Grief Expert: The Key to Overcoming Life’s Hardest Moments (With David Kessler)

In this episode, John sits down with author David Kessler to have a conversation about grief. Next Steps: Learn more about David Kessler and resources for grief Follow David on Instagram 📞 Ask John a question! Call 844-693-3291 or send us a message. 📚 Building a Non-Anxious Life 📝 Anxiety Test 📚 Own Your Past, Change Your Future ❓ Questions for Humans Conversation Cards 💭 John's Free Guided Meditation 🤘🏼The Dr. John Delony Show T-Shirts Connect With Our Sponsors: 🌱 Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp. 🌿 Get up to 40% off at Cozy Earth with code DELONY. 🔒 Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe. 😇 Go to Hallow for a 90-day free trial. 💤 Visit Helix Sleep for special offers! 💪 Get 25% off your order at Thorne. 🥤 Get 20% off at Organifi with code DELONY. 🏔️ Use code DELONY at Poncho Outdoors. Listen to More From Ramsey Network: 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💰 George Kamel 💼 The Ken Coleman Show 📈 EntreLeadership Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy https://www.ramseysolutions.com/company/policies/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  If you're dying, your marriage is falling apart, you're in the worst moments of your life, you want David Kessler there. It bothered me. I wanted to be, "Oh, you're having a party? You've got to get David Kessler there." I didn't want to be the death grief guy.

• 0:28Dr. John Delony?

  Yo, yo, what's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. So grateful to be here with you. Listen, we're talking about your emotional health, your mental health, your relationships, and underneath all of those things, phew, is hard moments, hard seasons. Every single person I know, you included, goes through hard seasons. We go through loss. We go through things that we want to happen that don't happen. And if you have listened to this show for any period of time, you know I've referred to this man, the great David Kessler. I have recommended his book, Finding Meaning, over and over and over and over again.

• 1:08Dr. John Delony?

  I think it is the masterpiece on dealing with not only heavy things like personal loss and romantic loss, but just all loss. Well, he's on the show today. We're having a two-part conversation. When I got going with him, dude, I took out my notepad, I started taking notes. It's one of the most incredible conversations of my lifetime, and I'm so grateful that the cameras were rolling and that you get to be a part of this amazing conversation. In this first part, we cover the gamut. I want you to sit down, I want you to pull out a piece of paper, I want you to take some notes, I want you to digest this episode, because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

• 1:48Dr. John Delony?

  for you and your loved ones and your friends and family to sit with a guy who's been there personally, a guy who's been there professionally, and a guy who has helped me immensely, sitting with hurting people. Listen to my conversation with the great David Kessler. This is the first half of the interview. Check it out.

• 2:09Dr. John Delony?

  I first read this and my son was younger. When did Finding Me come out?

• 2:15Speaker 00

  2019.

• 2:17Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, yeah. So that's about right. So my son was, I think,

• 2:23Dr. John Delony?

  yeah, maybe nine. And I remember not having a psychology for it. And so I used to work in residence halls in universities and I would hug these dads who were dropping their daughters off and they would be sobbing and I would be rolling my eyes out of the back of my head. And then I remember dropping my son off when he was like one at a local Tuesday, Thursday school and I just sobbed in the parking lot. And so then fast forward, now I've got an empathy for, your time's not here yet, but that pain is real, right? These people aren't, reading this was a heavy, I didn't have a, I didn't have an exhale for it. And I imagine eight years later.

• 3:06Speaker 00

  Well, it is a reminder that he was a gift I could not keep, that did not belong to me. And then I try to remember that about everyone.

• 3:22Speaker 00

  You know, this moment we're in is a gift that will be gone. And people think, oh, well, that sounds depressing. It actually becomes the opposite. When I go, oh, everyone's a gift that doesn't belong to me. Every moment is going to disappear. It doesn't make me go, well, what's the point? It makes me go, well, this is my time with John. Let me, let me really make it count.

• 3:51Dr. John Delony?

  Makes it infinitely more precious.

• 3:53Speaker 00

  Let me go into this. Let me soak this moment up. Let me not throw it away. It's another podcast. It's another moment. It's no, this is like, this is an amazing moment I'm in and to just take it in.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  You know, I come out happier. I ran into a neighbor that used to work with thirty years ago. And she said, Oh, I've been following your career. I would be friends with you, but it must be too depressing. And I was like, Yeah, actually not. I mean, I'm kind of a really happy person. And I know you're like a grief expert and kid die and shootings and parents and da, da, da. Yeah, that makes me understand the preciousness of all this. That makes me understand joy.

• 4:47Dr. John Delony?

  In a visceral way?

• 4:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:49Dr. John Delony?

  Or almost like oxygen. I know the importance of joy.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  And it's also like, years ago, I was on the road all the time, day and night. And I would go to these cities and, you know, have a hotel meeting room and be in the meeting room and few hundred people there. Next door was the meeting with the realtors, the nurses were down the hall, the Rotary Club. And at the end of the day, the staff would say, Hey, what were you teaching? And I go, Why do you ask? And they'd go, Because your group was laughing the most. And I would go, Grief. They'd be like, What? And what I think it's hard for people to understand is that group and those of us who are willing

• 5:31Speaker 00

  to like be present for the joy, but also the pain, we have a larger bandwidth to sit in that pain. But we have a larger bandwidth for the joy, for the laughter. So it really allows us to become bigger people.

