In this deeply moving episode, Lisa and Gretchen talk candidly about how milestone days like birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays impact those living with grief, especially suicide loss survivors. Through laughter, tears, and lived experience, they offer real-life tools, comfort, and hope for navigating the pain of remembrance while keeping the love alive.
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📝 Episode Summary:
Lisa opens up about losing her father to suicide 47 years ago and how milestone days—like birthdays, Father’s Day, and August 1st (his death anniversary)—still hit hard. Gretchen shares her own grief experiences, including how she transformed Valentine’s Day, the anniversary of her mother’s funeral, into a new chapter through podcasting. Together, they hold space for listeners navigating their own grief, emphasizing that there is no “right” way to mourn. Whether you're years into your grief or fresh in the pain, this episode is for you.
💡 Lessons Learned:
- Grief doesn’t have an expiration date—it evolves.
- You’re allowed to feel joy, sadness, anger, or all three at once.
- Rituals can offer comfort and connection to loved ones lost.
- Talking to someone—friends, family, a therapist, or a warmline—can ease the weight.
- Grieving is not weakness; it’s love in motion.
📖 Chapters:
00:00 – Trigger Warning & Introduction
01:00 – Lisa’s Birthday & Father’s Day Reflections
02:30 – Gretchen's Story: Valentine’s Day & Her Mother’s Passing
04:00 – Building Relationships with Lost Loved Ones
06:00 – The Power of Rituals and Letters
08:00 – Suicide Attempt Reflections & Christmas Grief
09:00 – Navigating Special Occasions Alone
11:00 – There's No Wrong Way to Grieve
14:00 – Journaling & Safe Spaces
16:00 – Lisa on Loneliness & Community Support
18:30 – The Importance of Warm Lines
20:00 – Therapy as Ongoing Support
22:00 – Grief as a Sign of Love
23:00 – Book Recommendation: Grief Is Love by Marisa Renee Lee
26:00 – A Friend’s Tribute: Honoring the Memory of Lisa’s Dad
29:00 – Remembering with Love & Living the Legacy
30:00 – Final Thoughts & Encouragement
📚 Resources for Mental Health & Support
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🔹 Sh!t That Goes On In Our Heads – A raw, award-winning mental health podcast: https://goesoninourheads.net/
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🎙️ See You Next Week! Stay strong, keep going, and remember: You are enough. 💜
00:00:01
The Survivors is brought to you by our friends at the Help Hub. This
00:00:05
podcast mentions suicide, mental illness, grief and loss and may be
00:00:09
triggering for some listeners. So please take care of your mental well being
00:00:12
by pausing or skipping any sections that feel uncomfortable to you. And if
00:00:16
you or someone you know is struggling, please call 988 for support.
00:00:22
We're back and it's an interesting
00:00:26
time that we're having this conversation because
00:00:30
yesterday was my birthday. And happy
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birthday to you. Thank you. Happy birthday to you.
00:00:38
Thank you. I appreciate that. So
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it's a bittersweet day for me, just
00:00:45
like Father's Day, which was last month, and
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just like August 1st will be for me, as
00:00:53
it is every year and has been for the last
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47 years. The reason why I'm talking about these
00:01:01
milestones is because you and I decided that we were going to talk
00:01:05
about grief during really difficult
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milestones, especially suicide grief, which
00:01:12
is such a unique and nuanced kind
00:01:16
of grief. And I really
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missed my dad yesterday. It's been over four
00:01:23
decades for me since my dad died. And I would
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almost say with a lot of certainty that
00:01:30
yesterday and Father's Day this year
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hit me harder than ever in that way.
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And August 1st is the anniversary when I lost my father in
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1978. And I'm aware that that day is
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only a couple of weeks away and it's already starting to bubble up in my
00:01:50
heart a little bit. So since I've had so many
00:01:54
of these days lately, and I know you've had them too,
00:01:57
we just want to bring it here. Like, we're bringing all of this stuff here
00:02:01
to talk about these things, because these are not just happening
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to me and they're not just happening to you. They're happening to tens of millions
00:02:08
of people around the world who have lost people to suicide, who have
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to go through the first Christmases and Hanukkahs and birthdays
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and death anniversaries and all that. And it
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sucks. It sucks. It does suck.
