Why the Five Stages of Grief Won't Heal Your Heart

I think it's just a really, really good fit. So I, you know, I'm really wanting to talk to you about that. And then in our kind of pre-interview, we, we covered some other really interesting topics. I want to hear more about kind of what you're doing on your podcast and you're exploring some very interesting topics on kind of the, the scientific intellectual level around grief.

And, and, you know, and I know there's some stuff you want to share there. So the first thing though, Brian, we always ask our guests, how did you first come to find the method? What was, what was kind of your, your search like and, and the work early on that was done for you? Mm-hmm.

Thanks, Colin. By the way, it was a real honor to be trained by your dad, John James. And it's, it's kind of interesting to see people's faces in the groups that I lead when I'm able to say, yeah, I was trained by John James. Oh, you were.

Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. And that's great.

Yeah. So, and you know what, Cole, I think personally, and I've listened to some of your podcasts, to me, this is the most significant, exciting part of these conversations. How did you come to engage with this program? Because it is truly life changing and though I love life change stories.

My story began with a group of, I kind of like to say I was ganged up by a number of losses all at the same time. It was, it involved a marital separation. It involved at the same time, essentially, the, the ending of a 20 year career in Christian ministry. And it was another element that involved a fire at the, at the church where I was working, that changed, changed everything about my plans for how I was going to and well in that ministry.

And so I, I launched into a search, Cole, for something that could help. But backing up about eight months, I thought having been a pastor and assisted many, many families and individuals through trying to navigate laws, had many funeral services and council assisted, provided help to families. I thought this is something, you know, I got this. And for the first about eight months after all these things happened, I put into effect my faith, which definitely was a, a life line to my health and well being.

I got busy working because I had to earn a living now and a, in a different way. And I had multiple part time jobs. I was volunteering at the church and that kept me busy. And you know what happened?

Cole, after about eight months, I think I was running on a adrenaline. And what we call stirbs. And I got sick. I got very sick.

And I realized that I was going to have to find something better than what I was doing because this was not working for me. Yeah. And I kind of knew that it wouldn't, but I didn't have anything else. So I prayed a very simple little prayer.

I said, God, I need your help because this is not working. And I went on a search, mostly an internet search for help with grief. And I, I found a number of things that looked interesting, but eventually I landed on a little, well, at that time the book wasn't purple. It was kind of yellowy colored.

Right. The grief or cover handbook. And I went and got me a copy of the grief or cover handbook. And page from the very first words of the book.

And so many people, this is so many, so common to many people's stories with grief or cover. It was like, how do you know me? This is written for me. Nowhere else have I found this kind of understanding and practical guidance.

And so I knew that I'd found what I was looking for. Wow. In the grief or cover handbook. And then I can I ask you a question there, Brian, not not to interject.

I'm just curious. So I'm following along here in this story, right? And you have this, the, the, this massive fire that has kind of changed everything in terms of your plans and your, and, and you're running on adrenaline trying to pivot to other things. And, and, and, and, and also there's loss of health.

Like you mentioned, you got very sick. But I, but my question is, is how did you have the kind of understanding that it was like grief? I need to go on an inner, an internet search around grief. How, you know, that awareness without having not hearing about a death yet or that, how was the awareness there that a lot of these things you were struggling with were grief?

Because I think that's kind of a lot of people miss that fact, right? Because of how we're kind of raised around that topic, which is, you know, people think grief is about death. So how were you aware at that point of, to search specifically for grief? Well, I wasn't super smart, but I was smart enough and through, through my experience and training for Christian ministry, I already knew that grief extended a well beyond death.

I see. Okay. And it seemed to be, you know, it seemed to be part of my DNA. And I'll just share a wee little story here at a school concert, well, my wife and I, we're at a school concert and in a lineup with other parents and just got chatting with this lady and her, her daughter waiting to enter the auditorium.

And she was sharing how she had moved from another low city. Her husband was offered a better job and they were in this where we were now, which was left bridge, Alberta at the time. And she'd moved from the beautiful city of Kelona. And as she shared her story, this was before I was trained with grief recovery.

I could tell that she wasn't super happy. And she was describing the dream home that they had in Kelona and the friends and such. But she was trying to put on a good face that yeah, we're in left bridges. And I don't even know where this came from, but I said to her, your experience in grief.

And she looked at me like with just kind of a blank face like, what are you talking about? Yeah, that's that's grief. So part of it is my training in ministry. And part of it just seemed to be something I recognized.

And actually, I don't even know why I said that to her. Sort of afterwards, I was as shocked as she was that I said that, but I realized, yeah, that's true. But yeah, your point is so well taken that if there hasn't been a death, you can't be grieving. And that's one of the things I love about the grief recovery method is that definition.

Yeah, that grief is the wide ranging, often conflicting emotions that result from the end of or the change in a familiar pattern of behavior. And so many people are living grief, not knowing how to address it, how to get better because they haven't addressed grief yet. Yeah, yeah. And the reason I bring this up is I just, what is it?