• 5:50Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, I have noticed that several of my colleagues who, for our careers, we've just sat with hurting people, also are the most irreverent and the funniest and the most like, bring your jokes on about like, because I used to think it was because we have to. And now it's, now I get to.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Right.

• 6:12Dr. John Delony?

  Right. Because this comes to an end at some point and I want to have not left a laugh unlaffed. Right?

• 6:19Speaker 00

  Right. That's great. I want, that's a great quote.

• 6:21Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 6:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 6:22Dr. John Delony?

  So I, I remember, I was not well, I was in a season of not being well. And I was reading a book and I was sitting by in bed, my wife and I were both nerds, we're both college nerds and we were sitting up in bed, both reading, as you would imagine, two nerdy people reading.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 6:38Dr. John Delony?

  And I dropped the book and I looked at her and said, and my son was one and a half, I think, too. Um, and I was not making this adjustment well, as a new dad, a professional, yada, yada. And I looked at her and said, oh, man.

• 6:54Dr. John Delony?

  If I'm 92 and you're 91 and the clock strikes midnight and we turn and kiss each other and we both die and our son has to deal with our bodies. That's the best this gets and every other scenario is just worse than that. And she looked at me, she just looked over her glasses and she's like, you're the worst. It's, it's 10 o'clock at night. Why, why this thing? But it was this strange moment that I had been sitting with hurting people always at arm's length and I don't think that made me very effective at it. But suddenly, I got a child now.

• 7:32Dr. John Delony?

  This ends, this ends for all of, it was this, this reckoning, not a, not a theoretical reckoning, but a reckoning here.

• 7:40Dr. John Delony?

  And over the last 10 or 15 years since that moment, um, that, that specific moment, I've been wrestling with, looking around culturally, is this strange

• 7:52Dr. John Delony?

  like Plexiglas we've all given ourselves to try to live between us and reality, which is hard things happen to everybody and pain is not a bug, it's a feature, it is. Loss is, not being here someday is.

• 8:09Dr. John Delony?

  As you've traveled the world, sitting with hurting people and hurting groups, what's the, what's the birthplace of this denial? That, um, hard things are a part and so.

• 8:21Dr. John Delony?

  Learning how to sit in hard things is really where the effort should be, not in trying to pretend it's not all coming. Does that make sense?

• 8:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's fairly modern.

• 8:30Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  I think it's uh, the 40s, 50s, the ideal TV shows, the ideal life, what life should look like. I mean, I think before, there were all those, Ozzy and Harriet and all those, you know, TV sitcoms and Leave It To Beaver. I think it was, life is, you know, tough. There's ups and downs. You know, I can remember, literally, you mentioned Leave It To Beaver. Leave It To Beaver, I remember seeing an episode, and Beaver says to his brother, Wally, "I got a problem, Wally." And Wally goes, "Tell me about it, Beaver."

• 9:15Speaker 00

  And I remember saying to my older brother, "I got a problem." And he goes, "Yeah, you think you got a problem? I have two beers and no opener." And I'm like, "Oh, life is different from that." And I think those were when the illusions happened. That, "Oh, life can be perfect and we're not as good as the Joneses." I mean, I guess comparison and all that was always there. But I just know from this work, whether we're talking about any kind of loss and, you know, "Oh, we got the marriage that went wrong, we've got the death, we've got the betrayal." No, everyone's got something. Everyone on the planet has something.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  And freedom is only found in reality.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  When I am unhappy, I am fighting with what is.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  And there's a lot of things I want to fight against. But the problem is, reality always wins.

• 10:18Dr. John Delony?

  Always.

• 10:19Speaker 00

  Reality always wins.

• 10:22Dr. John Delony?

  And I've found that the more you don't traffic in reality...

• 10:29Dr. John Delony?

  Man, A, there's somebody always willing to sell us a path of avoidance, but my body's always hoping for a reality. So as much as I don't want to admit that my teenager's not talking to me for some deeper issues, and I want to play over it, my body knows something's not right. Or my marriage is falling apart, or my health is...

• 10:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. And we also live in a world that almost treats grief as contagious. Like, "Oh, your grief is making me so uncomfortable. Can we get you past it?

• 11:04Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 11:04Speaker 00

  So I don't have to think about, what if my marriage goes south? What if my partner cheats? What if I have someone who dies? Like, just like, let's get through this to make life perfect again.

• 11:16Dr. John Delony?

  Everyone I've ever sat with has always circled back 100% of the time. I can't imagine, I can't remember a scenario when they didn't, that they didn't say at some point they became responsible for their closest friends and family. It became their job to make sure they were okay.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  You know, I remember in my childhood, after my mother died, horrible shooting, she died alone in the hospital. All of this stuff went down. I saw so many people being killed. The trauma, the grief, it was, you know, the only advice I got was be strong. And I think to most of us, be strong gets in like, don't have a lot of feelings and take care of everyone else.