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And like, for me, I, I, I'm not,
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I haven't had a lot of people in my, my life
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die by suicide, but I've had very personal deaths
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that affect me. And like, we'll take my mom,
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for example. You know, we buried my mom in
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on Valentine's Day, 1997. And the
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whole reason we launched a podcast on February
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14, 2023, was to change the trajectory
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of that day because I wanted to take all the sadness
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and turn it into something good. And you're talking about your.
00:03:01
Because you have another podcast for People who are listening, who don't know. G is
00:03:04
also the co host of the award winning podcast Shit
00:03:08
that Goes on in Our Head. So that's the podcast she's talking about. So that's
00:03:11
why we decided to do that. But
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Mother's Day, her birthday, all the days,
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they're just hard. And it doesn't matter if it happened yesterday,
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and in my case it was in 1997. Like, you still carry
00:03:27
that with you. You carry those memories. And
00:03:31
for, you know, people that have experienced suicide, loss, it's,
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it's so hard. Like, like, you know, the
00:03:39
days approaching, you're like, this is going to be like that same sadness
00:03:43
that keeps creeping up year after year after year.
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And for me, I create rituals, I create a safe
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space. Like I, for me, it's like my,
00:03:55
my time alone with them, even though they're not physically here,
00:03:59
it's my time to be with them. Yeah,
00:04:03
I'm glad you just said that that way because it just made me think of
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something that I learned
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more recently than not. I learned that
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I already said that my father's been gone. It will be,
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it will be 47 years in August. I
00:04:23
still create a relationship with my father. I'm
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still growing a relationship with my father. And
00:04:30
I think maybe that might sound strange to some people listening. Your
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person is physically gone. You can't have conversations. Yes, you
00:04:37
can. You can't engage
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with them in the ways that you did. True. But you can engage with them
00:04:45
in other ways. You can do things in their memory. You can do things in,
00:04:49
in honor of them. You can do the things that they loved. You
00:04:52
can have one sided conversations. I think I
00:04:56
mentioned way back in season one, in one of the early
00:04:59
episodes that my therapist gave me this amazing
00:05:03
suggestion. I've always journaled my whole life
00:05:07
and she said, have you ever written your dad a letter? Never occurred
00:05:11
to me. Never occurred to me in a million years to write my father a
00:05:14
letter. It was the most cathartic thing to write a letter
00:05:18
to my father. And it
00:05:22
exposes things, it fleshes things out in a way when you do
00:05:26
it in a random stream of consciousness sort of way. So you're always growing those
00:05:30
random relationships and it makes
00:05:34
these milestones that are hard just a tiny bit less
00:05:37
hard in some ways. Yeah. For me,
00:05:41
like what I did for my mom is a lot like what
00:05:45
you did. I wrote my mom a letter like, she's not here.
00:05:48
But it was super cathartic. And for
00:05:52
when I know that the date is coming up, I kind of plan
00:05:56
okay, you have to. I'm like, how. How am I going to deal with
00:06:00
this? Because it's not just the day. It's like, where am I mentally
00:06:04
at that time? Do I have a lot of stress? Am
00:06:07
I super depressed? I so lean in on my therapist
00:06:11
because, number one, I pay them money to make me feel better.
00:06:16
That's kind of like a. Like a prostitute.
00:06:23
I'm just saying. Just saying. But, you know, the. The
00:06:26
dates hit hard, and I lean in on my wife.
00:06:30
I lean in on my friends that they all know, because, you
00:06:34
know, it's been over 20 years that certain days just
00:06:37
hit me hard, harder than the normal. And
00:06:43
I give my. Myself permission to grieve. Like, I miss.
00:06:47
I miss my person. Always grieving. We never stop. We never
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stop. And they say that the pains, it's
00:06:54
not as painful like five years out. Okay? That's a big fat
00:06:58
lie. Okay? Because it's just different. It's just. It's a
00:07:01
different kind of pain. It's like an emptiness. But fill that
00:07:05
emptiness with things that bring you joy
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or would have brought both of you joy if you were doing it together. Like,
00:07:12
let's say you had, like, a standing date of.
00:07:18
Let's go to the zoo. Okay, Go to the zoo by yourself. Or
00:07:22
maybe take your significant other with you or a friend.
