Dr Lucy Hone - A Life Worth Grieving

Two cataclysmic events have shaped Dr Lucy Hone’s relationship with grief, and resilience. 💌Join 5,000+ people getting our takeaways and favourite moments from this episode in our weekly newsletter - http://bit.ly/45NyQDy Today in the Academy of Imperfection, we welcome Dr Lucy Hone. Dr Lucy’s work focuses on making sense of the senseless, and helping others to do the same. As a legitimate expert in grief, resilience and wellbeing, Dr Lucy is able to blend the science with her own lived experience. This episode explores living losses (divorce, estrangement, infertility), grief comparison, as well as the research around post-traumatic growth. Guided by questions from Dr Lucy’s latest book, How will I ever get through this?, Hugh, Josh and Ryan ask Dr Lucy why grief feels so lonely, how you are supposed to accept loss, and will you ever be happy again, amongst others. This is a special one. 0:00 – An Unsuspecting Saturday Morning 12:11 – Grief comparison 21:25 – How am I supposed to accept this? 31:14 – How do you keep hope alive? 35:48 – Why do I feel so lonely? 50:20 – Will I ever be happy again? 56:36 – Letting the other children live 1:03:44 – Do you know your strengths? 1:09:12 – Who and what do you want to live for? 1:14:59 – Who and what is good in your world? To full this full episode on YouTube, follow this link - https://youtu.be/Zyb7kELxFxI 🫖 Other Imperfects episodes mentioned in this episode Dr Emily - Grief Lightening - https://bit.ly/3ZPVNmO Dr Emily - Other People Matter - https://bit.ly/3Oku8b4 Dr Emily - Goals For Your Goals - https://bit.ly/4rAK3AF 📖 Things to read How Will I Ever Get Through This by Dr Lucy Hone - https://bit.ly/4bAWO9w Resilient Grieving by Dr Lucy Hone - https://bit.ly/4kpkf8g Oscillation Grief Theory - https://bit.ly/4qZ5WK1 Michael F. Steger - Meaning and Purpose Work - https://michaelfsteger.com J. William Worden - Four Tasks of Mourning - https://bit.ly/3NTGPcU 💻Things to check out Dr Lucy’s website - https://www.drlucyhone.com 3 Secrets of Resilient People TedTalk - https://bit.ly/3Zguj9S Dr Lucy’s ‘Look Forward To’ Calendar VIA Strengths test - http://bit.ly/4h2KYFJ Coping With Loss community on Facebook - https://bit.ly/3NTnDvT Welcome to Holland poem - https://bit.ly/4kgB0lH Will Arnett + Conan O’Brien on Grief - https://bit.ly/4a06320 🩷To host your own Vulnerabilitea House, (with the new cards!) purchase here - http://bit.ly/4lyuuWz 🩵To purchase our journal (or your novel) My Imperfect Life, click here - http://bit.ly/4lyuuW 🩵To join our subscriber community, A Little More Imperfects, follow this link - http://bit.ly/4mqunxu 🩷 AND you can subscribe to A Little More Imperfects through Apple Podcasts too, here - http://apple.co/theimperfects The Imperfects is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment. The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you’re struggling, please see a healthcare professional, or call lifeline on 13 11 14. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  My definition of grief is the difference between where your life is and where you thought it would be.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Dr Lucy Hohn is a globally recognised expert in resilience, psychology and wellbeing science.

• 0:13Speaker 00

  I had this voice in my head that said, choose life, not death. Don't lose what you have to what you have lost. People have started to think that the goal is positivity or that what you need to do is more positive thinking. Frankly, that's just complete rubbish. That's balderdash. We can't all be happy all the time. So what we're actually trying to do is to understand our feelings, to be able to sit with them and work out how to live with them, when frankly, they're a lot. Life's a lot.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  Everything you've talked about, I find, it makes me want to live a more fulfilling, better life.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  We are joined by Dr Lucy Hohn. We're very excited to have you here because you are an expert on something that I care about deeply, but you're an actual expert. I'm like a person who talks about sometimes you are an actual real life goddess of resilience. So how wonderful for just, yeah, it's great to have you here.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  Very well put, yes.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  The goddess of resilience. So for those of you who don't know, Dr Lucy Hohn is a globally recognised expert in resilience, psychology and wellbeing science. Lucy's TED Talk, The Three Secrets of Resilient People, has had more than nine million views, which makes it now in the top 100 of the most watched TED Talks of all time. How does that feel, knowing that many people have watched your TED Talk?

