Are You A Parent Carrying Pain? Grief Recovery Saved My Relationship with My Daughter

She gave me the book and she said, you know, I think, and we've been friends for years, you know, she said, I really think you should read this book, the grief covering handbook. And I was grateful. I said, oh, wow, this looks great. And I did not read it.

And we ran into each other again a year later at a similar event. And she said, hey, did you ever read that book I gave you? And I was like, oh, no, but I will, but I will. The third year comes around.

We meet up again. For she even said anything that I haven't read the book yet. I'm sorry, I haven't read the book yet. And funny enough, that coincided, we had, we moved around a lot.

Missionaries tend to get, you know, moved around a lot. And so we had come from Russia, from Moscow to Los Angeles. And in that large church, we were working with the Los Angeles. And what happened to already be a husband and wife team of grief recovery methods specialist who regularly did the method, did the, you know, delivered it to people who wanted it in their community from our church community, you know, around in LA.

And I was thrilled that that was going on, right? I was like, oh, yeah, great. Never occurred to me that maybe I ought to go. I went through pre-manopause unbelievably hard.

I had every symptom in the book. I wanted to die. And I really believe that had I done this work before then, it would not have been it. It would have been a thing, but it would not have been as debilitating as it was.

And there was all sorts of other stuff going on at the same time, you know, as that happens at that time of life, right? People hit your 40s or 50s and all of a sudden people are dying, you're dealing with aging parents, your kids are crazy teenagers. Work is hard life is just hard, right? And so there you go.

So what when I finally, finally went through the method, I had just moved and I knew by that time I knew that grief is not just a death or a divorce. I knew that all this moving around that I'd done. I think I did 13 international, like from country to country continent to continent, 13 times, I think. Wow.

Oh, it's hard for me. For those, you know, first time I did a lost history graph, I saw that. I was like, oh, my gosh, these moves are huge for me. It's like a parent dying.

It's huge. And so I just had done that again, right? I'd never done a lost history graph, never done the method, but I got to my new post, which happened to be in the middle of England. Dark, dreary, everybody's depressed, a lot of unemployment, high incidence of neurodiverse kids and people.

It's a tough place. It's like London is its own, you know, amazing, multicultural, cool place, which hasn't underbelly too, but it's cool. North of England. Oh, to visit as cool, live there is hard.

And, you know, with all love and respect to all my English friends, but it is hard place to live. And so I looked around and I felt like everybody is grieving here. Everybody that I meet is grieving. I got to do something.

And so I finally grabbed my copy of the book and I got one for a friend and the two of us went away for a weekend and we just did the whole thing in a weekend together. Did the exercises privately came together? We were each others listening partners went away. It came back.

And real quick, sorry, just Tim, I'm curious. We're both of you kind of new to the method working out of the book, fresh or was your friend? Okay, got you. Sorry, please continue.

I'm just curious on these things. We were both absolute novices, right? Never cracked the book before. Never had any experience other than what I had heard and should have been.

Should have been experienced, but had been avoiding, avoiding, avoiding. Okay. And I didn't know that about myself, right? I thought.

I thought I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. You know, I thought I'm doing the best I can. I'm optimistic. I'm hopeful.

I'm believing the best. I'm, you know, trying to be strong. But honestly, I was avoiding, avoiding, avoiding, avoiding. And I will remember one, one moment when I was working in music.

And this is, this is ancient history. I'm a dinosaur, right? This is before internet, before mobile phones, before all this stuff. I remember coming home one night at about four in the morning after gig.

And there's no TV. There's no nothing, right? And you're all revved up when you come home, you know, from work like that. You're like, okay, I'm going to do something.

Nothing on TV, nothing to do. And I remember all of the stuff that I avoid. All my shame from, you know, broken relationships as a teenager and a young adult, my parents' death, both of them died. Deaths of, you know, classmates all through high school, college, friend, took her life.

All of that stuff. I just felt like it was just about to overwhelm me, you know. And so I kept myself so busy that you could, you know, there was no noise. There's no room for noise because I'm so busy.

So that, that was my avoiding, you know, behavior that I, but I had no idea that I was doing that. It was just, it was just what I did. It was just what I did. So thank God I finally sat down with somebody and did the method and it was revolutionary.

I did a graph on my daughter, even though I thought the thing was this move. When I did the lost history graph, the genius of that honest exercise, self-reflection exercise is to see on paper with nobody telling anything, nobody directing this all came out of my soul, right. Was every time there was a line on my lost history graph that had something to do with my daughter, I just burst into tears. And I would have told if you had asked me 10 minutes before I sat down to do that exercise, it shows you how deceived people can be.

Tell me about your relationship with your daughter. Would you say it's mostly positive or mostly hard? I would have said, oh, mostly positive. Right.

Yeah. Because that's my MO, right. That's my idea. Well, guess what?

When I did the relationship graph on my daughter, which I decided to do because I realized, well, something's happening with me. I'm going to follow that impulse. So I did a relationship graph on my daughter and low and behold, low and behold, so much regret. I would have said then so much guilt.

I carried so much what I would have said then guilty feelings regrets about things I did or didn't do or, you know, would do differently now. And Tammy, Tammy, I'm sorry for a little bit of context if you're willing. How at that point held was your daughter? Kind of what what's that relationship?

It was gone. Sure. So we had we had gotten through my daughter and I had gotten through a rocky teenage period and it coincided with my premenopause. So, okay.

I was a little bit crazy women, right, in a house at the same time. We had moments. She's a great kid and she's honestly one of my best best best friends right now. She lives in Ukraine.

She's heroic. She those days though when she was growing up as a teen and it's mostly me, you know, I I was carrying all this junk and I didn't know it. And so she would, you know, come with some thing and I just would over react. I couldn't see it.