00:07:26
Or maybe it was making homemade pasta. Okay,
00:07:29
make that homemade pasta. But as you're doing it, you can think about
00:07:34
the things in your life that still hold close to your heart
00:07:38
that made you love that person so much.
00:07:42
And for those of us that have attempted suicide,
00:07:47
we still have that same type of grief. For me, it's
00:07:51
approaching the day that I attempted, which will always
00:07:55
be Christmas Day. But, like, in the
00:07:58
sense, you know, like last year and this year,
00:08:02
I approached it with, I'm still here.
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I get to live. And I'm grateful every single day because of a call
00:08:10
that I made so that I could be here to see other
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milestones. You know, it's. It's taking care of my
00:08:18
heart, my heart and my soul. And, you know, knowing
00:08:22
that I'm a good person, you know, I just went through some crap,
00:08:25
but I celebrate those. Wins, and we have to. But
00:08:29
let's. Let's drill down for the people who are listening to this, who have
00:08:33
lost someone, who are approaching a really, really rough date or rough
00:08:37
occasion. Maybe a child is graduating
00:08:41
from high school or college and a spouse or a partner or
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grandparent isn't there. Or maybe you're
00:08:48
getting married and one of your parents isn't There. I mean, there.
00:08:51
I've gone through every single one of these things.
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Why are they hard? We need to first understand, like, why
00:08:59
are they hard? Let's acknowledge that, say it out in the air, and
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then figure out what we can do to navigate
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them so they're re triggering our grief is what it is.
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It doesn't matter if It's a year, two years, 10 years,
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bringing up those memories. Those things
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just kind of put a spotlight on the intense
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sense of absence that we have. I know for a fact
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I don't remember very many things, like Thanksgivings with my dad. And Thanksgiving has
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always been my favorite holiday of all time. And for
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20 years, I hosted at home, at our house, and it was
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always my favorite holiday in the world. I
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do remember a couple of Thanksgivings with my dad. And so
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I look around my table and I know my dad's
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not there. Could have a house full. We usually have, like, you know, 20,
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21 people. I know my dad's not there. I know that there's
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a symbolically empty chair there. And. And that's.
00:10:03
That's really hard, you know, And I know that a lot of people deal
00:10:07
with that in so many different ways. And I think
00:10:10
that we have to just acknowledge, like, yeah, my dad's not here,
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and it fucking sucks, and I hate that. And
00:10:18
he's missed. He's missed so many of these. And what you can say
00:10:22
to yourself is, this day is hard, and I miss him. And that's okay. You
00:10:26
can. You can be silent. You can have laughter. There's
00:10:30
no wrong way to grieve. Yes. Yes. I'm so. Oh,
00:10:33
you're so. Like, oh, I could just squeeze you right now. That is so
00:10:37
important. Say it again. There's no wrong way to grieve.
00:10:41
Yes. Nugget, nugget.
00:10:45
That was. That was great. It's important. It's true. I mean, you're giggling, but
00:10:48
I'm saying that in all seriousness, that there
00:10:52
isn't a right or wrong way to grieve. Like, there
00:10:56
have absolutely been years. And I don't even know if my family knows this.
00:11:00
Since I was hosting, it was very easy for me to always get up from
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the table and be like, oh, gotta go baste the turkey. Oh, gotta go check
00:11:05
the pie. Oh. And I would leave everybody in the dining room, and I
00:11:08
would walk into the kitchen, and I would be sad that maybe my
00:11:12
Grandma Lil wasn't there, or I would be sad that my Aunt Harriet wasn't there
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or my dad wasn't there, and I would Cry.
00:11:19
I would just. I would stand there basting the turkey like an idiot,
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crying. And then I would wipe my eyes and I would walk back into the
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room, and nobody would know what I just did. That's okay. And
00:11:30
if you break down at the table, that's okay, too.
00:11:34
I've done that before. You know, it's all about
00:11:37
acknowledgement and letting yourself have
00:11:41
a little grace and permission to feel it. And, you
00:11:45
know, you don't have to explain yourself to
00:11:49
anybody. You absolutely do not. Like, if you have
00:11:52
a breakdown, have that breakdown. We're all human.
00:11:56
We are not robots. We are emotional creatures.