• 1:33Speaker 00

  It feels pretty mad, really. And it's kind of hard to conceptualise, isn't it? And obviously, I'm thrilled to help those people. And then also, there's the flip side of that, that that's nine million people who were struggling and suffering and needed help.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and needed it, yeah, yeah. Lucy's research has been peer reviewed and published in a range of sociological and psychological journals worldwide. Lucy has published two books, Resilient Grieving, and most recently, her new book, How Will I Ever Get Through This? Known for blending rigorous research and lived experience, Lucy's work helps people feel less alone, more equipped and more hopeful, even in the midst of life's most difficult chapters. Lucy, you've had two extremely significant life events shape you as a person, but also...

• 2:19Speaker 01

  I guess help you sort of discover your purpose. Do you mind talking us through those?

• 2:23Speaker 00

  Yes, um, thank you and great to be here with you all. Um, I, yeah, so my life seems to kind of play out in ironic chapters. And so I had just finished my PH. No, I was, yeah, I was trying to remember my timeline here.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Don't remember your life.

• 2:42Speaker 00

  I had just come back from studying my masters in resilience, psychology and wellbeing science when I, my, I live in Christchurch, New Zealand, my adopted hometown. And it was hit by that devastating quake on February the 22nd, 2011. We'd had one quake before that in the September.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  And you were there during the quake?

• 3:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. Oh, so I was there eventually through the five big earthquakes and 11,000 aftershocks for over a two-year period. And as a Londoner, I mean, you just, you guys probably likewise, I had no idea. So when we had the September quake, we'd had an earthquake. And I was like, okay, so now we know what it feels like to live in an earthquake. But that one was 45, 50 minutes outside of town. So it was, it, you know, tore up a field. And then February, when that hit, that was the one that brought the city to its knees. And then we had subsequent one in June that was, the epicentre was probably like 500 metres from our home. And, and then,

• 3:51Speaker 00

  you know, more, but, but more than anything, then you just lived through for two years, your stress response is dialed up because you never go to bed without thinking, I wonder if we have one tonight. Oh, it's raining outside. And like, if we do, that means we've all got to go and drag ourselves outside because you don't really want to be in the house when it's all going off. So it did teach me an awful lot. And I had been learning and watching the academic department that I was aligned to in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania. I'd been watching them package up the science for the American Army. And then I came back to Christchurch and pretty much got to do the same thing, like to look through all of

• 4:34Speaker 00

  the science that I was now pretty familiar with and wonder. You know, what is useful to people now that we're trying to get back on our feet in this post quake environment? And the term in Christchurch at the time was that we were munted, which is just such a great onomatopoeic term, isn't it? Because the city was munted, but we were all munted as well because you just, your brain, you've got that quake brain where you just, it's really hard to fathom what's going on and what you think and to function.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  So. Is there a fear in that moment as well of there's going to be more?

• 5:11Speaker 00

  Oh, there's so much fear because there are more. And actually, for each of our big ones, we had a kind of a pre and then the big ones. Every time you have a pre quite big one, you're then for the next 40 minutes thinking. So for two years or longer, any of us would never walk into a room without looking around and looking for steel and knowing what we felt about that building.

• 5:34Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 5:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I then got the opportunity to work with all sorts of big organisations and small and government agencies and search and rescue to do what they'd been doing in Philadelphia for the army, like just packaging up the science in a way that I thought might be helpful for people when they were munted. And it was, you know, that was amazing professionally. It was a pretty amazing time for me. I'm also married to a builder, so funny, the irony. So I did say to him at one point, can we leave? He did say, I'm a builder and you do resilience. I don't think we're going anywhere.

• 6:15Speaker 00

  And I thought that was my calling, my moment to put all of that research and study to good use. And it was, but sadly, a couple of years later, we hit family tragedy.

