Unspoken Goodbyes & Healing: Her Last Words to Her Dying Mom Were an Argument…

So you guys went together through the book as friends? Yes, yeah. Okay. Wow.

Okay. Very, yeah. And by the way, for those that want a real brief history lesson on the grief recovery institute, right? At first, that was the only way to actually access this work, right?

Is just my dad self-published this book. It got out there in the world and the book was it, right? The book guided you how to do this work on your own. And then eventually it was edited to do this work with somebody and explain kind of how to be that partner for that person.

And then from that came all this other stuff that we can do now. So you were doing the work as it was attended initially, right? So anyway, so you do the work in the book, okay? And what was your experience just working through it with a friend?

Oh, it was, it was really hard. Sure. It's not easy. It brings up a lot of heart emotions.

But I, you know, I didn't realize that I didn't say goodbye to my mom. You know, she died. She was dying in the hospital from cancer. And I just remember this one moment where she was taking off her wedding ring to give to me because she knew it was time.

And my heart just broke and we actually got in the fight because I was like, don't give up. I was so mad that she was giving up on life. I was angry. And, and that was like the last conversation we had.

And so going through the method and really identifying that there was like this, this real hurt and anger that I was so upset and ashamed of myself that I didn't, that last moment I didn't say goodbye and didn't tell her I loved her. And so that was the moment that I was like in the method, I was like, wow, I never did that. And that's why it hurt so much. I never got to say goodbye.

And I love you. I was in an argument before she died. I can't imagine what that was like for you. And I'm so glad that that you found a book to kind of help you reframe that and look at it through a different angle.

Or again, just process the feelings you had, right? Because again, so much of society wants to, would want to tell you to, oh, you, you didn't know and you were just wanting to help her keep fighting and all those kind of things. Right. Right.

As you know, right? It's like it doesn't matter. It's what's in our heart and what feels unfinished and that was unfinished for you. You know, and so many of us are carrying around those things.

And we unfortunately never find a way to process it or even identify there's, there's work to be done to kind of help unpack that for you. Absolutely. It's an ugliness that stays with you. It just kind of carries on with you.

Yeah. And it's interesting. Well, yesterday actually having, having coffee with a friend of mine who's not familiar with the method, but he's a pretty smart guy and, and I was kind of telling him about what I did and, um, and he's a new friend. And so we, you know, I was kind of doing a deep dive into the method.

And you know, he's from the Midwest and, you know, and he very astutely mentioned something that was like almost verbatim what my dad taught me very early on in my group for recovery training. And this guy from, that's never even heard of the method, right? And I was like, wow, that's really astute of you. And basically what he was talking about was how over the last several generations, we have really, really fallen out of, of touch with the actual experience of someone dying, right?

Oh, it's very much sterilized now and outsourced, right? And it's like back in the day, not only would that person, that loved one probably be dying the whole time in your home, but then there would be once, once the death occurred, there would be a preparing of the body. You know, the body would be in the parlor for a couple of days. You know, then they would, then you would move out to the funeral and there would be a lot more ritual around the funeral.

And that's all part of like how the grieving process that we've had for thousands, you know, if not, you know, tens of thousands of years. And all of that has really been stripped away from us, you know, in the last kind of couple of generations. And so I think that people before had more access to, or awareness and acceptance around death, right? But so, so often we hear this so much in the hospice world.

And again, just your experience and so many of our experiences is your, the loved one is busy trying to get a, emotionally complete with us. And they are doing things that are important for them to do to, to emotionally get complete. And again, out of love and out of wanting a miracle or wanting them to keep fighting, a lot of the time the family, the loved ones, the family members almost shut down that completion work that that person is doing. And it's again, I'm not picking on you, Kelly.

This is across the board, what we see. And the reason we're staying on it for, for a second is Kelly's had a chance to get complete with her mom around that. But we, but I want to teach on that for everyone listening is that a lot of the time that is what is happening is people are trying to get emotionally complete. And so please, as painful as it is, again, intuitively that person that is dying is aware of stuff you're not aware of, right?

And there's things going on there where they're wanting to complete. And as painful as it is a lot of the time like our advice would be to let that person do that, let that let that person say the things they want to say to you. Because otherwise, it can really complicate stuff for us as kind of the grieving person on the other end of that. Because again, we look back at some point and say, oh, I didn't get to say that or I didn't get to hear that from them.

And sometimes we could have, if we would have just let the process of dying play out versus this real fear that we have around dying. Not that I think it was easy for people hundreds and thousands of years ago when loved ones were dying. But there, I think there just was more familiarity with the process of death. Death was around more.

And again, it wasn't so kind of hidden from us right now. It's like, okay, grandma goes to the hospital and you're a child. And so we can't have anyone with the children in there with COVID. And so it's almost like one day grandma just leaves our awareness, right?

And then we never have a chance to say goodbye. And I don't think that's the best way to go about things. And I think it really complicates a lot of the grieving process for us. Yeah, absolutely.

This is how I'm, yeah. And I just want to say notice how I'm not saying the term complicated grief, okay? Because in our perspective, everyone has quote unquote complicated grief. And so what we believe is that term that has just kind of been thrown out there in the last several years really kind of minimizes and judges people.