I couldn't see that that's what I was doing. All my my stuff was up to here. I didn't realize that I thought I was doing a good job, you know, being strong and holding it together. And so she would, you know, come with something that was maybe a little upsetting or irritating or off or something and I would, you know, answer.

And then it would escalate. And I remember one morning I came to her first first interaction in the morning. She's got to be out at school really early as it in high school. I come knock on the door.

She's in the bathroom and I go, hey, I got your allowance. I, you know, where would you like me to give it to you? Because I know you're going to need it. And she kind of my perception snarkly responds from inside the closed door.

Just put it on my bed. And I was like, I just, I went, okay, I ran upstairs, slammed myself in the closet and I'm on the floor crying. My husband gets up. He finds my daughter crying in the bathroom.

I'm crying on the floor upstairs. And he's like, you guys, we've been up for five minutes. What is happening in this house? So that, I mean, that was, I see that as a direct result of me not dealing with my stuff.

It wasn't her. It was me. I couldn't handle even a little bit. And there's loads of stories with her.

But anyway, I, she's a good normal kid, you know, normal teenager going through teenage stuff. And I had no space. I had no space to handle her discomfort and her trials. I had to fix her and I had to, it had to stop because I'm so uncomfortable.

I couldn't tell you that. Tammy, and thank you for your honesty. I just want to, for the audience, right? It's like for a second.

Let's imagine how many thousands, you know, I don't know, I'd probably guess millions, but how many parents out there are in that position, right? They're children are just being kids, right? They are going to be by default, erratic, emotional, like, you know, make bad choices, be snarky. And, and, you know, again, I'm not, I'm not letting them off the hook.

There's obviously things we need to do to make sure that they're, they're making adjustments. But how many of us are parents who are just overflowing with their own stuff from the past. And so our reactions are way, way, way not relative to what they need to be in relation to what, what that child is doing. Right. 100% and that's why I get so fired up in these podcasts, because as a father of four, right, I'm learning I'm taking notes.

I do those things to Tammy, right. I have to really see where I am with life. Like you said, I'm 43 and, and the plate is full. Right.

And so you catch me in the wrong moment or the wrong day. My reaction is way, way not warranted for, for, you know, whatever the, whatever the thing happens. So anyway, I want to pass it back to you. But, but again, just out there listeners, right?

We don't have this podcast. So we can just talk about like very unique things, right. We do this podcast. So we can voice all of the things that literally millions of people are dealing with.

And there are communications and relationships ending and a strange minutes happening every day that don't that don't need to take place, right. As long as we have some tools or skills that we didn't have when we were raised. So anyway, yeah, keep going, Tammy. I just thank you for for telling this story.

Yeah. And so, so where my daughter was at when I finally did sit down, she, she, she had, she moved with our whole family. So I have a daughter in a son. They're nine years apart.

Everybody moved to England when we made that big move. And so she went off to university in London. So that's it. That's the end of our, you know, parenting of her at home.

That's where I was at when I sat down with this. So that I, again, it's all good. It's okay. This is my thing.

Right. No, it's great. Yeah. She's gone off to university.

It's good. We're better off than we've ever been. Our relationship is better than it's ever been. And no space for, and I'm so sad because it's, you know, I couldn't say.

It's sad. Yeah. Oh, it's hard. It's the thing.

Actually, a lot of my clients are people who for the first time are facing the emptiness. You know, it's one of the first times they go, oh, I'm dying. You know, I didn't think it would be this heart breaking. This natural thing that I've been looking forward to, I'm launching my kid and I'm proud of them.

And I'm dying. I'm dying. So I couldn't admit that. And I didn't realize that until, you know, this wonderful method, this amazing wise, you know, exercise revealed to me, you are so sad about your daughter.

She's just left home and she's the thing you need to work. So what I discovered from that, you know, that experience that weekend, we did the whole method completed. We were great listening partners for each other. My friend and I, though, we had no experience with the method before that.

And what I learned from that was I essentially emotionally missed my daughter's entire childhood. Because I was physically present. I was physically present. Always, you know, real over to you were trying to do all this.

We did all we had an interesting life. You know, we did a lot of stuff. She saw a lot of stuff. It was, you know, we were together a lot, but emotionally in my head.

I was always either expending energy to keep a lid on my regrets about yesterday, that conversation, you know, I had all this negative self talk. And, you know, regret about the past. I messed up. I promised to call somebody.

I didn't call somebody. I, you know, I should have done that better yesterday. And I didn't, or worry about tomorrow. I don't have enough money.

I don't have enough time to do what I'm supposed to do. I don't have enough knowledge. I don't have enough resources. How am I going to get done?

What is on my plate to do tomorrow? Oh my God. So this is where I'm at. That's where I lived.

And I couldn't have told you that. I could not have told you that. And I don't even think that after doing just that one graph. It was that clear.

And unfortunately, I, but I did realize, oh my gosh, I have so many regrets with her. Yeah. Which I completed. I completed.

And if you don't mind, let's stay here for a second, because what I find really fascinating. And I wish I don't have the numbers of the data for this. But what I love, what I love is the awareness you had around incompleteness with your daughter. And here's what I mean.

For you and a friend to pick up that book, which is again, a magical book, but at its core, it's written at a sixth grade reading level. And there's a lot of things that we fill in around that book when you're when you're in a training or if you go through a weekend, a workshop or a eight week group. When you're going through that method with somebody who's trained in this work, there's a lot of, there's a lot of depth that we can create because of the knowledge past the book. So what I love is though, even though that's that that's all said, you and your friend read the book, you're doing the lost history graph, like you've mentioned earlier, you clearly have what would qualify as grief in terms of the death of both of your parents, right.