It's Thursday now. On Monday, I finished up another four day training with an incredible group of people shout out to everyone in West Lake Village, California that just completed the certification. And there was 11 just amazing people in that room. And they all did a really amazing work.

And they kind of entered in and kind of what we call our professional package, which is they, you know, they're getting certified and on track to kind of get everything that we, we certify people for. So my point is there's a big time investment there. There was a big monetary investment there. A lot of them were already very well read into the method and others didn't, but you know, a lot of this made sense.

But where I'm going with this is even those people that were clearly had done some research by the time in that, in that certification training for them to identify the loss that they wanted to work on and go through the method with a lot of them were picking and choosing relationships that before that training, they weren't even aware they could do work on, right? They were doing like living relationships with people, you know, still in their lives or they work working on mom or dad that they that they didn't think right, those foundational relationships. And it just it always, it always reminds me how difficult it is to to kind of let people know how much how many different places you can go with the grief recovery method, right? How many how many kind of different parts of your heart this really can't help with?

And, and so, you know, so hopefully that makes sense, right? It's like people who are already aware of the method are still finding, oh, I can work on this. Oh, this event from my past can, can be looked at through the lens of grief recovery. And it's like, yes, absolutely.

And I think that's one of our challenges, right? As an organization is the the fact that when we first started this method, it was about death, right? When my father started working on the grief recovery method, he, you know, he thought this was about death, right? And as he started working with other griebers, that's when we put together, oh, wow, there's over 40 different life events that are that are death.

And so this little, this little lane we were in widened, right? But we haven't figured out how to kind of tell the general public that the lane has widened. And there's all of these things that can really benefit you from grief recovery. And like you said, Brian, but the the fact of the matter is a lot of people were walking around not thinking that they are actively grieving or holding on to grief from the past.

And, and so that's where the challenge is. And that's where I think this podcast is really powerful, right? Is to just really explore all the avenues that you can do this work. So anyway, thank you for checking in with that, Brian.

Please, please continue with wherever you want to go in kind of that early journey of your grief recovery method training. I was working coal at the funeral home at the time, because I had, by then I had transitioned into funeral service, funeral profession. And, you know, I can't actually remember, it was, it was through an internet search. I landed on a fellow named Eric Klein in Canada.

And because that was in Canada, and there was an association with the grief recovery handbook, at least, I reached out to him. And he said, in essence, he said, Brian, and you mentioned funeral profession, he was in the funeral profession. That was also a link for me. Here's somebody in the funeral profession.

I'm working in the funeral profession. He said, this is the best thing available, Brian, particularly if you're wanting a way to as quickly as possible to provide to as many people as possible, something that is going to really bring practical healing to broken hearts. So that conversation with Eric was one more, and then I also talked to a guy in Kelona BC, who was a funeral director in Kelona that was very involved in bringing grief recovery to their families. The conversations and the book led me to approach the management of my funeral with a proposal that I received training to bring this program into the context of our funeral home and the community.

And I am so delighted to say that management was fully behind me and made it possible for me to receive the training and culminated my plans and schedules to launch an initial group and support me all along the way. So that's great. One piece I missed, of course, the biggest piece is that when I went for the training, I experienced personally this amazing transformational process of bringing resolution to incomplete emotional stuff. Yes.

And it is like I have experienced something life changing and I want to I want to bring this to as many others as I possibly can. Yeah, yeah, I can relate to that for sure. That was my experience to you. Story is more of the same.

Yeah, yeah. Well, let's let's keep going. I love it. So you're you're you get certified, you realize, wow, there were some really important personal work to be done.

Sometimes we lose sight of that as professionals with our focus on getting tools to help others. But but that's why I think that the four days designed how it is, is we want to show you both what it feels like for you and what it feels like and you get to kind of watch the other 10, 15, 20 people in the room. And then it becomes undeniable. There's something here, right?

It's like when you watch 15 other people check in after the work and kind of just speak of the truth on what's there, what's on their heart. You know, there's there's buy in there where maybe you were skeptical at first and and that all kind of gets thrown out the window. So you're there. You get into this, you start applying it there at the funeral home.

I love that you have buy in by management. Two questions, was there anything there at the funeral home that was being offered before this or was it just kind of just hey, we're we're handling funeral services and that's it. Was there anything before before your certification there and supporting people? There had been.

And when I arrived, when I began my career at this particular funeral home, there was a plaque on the wall acknowledging the funeral home for being a host site for a particular grief care program, which I really did not know anything about. It was no longer operational. And some years later, somebody asked me about it. Are they still and I can't remember the name of it.

I'm sorry, Cole, but I said, well, I saw a plaque on the wall, but as far as I know, like nothing really happened other than somebody signing up for some materials or something. Now that's one of the things I think Cole that makes this program unique is that it is so practically deliverable to people. You don't have to get a bunch of stuff to take home and manage on your own. So they had made efforts.