Because it's like, sorry Kelly, like, you know, I know your grief, you're kind of struggling. But I don't know if you know, but someone told me my grief was complicated, right? And now all of a sudden, I'm, there's a hierarchy of heartbreak, right? So I just want to make that point.

I've used the term complicated, but I have not used the term complicated grief. Because again, everyone's grief when you're in it is highly complicated. And this, this method helps you very kind of systematically process that and identify the complexities of whatever you're going through with your heartbreak. But again, we don't want to, we don't want to have a pecking order of people's grief.

We just want to say, Hey, there's enough room for us all to be grieving at 100% of what that grief is. And we can all support each other, right? It doesn't need to be this, this kind of weird pecking order. We're only really one person is allowed to grieve because they have the, the saddest story.

So anyway, sorry, that was a, that was a long rant. But you know, getting back to you. It was a good one. Okay.

I just want to add, I want to add to your rant that you, you hit it right on the nose, I went to a funeral for my aunt and everybody was shocked that I brought my daughter because we don't even bring sometimes our children to the hospital. Like, they'll bring you through a funeral. They were like, why did you bring her here? Because this is part of life.

Thank you. I am so glad you brought that up. I absolutely, again, as weird as this sounds, when it is, when it is relevant, my children absolutely will attend, attend, you know, their first funeral. Unfortunately, with my dad, we did this weird COVID Zoom thing, you know?

And although there was, there was really some therapeutic value to me in that. I cried through the whole Zoom myself and really said some stuff I needed to say. And my kids watched with, with Ashley, they weren't there in the room with me. Again, it was weird around the COVID time.

But like you, I will make sure that when it is relevant, I'm not going to take them to a funeral of someone they barely knew, right? But when it is relevant, they absolutely should be there and learn how to navigate that, right? And so I'm so glad you did that. And that was for your niece, you said?

My aunt. Your aunt. And who? My brother, my daughter.

Yeah. Your daughter. Okay. Okay.

Got you. So, what were the kind of things you were communicating to your daughter during that funeral? What, do you, is there anything that comes to mind any conversations before, after, during, that stood out for you? You know, not really.

It just, it was just, you know, telling her who my aunt was. She didn't know her that well. Well, family, right? It's a familial thing, right?

Yeah. It was just to be there, to be part of it, to learn that life, that's part of life, we all have death, you know, there's life and there's death and it was just a part of that. And I, you know, I don't really remember anything sticking out just that, she, you know, it wasn't hard for her. It was, it was, it was normal.

It was almost, she was really young and it was almost normal for her because at that age, it was just normal for her to go, okay, this is part of life. It, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. She wasn't scared of it. Yeah, yeah, right?

And that's, that's the thing is, is what we see and a lot of the time what we teach on is, hey, kids actually are really good at processing grief until we get the way and kind of give, give them some wonky stuff in their belief system about suppressing stuff. And so I, I just love that you brought that up that you included her in this kind of ritual, the ceremony that has been going on forever since the beginning of people and you're, and, and, and children should be a part of that 100%. Just like I recently, I don't know if it's recently, but in terms of the, at the time frame when my friends were getting married, there were different invites where it was like no kids allowed. And I, I always had like kind of a gut level visceral reaction to that and it always bothered me, right?

I didn't quite understand why it was like, you know, the excuse was, well, you know, weddings cost so much money now and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And it's like if, if we invited the kids, it'd be like this many more people. But again, it's like, are we going to exclude our children from all of these, these ceremonies, these rituals? Again, both happy and sad.

Are we just going to kind of outsource that and not, not have them do that because it's more convenient for us as adults? You know, I don't think it's the best plan. So anyway, I hope that people really kind of take a pivot now and, and when relevant, bring their kids to funerals, absolutely, bring their kids to weddings, absolutely, right? They need to be a part of these things, right?

And hopefully as parents were role modeling, what, what, you know, what we should be doing at these different ceremonies, right? And again, it's all, whether it's a funeral or a wedding, right? What we really need to be doing is, is be open and honest with our emotional communication, right? And that can be during the happy times and the sad times.

So yeah, thank you for bringing that up, Kelly. Okay, so, so you, you work through the book and then please continue on kind of your, what's your journey? Because it doesn't end there for you, obviously, right? But what, what happens next and kind of your, your story was grief recovery?

Yeah, absolutely. I loved the method. I loved what it, how it helped me that I held on to that book. And we moved around the country.

I was, when I was single, I moved from house to house. I got married. We moved across country a couple times. And it was always with me.

People asked about, when they were grieving, asked about it, I, you know, handed them the book. I did it with them or I, you know, talked them about the book. And it happened in 2019, somebody was having a really hard time. They were grieving.

I think it was a death of a loved one. And I was like, I've got the perfect book for you. And I looked everywhere for the book. I couldn't find it.

We had just moved. And I think it was in one of those boxes that I either got rid of or got lost. And I was like, the book is gone. What am I going to do?

So Amazon, of course. And I Google, I go go the book and I found that you guys had a different book because I got my book back in 1994 or seven, something like that. And it was a purple book. And I'm like, this is great.

I ordered a couple books. And so I started going through it. And at the end of the book, it said, if you wanted to be a specialist, you know, we have training. And I went, really, I, I love this.

I share it with everybody. Maybe I should do this. Yeah. And then COVID hit.

And you guys started having training online, which was perfect for my situation. And I decided to do it. And so I took the training in 2020. Okay.