You've lost other friends to death. And and yet still, right, you you kind of read. And I know the book covers it, right. But you're also identifying, oh, wow, I can be really incomplete with a living relationship.

I can be complete with a with my child. Even though, you know, a week before the book, if you would ask me, I would have said it was all perfect, right. And that's that's the power of this method is if we can really stop for a second, learn some new things that we didn't have before because that's a huge piece of of this work is being educated just on on what incomplete emotion is, right. And then for you to have the kind of I don't want to say the the the epiphany, but but also I don't want to say permission, but again, the safety to say, hey, I'm going to look at this as grief.

I'm going to look at this living relationship with my daughter and know I can do the grief for every method on something like that. And that that happens very often where people will come to do one one loss. And then they threw education, see, oh, there's something else right now in this moment that I feel way, way more unfinished with I still, you know, there's still work to be done on what brought me here and sometimes people do that work too. But, but that is what's so hard to describe, you know, just on a website or something like that, the power of what unresolved grief really how it actually flows in your life on a daily basis, how it flows in your parenting, how it flows in your marriage, right.

How to how it employs in your employment and your career. And that's what's so hard to convey the depth of this work. So anyway, go ahead. You're you're doing this work and, you know, pick it up wherever you want.

I'm sorry. I don't mean to say great. You're doing great. So, so so it was revolutionary, right.

I mean, I really felt like I for, you know, I apologized for all the times that I felt regret. There were a lot of things I felt regret about. And I felt. And I felt like I was at peace about it.

And I've talked, I talked to her about it in little, you know, little over the next years. And I still do it. You know, I sometimes come back. I just did a PS letter on her recently.

I came back to her and I said, you know, this thing I was just remembering this thing. I, I am horrified that I left you alone. The first time you ever went under general anesthesia. And then I realized that I was going to have a child.

I was like, oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. And of course, her response is mom. I was a year and a half.

I have no, I don't remember it at all. Like, but I feel horrible. But see, and that's the key. That's the key right there is the rest of society will to tell Tammy intellectually.

You know, the doctor said this or you're supposed to do this. But in Tammy's heart, she felt like she left her child alone when she shouldn't have. And that's, we must do that work to complete that. And that's the key.

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And that's the key. And that's the key. And that's the key. And that's the key So anyway, that was my first experience.

And then can I ask you one other question on that? You I love that you use are using the word regret right you've used that word several times around just things that the other way we would simplify that and the grief recovery method is we would say these are things that we wish would have happened differently or things that we wish we would have done differently as a parent or you know they would have done differently as a child we do this work. We're looking at things like that right? And and one of the ones you know but that is feelings of regret a lot of the time right now we before the grief recovery.

And again I'm not looking I'm not leading you here. So I really want like in the early feelings was was the word that you would use regret? What had was I was a great no I would have said I am guilt. I feel so guilty.

That's what I would have said I feel so and I figured right I figured that. And, and so here here's the here's the thing we I do I think we should spend a second on, right? Sure. Regret is something that we can do something about in the grief recovery method.

Because regret, things we wish we would have done differently, is really the core of those feelings, right? Guilt is a deliberate intent to harm someone, right? So if I'm found guilty in a court of law, there was malice there, there was planning there, I'm guilty because I intended to harm someone in some way, shape or form, right? But we already know just from getting to know you in, you know, 15 minutes, Tammy wanted to be the best mom ever.

She set out to be the best mom ever, right? And just because she didn't have some skills that most none of us have, you know, things happen differently than she would have wanted them to looking back at stuff, right? That's regret, Christ. That's not guilt, but the problem is is society will hand Tammy the word guilt.

You shouldn't feel guilty, Tammy, or you know, she has learned that that's the word, even though it's the wrong word, right? And so I didn't want to skip over that because I had, I kind of figured that, but she's using the word that is the proper word because she has these tools to kind of help her heal, right? But again, right? In that, when we go, and again, not just Tammy, me, a lot of parents, right, we're gonna use the word guilt, and the problem is guilt can trap us forever, literally forever, or at least decades.

And if you can give people a lifeline of, hey, let's look at it more from like, I wish I would have made that choice differently, right? That is a lot easier to emotionally complete than guilt. And can I add one thing to that? Of course.

Sometimes I will confess guilt is the right I am guilty. I was guilty, for example, in my relationship with my poor mom, who died from colon cancer way too young. There was a moment when, either way, my father died first, the way that happened was just so hard for me. And so I would, one of the faint results of my father dying, one of the results of my father dying was I was so mad at my mother.

For keeping me in the dark, not bringing me along, I felt disrespected, I felt betrayed, I felt left out, I felt disregarded, I felt, not like I belonged in the family, even though I was a kid, I was trying to advocate for myself, but they were in the avoiding, no, no, no, no, we're gonna keep you in Disneyland, we'll keep you in Disneyland as long as we can. Even though they knew there was a terminal diagnosis hanging over my father's head and anyway, long story. But so I was so mad at my mom because she was in control, she could have brought me along and I felt like, you stole two years of my life with my, now my mother is the sweetest angel, kindest, most wonderful, beautiful person ever. And I was so mad at her.

So there was a moment in my life with her that I absolutely intended to harm her. And I remember screaming at her, you should have died instead of dead. You know, why are you alive? And so that was on my, you know, relationship graph with my mom as a long line down, and I learned, thank God, to say, okay, I had to look at it and go, did I intend to harm?

Yes, actually, in that case, I absolutely intended to harm her. Yes. And I can still complete that. But I have to tell the truth about it.

Then there's another thing on my graph with my mom, where I would have described it the same way before, I would have said, I felt guilty about the way I yelled at my mom that was wrong, right? I also felt guilty about the fact that when my mom was dying of cancer, I did not drop everything and move home and be with her. So I'm so grateful for this, you know, clarity about what is true, because without truth, there is no way to heal. And you're right, I would have kept myself trapped forever.