00:12:00
And those days are hard. I can even say
00:12:03
for the first Christmas without my mom. Christmas was my mom's favorite
00:12:07
holiday. It was so hard. But
00:12:11
as I've grown over the years, I do
00:12:15
things a little differently now. I
00:12:19
planned. I planned stuff that would have been fun,
00:12:22
that. That my mom would have liked to do. I love that. And I
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have, you know, I have my person, I have my wife. And she
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makes sure, like, just a
00:12:33
shout out to my wife because she's amazing. She's completely my
00:12:37
rock. Make sure that I'm okay. Like, if you don't
00:12:41
have that in your life, find that per. Find your
00:12:44
person, find your friend. Find somebody to hang out with during that.
00:12:48
On that day. Maybe somebody you just text or you're calling them on the
00:12:52
phone, talk it out. But you can also do. The other thing
00:12:56
I've done is I've been known to, like, cancel everything and just
00:12:59
hang out in bed for the day. That's okay, too. Like, you. You are
00:13:03
allowed to do that. You're allowed to say, actually,
00:13:07
thank you so much for that invite to that party or that thing or
00:13:11
that event, but I'm going to. I'm going to take a pass.
00:13:14
You don't have to give a reason. You don't have to go. You don't have
00:13:18
to put yourself in that position. So many people, we all feel like people pleaser.
00:13:21
People pleaser. Have to do all the things. No, you don't.
00:13:25
No, you don't. As long as you're showing up for yourself,
00:13:29
that's all that matters. That is showing up for yourself. Yeah. Like, you don't have
00:13:33
to show up for anybody else. Show up for you. Like, do the things
00:13:37
that make you happy. Like, for me, that's putting on my VR
00:13:40
headset and pretending I'm someplace else. Or pulling out my
00:13:44
favorite picture of my mom,
00:13:49
remembering the things that she taught me. I'll cook a meal. That
00:13:52
was one of her favorite meals. I will whip up my mom's
00:13:56
meatloaf and I'll eat the shit out of that and
00:14:00
not even care. And it's those little
00:14:04
things. And my wife will ask me, she's like, what are you
00:14:08
feeling today? And I tell her,
00:14:11
honestly, like, I either feel good, bad or sad. It could
00:14:15
be all together at the same time. And if I
00:14:18
can't name what the feeling is, she pretty much see it on my
00:14:22
face. I don't hide that well. I don't
00:14:26
hide sadness well. I don't either. I don't either. But I also, like,
00:14:30
started doing some journaling. Journaling on that, like with my
00:14:33
mom's death and my dad's death and like, things that I wish
00:14:37
that they had been around to see. And
00:14:41
maybe in the ethers of the world that they are getting those
00:14:44
messages. And I never do it alone
00:14:48
anymore. I don't. I always make sure that I have, like, my safe
00:14:52
space. My friends, my family, my wife, my journal.
00:14:56
And if I'm feeling super sad, I pick up the phone and
00:15:00
I call. People struggling with your mental health?
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00:16:11
Yeah, and that's so important. And this is. I'm glad that you said that and
00:16:14
that we're talking about this part of grieving during milestones,
00:16:19
because there is a whole world out there. We're
00:16:23
in the midst of a loneliness epidemic
00:16:27
and there's a whole world of people out there who don't
00:16:30
have the wide community of
00:16:34
people that maybe you have or that I have. You know, I'm very
00:16:38
fortunate. My husband and I work in the same
00:16:41
place. We work from home. He's upstairs right now. I'm in My office,
00:16:46
my kids. One of them is close by. I talk to my other daughter who
00:16:49
lives abroad every day. My mother and I communicate every
00:16:53
day. I have an incredibly close family and circle of friends. A
00:16:56
lot of people do not have that. They don't have a partner, they
00:17:00
don't have a spouse, they don't have a friend circle. Maybe they don't
00:17:04
work. So they don't have that, that community outlet, that workplace
00:17:08
outlet. And they don't have kids. So what do
00:17:11
they do? Because that must be an incredibly
00:17:15
isolating and lonely feeling. And what I'll tell you, if you're one of
00:17:19
those people that I just described and you're out there listening, going, I
00:17:23
don't have anybody. Yes, you do. You have
00:17:26
anybody who is on the other end of the 988
00:17:30
suicide and crisis hotline. And there are also
00:17:34
warm lines. Maybe you're not suicidal.