Wow. Well, I am glad you found that book. And I'm glad that my dad and Russell had the, the, the, the wherewithal to it to say, hey, we should mention the certification training in the new book. Yeah.

And a lot of people, by the way, find themselves to, to getting certified through that book, you know, through that messaging. And, and obviously that, that's a great thing. And yeah. So for, for those of you who are listening, right, we, we used to only do in person certifications for the majority of our, of our time doing this work.

And then COVID hit and write in, hey, we can't do this anymore. And luckily by that time, we had already been having specialist work with grieving people via via the internet. So we knew, we knew it could work. But we were, again, we didn't know about the four day certification.

And what is wild, some people much prefer the online, some people only want to get certified in person. Again, it's personal preference. But what I always let people know is the actual review, the five star rating out, you know, out of thousands of people that have gotten certified, I think we're almost tied at like 4.6 or 4.7 stars between the in person and the online. So rest rest assured, if you are considering certification, just know people have amazing life changing experiences, both on zoom and in person.

And I wouldn't have believed that at first. I would have said, you know, because I remember with COVID, I, I'd led the first online training. And I was very curious to see how it would be received and how, how it worked. And we had an amazing group and an amazing experience.

So anyway, I just wanted to touch on that. So you got, you got certified right around 2020. And, and you know, one of the things obviously is your focus is now helping other people. But the thing that we recommend that people do is never, never, never stop working on yourself, right?

Because we, we come to the work with a whole list of losses. We get better and better helping others as we get more familiar and complete our own personal work, right? And so, um, can you kind of talk to us about, um, again, just being a new specialist and figuring out what, what work you needed to do both personally and then, you know, working with others, kind of, we can go wherever you want to go there. Absolutely.

Well, after I finished the certification, um, I realized in that book and I don't know if it was in the book that I had previously, because I was so focused on my mom, I had no other thoughts, but I was like, in, in the training, loss wasn't just about death of a loved one. And in my mind at that time, that's what it was, because that's what it was for me. And after the training, I realized there are so many losses in my life. Like you said, in the training, we also go through that and we list them all out.

There's so many losses in my life that I need to work on. And I took, um, it took me a few months to get a client. So I worked on me for a few months before that. For you.

It's a good way to go. I did a lot of work with people in my life, but then it came to one of these things that happened before my mom died. Happened in 1990. I had a traumatic brain injury.

Mm. Um, so I was, I was a, it was the summer before my junior year in college and a bunch of us were going water skiing and we were goofing around because somebody was supposed to meet us and we were in a parking lot of a gas station and they were late. And we're goofing around at 5.30 in the morning. And I decided to do a cheerleading pyramid for some reason.

Wasn't a cheerleader. And I fell off and hit my head on the cement. Oh, wow. And, you know, at I woke up days later, because I had, um, I was in intensive care.

Um, I didn't know who I was. Uh, amnesia and all that. Um, I wasn't expected to live. I did, which was amazing.

Um, it was amazing trauma center. And, uh, so it was really rough time. Then you get out of the hospital. That's back in 1990.

So they didn't do a lot with brain injuries back then. Yep. I get out of the hospital. They said, go back to school.

Okay. I'm going to go back to college. I went early to help the freshman and I went back there and I'm like, I'm supposed to know this roommate I'm living with. I don't remember her.

Hmm. And I was, I was reading a book one day and it was so frustrating. I couldn't understand anything I was reading. I kept reading it over and over again.

And it was so frustrating. I didn't know what was going on with me. And I ended up coming home. Um, I went to school in Santa Barbara.

I drove all the way back to San Jose. I was in California at the time and went to the doctor and they're like, oh, there's some other stuff going on with you. You know, you get released from the hospital. Think they think, oh, you'll just have headaches and you'll just have vertigo, but you'll be fine.

You know, you'll just be fine. Just, you know, deal with it. Yep. And, and so I had to quit college for a while.

Um, I had to, uh, they did some tests and they found out I'm dyslexic. I have a auditory processing disorder. And so I had all these things that were just a lot to take. And I was like, I was a junior in college.

And now I just don't even know if I can read. Wow. And, and so, um, at that time, my mom was still alive because it was like four years before my mom died. It was also, I didn't know who I was.

Everybody else is going back to school, all your friends, which they should have. But in my heart, it was. I don't know who I am. I don't know where I belong anymore.

And, and it was a really hard time. My mom was a nurse. So I really got really close to my mom during those, those years, um, right after my head injury. She was the one supporting me and I had to move home.

I lived at home. Um, so it was just. I didn't know all those losses could be helped because they talk about, okay, what we're going to do for your, for your reading. So I was able to go back to school and went to San Jose State and they said, well, we have disabled student services will help you read by giving you recordings for the blind of all your textbooks because I have to listen and read at the same time in order to get something.

And then we'll, we'll have somebody take notes for you and all your classes so that when the professor talks too much, you know, you don't miss things. And you know, so there was, there was things to help me get better. But nobody talked about the emotional toll that it took on me. Yeah.

Yeah. And it, you know, so fast forward years later and I get the certification and I'm looking at my graph and I'm going, I had this traumatic brain injury. What kind of losses, you know, emotional losses are going on with that. And I decided to take this journey and a traumatic brain injury is an intangible, you know, it's not a person that you're like, okay, here's a relationship I can see.