Yeah, okay, you know, that's great. And in terms of what were the benefits do you think once you started implementing this in the community with the clients of that funeral home, what were the benefits of it for again, for the community personally and then also just as a business, was it helpful for the business to provide this? Because I think sometimes funeral homes are scared to introduce anything other than the services that they provide. To give you an example, when my dad died, he died in central Oregon.

And so the funeral home was located in Bend, Oregon. And I was obviously because of the work I do, I was very curious to see kind of what the level of support would be there. And when those folks were there to kind of bring the body to the funeral home, leaving my mother and father's home, they did it with tremendous care. The reverence and the way they did it, I was very touched.

And I was like, yep, like A plus for that, right? It was kind of this weird thing. I'm like absolutely heartbroken. And I also have a professional side of my mind on how are they handling this grieving family.

So, you know, it was kind of this weird, I'm in my heart and I'm like looking at it and all that. And all the way through, all the way to being in the funeral home and helping my mom make some of the decisions that need to be made there, they were great on that, right? But there was no continued care there, right? There's maybe a pamphlet here about some program that someone else is doing, but there really was not off.

It was kind of like they just weren't looking to address any part of that. And again, I think they did a great job in everything that they think is the only part of their job. I just think they missed an opportunity with my family to, to again, offer a life line out there and deepen their relationship with us, frankly, right? And then also for our family, when the time comes for someone else in the community to pick a funeral home, we're going to be, we're going to advocate for that funeral home, right?

And so, you know, again, it wasn't a bad experience, but certainly it was, it was just transactional. And then it was kind of like, and again, lovingly transactional, but there was no after-care any sort of offering of follow-up right there, right? So obviously, you guys are doing something different way back when you're doing that work. So how did that differ from the way you would work with, you know, people, clients from that funeral home?

How would it differ? Well, okay. In terms of, of when would be, how would you approach people? When would be the right time to introduce this?

Right? It's like, obviously, you're handling all this stuff. You have to handle as a funeral home. But when, when did you guys kind of, you know, the logistics of when you would offer this kind of a service?

Right. So you mentioned aftercare. So a big part of aftercare in virtually all funeral homes is assisting whoever is the executor, the family members that are in charge of the business side of things. Aftercare to a large degree focuses on government forums and applications and filings of documents and just some guidance and what to do at the bank.

And do you have a will? All this kind of thing. It's really practical, just a distance to families. And so one of the ways that we make this, the grief recovery program known is during that aftercare.

So I have a very good relationship with a colleague at that funeral home who does the aftercare and she loves the program. And so we have a little package of printed materials with a brochure and she actually discusses it with families during aftercare. We do have a program that addresses grief and loss that we provide for our families and she gives them a little bit of information and a brochure. And so they're made aware at that point.

Yep. Okay. We also send out prior to each of the scheduled grief recovery groups that we offer. We offer three a year through the funeral home.

We send out a general mailing to all of the families that the funeral home has served since the last group. Okay. So just real quick, just to jump in, I want to make sure I'm tracking correctly. So there is at the time when when you're helping them with the immediate funeral services, you kind of just introduce the concept of, hey, we have a service for grief and loss if if the time comes where you want to kind of participate in that.

And then at a later time, once you get done with your your previous group, you're putting out kind of a mailer to let people know of the upcoming group. And then the families and everyone can choose, hey, I remember briefly hearing about this and it's already been introduced and then it's their choice if they want to participate. Right. Is that is that accurate?

That's accurate. Then we do we do place an ad in the local paper as well advertising it. Okay. To bring people from the community.

Yep. And shelly the gallant does the aftercare. Will she's got a really sensitive heart and has experienced significant loss in her own life. And so she will quite frequently ask people for permission to have me give them a call.

People that she she senses they're really struggling here. She will say, hey, we have someone on staff who who has able to chat with you and talk about loss. We run a program and and if you'd be willing to have Brian give you a call, it might be helpful. And so if they give permission, then she will say, hey, Brian, could you call such and such an individual?

So there's a number of ways that we connect. And you know, what's happened is that we began of course, most 16 years ago, primarily the attendees for our programs who were folks from families that our funeral home had served. Yep. But because of the the very community focus and concern of Martin Brothers in Lethbridge, the management, anybody can attend from the community.

And we open it up to the community. And and so now I would say the majority of folks come by word of mouth just throughout the community. And to the degree where we have the program is is is so well recognized in the community. We have doctors making referrals to our program.

We have psychiatrists making referrals and private license counselors making referrals to our program. The the owner of our funeral home has spoken to me more than once to say, hey, Brian, just keep doing that because and he's very well known. It's a fairly small city, but he keeps running into people that say, hey, heard about your grief recovery program. Either they took it themselves or someone and their family went through the program.