In, you know, I'm guilty, I'm guilty about not going home. Because that was huge for me, you know, she did all this by herself, she's a widow, she's, you know, under so much stress, she's going to all these horrible chemo appointments, radiation appointments by herself, I'm her only living relative. What is wrong with me that I didn't drop everything gone? Yeah.

Why was I not there, right? So I could very easily beat myself up with guilt, and then I'm trapped forever. Yep. But I had no intent to harm her.

I was trying, you know, I'm trying to advocate for her. I'm, you know, we're going to get through this. We're going to beat this thing. We're going to do it.

And I regret that I waited too long. I regret that I wasn't there sooner. Yeah. But I'm not guilty.

Yeah, no, and I want to go back to the guilty. I'm so glad you brought that up. But first, right, it's like, what we're talking about right now is Tammy, through grief recovery, right? Tammy has found a lot of an awareness where maybe she hadn't had awareness.

Moments and time, interactions, right? Things that, that again, some of this stuff floats around like Tammy said at 4 in the morning, when all the distractions are gone, we sort some of this stuff out. And when I say sort, I just mean we stir the pot. I just mean, oh, yeah, that hurts, right?

Yeah, Ruminate, thank you. That would be like the $10 word. I try and always use a $3 word. But Ruminate is a good one.

Thank you. And so my point being is a lot of people, you can pay a lot of people money, and they can help you kind of ruminate or discover or become aware of stuff. And that's one piece of it, right? What the power of this method does, though, is we're not talking about the next step in this, which is we got to emotionally complete these moments in time.

We got to actually say goodbye to this pain forever. And again, I know that sounds made for many of you listening impossible or this coals lying or whatever. And I just beg you, go try this work for yourself so that you can see what I mean or what Tammy means. So again, we're not talking about the final step of the method.

We're just talking about all the discoveries that Tammy made in her relationship. And that's great. But there is more work to be done. And really the power of our work and the thing that I think differentiates our work is we're going past identifying and acknowledging the pain.

We're looking and moving towards completing the pain. And that's different than sadness, right? And we have to constantly talk about this, too, because people will be like, oh, so you're just cured forever. And then there's no sadness.

No, that's not what we're saying, right? We're dealing with heavy, heavy, heavy losses and things that are tragic for us and things we wish in a million years would have never happened. So there will always be sadness in us. That's part of the human experience, no doubt.

But this unfinished pain is really kind of what we help with, right? Now, the other thing I want to say again, Tammy, I'm so glad you mentioned that. For a percentage of the population or for part of your story when you're graphing or doing a relationship, yeah, guilt can absolutely be the right word. What we're saying, though, is most grievers use the word guilt over regret when really regret is for the majority of them, really, the feelings that they have.

Now, we work a lot in prisons. And when you go into a prison and that person in prison is working on the relationship that put them in prison, yes, absolutely. There are feelings of guilt there and there was deliberate intense to harm. Sometimes in the most dramatic, tragic ways that you can imagine someone would be in prison for.

Sure. The way the completion work is done there, right, is through. And there's no way that I can give the reverence to this work sitting on a podcast. If you, unless you're in the room working with someone who has really done the heavy lifting to get there, that would come out in the form of an apology.

And it would be the most powerful apology you've ever heard someone make. So that's how, again, I'm kind of skipping to the end here. And it's hard to do it. But I really want our listeners to kind of understand.

We're not just going to open you up and then send you on your way. And there's a lot of things that do that. And frankly, we know that because people come to us finally and they tell us. They just opened me up.

And they didn't know how to help me close it off. And again, I wouldn't say close. We would use complete. But that's a huge distinction in our work.

Is the last thing we would ever do for you is just open you up and say, hey, here you go. Congrats. You're more aware of your pain. Or we don't.

You stir up your pain. Good luck to you. Don't ever think that's us. We don't do that.

All right. Talking rock back to you, Tammy, because it's really thank you for your truth. And can I add something to that? Which you may want to edit out.

But let me just throw something in there too. I think the incredible beauty and insight in this method is that that completion piece, another word that to me makes sense, is forgiveness. Which there's so much written, podcasted, spoken about forgiveness these days. My personal experience, some of it is really good.

And some of it is not complete. It's not really there. And it really helps me understand when I make an apology, when we're completing in the grief recovery method, an apology opens me up. It allows me to receive forgiveness.

It's kind of like I forget. I'm giving, I'm accepting the fact that I can be forgiven completely for these things that I really feel badly about. My regrets, what I would have said before, what things I feel really guilty about, or whether that's right or wrong, we've just unpacked all of that. But I have stuff I don't feel proud of.

I don't feel good about it. Everybody does. Me too. Yeah.

I need forgiveness. I need to feel forgiven. And I need to complete it. I need to apologize.

Yes. And other people need my forgiveness. There's people that have hurt me or situations that have hurt me. And I love the grief of every definition, to give up the hope of a different or better yesterday.

I need to let go and forgive that event, that person, that thing. So it's forgiveness all around. And we misunderstand it so much of the time. I've had people look me straight in the face and say, no, I've done a lot of forgiving.

I know exactly what forgiveness is. And they actually don't. And they're stuck. And no judgment on those people.

I'm one of those people just saying. It's so easy to not grasp that. Think we've got it, but not really grasp it. And you're so right, completion in this method is the different thing.

It's true forgiveness. It's true freedom. It gives you back your well-being. Yeah.

And trust me, I'm not going to edit that out. Thank you beautifully put. And I'm glad you're getting people thinking about that part of it as well. And like you said, forgiveness, so many people, so many different backgrounds and groups of people in different parts of the world.