• 12:01Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  That's where we start from.

• 12:06Dr. John Delony?

  But I think the phrase be strong almost is a reflection of the person who spoke it. I can't sit with this much hurt. I need you to deal with it. The strongest, most powerful men and women in my life have been able to sit with me when things have fallen apart.

• 12:26Speaker 00

  Right.

• 12:27Dr. John Delony?

  And that's that old, hold my arms up in the desert, right, when I can't, right? There's like, we'll take care of food when you can, we'll take care of the next right thing when you can't. That to me is, that to me is strength in a powerful way, not, hey, toughen up, right? How do you sit with somebody and bring them to reality? Or can you?

• 12:48Speaker 00

  Well, I think they have to be allowed to deny it.

• 12:53Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  They have to be allowed to deny it for a while.

• 12:56Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  You know, denial is the first place we go to. I can't believe they betrayed me. I can't believe this marriage is over. I can't believe that I, they died. I can't believe it. And I always tell people, someone will go, they're in denial. There's a grace in denial.

• 13:14Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 13:15Speaker 00

  If we let all the pain of loss in, in one day, we would be on the floor and never get up.

• 13:23Dr. John Delony?

  Ooh, I like that. Okay.

• 13:26Speaker 00

  Denial paces the pain. It gives it a little bit at a time. So there, I think people don't understand what a grace, how amazing that our brain, our psyche knows, this is too much, it's okay to not believe it. For now.

• 13:46Dr. John Delony?

  For now.

• 13:47Speaker 00

  For now. And so, I mean, partly you start with, I can't believe it either. I'm right there with you. I'm right there with you. You know, people are like, we gotta get them out of the denial. Stop that. You do not need a crowbar. You know? You need a pillow to put behind them, not a crowbar.

• 14:07Dr. John Delony?

  For people watching this, they'll, they'll know, like, why does John have, taking notes? I never take notes.

• 14:16Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 14:17Dr. John Delony?

  This is a, this is graduate school for me too today, man. So let's talk about feelings. I feel like we've been given two cultural narratives. One is feelings are your universal truth. Don't do anything outside of your feelings. They are reality. And this other narrative that feels like it's emerged recently has, is feelings don't count, they have no validity, throw them out. And I find

• 14:49Dr. John Delony?

  Heartbreaking illness on both sides of this. And there's, can you paint us a picture of a new third way?

• 14:57Speaker 00

  I think of feelings as information.

• 15:00Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 15:01Speaker 00

  It's data.

• 15:02Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 15:03Speaker 00

  Take it in, look at it. Here's the problem, especially in grief. We feel a feeling and we have the luxury of being one of the first generations to have feelings about feelings. Literally.

• 15:21Dr. John Delony?

  Will you unpack that? Cause that's really important.

• 15:24Speaker 00

  I'm angry. Anger is inappropriate. Let me just unfeel it and throw it behind me. Inappropriate to be angry. Okay? I'm sad, but people have it so much worse. I mean, look at the world. Look at what happened to Janet. Look at what happened to Bill. Let me throw that behind me. And so we keep throwing half felt feelings behind us and just carry them with us. Unfelt, trying to get our attention all the time. And one of the things that our minds has is you don't understand. If you feel like, David, if I start crying, I might never stop.

• 16:07Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 16:07Speaker 00

  I say to people, I have been with thousands of people. Everyone stopped crying. Doesn't mean we don't start again in our life. Everyone stops crying. So feelings are data. They're information. They're knowledge about us. They're the way forward in terms of understanding our own psyche. And no feeling is a fact and no feeling is final.

• 16:41Speaker 00

  We go.

• 16:41Dr. John Delony?

  Good grief, David, you're giving me all kinda.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  This is like, this is like, oh my gosh, you know, my spouse died. I'm going to have 40 more years of sitting at the kitchen table lonely every night. Yeah, that's what you're my, you're lonely today. And you're right, your spouse is never going to be there again. You have to grieve that. But we don't know what your feelings really are for the next forty years. I mean, you know, your, your future is not written.

• 17:15Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  But those feelings we think are written. I'm going to be broken forever. I'm going to be sad forever. Well, we know you feel sad and broken today. I mean, we actually don't know the future. So feelings are huge. In this, I'm just going to show you this.

• 17:35Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  Let me tell you, one of the things people go, I say, what, what are you feeling right now? I don't know. I'm numb. I don't know.

• 17:44Dr. John Delony?

  I don't know. Yeah.

• 17:45Speaker 00

  I feel numb. People think in feelings, we have anger, sadness, happy. That's my choice. I put in the good old feeling wheel.

• 17:58Dr. John Delony?

  Amazing.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  Tons of feelings. I got all these exercises. And I put this in front of people and I'll go, choose five. And I promise you, they're like, I don't have five feelings. And then they're like, oh, oh, yeah, I'm rejected. Yeah, I feel helpless. I'm, yeah, I'm insecure. Yeah, I'm a little, I mean, literally, they suddenly find ten feelings.