And so it's very difficult for funeral home for a funeral home to attach, you know, a monetary payback, so to speak. But in terms of community awareness and public involvement, it's it's been huge. Yeah, that's a great. I'm glad you brought up that point, right?

So it's it's it's it's just another way for you guys to kind of advertise and market that that that funeral home. And you know, unless you've been through it, it's really hard to kind of understand. But the bond that forms for everyone in those groups, right? When they go through grief recovery, the bond that they make with each other, they the bond they make with the leader, you know, this this program really brings people together.

And again, I can't describe it unless you were there. I mean, the connection that we all had just on Monday, when when I say goodbye to that whole group of 11, it's just like a once in a lifetime type thing, right? And it's just like for a lot of people. And so no, that makes perfect sense, right?

It's like it's not the monetary thing, but it's about everyone in the community, understanding the heart and the compassion and the empathy of that funeral home specifically, right? I mean, it that makes a lot of sense. I also you you touched on another thing I wanted to to focus on just for a second for for our specialists out there who are listening, our specialists are our trained people in this work. I love what Brian and the lady that you mentioned, what what they're doing is they're meeting people where where they are in that moment, right?

And so a lot of the time, most of the time when we have a death of a loved one, right? After that, we are just in survival mode. And like you touched on, there's a lot of practical answers that need to or questions that are asked of you. And there's decisions, practical decisions that need to be made.

And frankly, that person is in survival mode in that window, right? And so it's inappropriate really to be offering grief or recovery at that point, in my opinion, because again, the the emotional work that needs to be done needs to be done, but not in that moment. There's so many other things just just in terms of surviving this devastating loss that these people are enduring. So it's there's no mistake that Brian and his team and that lady, right, they're introducing what needs to be introduced.

And then they're kind of almost planting the seed for later, the grief or recovery work. And then and then meeting them where they are. And so and and I say this because a lot of the time specialists, again, they see this tool, they've experienced this tool, they see what it's done for everyone else. And they want to go out and help people immediately, right?

And it's like my new specialist in California, you know, you're your your your heart would tell you, hey, right after the fire in Palisades or, you know, Altadena, give them grief or recovery right away, right? But again, when we have just lost our home and we're not sure if our pets survived and we're not sure how much the insurance will actually cover it and we're not sure if we'll ever live in in that area again, right? We are in survival mode. And so it would it would kind of it just it's not a great point to introduce grief or recovery.

Now again, everyone in that community, I would love to go through grief or recovery, but we have to really understand where the where the person's at just and and and went to offer grief or recovery. So I love that you touched on that as I think you're you're offering grief or recovery right at the right at the right time, right? Which is later after all the practical stuff needs to be addressed and then I love what you what a loving thing where you guys are actually doing some outbound calls for people that you really think could use this. I mean that that's a beautiful thing to hear as well, right?

Now, let me tell you a really kind of in terms of grief or recovery, a useless story, but my connection to left left bridge, okay? So last year my my son is 11. He plays travel baseball. We're at a tournament in Missoula, Montana and it's a it's a fun spring tournament and people are coming from all over, you know, the area and you know on our roster we're about to play somebody called left bridge academy.

Now because we're a little bit arrogant, right? We figure out it's a Canadian team, you know, that'll be an easy win for us. We think you guys are good good at hockey and nothing else, but shout out to left bridge academy. You guys totally kicked our butt and we ate humble pie that day and and turns out there's some really good baseball in Canada.

So that's that's a I'm a little bit southeast of you, right? We're about 80 miles from the border, but kind of BC, but again, right? We're right next to Montana and we're not far from you guys. So again, I just wanted to mention that I do I do I'm aware of the left bridge baseballs.

You guys are there's some good baseball up there. Well, Southern Alberta has a lot of premier sports activities. Okay, that makes sense. I think, you know, fair fair to say there was a lot of, you know, in the early 1900s, a lot of immigration was from the state up through the states.

Okay, I think that has, you know, had a very positive impact on the sports culture in Southern Alberta. Gotcha. Yeah, I mean, we just on on his team this year, he has a kid that just moved down from Calgary and he's just an excellent player too. So that all makes sense.

So sorry, listeners, I digress a little bit into some baseball stories, but Brian, let's get back to the work you're doing. So you guys have been doing this for 16 years there. I think that's incredible, right? And clearly, you wouldn't be doing a program for 16 years unless it was quality and something that really that that helped the community.

So kind of before we pivot, is there any other things that you want the listeners to know about grief recovery specifically in a funeral home setting? Is there anything else any places you want to explore there? Well, I just wish as you have indicated a call about your experience with your dad after your father's death, I just wish we could be I could be more effective at encouraging funeral homes to recognize the opportunity here. Both to meet a very significant need in the in the lives of their own clients, their own families that they serve, but also to be sort of let's say the funeral home in the community to go above and beyond caring for the grief needs of their families.