It's, there was all these things that I, it was very complicated and Susan helped me out a lot with it because it was an intangible. Yeah. And, and real quick for our listeners that are newer, what we mean by intangible loss, again, like what Kelly and I are, and most people came into the method thinking, hey, grief is about death and I'm going to work on someone who has died. But, but these other losses that we can endure, right, are there, there's, we call them intangible losses.

So for instance, people regularly work with us around the loss of infertility, right? And so that's a massive grief event for many women. And we help them work through it right and another one would be something like this, right, where it was like, what are all of the intangible losses associated with this, this life changing, I almost died traumatic brain injury and look at it through the lens of grief, which again, almost no one on the planet will help you look at through the lens of grief, right? And even, you know, I was going to say this and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Kelly, but I'm imagining in 1990, like you said, everyone is trying to practically logically help you with all of the day to day stuff around a physical injury, but no one is stopping to help you unpack all that emotional turmoil that is happening through all of this.

And I would say I would, I would bet a lot of money in 2025. If a college student had that, there would be more mental health professionals helping them through therapy, look at the emotional stuff. But I will add a caveat, they still, unless they're trained in our method, won't be looking at it through the lens of unresolved emotional grief, right? And I think probably where you're going next is how you use this method to help you with this tragic event that happened 30 years ago, right?

But we're still, there's still work to be done. There's still stuff that Kelly was emotionally caring for 30 years around unresolved emotional pain from a past event. And that's really kind of what we are trying to do is let people know a shocking, shockingly small percentage of people in the world at any given time think that it is the right time for them to do grief recovery work with someone. And usually it's around, you know, again, I had a loved one who died one to three years ago.

And so I qualify as someone to look at their grief and it's the right time for me to look at my grief. And let me just say this, like if they you're in that scenario, welcome, and yes, please come do this work. But what we haven't quite figured out how to communicate quite honestly is the vast majority of the population can right now this minute do the grief recovery method. And we can help you identify stuff that is unfinished from your past that will benefit you to work with right now.

So in other words, there's no right or wrong time to do grief recovery work. I assure you, if you've lived on this planet for longer than, you know, five years, right? There you have accumulated unresolved grief from your past and we want to help you unpack that so you can live again, live free again, live a more happy joyous life and stuff like that. So anyway, Kelly, back to you, you now got certified and you're looking from at your past losses and you're saying, oh, wow, can I apply the method to this traumatic brain injury event I had, you know, in college, right?

Take it from there if you don't mind. Yeah, well, you know, it's it's with with a traumatic brain injury or any chronic illness, it continues to. So it's not just the stuff that I had 30 years ago, it was stuff that I was discovering over the years to that come up. So, you know, one of the things that that writing it out and really, so that's that's why the method is so good because it's not just about, hey, I had this traumatic brain injury, it's actually really diving deep and saying, okay, what did it affect in my life?

You know, it affected my reading and it affected my self-esteem because I was embarrassed in college when I would say something backwards because I was reading in a class and I would read it back the phrase backwards because I was dyslexic and it was embarrassing when people would laugh, you know, and there was all that stuff. You know, there was one of the things that I lost was my sense of smell and I didn't know for a long time and it sounds weird. You didn't know you lost your sense of smell, but it was there was so much going on. And one of the things in my mind, just like the doctor's office, I might have got it from the doctor or my parents, it's like, well, good thing it wasn't your eyesight or your hearing.

Yeah. Right? You know, be grateful it wasn't this, right? Be grateful.

Let's not look at the sad stuff. Just be grateful it wasn't XY or Z. Yep. That's not the other.

We talk about those intellectual comments, right? You know, it's, it's, it's, oh, but you have your eyesight and you have your hearing. So that's the most important. You didn't lose those.

But you don't realize that your sense of smell and maybe more people realize during COVID when they lost it, but your sense of smell actually bypasses your intellect and it goes to your emotion and your memory centers. And so you think about it. If you smell something, it brings back super vivid memories of your childhood or your connection with people and you feel connected. And while I was doing the grief recovery method, I was like, that is why I don't feel connected to people or I struggle to connect to my past.

You know, I lost my, a lot of my childhood memories were lost or fogged. So I don't remember my parents. But all of a sudden, too, it's like, I don't have that sense of smell that's connecting and really making those memories vivid. So when I do get a memory, I feel numb.

It's like, oh, that must have been in a TV show or, you know, it's kind of that disconnect. It's like I watched it on screen. I didn't participate in that memory. Yeah.

And so there's a, there's a big loss of feeling connected to the world around you, feeling connected to the people that you were supposed to be connected with because I've lost that. Yeah, this is so powerful. Again, if you, if you're paying attention, right, Kelly is using the term loss a lot, right? And we interchange society, interchange is the term grief with loss, right?

And so look at this. There's a loss of community there, right? There's, there's the loss of smell. There is the, the loss of, again, hope streams and expectations, right?

Because as a junior in college, you're planning where you, where you are off to next, right? And, and when this happens, right? It's like, oh, no, that like I, I can't maybe continue on with those plans. And again, so you're using the term loss a lot very specifically.

And I want, I want listeners to connect with that, right? How many people in the world, honestly, are going to say you had a TBI, you had a traumatic brain injury. And here's all this grief attached to it. Right.