00:17:37
Maybe you're not in a desperate headspace.
00:17:41
Maybe you're not in an abusive relationship or there's something
00:17:46
that you're navigating that's life threatening, but maybe you
00:17:49
just need to talk to a human and hear another human's
00:17:53
voice. Maybe you call 988 or maybe you
00:17:56
call some warm lines and you and I can put
00:18:00
some numbers for some warm lines in our show notes
00:18:04
this week to ensure that people have those. And for those who don't know what
00:18:07
a warm line is, use your context clues, friends. A
00:18:11
hotline means, like, it's hot. Like the problem is,
00:18:14
is hot on fire needs to be addressed right now. Dangerous,
00:18:18
potentially a warm line. Just what it sounds like.
00:18:22
Maybe somebody needs a little support. They need a little something. Maybe it's not life
00:18:25
threatening or imminent, but they just need someone. So there are warm lines.
00:18:29
You're never alone is the point that I'm trying to make.
00:18:34
100%. You know, and other things you can do is you can
00:18:38
text a trust a friend, you can say, hey, this start, this day is
00:18:42
hard. I just need to say hi. You know, I,
00:18:46
that I've done that. A bazillion times, see each other literally every
00:18:50
morning. Every morning. And, you know, and I talk to Dirty
00:18:53
Skittles, you know, from my other podcast, every
00:18:57
morning. And you, you all know when I'm not
00:19:00
okay, because like I said, you know, now that I've learned how
00:19:04
to be a whole person and
00:19:08
show my feelings, like, you can see it in my face. You can
00:19:11
hear my voice. So proud of you. But I also,
00:19:15
oh, thank you. But, you know, also remember that
00:19:19
therapy is not just for the early stages therapy is
00:19:22
ongoing. So if you feel like you're. It's going to be a really super
00:19:26
hard day, contact your therapist.
00:19:30
Yep. I have an appointment this afternoon. I can't wait. I haven't seen her for
00:19:33
three weeks because I was traveling so much, and I cannot
00:19:37
wait. It's like maintenance. You know, we go to the dentist, go to
00:19:41
the doctor, go to the chiropractor. No different.
00:19:44
To maintain your mental health and wellness. I can't wait
00:19:48
to sit and catch. Up with her and, you know,
00:19:52
recognize that your grief is not a weakness. It's a sign of
00:19:56
deep love. We lost somebody that
00:20:00
we loved dearly. We may not have under. We
00:20:04
may not understand why they're not here any longer. We may not understand
00:20:08
what was going through their mind, but
00:20:11
it's okay to grieve it 100%.
00:20:15
Like, it's necessary. It's necessary. Like, you know,
00:20:19
tears are cathartic.
00:20:23
You know, you can also be angry, and that's okay, too.
00:20:27
But don't let that anger take over everything else that you're doing
00:20:31
in your life. Sit with it. You can be
00:20:35
angry, be angry until you don't feel angry anymore. Right. And,
00:20:38
you know, there's no expiration date on grief. No. There's that next
00:20:42
breath, that next choice, and that next moment of remembering.
00:20:46
And every time we remember them, it can spark a little
00:20:49
joy in our heart. When I remember my mom, I
00:20:53
remember the good things, and I remember a lot of the bad things. But on
00:20:57
those certain milestone dates, I remember the
00:21:01
things that brought me joy. And I'll sit there and not
00:21:04
cry. Life's a balance. Life's a balance. We have to remember all the good with
00:21:08
the bad. Some days I cry. Some days I laugh.
00:21:12
Some days I do both. But, you know, there's no. There's no
00:21:15
timeline. And, like, don't let people, like, tell you that
00:21:19
to just get over it, because you just don't get over it. I'm. And if
00:21:23
you're saying that to people, please stop. Well, if you think
00:21:26
about grief in the way that I have learned to think about grief, I
00:21:30
don't want to stop grieving for my dad or I'm just talking about the
00:21:34
people who I've lost to suicide. My dad, my cousin, and one of
00:21:38
my closest friends. But I have never even really talked at all
00:21:42
about, you know, my grandmothers, who. My. One of my grandmothers was
00:21:46
my best friend in the world. Lost. My grandmothers, lost aunts, lost
00:21:49
uncles, lost cousins, lost friends. I mean, I've been accompanied by Grief
00:21:53
my whole life. I don't want to ever stop
00:21:57
grieving. And I think Stephen Colbert was one of the ones who said something very
00:22:00
profound. I wish I could remember the quote exactly, but he
00:22:05
mentioned something about how, like, it's a. It's a privilege
00:22:09
to be able to grieve for the people we love. And that.