Yes. Yes. So I've seen some success in encouraging other locations to consider this, but I'm you know, I have to be honest, Cole, and so I'm still disappointed that that there isn't more traction. And I don't agree.

Well, yeah, and let's let's go there for a sec, right? And I agree 100% Brian, here, here was my dad and Russell Friedman, another pioneer of this work, kind of co-founder of this method, and then my dad, their take was, and again, let me know what you think, but their take was that at some point, again, I don't know if it was the 80s or the 90s, but you had, you know, funeral homes all across the country, the US, Canada, and they were kind of generational businesses, right? And you see that, you know, James and sons. I mean, you see how a lot of the time these funeral homes were passed down from one generation to the next.

And their take was at some point, a large corporation started buying up funeral homes and kind of, again, I don't know if they took over ownership, but then the family's kind of still operated them. You know, I don't know, but there was some shift in that industry, and their kind of sense was, you know, you kind of had corporations now looking at bottom lines and looking at what are you, what are expenses and what are you introducing? And they were deeming this work kind of unnecessary or an unnecessary training expense. And that was their sense is people shifted away from that once, once it became more corporate owned.

You know, I've talked to other people in the funeral industry and they kind of give me the idea that it's kind of shifting back to individually owned. And again, I don't know, I'm not an expert in that world, but that was kind of one factor that I know about. And then the other the other thing that is my general sense, and again, this isn't unique to the funeral home industry, this is across the board. I think a lot of people just have a lack of awareness of what's out there.

And so, you know, if they're operating from the idea that grief just takes time and it's just going to kind of be a real sad experience for people for, you know, forever. And if we have groups where people are just crying and sad and then week after week and, you know, that's just kind of a downer for a lack of a better term. And I don't know what the out of the value add is if we start, you know, offering groups out there for people to just be sad for long periods of time. You know, like, again, I don't want it mean to be blunt here, but if I was a business owner, am I really going to invest in doing something like that and using resources to that end, right?

And so, what I want to remind listeners, right, is that that is not what we do with grief or recovery, right? We are providing hope and what we are providing is a pathway to what we call emotionally, emotional completion, right? We are helping people get emotionally complete with what is unfinished in these relationships, right? And obviously in the case of funeral homes, a lot, that is all people who have died and people are heartbroken over that and they are unfinished with the events.

They're unfinished with a bunch of the different highs and low points of the relationship. And so, with grief or recovery, there's a tremendous amount of education on the topic, which kind of starts off as just kind of an educational pursuit. And then we gently safely start diving into them, picking a relationship to work on and then processing these emotions and then towards the culmination of again, getting emotionally complete with what is painful in the relationship. And so, I tell people all the time, if this was about me talking with people about how sad they feel and just with no direction and just aimlessly talking about sadness and pain, I promise you, I would have done this work for two weeks and then I would have patted my dad on the back and said, good luck, I got to go find something else.

This is much too overwhelming and sad to me, right? But that wasn't what was happening, right? I get trained in this method and then I help people walk through courageous steps and you get to see them do the heavy lifting, exercise after exercise. And then after the culmination of this work, you get to hear them report back to you, I feel different, I feel lighter.

What used to be just pure pain feels different now, right? And yes, there's still sadness and yes, there's still all those normal aspects of grief and all the normal aspects and healthy aspects around just missing these people we love that had died, right? That is very different than people on feeling unfinished year after year with deep, deep pain. And that's what we help people complete and work through, right?

And so, I want to tell people, you know, especially if you're a funeral director or a decision maker or a funeral home, we are providing hope and we are providing life changing transformational work where these clients of yours will look different after your groups. They, believe it or not, after eight weeks of going through this program and giving it their all, they're going to look at you differently and they're going to be a different person. And that's what you will be able to offer to people. Not endless, open-ended, drop-in style support groups, right?

And so, that's where I think a big disconnect is too. But again, what are your thoughts, Brian? Again, anything I covered or anything you want to you want to go from there? Good.

I covered a lot there and I think the corporate piece might be legitimate in that things are decisions and programs etc are maybe decided far away from the location and they want some uniformity. But my experience has not been with corporate funeral homes and I've had similar, I'm not going to say roadblocks, but challenges in terms of, besides the wonderful example I shared with you at Martin Brothers, my own experience at the one location. Beyond that, I have found some sort of resistance, I suppose. And I think part of the reason it was successful in my situation is that I was a team member already.

I was in the system and they knew my work and my commitment to the to the business and to the families and so they were willing to make some risk, take some risk in trusting me. And once we got started, the benefits to the families and to the reputation of the funeral became very apparent. But if a funeral home has somebody coming from outside, a member of the community or a professional person is saying, hey, I've got a plan to make your funeral home much more effective in meeting the needs of your families and your community. The management might think, well you and a dozen other people do.