• 6:31Speaker 00

  The likes of, you know, which um one you never see coming and um hard to to imagine. So two thousand and fourteen and it was an unsuspecting Saturday morning. Actually, it was Queen's Birthday Weekend and three families, we were off to bike the Alps to Ocean, a new mountain bike trail that just opened. And so we're all getting really excited, big Kiwi road trip, all the four wheel drives and the bikes on the back and all the clobber. And at the last minute, a phone call comes for Abby from her best friend Ella.

• 7:13Speaker 00

  So Abby is.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Abby's your daughter.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  Twelve year old daughter.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  And Ella is her twelve year old best friend. And Ella wants to know if Abby can go down in her car. And of course, we said yes, I mean, they're twelve year old girls, best friends in and out of each other's lives and each other's cars and homes. Pretty inseparable. And sadly, on the way down, as they were driving through the back country lanes, a driver sped through a stop sign at a hundred kilometers an hour, plowed into them and killed all three of them, Abby, Ella and Sally's mum.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  Ella's mum Sally, who was a really good friend of mine too. So, you know.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Oh, it's it's it's beyond, it's beyond heartbreaking. I can't imagine, I can't imagine.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  You can't, you, yeah, you can't.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  No, you can't. And I can't even, I mean, I'm distanced from it now. We're eleven years on now. Um, so it doesn't upset me. I can talk about it kind of rationally in a bizarre way now.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  But I will never forget the, so we were down at the lodge. And having dinner, the first two families and the third family hadn't turned up. Somebody, the person who owns the lodge walks across the room and says, there's a phone call for you, looking at my husband and I. And says it's the police. And Trevor looked at me and said, they don't come with, they don't call with good news or something. Words to that effect. And so then we went into the office of the lodge. And had to wait for him for 20 minutes. So then, by then you are a caged animal.

• 9:14Speaker 00

  And he came and confirmed what we probably already knew to be true by then. Or had imagined. And, and then we had to go and tell our boys.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Do you remember the next few hours?

• 9:36Speaker 00

  I don't remember telling the boys, in fact, honestly, about two weeks ago, Trevor and I sat in the car at the supermarket, I don't know what brought this up. And I said, Tim, can we just confirm that you think I was there? Because I really don't think I was. I could have sworn it was our neighbour and him, and I walked into it. That's my memory. And he said, no, you were definitely there. I remember it being the corridor from hell. That is literally the word, the only words I can give to it. But then I then went to phone my sister, who was down in Dunedin with her, some of her kids who were university down there. And they were all in the pub together and no one answered. So I literally went through the whole family.

• 10:22Speaker 00

  And I think they then suddenly started realising that I was calling all of them. And I do remember telling her.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, I literally remember being in the blue block of this lodge by then. And just saying to her, Abby and Abby's been killed. But you know, it's just that you shake your head, don't you?

• 10:45Speaker 00

  And that is what I've learnt so much about since is that this shaking of the head, this consternation, the not being able to believe it or understand is because as humans, we are sense-making beings and we seek to understand and live in a world that makes sense. And that's kind of been my work for the last decade really is trying to make sense of the senseless and help other people do that too.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  That's so interesting. You say that the shaking of the head because as before you said that I was shaking my head because it seems and I think I just do it unconsciously probably when someone tells me something so heartbreaking or something. And that's such a fascinating thing to think about is the reason why we do that, why we shake our head when we're hearing that because it is, it's like it's nonsensical. It's like this can't be true.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  And it's so fascinating because we think we don't understand grief and yet our physiology, I've never thought about this either, it does because it shakes the head and goes, how can this like, no, I don't understand like.

• 11:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:53Speaker 00

  And actually that process of sense-making, it's called in psychology, over time, that is the work of grieving, is trying to integrate this unthinkable thing into your broader, longer life story.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, the fact that you work in resilience, like this is why, like we have experts talk about resilience and we have people with lived experience talk about, but this is, we've never had this before. And I guess it's one of the reasons, one of the many reasons you're so sought after and why everything you do is so widely consumed because you come at it from both angles. And I think. Sometimes we can hear it, but speak about it and you go, yep, I get the science behind it, but I don't understand how this actually works practically. So your book, your new book, How Will I Ever Get Through This?, looks specifically at living losses.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Could you give us a list, like, could you list what are some examples of living losses?