• 18:18Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 18:19Speaker 00

  And they're all there. They just need to be felt.

• 18:23Dr. John Delony?

  And yeah, that new third way is both and, right? Like, I have to feel these things.

• 18:31Speaker 00

  And they're not facts.

• 18:32Dr. John Delony?

  And they're not the true, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you, but you have to acknowledge them.

• 18:35Speaker 00

  Right, absolutely.

• 18:38Dr. John Delony?

  And I like the way you said that and you just throw them behind you. One of the analogies I always, I kind of beat to death is that we're all wearing backpacks. And man, if you don't acknowledge them and at least walk through them, man, I just feel like I'm always piling them up back here. And they will find a way out.

• 18:55Speaker 00

  You'll appreciate this, I think. I think of it sometimes with weights. I literally go, ooh, I feel hurt about what just happened.

• 19:06Speaker 00

  Okay, feel it fully is choice number one. The other choice is, I have to decide, is this a five pound? Is this 10? Is this 20? Is it 30? And am I going to pick it up? And am I going to keep carrying it for the rest of my life?

• 19:24Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  You know, and that resentment's going to weigh me down. That, it's going to weigh me down. I can just really work through it and feel it or carry it all the time.

• 19:38Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, that's one of the, that's one of the first exercises I give people is to go to Lowe's and buy a cinder block and carry it for a few minutes and then set it down. Like, right, I'm going to choose to not carry this anymore. Which leads me to this. Like, if you ask, like, what's your superpower, John? I would tell you, I don't know how, I don't know why, but I can sit in the worst of it. Right? In the worst. And I can sit with people and then go home. And I don't know why that is. I remember leaving the first messy shooter situation and my dad was a hostage negotiator. So I called him and I said, hey dad, what do you do when you find out your greatest gift

• 20:20Dr. John Delony?

  is giving people horrific news with grace and then just sitting there? And he got quiet and he doesn't talk very much. He's an old Texas cop and didn't talk very much. But he said, be really grateful that you found your thing and you better do it right. With just sense of like, go learn how to do this the right way. So that was my superpower. The reason I keep coming back to your work over and over, and you don't know this, I will just randomly put the name David Kessler in my, in a podcast feed and find somewhere where you have been on an interview, just to hear your voice and your wisdom. So I sat down with a, with a, with a book today. You believe in people.

• 21:03Dr. John Delony?

  You are one of the few voices in culture today that continue to empower people and say, I've seen the worst. Trust me, David Kessler, I've seen the worst and you've been open about your experiences with your mom and your child. I've felt the worst and I still believe that you can play a role in tomorrow being better. How do you arrive there?

• 21:26Speaker 00

  Thank you for that, but I also have a personal question right back at you.

• 21:30Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, all right.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  Did you ever resist it?

• 21:35Dr. John Delony?

  I said again.

• 21:37Speaker 00

  Well, let me tell you for me. It became clear to me that I had some gift, just like you, around sitting in the worst.

• 21:47Dr. John Delony?

  That's right.

• 21:48Speaker 00

  The worst betrayal someone's like marriage is shattered, child, whatever it is, shooting. I can sit there. And then I got labeled the death and grief guy. And I remember someone saying, I was probably late twenties, thirties. Someone goes, if you're dying, your marriage is falling apart. You're, you know, in the worst moments of your life, you want David Kessler there. And at 29, 30, it bothered me because in my mind, I wanted to be, oh, you're having a party? You've got to get David Kessler there.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  I didn't want to be the death grief guy. I wanted to be like the, you know, so it's interesting. One of the things when I went, okay, that's ego. You got that? Now let's unpack this. What is that sort of gift? What is that? I walk in a room knowing that, and this is going to sound strange. Let me think about this. Nothing has gone wrong. Like I know that these are the worst circumstances.

• 23:12Speaker 00

  And this is part of the tapestry of life and the path of life and the road of life. And I know you have it in you to survive it. And I will see that before you will.

• 23:30Dr. John Delony?

  And that, that to me is the gritty scratching and clawing of hope. That's why people want you there, because you walk in and you shine a light.

• 23:41Speaker 00

  Well, and I always feel like, look, the truth is,

• 23:47Speaker 00

  I talk about, you know, death comes in many forms, not just grief of a person dying. A breakup is the death of a relationship, divorce is the death of a marriage, job loss, pet loss, those are all huge deaths. Relationship with abusers, narcissists can feel like the death of yourself.

• 24:13Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  There's all kinds of losses there. And so I sit with someone who is hopeless. And I know, it may very be, look, the physical death, absolutely it's true. The marriage being over, the death of betrayal, you know, trust over. Person's death is permanent. The loss of hope that you are feeling is temporary. And I believe it's temporary. And I know how precious it is to hold hope. And I am going to hold your hope until you can find it again.

• 24:59Speaker 00

  I have hope for you.

• 25:00Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 25:01Speaker 00

  I have hope for you to get through this, you know. I believe, we were talking about this earlier, this idea that like, our modern culture, how did this happen? I always say, you come from a long line of dead people.

• 25:16Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 25:17Speaker 00

  Like every ancestor you've ever had has died.