Everyone has different takes on forgiveness. I'm biased, but I really like ours. But none of our work, none of our concepts really work, until you kind of bring them all together. And so one of the things that I've heard from Tammy's story, and then this is part of my story too.

I'm a black belt level of waiter as well. And I'm also a black belt level thinker. Not that my IQ score would probably show that. But I'm in my head all the time, if I'm not careful.

So I like to think of every angle. I like playing chess because I want to get seven moves ahead. It's something that is again a blessing and a curse for me, right? But my point is that what I heard from Tammy's story, and from most of our stories, is, and if you go back to what she mentioned about expectations, right?

Expectations equal plan disappointments. Forgiveness is an attempt to be, you know, wait, I'm drawn a blank forgiveness is about expecting a different or better yesterday, okay? All of these things equate to bad skills at being in the present moment. And I have found friends loved ones me.

When we really, really get into these really kind of really sad states and depressive states, when I'm helping people, the people that really seem to have the hardest time getting themselves out of really rough emotional spots are the people that have made a habit of being anywhere but the present moment, right? We want to ruminate on the past all the time. Or like Tammy said, right? How am I going to pay this mortgage?

Is my, if my kid doesn't do the homework, they're not going to get into school, right? I'm unfinished with Cornell. So I need my kid to get to an Ivy League school. Again, I put that in here.

I'm not saying that's that. But a lot of us as parents do that, right? It's like, if I am not careful, I'm going to push my boys too hard into baseball because I didn't get to the major leagues, right? And we all know coaches like that who are absolutely embarrassing and the cringe factor of adult male coaches in kids sports.

Again, I am capable of going there if I'm not complete with my past, okay? That's all present moment skills, not all. A huge part of that is being able to be in the present moment and not be stuck in my glory days of when I claim I used to hit the ball a mile away, which I never could, but you guys get my drift, right? And so a lot of unresolved grief robs us of even the opportunity or the ability to be in the present moment.

So I can't just read a book on why it's so good to be in the present moment and then be like, I'm going to turn over a new leaf and be in the present moment. If I have a lifetime full of regret, unfinished emotional business for my past, good luck getting the skill of being in the present moment, right? Yes. And I say this all the time, if I need to lose 25 pounds because my doctor's like, hey, do you want to be around for your kid for the next 40 years?

Good luck losing that weight when the stir of eating was the only thing that kept everything bottled up because I'm incomplete with my past, right? And we could go on, I mean, we could just name every problem society has and we could trace it directly back to unresolved grief for whatever reason society doesn't want to kind of address that but we've seen after working with over a million people like unresolved grief is the core of what people are struggling with. And so again, sorry, I just felt kind of, I don't know why, but I feel like a topic that we weren't addressing was present moment skills and not having those, right? And we get those.

My point is, Tammy, guess those, I get those when we do more completion work through the grief recovery method. Totally, totally. And I have to say, to fast forward in my story from the time I did that first graph by myself with my friend with the book on my daughter, I waited 10 years, unfortunately, before I did my next one, which was at my certification training when I trained with the grief recovery institute to become a specialist, thank goodness. And I was having a really, really hard year with my 19 year old son.

Nothing wrong with him. But as you mentioned, I could not will myself. I mean, I used all the tools I had available to me, right? I'm a Christian believer, I was fasting, I was praying, I was getting advice, I was confessing my anxiety and my fears and my weaknesses.

I'm in community, I'm not, I'm online, I'm doing all the work I know to do with everything I got, trying to be positive, trying to forgive, trying to be good, you know, all of this stuff. And I had a horrible year with a poor guy. Nothing wrong with him. He's just been a 19 year old.

I could not find a switch, you know, to go get it together, just pull it together, just relax, just come on. So this is the state I was in when I went walked into my certification training and I chose to do my relationship work that weekend on my son. Well, don't you know, so I do my son and only after doing that work did it dawn on me. And I'll tell you another little piece there was, you know, when we finished the method, we come up with this completion letter and the direction is to dispose of the letter.

So I wanted to tear it up right there. That was my choice. I wanted to just get rid of it right there. And when I went to do it, I couldn't do it.

And I was shocked at myself. Like what's happening here? Yeah. And I realized I stood over this garbage can for 10 minutes and could not bring myself to tear up this letter and throw it away.

And I realized, oh my gosh, I am so codependent with the pain in this relationship. I have no, what is wrong with me? I have no faith that if I get rid of this now, we're not gonna ever build anything good. And that's ridiculous.

Can I just say it's ridiculous, we're given the people that we're talking about, me and myself. But I wouldn't have seen that if I hadn't had that moment of, okay, I'm gonna throw it away. Then I got there and was like, I can't do it. And then here's the amazing revelator.

And once I threw it away, you know what happened? No one said anything to me. Nobody standing over me telling me this. I realized, oh my gosh, all of this has nothing to do with my poor son.

This has everything to do with the fact that I'm about to leave the United States again. I'm about to move to live in Ukraine, which we weren't at war yet, but still. This is 2017. About to move out of my home country again.

And my parents died when I was kid. And now I'm moving away from my daughter moved away and now my son, my last intimate relationship like that. I'm about to move away from him sooner than I feel ready. That's what's going on here.

Is I am incomplete with my parents. Oh my gosh. And do you know if you had said to me 10 minutes before that, Tammy, you have, you're carrying pain still in your relationship with your father and your mother who died decades ago and it's limiting your life. I would have laughed at you.

I would have said, it's absolutely ridiculous. I'm good. I'm good. I feel fine.

I feel like I work through that. I feel like I process that. I feel like God supported me through that. I feel whole.