00:22:13
That makes me think of someone else who is worth a shout out in
00:22:16
this particular conversation. Have I ever told you
00:22:20
my favorite book on grief? Have I ever shared that
00:22:24
with you? No. There is a woman. She's an author. Her
00:22:28
name is Marissa Renee Lee. I've been very fortunate to
00:22:32
have a couple of. Of DM
00:22:35
conversations with her privately. She is the author of my
00:22:39
favorite book on grief called Grief is Love.
00:22:43
And it is the most transformative book on grief I've ever
00:22:46
read. I could easily talk 45 minutes about this book and why
00:22:50
I love it and why it was so transformative, but I will make sure that
00:22:54
it's in the show notes. Grief is Love by Marissa
00:22:58
Renee Lee. And again, she's not a therapist, she's not a clinician, which
00:23:01
is maybe part of why it resonated with me so much, because she is this
00:23:05
regular human who was grieving loss. And it was just her
00:23:09
perspective on that loss. And a lot of it centered around
00:23:12
the fact that as hard and painful and ugly and messy
00:23:16
as grief is like, I actually wouldn't trade it because
00:23:20
it shows how much I love my people, and I want that.
00:23:24
It's a connector. It's a bridge to our people. So I
00:23:28
don't want to leave that behind or lose that. You just learn to
00:23:31
integrate it into your life and into your world. And then eventually, you know, it's
00:23:35
like scales, like anyone who's just listening, I'm doing with my
00:23:39
hands, like, tipping the scales. And eventually
00:23:43
joy and grief, kind of, there's a balance there, and you
00:23:46
learn to live with both of them. But her book, if you have not read
00:23:49
it, go get it and read it. It is
00:23:53
profound. And the takeaway is
00:23:58
be gentle with yourself. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to the people
00:24:02
you know, who have lost people because you.
00:24:06
It's the hardest thing we go through in life. It is.
00:24:10
And making sure that when
00:24:14
somebody does reach out to you, that you hold space for them.
00:24:19
And a lot of times, what I mean by holding space is
00:24:23
just give us time to talk. Like, listen with your
00:24:26
ears, not with your mouth. We need an opinion.
00:24:30
We'll kind of clue you in on that. But just listen to
00:24:34
us and you'll Hear
00:24:38
our love come out in our voices
00:24:41
and be thankful
00:24:45
that they reached out to you. Honor their
00:24:48
grief and just be
00:24:52
a good friend. That, to me is like the perfect thing
00:24:56
for anybody is just honor that space that
00:24:59
we're holding with you for right in that very moment. Because holding
00:25:03
space is not that complicated. It's just being there.
00:25:07
It's just showing up. It's being a place that can
00:25:11
receive what a person needs to share, whatever
00:25:14
that might be. You know, we can share things in a journal. You can talk
00:25:18
to yourself in the mirror, but when you're expressing
00:25:21
the innermost feelings of love or sadness or joy
00:25:26
that's in your heart to an actual human, whether it's over over
00:25:30
phone or whether it's like this through a screen, or whether it's in person,
00:25:34
it's next level, it's different. There is just.
00:25:39
There's a tangibleness that's not even a word, but I
00:25:43
made it a word today. There's a tangibleness in it, and
00:25:46
it matters. It means something different. I don't know about you,
00:25:50
but. But I can say from my own experience
00:25:54
and the conversations that I've had with so many people over the years who have
00:25:57
lost people, especially friends, it is
00:26:01
profoundly important to me
00:26:04
when people mention my father
00:26:08
profoundly on Father's Day this year. I just want to share this one thing.
00:26:12
I know we're coming sort of toward the end of this conversation, but I want
00:26:15
to share something that happened. And this is a shout out to my friend Mike
00:26:18
and you know who you are. This is an old, old, old childhood
00:26:22
friend. I don't have a lot of people left in the world
00:26:26
who knew my father. And that, like, just immediately got me so choked
00:26:29
up. But it's the truth. Like, obviously my mother, my husband never knew
00:26:33
my father, my kids. I obviously have some family members
00:26:37
who, aunts and uncles, but most everyone
00:26:40
is gone who knew my father. This
00:26:45
friend of mine, who I haven't seen him in decades, but we've recently, in
00:26:48
the last several years, gotten more in touch over social media.