I either there's this loss attached to it. And that's what our passion is, is looking, looking at your past hurtful painful events through the lens of grief. Because every 10 years we call it something else, right? Now we love calling everything trauma, right? 10 years before that, it was stress and anxiety and 10 years before that, it was some other thing.

We don't like for whatever reason. It does, it's scary to look at this through the lens of grief. But luckily there's this whole, this whole program attached to very thoroughly looking at these things, right? So like Kelly got to discover a bunch of stuff that was more accessible once you looked at it through different lens, right?

Because without the method, Kelly, would you be able to impact this event that happened in the 90s as thoroughly as you had? No, I think in the 90s and until I learned this method, it was like just deal with it. Just get over it. It happened.

Move on. Use your intellect, right? Use it self-talk, tell yourself, just get over it. And if you tell yourself that enough times, you'll just get over it.

Which did not happen. You know, it's, it's, when you go through something like this and like my death with my mom, I would bury it. You know, it's like you have to move on, you have to be strong, you have to go on, you have job, you know, and I would push it down so much that I didn't even know it was there. Until I would, I always said that it was like, it's like a beach ball, you hold underwater and it's really hard, you keep it down and until it explodes and when it explodes, it's not just going to affect you, it's going to affect every and a huge area around you, of people around you when it does explode, when your emotions explode and you haven't worked on it.

Yeah. Yeah, that's that I'm actually listening. I'm listening. I was going to say reading, but that would not be accurate.

I'm listening to this book called Atomic Habits and the author is a guy named James Clear and it's a pretty interesting book, but it starts with in high school, his teammate was warming up in the in the on deck circle of the batter's box for baseball and swung a bat full speed and let go of the bat and it hit James, you know, clear directly between the eyes and again, they had to put him in a forced coma and, you know, again, a TBI and the book starts with him trying to figure out how to develop habits to come back from this, both as a baseball player and then again, figuring out who he is in the world. And it's interesting, he gets into with the Atomic Habits, he gets into kind of what we teach on around the basic action chain in some other ways around building habits. So there's there's I actually would love to have him on his a guess because there's a lot of parallels.

You know, but what I don't recall from any of that is is kind of the a deep dive into the emotional turmoil that that event had and that's what I that's why I'm loving this conversation with you because he had this similar TBI at a very young age and and trying to figure it all out and and yes, like through new habits and through modern science, we can help with a lot of the practical stuff about people getting them participating in life again, but again, like Kelly, right, you were carrying all of this emotional stuff that you weren't even quite aware of, right, for decades because because no one kind of knew how to help you find that, right? And ultimately you found it, you discovered it through this process. So that is again, I'm so I'm so glad we're talking about this on this podcast because so many of us who are listening have had health events, right, things that you would just classify as health events and and you can do a lot of work around freeing yourself because you're carrying a bunch of stuff emotionally again, not to compare, but like my whole self worth as a as a young man was being really good at baseball or what I thought was really good at baseball.

And then I blew out my knee and tore all my ligaments and then all of a sudden I'm not competing with all the other guys on my team at at this pretty elite level. And and now who am I, right? And every you know, and everyone's like, Hey, we're going to, you know, you should have the surgery, you shouldn't have the surgery. Like you should here go play for this team, right?

It's all about just like getting back on the horse. And none of it was about, Hey, you I know inside your emotionally struggling with the fact that you probably are never going to play baseball again at that level. And like now what do you do? All your hopes, dreams, expectations for the future are gone at 21 years old, right?

That is a terrifying place for me to be as a young man. And unfortunately, you know, drugs and alcohol were my solution to numb that pain for a while. And I am so grateful that I had a dad as loving as he was with the emotional IQ that he had because he could guide me to, Hey, let's look at this other stuff, right? Because drug to alcohol may may not be the plan long term, right?

And so anyway. So okay, so Kelly, back to you, you are your first discovering all of the different losses associated with the with the with the TBI. And so are you just curious, curious? And this may be a little bit of inside baseball for those listening, but I'm curious.

Were you doing graphs around different events or did you do a graph around relationship graph is what I'm talking about if you're not familiar with the work? Did you do a relationship graph around the whole event? Are you doing it more in pieces when you're doing the personal or work around that? Yeah, well, I did the relationship graph really through it started at the TBI.

Okay. And the graph ended when I actually worked on it, the time I worked on it. And the whole relationship graph was the the losses, you know, the things above the graph, if you know, those good, those good things about some of the things that came out of it that I learned about myself. Or I radically changed my major because it, you know, when I went back to school because I couldn't do the things that I wanted to do at the time and it had been a good thing.

You know, so, and then I put down, you know, all the things that were really frustrating or hard that my body couldn't do. So it was kind of a graph about limitations that my body had, my mind had, my body, and just the outcome of what happened with that traumatic brain injury, the good of the bad. Yeah. Gotcha.

Did you, did you find a level of peace and acceptance about loving who you are now when you could grieve and complete who you were before? Was that a part of it for you? Absolutely. Because, you know, until that point, there was still part of me that goes, I don't know who I am, you know, because I lost that.

I thought I was, you know, in our 20s, we think, oh, we're going to do this, this, this, and this. And I'm going to be this incredible person and I'm going to, you know, I, it's so funny because I don't really remember much of those dreams anymore because they're gone. And, and when they were gone, it was like, who am I? What am I supposed to be doing here?