• 12:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the terrible thing about living losses is there are so many of them. You know, so typically people will be talking about a relationship breakdown, a divorce. But then there are more ambiguous losses like dementia, where the person is still physically present, but emotionally or mentally absent. And then there is family estrangement, which amazingly affects now one in four families in Australia. And then there are things like pet loss and job loss and migration and natural disasters, infertility. Even I've had people speak to me about the fact that they struggled with fertility,

• 13:42Speaker 00

  went on to have a baby, felt completely blessed, but still grieved all of those years that they lost to the struggle to have the baby. So these losses are disenfranchised, technically, that's the academic term, because people, society doesn't recognise them, doesn't recognise the grief that is associated with these losses.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Like they're not grief worthy, is that what I mean?

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think people think they're not grief worthy, but they also just don't really realise that they're grieving. In fact, it was the earthquakes that taught me that it was okay to grieve, because we hadn't lost our home and I hadn't lost anyone. And I was working with emergency response in the disaster recovery. And I remember saying to someone, I don't feel like I've got a right to grieve here. And yet I feel so sad and so much sorrow for the city. And it was one of them who said to me, you can grieve when something goes, you don't, it's not just about when someone dies.

• 14:43Speaker 03

  I imagine there'd be a lot of grief comparison, like in terms of like, you know, well, this person's gone through that, so I haven't got any right to grieve what I'm going through, because it's nothing compared to, you know, what they've dealt with.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  That's certainly true. And, and yet grief is your grief, it is subjective. And so the how will I ever get through this is the new book and it has 20 questions in it and the first 10 came from my research. Based on the fact that it seems to me that when people come to me, either honestly through Instagram or email, or I might meet them at a workshop or at a keynote, after I've done a keynote or something, people often ask me the same questions. And so I worked with Ruben Rusk to create the stressful life events study, which we put out to people all over the world.

• 15:35Speaker 00

  And so we asked them specifically, we want you to talk about not when someone has died, but when something has died or changed in your life. So we gave them a whole range of questions and asked them to choose which ones most typically are circulating around in your head when you go through this. And how will I ever get through this was the number one question.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  That's such a brilliant premise for a book, it really is.

• 16:01Speaker 00

  Well, and it's, it was so interesting to me because number two was why do I feel so physically exhausted, which doesn't surprise me because people ask me that all the time, but people are always surprised when they ask me that. So the first 10 are the questions that the reader was most likely to be asking themselves in their own head with their constant ruminations that come from these stressful life events. And then the second 10 are the questions that I've developed over the last decade, which I typically ask other people to kind of help them find their way back on track when they are facing some potentially traumatic event.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we had, so we've got three questions here that we would love to get you to discuss. Just before we do that, like this is, I have lived this the last three years of my life. I sat down with my psychologist a year and a half ago and she said to me, you are deep in the depression stage of grief. And for us, it was a diagnosis, an autism diagnosis for our child and it was.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  That which in and of itself is not something you would you would grieve, but but the level of distress and dysregulation they're in was something I had never I had never seen a child so unhappy before. And so that is the that is what led to the, you know, there was grieving the life that the child won't be able to have. It was grieving the life that our family won't be able to have. It was grieving the relationship that my wife and I just weren't able to have. So I have lived this stuff last three years. So I'm so I'm so fascinated in this and it's sort of helped shape some of the questions that we wanted to that I was really interested in as well.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  It did. It did sort of, you know, reading about Lucy and your story and what you've just sort of explained, it did shades of it did remind me of you, Hugh, in the sense that you spent so long talking about resilience. And then it would sort of then you sort of hit a point where you faced like true like struggle. And it's like you had to then put the the things that you'd been talking about.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Turns out as a fraud.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  Well, certainly not. But it the how you looked at it from a completely different angle.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:11Speaker 00

  It is. But they're all different, all these losses. And yours is a chronic loss. So long lasting. A couple of things I need to interject and say is there are no five stages of grief. Do you all know that?