I don't feel anything. Can you imagine how out of touch, how you just don't know what you don't know, right? Yeah. So I sat down after that immediately and I did my dad and I did my mom and you know, that's when for me, kind of the heavens open in the angel saying, like after those, those, because those were the, those were the foundation of my dad died when I was 12.

He left my life when I was 10. I had no contact with him from age 10 to 12 while he was in the hospital and then he died. And that was devastating. And then my poor mom essentially went offline because she's grieving and she's trying to pull her life together and her thing was keep busy.

So I watched her keep busy and be so busy, busy, busy, busy, she just was not available. Sweetest person on earth, not available. So I was left alone. I have no siblings is me and I'm 12.

Yeah. Mm. And so, you know, can you imagine how? And you know, and the reason that these stories are so heartbreaking and tragic is you got, like you said, you have like sweetest mom in the world.

And she is doing the best she can with, with, you know, the tool she had picked up from the generation she was in, right? And so her best thinking is, let's just kind of shield Tammy from this dying process of her father. And then again, the tragic part of this is then Tammy has all this anger right at mom when moms, meanwhile, trying to do the best she can, right? And it's just, it's so much of our lives, you know, and it just, it doesn't, it doesn't have to be that way.

And by the way, the goal of the grief recovery method, right? If you come as a parent, isn't to beat you up about things you regret because you didn't know, you didn't know them at the time when you didn't know them, right? The goal of grief recovery, a lot of the time, for, for often when we're doing living relationships, the goal is to enhance and improve your relationship. Sometimes the goal though, you know, on the reverse of that, sometimes is for you to find the clarity that this person is poison, you know, you can't keep going back to that well trying to get fresh water because you're only going to get poison.

And the happy ending of that relationship is now, now I, I don't have a relationship, right? So it can, the outcome can be anything that you need it to be. But a lot of the time when we're doing living relationships, right, the goal is to improve it because the alternative is to have a rocky relationship, you know, for the rest of, of time, you know, for you and your child or you and your spouse or, you know, so again, I'm so glad that, that you are so willing, Tammy, to, to, to again, speak your truth, tell the truth, let us into your life, you know, because I know you have the goal of helping other people, right? And that's why a lot of the time we courageously open up, like on a podcast and, and tell the truth about stuff because we know other people are going through this stuff as well.

And so, you know, again, thank you for that. You mentioned this and I really want to shift gears if you're okay with it because, again, it's such a, it's such a tragic, again, heartbreaking part of, of our, our world right now. Okay. And so, Tammy, you've done a lot with grief or recovery to help the people of Ukraine, to help the people of Russia.

And I, I am so in awe of your courage and your heart and, and your, your willingness to, to again, help people in this, in this horrific situation. So, where do you want to start in terms of just letting people know what you're doing there in that region? Thanks so much. Well, and I'm so grateful to you guys because you were there at exactly the right time, you know, the institute really supported our dream of trying to figure out how to bring the grief-covering method into the Russian speaking world.

So, I speak Russian. And my son was born in Russia. I spent a lot of years there. And my daughter now married to Ukrainian when she graduated from university.

She felt pulled to go back where she spent her childhood, which was Eastern Europe. Russia wasn't Moscow. She grew up, but now she lives in Ukraine. Those two countries are at war.

Oh my goodness. We have relationships, you know, we worked with a group of churches that grew from, you know, zero to 10,000 people in the former Soviet Union starting when it was the former Soviet Union. A lot of your listeners won't even know what that is. But Russia is an enormous country, enormous, enormous country, 11 time zones from East to West.

And I feel so privileged to have been able to be there, learn the language. And so, I always thought, that was where our, you know, sort of final stop was going to be. My husband and I in retirement. Ha-ha-ha.

Oh my gosh, were we wrong? Yeah. You know, the politics have just made that impossible. But we always thought we were going to go back there.

So, with that in mind, I really had this passion to find, you know, a grief method that worked and get permission to translate it into Russian. Well, there's nothing better than the grief covering method. I spent a year going all sorts of grief programs and, you know, interviewing people and talking to everybody that I could find. And this is the best thing that I could find.

And I, after years now of doing this, seven years of day, years of doing this, I'm only more convinced of that that there is nothing as valuable, start, and a finish, an action program that works, that doesn't leave you spending in your story, right? But you come to completion, you come to forgiveness, you finish, and well-being returns. I mean, oh my goodness, it's such a brilliant, brilliant thing. I wanted to bring that to Russia to all our people that are suffering there.

There's such pain. And then the war started. And I wound up, we tried to live in Russia. We couldn't.

The door is just closed for us. But in the years that we were trying to get in there, I was so lucky, blessed, whatever we traveled a lot. And I got to visit in person many of the major cities and spend enough time there to do the grief recovery method in person with groups in Moscow, in St. Petersburg, in Yikaterinaburg, in Vladyvastok, in Novosibirsk.

I mean, miraculous. It would never happen today. I can't get back in. I'll never go back.

That's one of the heartbreaks. I was going to perfect my Russian. I was going to live and die there. And this may sound so weird to people, given all the politics now.

But the Russian people are deep, soulful, beautiful people. The politics is a whole different thing. And I hope that's true for many countries, where you have challenging politics and just beautiful people, I think, everywhere. And there's tough people everywhere too.

There's jokes everywhere. But there's beautiful people everywhere. And the Ukrainians, oh my gosh, we are family. It's this, there's a similar tribe.

They're from the same roots. And there's some different roots. But honestly, they're so intermarried. They're so connected.

And now we have, I mean, it sounds like what it must have been like with the American Civil War, brother against brother, parents against kids. Families or husbands against wives, kids against parents. It's just absolutely heartbreaking. This, this, this rift.