• 25:21Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  They've, they've been cheated on, they've been betrayed. I mean, all this has happened and you're actually built to take a number of hits this lifetime. You are built for loss and to survive it. And I'm going to remind you of that and get you through it.

• 25:40Dr. John Delony?

  That's such a...

• 25:45Dr. John Delony?

  That's such a, a, a voice of empowerment in a world that just tells me I'm gonna be the worst thing that ever happened to me. That's my story with a period at the end.

• 25:53Speaker 00

  It is the worst thing that's ever happened to you now, here, and I hope it's the worst thing in your life.

• 26:01Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 26:01Speaker 00

  I hope this is the worst valley.

• 26:03Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 26:04Speaker 00

  It's not my place to know.

• 26:06Dr. John Delony?

  Sure.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  And I'm just to remind you, it is a valley and valleys don't go on forever.

• 26:13Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 26:14Speaker 00

  You know, that's all I want to do is walk you through that valley.

• 26:19Dr. John Delony?

  So let's talk about that pain.

• 26:23Dr. John Delony?

  After the initial loss, over the years, when sitting with hurting people, and sometimes it's not that night or not that week, it's a few weeks later, or maybe it's years later. I often find myself telling somebody in a moment of compassion,

• 26:39Dr. John Delony?

  "Let that kid go play. Let that abused kid that's sitting inside of you, let that little boy or little girl go play. She's tired of fighting." Or I might tell somebody, "You gotta let your dad go. He passed away two years ago. Let him go. Like, let him go. Like, give him peace." And I'm often met with really wide eyes, and it's this sense of, "Oh, gosh, if I let go..." Not in a way of expediting grief or discomfort, but if I let them go, they're really gone. How do we teach somebody that holding on to pain or being a pain collector in a way?

• 27:25Dr. John Delony?

  I don't know how to say it without sounding callous. It's almost like a choice to continue being miserable, as though I don't have permission to laugh or love or make love anymore. I have to, if I, if I let go, I'm betraying that person who's gone, or I'm betraying the abuse I experienced. Like, talk through that for me.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's, it's, it is a disloyalty factor.

• 27:47Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, that's a great word.

• 27:49Speaker 00

  In this, I even put like a disloyalty checklist. I don't even think we understand the amount of disloyalty we have around living again.

• 27:59Dr. John Delony?

  Gosh, will you say that again?

• 28:00Speaker 00

  We don't understand the disloyalty we have around living again.

• 28:06Dr. John Delony?

  Man.

• 28:07Speaker 00

  After the breakup, after the divorce, after the betrayal, after the death. You know, let's go to in the past, decades ago, if you had a death, you would wear black. It wasn't a style. Anyone in black, they're grieving. Grief is what's inside of us. Mourning is what we do on the outside. It was a sign of mourning. Okay. At the one-year point, you would have a meeting with your clergy. And your clergy would say, "The one-year mark has arrived.

• 28:50Speaker 00

  You may continue to wear black, or you can take it off now. You take it off whenever you're ready, but beginning now, you have permission to live again. But at your own pace." There is not a moment in our society when we've gone through horrific pain, trauma, that we know, "Oh, at some point, it is okay to engage in this." You know, even for me, after my son died, a dear friend, Diane Gray, called.

• 29:29Speaker 00

  Was head of the Elizabeth Kübler Ross Foundation. She also bereaved mother. And she said to me after my son died, she goes, "I know you are drowning, and you are in the deepest end of the ocean." And she goes, "You can't see it yet, but there will come a time when you hit bottom. And when you hit bottom, you are going to consciously or unconsciously have a choice to stay there or push up."

• 30:06Speaker 00

  And I was like, I remember sort of dismissing it like, okay, thanks, da, da, da, da, da. And like, but yet, the seed got planted. I often talk about planting seeds. The seed was planted like the recording was made for playback later. And then, later on, as I began to think about the rest of my life, and think about my future. I live in a little cute neighborhood, we were talking about, little cute neighborhood, little houses. And I thought, I pictured, 10 years in the future, 20 years in the future, the teenagers riding their bikes, and a new kid moving to the area.

• 30:49Speaker 00

  And he's riding with the kids, the pre-teens and the teenagers, and they're like, "What's that house? Is that like a haunted house? Like the cobwebs, like what's that house?" And one of the kids says, "Oh, there's a guy in there. He was a grief expert, and a writer, and an author, and then his son died, and he never came out again." And I thought, "Yeah, I could write that future. I could write that future. Okay, I know I could do that one. I'm curious about what other futures there might be." And so, and I'll tell you another thing. This is like a challenge.

• 31:32Speaker 00

  Obviously, when my son died, I had like, a bazillion lectures planned. We had to cancel them all. And then eventually, when I was like, "I gotta go back and do this, do my work, get back to my work", they sent out brochures, it's been rescheduled, all that. I got emails. "I saw your brochure. You're smiling in the picture. I know your son died. You should not be smiling." I had to really sit with that and go, "Okay, is that true? Does that feel like I should never smile again?" The first person I wanted to take that to is my son.

• 32:16Dr. John Delony?