Yeah. And, and so it was, it was letting go of that and saying, I'm still a great person. I have, okay, yes, I have, maybe not be able to read or I can't do this, you know, and I actually got to forgive myself for being ashamed. I was ashamed of how I lost, you know, it's kind of like, it's not exactly losing intellect, but, you know, there's seven different types of intellect, according to, I think is what I learned when I was in that disability thing.

And my reading comprehension was below normal. And that made me feel ashamed and I was horrified that I could, I felt really stupid and dumb. And I carried that with me through the years until I did this and I said, you know, what, I'm not dumb, that just happened to me, you know, I'm not dumb. I, you know, and it's, it's, so that was so freeing to let go of that, that shame and feeling that I was a dumb person and I could never amount to anything because of that.

Wow. Okay. Again, I'm so glad that, that, that you got to do this work on that now. Shifting, if you don't mind shifting into your, your specialist now and your, you know, and your goal is to help other people with this method that you found help from.

We talk about a lot of the time when people first get trained, you know, look at, look at your passion population, look at, look at people that you are passionate about helping. Do you have that passion population? We, we really do also try and make this accessible to anyone. So in other words, if I'm a grief recovery specialist, I have tools to help everyone on the planet with all different types of losses.

In other words, I don't have to have the same losses you to be helpful to you because I'm going to share these tools and you're going to be doing the heavy lifting to help recover from whatever you're, you're working on. But at the same time, we do have very specific insight on different life experiences we bring. So Kelly, I guess my question is, have you helped other people specifically with TBI? The story is, is very powerful.

Do people find you that way or is that not really something that's come up for you with clients yet? Yeah, actually, it hasn't yet. I think that is one of my, my population people. It just hasn't yet.

I've, I've had a wide range of people in losses. But one of my passions is people with traumatic brain injuries, but also people with chronic illnesses because it's similar. It's, it's that invisible disease sometimes people look at you and say, well, you look fine. Why are you canceling plans on me?

It's that loss of community where you can't get out of the house because you are sick or something's going on with you, but people don't realize that and they look at you and go, there's nothing wrong with you. It's an invisible disease. And a lot of times traumatic brain injuries, people would see me now and say, there's nothing wrong with you. You don't have any issues.

Very interesting. Yeah, and I think to, I think, right, I think you would be able to help people in the veteran community. You know, obviously there's a lot of TBI stuff coming, coming out of that. And also, right, when you look at sports and football and there's a ton of TBI there.

And you know, and I want to say this, a lot of the time people think that grief or recovery work is going to be sad. It's going to be painful. And it, you know, again, being honest, it absolutely can be those things. But I think what people don't really realize is the joy and the capacity for happiness and again, accepting of who you are now or accepting of what the situation is now.

There is a lot of beauty that comes out of this grief or recovery work. And I want people to hear that into know that, right? There's joy that comes out of this work. There's laughter where you didn't have capacity for laughter before this work.

There is connection, right? There is, is again, like you were saying, a lot of your story I'm hearing and this has been true for me too. A lot of your story in mine has been isolation during grief and after grief. And you can refine connection and you can feel connection where you didn't have that capacity before.

These are all the benefits of grief or recovery. So I don't want you guys to think this is seven weeks or eight weeks or a weekend in a hotel where it's just nothing but ripped off band-aid after band-aid. And there isn't a light at the end of the tunnel, right? That is not this work.

If that was the case and I just worked with people around grief but I didn't get to see them process that and let go of that, I would have put in my two weeks into this work with my dad. So sorry to add, this isn't really working for me, right? But it's the joy and the beauty that we get to help people find again is I think what really ties us to this work. And so again, if you're struggling with these past hurts or others that we haven't covered today, just know that like our whole goal and the whole, this method is about helping you with your quality of life and finding that again or finding it for the first time, you know, depending on what you're coming to this work with.

So, so that's interesting Kelly. If you don't mind just because again, this fascinating. So TBI and then people with kind of long term illnesses, you're finding similarities in the grief that they carry around those things and you find that isolation there similar, right? Yeah.

So, so you have found yourself working with people around those losses they're finding you more than the TBI people right now. Yeah, absolutely. And, and part of that is because I just, my, my daughter has an autoimmune disease. So I've just been connected more connected with that kind of population and you know, it, it gets so frustrating.

I talk a lot about when I was talking to people, especially my, my daughter was younger. I remember the doctor telling me that she was chronically depressed and my heart was breaking and it was because we moved to a new state and she every year her friends that were there that she met left and it wasn't chronically depression. It was grief and it when it was so frustrating to see my daughter be labeled by the medical community, community that she had depression. And so it's like, you know, I think so many times with chronic illness too, they market as depression.

It's like, no, it's grief. They can't get out of the house to see their friends. They can't, you know, they're feeling sick all the time. So it feels hopeless that, you know, they're never going to feel good again or they're not going to feel normal like they used to or, you know, that hope dreams and expectations of their life has changed because they have this chronic illness.

And it's one of those passions of mine to make sure people know that it's, it's, it's grief and you can work on it and, and you can get past that and you can find joy in life again. You can find that hope. Yep. Yep.

Yeah. That, thank you for saying that, right? This is obviously far from the first time I've heard this story where it was essentially a misdiagnosis, right? And if we misdiagnosed, then obviously the treatment plan is going to be different.