I mean, there's no, I don't have words. I don't have words. This is my greatest heartbreak right here, is the fallout of these relationships that, they cannot understand each other. Yeah.

So that's where we're at. I live in Ukraine now. That's my permanent residency. And I'm so grateful we have the method in Russian.

We have 14 trained grief recovery methods specialists across the country in Russia that are trying like crazy to function. They're suffering in their own way. And then we have two Ukrainian specialists in Ukraine. I know we have a couple more outside of Ukraine that have been trained in the States and a couple other places.

But in Ukraine, I believe it's just this one husband and wife team and myself in Kiev. And so they're amazing. I mean, war. There's so many losses connected to war.

Yeah. And I do want to say, it is tragic. The war is in its fourth year now in Ukraine. The UN has an ongoing resolution right now.

It's open still where they're trying to convict the invading nation of war crimes. There's been terrible sexual violence, sexual abuse of men and women, men in captivity, women in villages that the occupiers invade. Specialists, they were only 20 kilometers south of the worst of the worst on fighting in the west of Kiev when the battle just began. And they evacuated for a couple of months.

As we did, we were there as well. And it's horrifying when you think about that. But that's not the only tragedy. It's...

And I just want to say, I think that this kind of pain is behind every door in America. It may not be tanks and it may not be missiles dropping on your head. But this kind of pain of, I thought, my marriage was going to be happy or I thought my health was going to be OK. Or I thought I was going to have this job forever.

Or I thought my kids and I were going to get along. That pain almost is worse than looking at a Russian tank in the face, that's clear. That's my clear enemy right there. And I get that.

But there are some pains that are even, I think, more heartbreaking and more devastating than fear for your physical well-being. When your soul is troubled. And I'm just so grateful that we have that opportunity to take these tools to places like that. Because it's not just the bombs and the tanks.

And that's one whole horrible thing. But there's also the same alcoholism, a diction, a strangement in families. Humanity is still humanity over there, even without the war. So I'm so grateful that we have this now in Ukrainian, in Russian.

And I know it's been translated into so many languages all around the world. But I'm super grateful to be able to be on the front lines literally with these two languages. And hopefully we'll see a lot more, as hopefully years to come and this calms down and our relations, international relations, come back to normal, or at least friendly again. I hope that we can see a lot more specialists multiplying in those countries.

Yeah. And you just said it. And you've said it a couple of times. And I know your daughter and your son-in-law are in Ukraine, right?

And I know you have love for people in Russia as well, right? And that's what makes this conflict, I think, really, really unimaginable in ways. Because for a while, right? We asked and we said yes.

And we made sure that we were doing certifications. And we had people in Russia doing it alongside people in the Ukraine. And as the war went on and as the war got more brutal, I know that that's near and possible right now, right, is to have regular people, again, not people on the political level making the decisions. But the regular people that got caught up in all of these conflicts, right?

We were just trying to get grief or recovery to them. We were trying to get grief or recovery to people in the Ukraine. We were trying to get grief or recovery to people in Russia. And again, we're not saying any of this is easy stuff, right?

It's not easy stuff to try to rise to that level and say, hey, I'm going to serve people because we have broken hearts all over this conflict. The regular people that don't call the shots, they just have to show up in the trenches. Or they're the family members of the people that do have to, so anyway, it's just horrific. It breaks my heart, too.

I know you're way more close to it. But just watching it unfold and the way that war is playing out and the tools and the weapons being used in the war, it's just so heartbreaking. And I just, yeah, it is. But publicly, I want to thank you because you have really been so passionate and just nonstop in terms of getting these tools to people that need them.

And you know, oh, it's, yeah, well, I mean, we're all unfinished with wars of the past, right? And then now we have to fight new ones, right? I mean, that area, the amount of death and destruction from war that's happened over the last 150 years is unimaginable. I mean, the numbers of people who have died in those areas, I mean, we are way, way, way unfinished with the past wars, right?

The alcoholism, the grief, we haven't, you know, again, we haven't even looked at the grief from the past. And now there's more here. And like you said, I mean, that's true in the United States. That's true in every country, right?

We all have really heartbreaking histories. And then some of us are dealing with even more and accumulating even more stuff right now. And it's, I think you and I know that just means our work is cut out for us. And we try and bring these tools anywhere we can.

We're so grateful. And I want to thank you and the Institute too, because I felt like you really stood up for us. When we, you know, the economics there is tough. And I really appreciate you going the extra mile to make time for these young specialists.

And, you know, Russia's been portrayed, you know, as an enemy in American film and media for, you know, decades. So it's not. Yes. It's not a very friendly, you know, field, right?

To reach out to. But it's just so sad because that is not, I mean, yes, there are people like that. Yes. And they're just like you and me.

And so deep and so sweet and so heartsy and so soulful. And so you're just wanting to be good people, you know? Yeah. Like everywhere.

Like everywhere. Yeah. And that's why, you know, and you know this, that's why the book is in over 23 languages now. That's why we will go to any continent on the planet and try and help people with this stuff.

Because the people that are the caricatures that you speak of, that just the angry, mean, cruel, hateful people, they're not coming to do grief for recovery. It's not even on their radar. So, you know, the people we're going to reach, whether it's in the Ukraine or Russia or, you know, Israel or Gaza or wherever, it's going to be the people with the good hearts that are just looking to stop the emotional bleeding. Because they've been bleeding to death emotionally for years.

And those are the people we want to help. And those are the people we reach, frankly. Those other people, they don't come to our work. They don't want to get trained in our work.

They don't want to participate in our work. You know, it's not on their radar, you know? So we get to work with the best people. The ones that, you know, we want more of on the planet.

So here, I can't believe we're at this time. Like I said earlier, Tammy, when you have the time, I would love you to come back for episode two. You're just an inspiration in this work. And I love you very much.