  David, yeah.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  And I went, David loved my career. He loved my work. Would he want his death to like take away my smile and like, oh my gosh, that person, that's so about them and not about me and my David and my relationship? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And like, you know, I'm going to live again in his honor. And this isn't about, we talk so much about the post-traumatic stress. This is the post-traumatic growth we're talking about.

• 32:50Dr. John Delony?

  That's like the big hush hush thing. Nobody talks about it.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  And it occurs more than post-traumatic stress does.

• 32:57Dr. John Delony?

  Way more.

• 32:58Speaker 00

  But we don't know it's okay to not just go through this, but grow through it.

• 33:05Dr. John Delony?

  I always want to live out of the things that happened to me and the things I've experienced. I always want there to be some sort of peaceful, like Nirvana-esque path forward. I was inspired by the veterans that I've worked with for the last 20 years. When they tell me some, I often find starting from a sense of obligation is okay. When they would say, no, no, no, so and so died. I have a responsibility to laugh and live for two now, man. Cause if I don't, it's dismissing. And I have a responsibility to over laugh, over adventure, over treat people well because of what

• 33:48Dr. John Delony?

  happened to me when I was a kid. I don't know that that's healthy long-term, but I, I think sometimes obligation, I have a responsibility to go find joy because of what hap- because of what happened to me. As, as good jet fuel to get somebody, get me personally off, off the mat.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  Well, let's just connect that as where we just were. As one side, I have to live for two. On the other side, I work with veterans who also will say to me, you don't understand this pain that I carry forever is a badge of honor. And I, this is my connection to them is the pain. And I'll say, I see that. And I understand that. And it's been a while that you've been in this pain.

• 34:34Speaker 00

  What would happen if you released that pain? And I would lose the connection. And I would go, I don't think so. When you release that pain, you would stay connected. But you would be connected only in love. And I can tell you, that pain that you think is a badge of honor, love is a stronger badge. And you can wear their love. So it is between back to the disloyalty and I'm not going to live, to I'm living for both. I mean, find a place within there, but not be an extreme of either.

• 35:09Dr. John Delony?

  Well, that reminds me of the old, it's a cliche now, but it's true. You get to choose your heart. You want to choose hard and carry pain around forever? Or do you want to choose hard and figure out ways to laugh? And I always tell folks, when you're faced with that, find the hard or choose the hard that on the other side of it, gives you the best opportunity for joy.

• 35:31Speaker 00

  And you know, one of the things that you mentioned is that little person in us that we're always working on healing. And going back to, one of the keys for me that was different is, because that is that little wounded self. And one of the things I see so many times is people go, I'm so screwed up. You know, my abandonment comes up every time I'm in a new relationship. My this comes up, da, da, da, and all that. My fears, I was abused, I think I don't trust, all that. People are going to die on me, whatever that flavor is that comes up. Why am I so screwed up?

• 36:12Speaker 00

  I always think about, what if we didn't see it as you're so screwed up? But what if it was that little child within you knocking? Don't forget about me. I still need some healing. I still need some healing. So on one hand, I think we have to recognize that, you know, inner child.

• 36:40Speaker 00

  There was a John Bradshaw comic strip, I'll never forget, that it said, "There's this guy, John Bradshaw, that says we all have these, it's two bears talking in the woods. The two bears are talking, "There's this guy, John Bradshaw here. He talks about our inner child, and we gotta nourish that inner child." And the other bear says, "Hmm, it's very interesting, but let's eat him." You know, it's sort of like that. But, here's the other piece I think people don't realize. You talk about that inner child in you, or I talk about that inner child in me. It's not just about trying to heal those wounds, and they get revealed in our grief.

• 37:17Dr. John Delony?

  Sure.

• 37:19Speaker 00

  Can we bring them with us? Like, it's cool for me, but I gotta tell you, the little David in me is sitting here with you today.

• 37:32Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 37:32Speaker 00

  I want him to come to these good moments. I don't want him to be, "Oh, isn't it shooting and there was abuse?" I want him, like, I hope that, like, John and little Dave, like, both little John and little, they're getting to be in this moment with each other, and enjoying this moment with us. And that we bring them forward. And here's the thing, I don't want, like, how many people leave that child in the abuse? In the death?

• 38:01Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 38:02Speaker 00

  Like, bring them with you.

• 38:04Dr. John Delony?

  So that's probably, in the thousand things I've learned from you, that's probably one of the top three things that has been, what I would tell you is a direct gift, and something I find myself saying often now. And, when somebody, I just recently was sitting with somebody, just the worst of the worst, and I made them look me in the eye, and I put my hand on the back of their neck, just to be still. And I said, "They're not hurting anymore. They're not hurting right now." How often do we get locked into...

• 38:38Dr. John Delony?

  That child who got hit too hard, that child who got sexually abused, that there was a car wreck and we imagine that recognition, that that flash of recognition and the hit and what was pain. We trap either ourselves, we trap our loved ones, we trap the the nameless people we see on the news. We trap them in that moment and there's something so profound about saying, hey, hey, hey, they're not hurting right now.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're not in that moment anymore. I understand your loved one was murdered. How it's as horrific as it gets and they're not being murdered today. And you know, so many times

• 39:16Dr. John Delony?