And if you don't have some kind of first hand experience of the benefits of this program, what would lead you to what would lead a management team to say, well, let's go with these guys. Part of it, Cole, is the training that funeral directors receive or students who are going through a funeral program, a funeral director program, receive. And unfortunately, a lot of it, because there is a big piece that has to do with the psychological side of death and dying and the culture of death and dying within most programs. Unfortunately, most of it is still drawn from materials that are not very helpful to actually deliver care.

So you're getting young, newly trained funeral directors coming out of an educational system that frankly is weighted towards academic perceptions and such. And even unfortunately, still, yet heavily weighted towards stage theory kinds of ideas. Yes. Yes.

And so, might I say that these young folks think they've got all the training they need, they understand how it's going to happen for people. It's different for everybody, everybody will manage their stages and such. And then does a program like Grief or Recovery Method appear to be, I don't even know what the right word is, but unnecessarily prescriptive. Right.

Yep. I think you're, I think this is, I'm really glad you bring this up, Brian. I think you hit the nail on the head. And again, you have far more insight than me.

And I think you're, I think you're absolutely right. I will, I will not mention the industry, but again, in this in this group, I just finished training 11 people, right? You had one person who had been in this in this work for, you know, her career in this industry for a long time. You have a new person that just got trained in this industry.

And, you know, we're now three days into the training. So we trust each other and we can say what we, what we feel. And this one lady told the, the lady who was in school, you're going to have to basically throw out everything you learned in school out the window. Because again, like you said, it's too academic, it's too intellectual.

It doesn't address the person on the ground, right? It's what you said at the very start of this podcast, Brian. This work, the Grief or Recovery Method specifically is accessible. It is simple.

It, people can pick it up even if we have overwhelming grief in our heart and we go in the kitchen and we forget why we went in there, right? Because that is how much we're moving out of the present moment because of the circumstances of our life at that point. And yet you can still help that person gently with these actions, right? The book is written at a sixth grade rating level.

That will never change because we're not trying to impress academia, right? We will never be trying to impress academia. We want it, we want this to be accessible to the person in Lethbridge, right? That works at the shoe store.

We want this to be accessible to the person in Kenya who just came in from the village to do this work there. You know, we want this to be accessible for the business woman, you know, in Japan. And it is acceptable. Everybody I just mentioned is doing Grief or Recovery right now, right?

And that is the point. And so, yes, I think a lot of the time these schools are either over complicating things or staying up here because it's safer for us to stay up here. And it gets really kind of scary for those kind of folks to be working with people down here emotionally. And so anyway, I think the factors that you mentioned, I think you're right on, you know, in terms of where and then lastly, let's just let's just address this head on again, because I we've been saying this for 40 years, but I can't I can't say it enough.

The five stages of death and dying that were designed by Elizabeth Kubler Ross were really, really pivotal and helpful for for how we address dying people because at the time, we really were not doing a good job of it. And it was pretty shameful how we're treating people who were in that experience. And so our hats are off to Elizabeth Kubler Ross at working with people who were dying of whatever they were dying of. Okay.

The problem though is people took death and dying in those stages. Okay. And they simply applied them to Grief, which is a completely different emotional experience, right? It's like, now someone who is dying, yes, there's grief aspects to them, but the family around them, right, those those stages aren't applicable to them because they're not dying.

They're grieving. And so we are in we are in this math mess in a large part because like you said in school, whether it's funeral directors or I'm in school, if to be a social worker, I'm in school to be a mental health professional or I'm in school to be, you know, I'm in seminary to be a pastor. The problem is is everyone is teaching on these old antiquated not designed for grief stages. And so you have to literally take the stages and throw them out the window because they are we're they were there was different information designed for a different emotional experience and we cannot stress on on that enough because bad things happen when you apply unhelpful stages to a grieving person were that and using stages that weren't designed for them, right?

You can see where if you were dying bargaining and you know an anger and you know on all these kind of stages and even then I think of Elizabeth, if we were talking to her today, would say I didn't mean them like it's not like in a linear or perfect stages, they're just kind of sectors people can flow and when you get told that you have two months to live, right? Those stages make a lot of sense in that in that regard. They make zero sense when it comes to the person grieving that person who has died zero sense. So again, I'm being I'm being this direct because it needs to happen.

These schools have to throw this stuff out because it's exactly what you said, Brian, we don't get the funeral director that is six months out of school. That person thinks they're an expert. It's only until they work in this field for you know several years and really start seeing I want to be better and there are holes in my game, right? We don't get the mental health professional that is six months out of school because they think they are you know aware of everything they need to be aware of.

We get the mental health professional that's been working with clients for a couple of years and says I really feel like there's a hole in my game around grief and loss, right? And so we get to work with the best people, you know, the professionals that actually care about what they're doing and understand there's a shelf life on their education and understand that they got to keep growing or they're not or just again identifying holes in their game, right? Nothing doesn't say anything about them. It just says you don't come to what, you know, you don't find what you don't find and you know, until you do.

