that's what's great about the method too is that I will do most of the work for you.

You know, I'm teaching you how to do it. Of course, you have to show up and do your work. And I'm like, hey, you know, here's your garden, you know, here's your shovel and, you know, here's your bucket. And here's how you start to garden.

You know, you don't have to know all of the things I get to teach you and I get to show you and, you know, show up and we will, we will do it together, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, well said, my friend.

All right. Well, I want to thank everyone for listening. Please like, subscribe. I think it, I think these days the most important thing you can do is share this.

So please share this podcast with other people, spread the word. And, you know, again, I want to thank you for listening to the Feel Free Again podcast. Casey will have you back. Go, go, go create your center and go help a ton of people in your community.

Again, we thank you on behalf of everyone on the team. We thank you for all the good work you're doing there. And again, we will see you next time. Thank you guys for listening to the Feel Free Again podcast.