  That's such an exhale.

• 39:17Speaker 00

  And I'll tell you, but the thing is, so many times, especially with the therapists I train, we talk about and coaches. You know, everyone's like, let's bring our clients out of the traumatic moment into the now. And I'm like, but we can't leave our loved ones in the trauma.

• 39:33Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 39:33Speaker 00

  We gotta bring them into the now. They're no longer in the car wreck. Our inner child's no longer getting abused. We gotta move everyone into the now. When we keep anyone in the trauma and all grief does not have trauma, but all trauma has grief.

• 39:50Dr. John Delony?

  There you go. Yeah. And yeah, that's a, that's a, that's a

• 39:56Dr. John Delony?

  it's like feelings. It's become this thing that it's not, right? On both sides of this equation, I think trauma is that same thing. Trauma is very, very real and it

• 40:07Dr. John Delony?

  it it's a part of you and every uncomfortable feeling is not trauma.

• 40:13Speaker 00

  Right.

• 40:13Dr. John Delony?

  And every dumb thing your parents said is not trauma. It's a weird mix. I'm trying to tell people to own and recognize their trauma and also

• 40:23Dr. John Delony?

  it's not trauma too, right? It's a both hand.

• 40:25Speaker 00

  And right, it is that. It's like on one hand, no one else gets to define

• 40:30Dr. John Delony?

  That's it. That's it.

• 40:31Speaker 00

  Your trauma, your try, you know, two people can go through the same thing and one is traumatized, the other's not. And like There's some underlying wound if every day in life you are re-traumatized by something that's happened.

• 40:46Dr. John Delony?

  Correct.

• 40:47Speaker 00

  You know, "Why are you wearing black? Do you not know how traumatizing that is?" I mean, you know, and one of the things in our world now is we so want to outsource our healing. We want to go, "Everyone's got to like really give me trauma warnings? We got to understand."

• 41:02Dr. John Delony?

  It's y'all's job.

• 41:03Speaker 00

  It's y'all's job to heal me inside. And it's interesting when people say to me, "Where do we begin? I don't know where to begin. How do we..." I'll go, "What triggers you? What activates you? That's a map to your grief and trauma, and it's a map to your healing."

• 41:27Dr. John Delony?

  Yep.

• 41:28Speaker 00

  Like, don't dismiss that. Like, that's the map we're looking for, for you to get through this.

• 41:34Dr. John Delony?

  I've often, I mean, not often, always. Healing's on the other side of that. It's not around it, right? And often I'll tell people, "I know it looks daunting. I'll go with you. I'll walk with you."

• 41:49Speaker 00

  Right.

• 41:50Dr. John Delony?

  Or at least walk until you can be with the next person, and with the next person. But if you want peace, you got to go to the other side of that. Okay, so let's, I want to shift gears, I just want to stay here for a while, but I want to talk to some practical things.

• 42:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 42:06Dr. John Delony?

  Okay. I just need to double-click on something before we do that. I want to go back to just what you just said, because I can't let that slide with our listeners. You telling somebody, me telling somebody that your healing starts here...

• 42:29Dr. John Delony?

  And it's you getting somebody, it's you choosing to walk towards this thing. That is the empowerment. That's somebody looking, I believe in you not. And I've been guilty of this, especially at the university level. Spending all of my time trying to clear the deck for everybody. So that they can go through their world with no

• 42:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 42:51Dr. John Delony?

  No discomfort. That's, that is disempowering. That is me looking at you saying, I don't believe in you. Let me go clear it for you. Instead of saying, no, no, I believe in you. Let's wrap skills and support so that we can go together. We can go to the other side of that. That's empowerment.

• 43:07Speaker 00

  It's the good news and the bad news.

• 43:08Dr. John Delony?

  That's right. That's right.

• 43:09Speaker 00

  And you know, the bad news is it's actually in you.

• 43:14Dr. John Delony?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:15Speaker 00

  The good news is that's where you can get to it. Like,

• 43:19Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 43:19Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh, I don't need to talk to the abuser.

• 43:22Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 43:23Speaker 00

  Oh, I don't need to get my healing from them. I don't need to get it from my ex. I don't need my loved one who died. It's in me. Wow. I have access to me. Like, how lucky am I? It turns out the issue is where I can get it.

• 43:39Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 43:40Speaker 00

  And I wanna, we talked about disloyalty. I wanna just unpack healing for a moment because there's some people who go, I don't want healing. And I'm like, like, it's a bad word.

• 43:51Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 43:52Speaker 00

  Here's, people think there's something about healing means, oh, I'm going to forget them. I'm going to dismiss the trauma that happened. I'm going to minimize it. To me, healing means the events or the event no longer controls me. I don't make decisions anymore from my abandonment. I don't have relationships from my prior losses. I can't connect with you because you, we could die. We could all lose. I mean, I am now in reality and in freedom to feel, do whatever I want and write a different future

• 44:36Speaker 00

  without using the pen of all those losses or traumas.