And so again, I really appreciate what you're saying, which is school really does a number on people being open to this. Now I will say and then I want to shift back to you, Brian, but I will say that one thing I'm really grateful for is shout out to Dr. Rachel Nolan and Dr. Jeffrey Hallum and Lois Hall and all these people that really pushed in the research on the grief recovery method.

You know, this is the only evidence-based grief recovery intervention out there. And so I think for a lot of organizations like that that will give them a reason to take a look into this further where maybe they weren't open to it before, but we've had again, we have added academics look at this work and see that it is helpful. And so if you want to go down that that, you know, rabbit hole and re and look at the evidence-based stuff on the method that is available to you now where before it was. And I mean, when Brian, when Brian looked at this work, you know, he took a leap of faith, right?

And we're not there as much now, right? So just rest assured that there are things you can take to your management or if you are considering this work, right? And there are, this work has been studied is my point, you know? But again, I want to hear from you because I know I'm ranting at this point, Brian.

Stage, I have slightly varied my thoughts about stage theory. I, you know, we all know about anticipatory grief where you know something's coming, you know it. I think the idea of the stages can, even for the person that's not going to be dying, for example, but when they know a death is coming or a big change is coming, that the ideas of stage theory, Debra, can be beneficial and applicable to anticipatory grief. But not when the loss has happened, not after the loss has actually happened.

Unfortunately, and I think it's out of a high degree of respect for Elizabeth Kubler-Ross that even to a large degree within the professional ranks, there's so much respect for her groundbreaking work and what she did that there's, there seems to be very little willingness to point out that this is not, when I've done my research, I find that those that are on the cutting edge of the research and such, they do say, hey, hey guys, stage theory is not applicable. It doesn't work. But they'll still endorse books and talk about this as though they think it's still a thing. And the gentleman that assisted Elizabeth Kubler-Ross with their writings is still recognized as an expert and yet he's presenting material that really is misleading the broken heart.

Yes. And a most recent materials talk about finding meaning. And the sixth stage of grief, it's called. And again, feeding people some hope that, oh, now I'll feel better because there's a sixth stage I've been missing.

Right. Yep. And I don't care if you've got 20 stages until you address the unresolved emotional energy of a relationship that is ended until you do that, which this program guides anybody and everybody to do that until you do that, any ideas about stages is not, is always going to leave people unfinished carrying a burden. Yep.

Yeah, I mean, and again, right, I think honestly, Brian, I wouldn't mind having you back. I think it's worth us doing an hour on this. You're very well read on this topic. And it's really a topic that we need to fight head on because it is very damaging to people.

And we've seen that over the last 45 years. That's why we're passionate about talking about this. It damages people, it misleads people, it gets people stuck. There's also kind of a notion of a passivity a little bit where if I'm just going to randomly flow through five stages, there's not much work to be done on my side.

And I'm kind of waiting to get out of the anger stage. And then at some point, I'm going to be in the next stage. And it's like that, there's nothing could be further from the truth about what unresolved grief is and where unresolved grief lies. Right.

It's like it's it's it's it's focusing people in the completely wrong direction. Right. It's what Brian talked about is the grief recovery method. The reason it's effective is because we're going to help you in a non comparative non-judgmental, very safe environment allow you to explore all of the feelings that are unfinished for you in that relationship.

The good, the bad, the happy, the sad, the things we did wrong, the things they did wrong, the totality of the relationship. And we're going to help you process those emotions, right. And by the by the end of that work, the energy will feel different. Like you touched on the emotional energy will be different because it is because you've worked on it versus, hey, you're going to kind of be in this stage and then you know, give me a call and I'll let you know when you're in this next stage.

And like you said, and kind of we need to we kind of understand that this whole foundation we created was wrong. So now we got to create a six stage to kind of like cobble together something that makes all this other stuff make sense. It's it's just it's not not right. You know, it's I don't know what how I was to put it.

And and just so you know, this isn't something that I dreamed up now. This is something that John James and Russell Friedman and all these giants before me and grief recovery. Over the last 40, 50 years, everybody that knew what they were doing around helping people with grief, not studying the concept of grief. Let me just again, there's a big differentiator between people have quadruple PhDs about understanding grief.

And then people like Brian and myself that are in the trenches weekly helping people with grief and helping them recover from unfinished emotional pain. There's a big difference. And so just know that, right. Is when you're seeking out care for your loved one or yourself, ask yourself, is this person an expert on grief or are they an expert at helping people move through grief, right?

And there's a big difference. And if I might add cool, it's not as though there is nothing of benefit in these other ideas. For example, we've been talking about stage theory and other other sort of ideas about loss and academic research. It's not as though there's nothing of benefit to it.