And thank you for being here. And so, and if you've been listening and you are intrigued on any level with this work, right? I think Tammy would also recommend not waiting 20 years to do this work, right? I think we didn't get into this, right?

But from the time that person handed you the book until the time you were doing the work, what was the timeframe? I was 1999 until, well, at the time I went by myself, it was eight years, seven years. Eight years? Eight years.

Eight years. Eight years and then nine years. Before, I really got it. And now I continue to do the work all that's every day.

I mean, all the time, all the time, all the time, all the time. But it took me so long. Well, and you know, and we hear that all the time, right? And if you're listening to this and you have the book on your shelf collecting best, there's obviously a reason you're listening to this.

But don't wait. Don't make it seven or eight years, right? Because we can start improving our lives right now. We can start improving our relationships and start letting go of that pain we've been carrying.

And it's just too heavy, right? Yeah. So, you know, Cole, I just want to say, you may not have time for this, maybe edit out or whatever. But I just want to say the result of, after I did my parents' graphs, the result is, I, two huge things, I'm sure there's moral discovery, but two huge things, I don't pack my schedule anymore like I used to.

I mean, for, you know, 57 years or something, I lived a life on absolute, you know, hyper speed. Just, you know, doing stuff all the time, all the time, all the time, all the time, all the time, packing, you know, meeting as many people having, you know, 10, 12, 15 appointments in a day. Just crazy stuff, crazy stuff. I don't do that anymore.

Yeah, yeah. You know, the thought of taking a Sabbath, you know, a day of, was petrifying to me. And now I'm like, oh, blink it on. Yeah.

Because I am at peace. My brain isn't, you know, attacking me. And the other thing that's interesting is I think, I think I realized I had this, from the death of my dad, because it was, and this took a little while to come, you know, to come to the fore, but I realized after I completed my relationship with my dad, I realized that, you know, because that was such a horrible thing, it was, right? Our brains want to make sense of stuff, right?

And the only sense I could make out of it was, this is horrible. This shouldn't happen to anybody. It didn't happen to anybody else but to me. I was the first kid in our, you know, community who had a parent die.

It only happened to me, therefore, something's wrong with me. And that has been in there at an unconscious level for 50 something years, right? I'm 65 now. So, but it took me that long.

What a shame, right? I wish I had figured that out, when I was in my 20s, which I could have. I could have. I didn't have to carry it for all these decades.

I could have figured it out then and been free. And not second-guess myself all the time, well, I shouldn't try this because I probably want to do it because there's something wrong with me and I'm afraid of this and I'm afraid of that and I shouldn't do that. That's where that came from. Yep.

But I couldn't see it till I completed with my dad. Yep. Yeah, your honesty is so inspiring to me. And it's funny.

I was introduced. I remember my dad one day. I think I was like 18 maybe somewhere around there. He's like, and I got your ticket to Florida.

You're going to go get certified in the group recovery method, right? And I was like, what? But when John James asked you to do something, usually you do it. And so I went and I went through this method at 18 years old, right?

And I really got to see what life was about. And there's a piece in the training where we really we kind of show how we get, we go down these paths about collecting things and collecting degrees and getting a really nice car. And it's like, and but when you're on the plane in 9-11 and you have two minutes, right? You're calling people and you're emotionally completing and emotionally communicating stuff that you need to communicate.

That's all that matters, right? And for an 18 year old to be taught that in such a powerful way, it's a gift that I can never repay my dad for doing that. Now, I trust me. I was still 18.

I still had plenty of life struggles and mistakes to be made. But I couldn't stray that far without really understanding that life is about relationships. It's about loving those that are close to you and knowing how to do that. And I couldn't chase dumb stuff too much.

Now, I have, trust me, I got a list in the day of Ramsey because sometimes I chase dumb stuff. But overall, this is a gift you can get in your 20s. You can. And you can get these tools so you don't have to accumulate the stuff that so many of us have to when we get here at 50 or 60 or, you know, and those kind of things.

So I really, really appreciate that message, Tammy, is you don't have to wait. So Tammy, where can people find you if they want to contact you, if they want to work with you? You know, what is the best way for people to get in touch with you? Sure.

Sure. Well, I'm on the grief-covered website, grief-covering method website, right? But I also have my own website, TammyTaxterFlemming.com. Okay.

I'm on Instagram as TammyTaxterFlemming. And I'm on Facebook as Tammy Flemming, grief-covering method. So I'm out there if anybody does a search. Yeah.

Okay. And we'll link to that stuff in the show notes as well so that people can find you. Again, I want to thank you for your time. I want to thank you for just being a leader in this work.

You're an incredible human being. And I can't wait for us to do an episode too, my friend. Thanks. Appreciate you.

Thank you, Tuckel. Yep. Love you. And out there, thank you for listening.

Share this. Subscribe. Help us with the algorithm. Get found, right?

We desperately need this work, right? I mean, that's why we cover what we do every, every week. We have a very single person. Yeah.

So share this out there. And, you know, and the one thing you can do is the next time someone wants to tell you something that's a sad part of their life. Just be a heart with ears. Just turn off the rebuttal part of your brain.

Turn off the your opinion part of your brain. And just let them know that you're there to listen without any judgment, comparison, criticism. And just be a heart with ears and no mouth. And if you're listening and not well looking, I'm covering my mouth right now.

And if you do that gift alone, you know, in your daily interactions with people you care about, you will be such an asset to them. That, and I know it sounds like such a little skill, but it's actually one of the best ones you can have, right? Just be a heart with ears for your community. Well, that being said, thank you for listening to the Feel Free Again podcast.

Until next time, I'm your host, Cole James. And again, thank you for listening. Have a great day.