Right. You know, to take this away from, from your daughter's story, but just to broaden it out, right? A lot of the time what I see is here we have, we have drugs to put you on, right? Yep.

And the plan is just forever, right? The discounted, sorry, that's kind of your new lot in life and, you know, and that's really sad, right? It's not a world I want to live in where the solution is always as pharmaceuticals and stuff like that. So I, you know, I really am grateful that again, we have people out there looking at it through a different lens.

It's like, hey, maybe, maybe you move towns a lot and a lot of your friends essentially have died now, right? Because we always say we're going to go visit them. We always say we're going to go hang out, but most of the time we don't, right? And so for all intents and purposes, it's almost like we've just lost those friends forever.

And that is heartbreaking for young people. It's heartbreaking for me when I, you know, when I moved from Oregon to Idaho. And again, I have a couple of options. I can just suppress all that stuff.

But guess what? That turns into being really sad, right? And if you meet the wrong professional, they're going to misdiagnose that. And they're going to put me on a path that maybe isn't optimal for me, you know, being healthy long term and finding happiness.

So you know, that being said, I'm hearing more and more about autoimmune stuff, right? I feel like more and more our population is struggling with that. And if you don't mind, if we can talk a little bit about that, again, I could name dozens of people in my own life that, you know, mentioned autoimmune stuff. And I feel like, and I think this is a good thing.

I think now more than ever, we're really focusing on nutrition and kind of what you're ingesting plays a, plays a large role in treating this. And again, I'm just guessing here, but I think like we usually like to do, right? Like they did with the TBI. We're focusing on all the practical stuff or the stuff as the end all be all, right?

Versus like what you really were getting at with your daughter, which is like, hey, this is a bunch of grief around this condition that has been life limiting to you, right? And I wish that the, even if we are finding a lot of solutions through nutrition, which I think is a great thing. It's not, it's not letting go of this, this unpacking of this emotional pain that is burdening us and is life limiting to us, right? Well, the thing that is really interesting when I was going through the grief recovery method with in training, we talk about accidents and illnesses after a big emotional.

And after my mom died, I was actually diagnosed with an autoimmune as well. I was predispositioned, but it was that feeling, you know, holding all of that pain inside for so long, it came out. And, you know, I really believe that that autoimmune, whether I was predispositioned to it or not, it, you know, was in my genes. It came out after my mom died.

And, you know, there we get, you know, because I still had all that grief bottled up inside of me for years. Because of that, you know, we tried band-aids and different things to fix it. My band-aid, my stirb, which we talked about short-term energy relieving behaviors was eating sweets. You know, that's not going to be any good for an autoimmune when you have, you know, when you're eating all the sugar, that's like inflammation is one of the worst things for an autoimmune thing.

But some of it was because of a stirb, some of it was because when you don't have a sense of smell, food doesn't taste very good. So sweets actually taste a little bit, it's a taste bud. Yep, make sense. So, you know, I was eating all the time, not the appropriate food, but no one talked to me about that.

No one talked to me about, you know, here's this big emotional event that happened in my life and my health took a hit after it. You know, and I believe with my daughter as well with her autoimmune, there was a big emotional event as we moved from California to upstate New York. Yeah, that's quite a change. That's quite a change, right?

It was emotional for me too, but, you know, it was a big emotional change for her. And, you know, here we go, we've got an autoimmune, you know, and again, you're right. It's like, you know, our nutrition, we need to look at that, but we also so often are put on the pharmaceuticals to deal with that. Yep.

And then you're stuck on them forever because you were diagnosed with something. Yeah. Yeah, this is, this is a, again, let's just open Pandora's Box again, right? It's like, we, we have been connecting grief, unresolved grief from our past and cancer for, you know, long, long time, right?

And there has been, there have been doctors that have researched that and the medical community did it does not, does not want to really put those people on a podium, right? For what reason I don't know, right? That's above my pay grade. But what, what we say is, again, we, we've had doctors of all different, we've had GI doctors, we've had heart doctors, we've had cancer doctors, we've, you know, and get certified with us and, and sit in a room and agree with everything that we talk about, which is unresolved grief is not good for the body physically and does not create an environment for you to thrive physically.

So are we saying that grief is 100% the cause of cancer or Hashimoto's or anything like that? No, that's not what we're saying. But we are saying that it can really help these things thrive in our body. And, you know, again, I, I wish we could do this research at some point.

I wish we could, we could kind of study people who are fighting cancer or fighting autoimmune diseases, who have done the grief recovery method and those that who have not and those who have a lifetime full of unresolved emotional pain that no one's helped them express in process and then looking people at who are dealing with some of these things who have processed a lot of that emotional pain. Again, we haven't done that, but that would be a very interesting thing to do because like you touched on, right? Or let's say someone has, right? We, I've heard this.

I'm not a doctor, but we all have a bunch of cancer in our body and in our body is constantly fighting these things. And then for one reason or another at some point, the cancer takes over and now is in some environment where now it can thrive or win or, you know, with those kind of things. And again, I'm, I've bet a lot of money that unresolved emotional pain plays a large role in that. So yeah, I'm glad you're willing to go, go down this kind of rabbit hole Kelly because again, it's a, no, no one gives credit to grief in terms of the things we struggle with as a society.