00:26:52
He lives in D.C. he and his brother
00:26:56
and his father and my father and I used to mountain
00:27:00
climb together. My father was a huge mountaineer, and my father
00:27:04
got his father into mountain
00:27:07
climbing and peak bagging and up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. And we
00:27:11
all grew up together, he and I and his brother, climbing mountains together.
00:27:15
And because of that, he developed this incredible, insatiable love of
00:27:19
being outdoors and climbing mountains. And it was because of my father.
00:27:23
So when I made the post I made on Father's Day to my husband and
00:27:26
my stepdad and my father in law and my dad. He
00:27:30
immediately wrote this message and he wrote it on Facebook, like on my wall.
00:27:34
And this is what made the most impact on me. He said, I
00:27:38
miss your dad. My dad's name was Jim. He says, I miss Jimmy
00:27:41
Eigner. And he said, if it were not for your father,
00:27:47
he was the one who brought me and my father and
00:27:50
my brother into this world, this new world that has become such a
00:27:54
big part of our world that we have now gifted to our children. And it
00:27:58
was the most beautiful post
00:28:01
about my dad from someone who knew my dad and spent time with my dad
00:28:04
and knew what he was in the world. And. And he told me in
00:28:08
this post that his daughter is now
00:28:12
working for the Appalachian Mountain Club,
00:28:17
carrying on the tradition that my father gave to
00:28:20
her grandfather who gave to her father. It was just this whole thing, and I'm
00:28:23
bawling and I'm sending screenshots to my mother and I'm reaching out to him.
00:28:28
I told my friend Mike in a message
00:28:32
that that was such a gift, Mike, I want you to hear it with my
00:28:35
own voice right now. That was like, now I'm gonna just fully cry. And I
00:28:38
don't even care because sometimes we cry. That was the greatest gift
00:28:42
anyone has given me in the longest time to just say that about my dad
00:28:45
out into the world. And that's the point. I need to stop talking now
00:28:49
because I'm crying. But you know what? That's okay, too.
00:28:53
Because every year when I post about my mom, all my
00:28:57
friends from high school, even elementary school, you know, my
00:29:00
mom was. She was central to our community,
00:29:05
and she was a good person. And they
00:29:09
all helped me remember why we all love
00:29:12
my mom so much and that it's okay to grieve.
00:29:16
And that even though they're not here anymore,
00:29:20
they're still in our hearts. And they taught us
00:29:23
amazing things that we get to carry on for the rest of our
00:29:27
lives, and we get to share with other people those
00:29:31
gifts. And your dad is always going to be with you,
00:29:34
no matter if he's here physically or not. And your mom is always
00:29:38
going to. Be with you 100%. Like, we carry
00:29:42
on those traditions that we
00:29:45
shared with them. And you know what? Life is good.
00:29:49
Life is good. And grief, my friends, is
00:29:53
love. Grief is love. Amen.
00:29:56
Amen. All right, Boo. I love you. I love you, G. Hey,
00:30:00
you want to do this again next week? Yeah, sure. All right, let's do it.
00:30:03
Okay. See you next week. Bye.
00:30:07
Thanks for joining us on the Survivors. Remember, no matter how tough things
00:30:11
feel, you are enough and the world needs you just the way you are.
00:30:15
You're not alone in this journey. There's a community here and every step forward
00:30:19
counts. We're so grateful you took the time to listen, and we hope you'll
00:30:23
take one day at a time. Just know there's always more light ahead.
00:30:27
Thanks for being here, friends. Just remember, help is out there
00:30:31
in so many different places. So if you or someone you know is struggling,
00:30:35
please call 988 and a trained crisis counselor like me will be
00:30:39
there to help. You can also find an inclusive and comprehensive directory
00:30:43
of mental health resources, tools and content at thehelphub.
00:30:46
Co. Just remember that help is always just a call or
00:30:50
a click away. We'll catch you next week. In the meantime, keep
00:30:53
surviving.