• 44:41Dr. John Delony?

  My goodness. So.

• 44:47Dr. John Delony?

  How do we, and I'm laughing because it just sounds like such a cruel question. How do we show up with the right amount of compassion and the right amount of,

• 45:01Dr. John Delony?

  I don't even have a word for it, for folks who I would call pain collectors, or injustice collectors, or who I just have, like, my identity is how much I hurt.

• 45:13Speaker 00

  Right.

• 45:14Dr. John Delony?

  And they're just, we all have a family member, we all have people in our local church, that I end up feeling like I don't even go, I'm gonna take a different path out of my church building because I don't want to walk past, right? How do we provide grace and empathy and compassion and also?

• 45:30Speaker 00

  So there was a therapist that I met years ago who said to me, "Every client I meet leaves a little pain in my office." And I went, "Oh, you're not gonna make it." "Oh, no, you can't be a pain collector." "Oh, no, no, no, this is, oh, I would like to look at some other gigs." "This is not for you, if you're gonna collect pain." So,

• 45:56Speaker 00

  here's the thing, let's talk about which grief is the worst. People always want to know, which is the worst grief? Is it the sexual abuse that ruins, it feels like your sex life for the rest of your life? Is it the trauma of your childhood? Is it a divorce where they didn't die, they're like rejecting you every day on this planet? Is it the betrayal that you can no longer trust? Is it the person dying? Is it a murder? Is it a child death? I always say, "The worst loss is yours."

• 46:28Speaker 00

  It's yours. I can never know your losses, your griefs. I can't know it, I can only know my own. Now, I work with people and work very hard to find security in my grief.

• 46:49Speaker 00

  So many times, I need you to honor my grief and my pain and my loss. I always say, what if you're the one that needs to get it? What if like, I can't make John understand what I've been through. I mean, look, I could explain it. You could like, what if I'm the one that needs to get how brutal this was? And I need to sit with it and heal it. What if I forget trying to get John and Sue and Martha to get it? What if I get it? So there's that piece.

• 47:30Speaker 00

  The other piece is whenever we're, and this is like a really important piece for therapists and coaches and all that, whenever you have that person, like in the grief group who goes, "Really? Your spouse died a year after you were married?" "Oh, I lost my spouse at 40 years. That's real grief." So whenever anyone goes, "How dare them? How dare..." They're really saying, "You know, you have gotten too much grief attention and I haven't gotten enough."

• 48:11Speaker 00

  So the advance work is to go, the person who's comparing is really telling us they haven't gotten enough support. Yeah. Now, we're coming back to feelings. In my online group, I have a grief group for the death of a person, Tender Hearts. In that group, sometimes we have what's called a check-in. And I'll go, "What are you feeling?" And there's people who will be telling their stories and I'll go, "Have you had a chance to tell this story?" And some people are like, "No, no one lets me tell this story." I'll go, "But we want to hear it. Please continue." And there's other people who go, "Yes, I've told this story a thousand times and it's never enough."

• 48:55Speaker 00

  It's because the feelings didn't get witnessed, not the story. Yeah. There's a feeling that didn't get witnessed. So there is this one place, getting back to your question of, "I need to see your pain, your grief, your pain. It needs to be witnessed." On the other hand, I also see you more than your pain. I know you feel victimized and there is more to your story than that. I want to remind you of your greatness and see your pain.

• 49:36Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  And so that's the challenge when we see people who like, it is nothing. And I'll tell you, one of the things I start with in this workbook is having people tell their stories.

• 49:47Dr. John Delony?

  Yep.

• 49:49Speaker 00

  And to see and bring awareness, because I have them tell it different ways. How do you tell your story? Do you tell it? Because listen, in my life, I have told my story when I was young. I was like, yeah, there was a shooting, my mom died, it was no big deal. Like, I wanted to be like everyone else, I minimize my story. Then there was a time where like, I'm screwed up. This is the story of someone who screwed up. I'm like a victim. Then I was like, I'm a victor. I'm a victor of my story. You know, there's a part of me that like, when my son died, my younger son, are you kidding? Why? Why me?

• 50:33Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 50:33Speaker 00

  Like, really? Have not, like, have I not had enough grief? Why me? And then there was another story I found of like, yeah, that's painful. And why not you? Did you think the grief expert gets to only have grief in it? Did you think, you know? Why not you? So how we tell our stories is really a key.

• 51:03Dr. John Delony?

  All right, we are back. Hey, look, you can get the Finding Meaning workbook. It's David Kessler's workbook. It would be linked in the show notes. All of the stuff we talked about will be linked in the show notes. His website, grief.com, his groups, the great book, one of the greatest grief books of all time, the greatest grief book of all time, Finding Meaning. Listen, join us again for the second half of this interview. It's going to be coming out in a couple of weeks or a couple of months. Stay tuned for it. Send this episode to everyone you know. Everyone in the world needs to listen to what David Kessler has to say about loss, about finding joy, and about how to sit with hurting people. Thanks for joining me. Can't wait to see you soon, right here on the Dr.

• 51:48Dr. John Delony?

  John Delony Show.