You're never going to hear on the nightly news that unresolved grief is the reason so many of our men are in prison. You're never going to hear on the nightly news why, you know, the heart attack rate is, is astronomical because of unresolved grief. You're not going to hear about the divorce rate being what it is because of unresolved grief, right? We are all carrying an REI 60 liter backpacking backpack full of unresolved grief every day and no one, no one wants to talk about that.

You know, I love our mental health professionals that, that come and work with us because they are courageous enough to be like, Hey, there's this little hole in my game. And when I'm working with clients, I have to realize that I've only had a half a semester on grief and it was like, I learned some antiquated stuff on the topic and I need some other tools. Every sales call goes with, with therapists who are willing to kind of admit that. Um, so I love when therapists come and get these tools too and, and can apply them because even, because my point being as, as gently as I can say this, even our mental health community, the, the majority of them do not see what we see in terms of unresolved grief, wreaking havoc in, in their clients lives, right?

And they're certainly don't have the awareness to apply these tools and say, Hey, Kelly, you know, that TBI that you had in the 90s, I think there's still a lot of life limiting beliefs. You have belief systems you have that are hurting your, your relationship with your daughter that are affecting negatively your relationship, you know, with your spouse or, or your mom or your dad or, you know, whatever the case may be. Let's look at it through the lens of grief or carving. Let's unpack some of that stuff.

So we're not bringing those feelings into the next argument we have or the next kind of friction point we have with, you know, again, the majority of them are going to be like, maybe people aren't even looking at what we're looking at. And it's, it's, it's, well, it's why I have gray hairs and, and I will continue doing this work probably until the day that I die because again, it's just like, it's hard to have these tools and not, not have people know that they're here, right? And so you do what you do and I do what I do. So Kelly, let me, let me, let me, we're, I can't believe it, we're at kind of the hour of the work.

Um, I just want to say that, uh, you know, I know you will be in good hands if you reach out to Kelly and work with her, right? And so if you have found some inspiration, some hope from Kelly's story and you want to do some work, um, I'll just say right now you are in good hands if you reach out to Kelly. So Kelly, where can people find you if they do want to work with you? Yeah, well, they can find my microsite on the Grief Recovery Institute's website.

Which is the Grief Recovery method. Yep. And, uh, you can also I'm, I, at renewed hope grief recovery.com. That's my personal website.

Renewed hope grief recovery.com. Okay. And, and we'll put that in the show notes too. So if you're watching on YouTube or, or if you're listening to a podcast, we'll make sure we link to that site there.

Um, any final words that you want to mention to, to people listening? Yeah, I, I think it's the Grief Recovery. You talked a little bit about it. It can be tough in the middle of it when you're actually doing it.

But when you get to the other side and there's just so much, that's why I called it renewed hope because there is so much hope for our life afterwards. You take that, that grief and, and you're able to process it and get rid of it and, and then you're like, wow, it opens up so much more to life. It's just like that, that pain is gone. And, um, and the tools that we teach, you can use for anything.

Uh, and I've used it for my relationship with my husband, my relationship with my daughter. I have a great relationship with them, but those little things that bother you, you don't want it to cause bitterness in your relationship, use that, use the method. It's just it, it really clears all that stuff so that your heart is open to all the good stuff that can come in beautifully said. Um, Kelly, I just want to say that I am so grateful that you found our way, uh, you found your way to this method.

I am so grateful that you're out there utilizing these tools to help others and yourself and your family. Um, so I definitely would love to have you back at some point in the future. Again, keep doing what you're doing and, and on behalf of everyone at the institute, thank you for the work you do for, for, for, for people. Um, and again, I've really enjoyed this conversation.

Me too. Thank you so much. Yeah. All right.

So anybody, if, uh, anybody out there, uh, please, please, please like, uh, subscribe and share this podcast. Uh, again, our whole goal is to help people look at it through, look at some of their struggles in life, uh, through a different lens and not only have that awareness, but then actually put in, put in, uh, put into action, some tools that can really help you say goodbye to that stuff that you've been carrying, right? It's not just about awareness. There's a lot of programs out there that will charge you a lot of money to find awareness.

And there is some relief in the awareness, but the problem is a lot of the programs just stop at that awareness and, and after a couple of days of that relief, uh, you were still carrying it. And so our whole goal here is to help you find emotional completion with what has been unfinished maybe for decades or, you know, um, I was going to say a century, but that may be an overstatement. But again, I haven't worked with someone over a hundred years old, but I would love the opportunity at some point. But anyway, I digress.

Uh, thank you for listening. Share this with people. You are not alone. You don't need to be alone.

Even if it feels that way right now, uh, it doesn't always have to feel that way. That is the majority of us that came to this work felt very alone, felt like people didn't understand us, felt like people didn't know how to just hear us. Um, and I promise, promise, promise, if you come to the grief recovery method and you do some work with one of us, um, that will not be the case. That though, those won't be the feelings produced from this work.

Um, and as with everything that is, that is meaningful, it is going to be hard work. Right? We don't get anything in this life for free, uh, but you do get out what you put into it and, and this method will help you feel free again. So again, thank you for joining us.

Please share this. Please like and subscribe until next time. Um, my name is Cole James and thank you for joining us. And again, lastly, Kelly, thank you so much for being on here.

We're honored to have you representing this work and have a, have a wonderful day, everyone. Thank you.