There are pieces of benefit there. But in terms of actually addressing the emotional mechanics of loss, it does not bring people to a place of resolution of the pain and the unfinished business that is associated with the changes and the endings that we call grief. I kind of think of these other ideas as if you've got a small plane and you're coming into the airport and it's an airport you haven't been to before. And you're interested in the surroundings.

There's a golf course over there and a park and a you know, and you're circling around looking down there and oh this is great. This looks fun. Oh, we should maybe go there. But you never land.

You're just circling around looking at interesting stuff and you say, yeah, that looks good. That's nice. I'm really enjoying the view from here. But you never actually land and go to those places and do this stuff and experience it.

And that's what the grief recovery method does is guide you into a healing experience. Yes. And it is so accessible. Wow, I love that, Brian.

I'm going to use that if you don't mind. And you know, another way we would kind of talk about this story, you know, this example, Brian just mentioned, is a lot of the time, you know, you could buy 50 books on grief, right? And most of those books are intellectual pursuits. So it's like when you're up in the plane and you're like, yeah, we could look over there and we can look over there.

It much, it very much keeps you in your head and you're kind of intellectually kind of gaining knowledge around this part of grief or that part of grief. But again, the work that needs to be done from our perspective, seeing what we've seen is we need to do emotional work, right? And so if you read our book versus again, the majority of other books out there on the topic, you'll see, we are helping people get down to the heart of the matter and help them communicate emotionally because that's where they're bleeding to death emotionally. They're not bleeding to death intellectually.

Yes, there's there's definitely parts of their brain around a grief event as trying to sort stuff out intellectually. People are trying to sort stuff out spiritually. You know, those are all true. But what we find is the place we need and must address first is the fact that they are hurting emotionally and they are unfinished emotionally with the grief, right?

That is the aspect that is the overwhelming most important aspect to help address. And all of these other programs seemingly keep people up here and keep offering them new ideas and concepts, right? It's like anticipatory grief, right? Great concept.

Somebody wanted to write a book. They studied it. They coined this term anticipatory grief. Just know that in the grief recovery method, we just we don't use that term because look, I as my dad was battling cancer, right?

I was grieving. I wasn't having anticipatory grief. I was just grieving and I could do grief recovery work six months before he died. I could do grief work two months after he died.

It was up to me. But what was happening for me is my heart was being broken into a hundred pieces before he died after he died and the work to be done was emotional because I was having an emotional experience, right? And again, trust me, there was many, many, many more feelings than a tidy five stages or six stages. There were hundreds, if not thousands of feelings.

And if I don't know how to address those and get complete with those feelings, then I hold them. Then they weigh me down. Then I go to things like you touched on. We kind of breeze over it, but stirs, which are food, food, eating to feel different, drinking to feel different, going to social media to feel different, cutting to feel different, you know, ultra-marathons to feel different.

I mean, the list goes on, but what we're hurting with within society is going to short-term energy relieving behaviors because we have a motion come up and at all costs, we needed to kind of divert and distract from that emotion because we don't know how to process it. That's just kind of the bottom line from my perspective on that. Brian, I can't believe it, but we're at 59 minutes. I want to be respectful of your time and all of our listeners time.

I will definitely, if you have the time, I would love to have you back. I think you're just a wealth of information on this method and you're very kind of wise person. Brian, before I... No, that's obvious to me.

Brian, can you, if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that? If they want to work with you, you know, all those kind of things, please just kind of promote where people can find you. I like to say the best way is to the Grief Recovery Institute. Okay.

GriefRecoveryMethod.com and then you do a search. There's an easy way to search locations. Beaumont, Alberta. The other way is my own website, theheartofgrief.com.

The Heart of Grief.com. The Heart of Grief.com. And we'll put that in the show notes. So if you're listening to this or watching this on YouTube in the description, we'll link to Brian's site there.

If you're listening to this on a podcast in the show notes, we'll link to Brian's site there. And again, Brian, I just want to thank you for your insight and your time. And most importantly, on behalf of my father, I want to thank you for all the GriefRecovery work you've done and all the people you've helped that we don't get to meet. You know, just we're thankful for you.

Well, it was it's a gift that I have been given and I want to do everything I can to pass that on to other people. So thank you so much. Yeah. Absolutely.

And if you're listening, please like this, write a review, share this with other people that helps this work get out found by more people. As you kind of can are probably putting together, we do believe there is an epidemic of unresolved grief out there. And we focus so much in society on the symptoms. And our belief is that if we focus only on the symptoms, but we don't address the core problem, which is we're all carrying around a lifetime of unresolved emotional pain from our past i.e. grief that we really don't have a chance at really finding solutions to these things we're struggling with in life.

So please look into this work. If you're listening to this podcast, I assure you there's work to be done. There's never it never feels like the exact right time. There is no right time, right?

Let's get in there and start looking at what emotional work needs to be done for us, right? So again, thank you for listening. Until next time, thank you for for tuning into the Feel Free Again podcast. I hope you have a great rest of your day or evening.