• 18:26Speaker 01

  I I've been told that they were, but they're not linear. And that's no, they're just not.

• 18:30Speaker 00

  They're just not.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:31Speaker 00

  Just not. So and not helpful and actually very harmful because very often people come to me and say, what's wrong with me? I'm not grieving right because I'm not going through all the five stages. Or I thought I'd done anger, denial, bargaining, and I'm back there again. That's the nonlinear bit.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  I'm going to send Kubler Ross a angry DM.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know, great contribution. Because actually, she started the fact that we are now talking about grief, death and dying. But no, so when we got all the grief resources came to our door in various like, you know, in a pack verbally, all those ways, I remember thinking, wow, this is kind of confusing because you're telling me that there are five stages of grief. And then you're also telling me that grief is as individual as your. Fingerprint and I'm a social scientist, so something's not adding up for me here. We can't all go through five stages or even most of us go through five stages. If grief is as individual as your fingerprint.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  And that is so important to know because one of the other reasons people come to me all the time is I'm not grieving right because I'm doing it different to my partner.

• 19:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:41Speaker 00

  Um, or it's not what I expected.

• 19:43Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 19:44Speaker 00

  But the other thing I wanted to say to you is that my definition of grief is the difference between where your life is and where you thought it would be.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  And that

• 19:57Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 19:57Speaker 00

  is what you were experiencing.

• 19:59Speaker 03

  Wow, that's so powerful.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  Because we

• 20:01Speaker 03

  And it's so true, just thinking about that.

• 20:04Speaker 00

  We make these mental maps, don't we? I mean, humans, we're predictive beings. And so without even knowing it, we create these beautiful paths ahead that we assume we're going to go down.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  Oh, that's so good, isn't it? And it really, and you sort of go into this in your TED Talk, which everyone should watch, we'll link to it. Um, but you sort of go into that and even that description, that simple description, it broadens the scope of what grief can be. Where I think like our assumption of what grief is, is, is quite a narrow scope.

• 20:36Speaker 00

  Someone dying.

• 20:37Speaker 03

  Someone dying usually, yeah. And, and this, but it's like, it's, yeah, grief is, it comes in all shapes and sizes.

• 20:43Speaker 00

  People don't know they're grieving. They don't know about grief. And if so much of what you experience when you are going through either a big transition that has an end, or in your case, more of a nonfinite loss, you know, it's going ongoing and will unravel and um unfold in different times and in different ways. Then you need to understand grieving, the process of coming to terms with over time, and you need to keep doing it, keep working it out. And you know, this goes back to the sense making again, doesn't it? Like, we're trying to figure out how to do life, all of us, all the time.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  Hmm. The question that jumped out at me the most is how am I supposed to accept this?

• 21:27Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 21:28Speaker 03

  Because I remember being told, well, your acceptance is the, is the key, how it goes. Yeah, great.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  How on earth do I do that? Like, do I just, I can't just keep saying to myself, I have to do that. That's not gonna, like, how? What are the?

• 21:40Speaker 00

  Um. So I think in the five stages of grief model, acceptance is the last stage that you get to and then, you know, you're done.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Graduation party, yeah.

• 21:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, great. It doesn't work like that. And actually, in William Worden's work, um, which is probably a better model, acceptance is the first thing you have to do. And in our work, in my work, I always, I find it helpful to say to people that acceptance doesn't mean you like it. It doesn't mean you're okay with it. Um. It means that you are going to stop fighting the reality of life and work out how you can come to terms with it over time. And I think there is a really big difference between acceptance and coming to terms with, which is a much longer, more gnarly process.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 22:30Speaker 00

  And I also would say to you that what helped me when we lost Abby was effectively as shit happens and suffering and struggle happen to us all. They are part of life. And that stopped me from asking the why me question and made that bit easier to accept because I'm like, well, this is the cards we've been dealt. I can't do anything to change the outcome. All I can do now is try and adapt, relearn to live in the world, which is one of my favorite phrases from a guy called Tom Attig, a bereavement researcher.

• 23:14Speaker 00

  So all I'm trying to do now is relearn to live in the world where she isn't part of our lives and avoid the kind of second arrow, the destruction that might happen if.

• 23:26Speaker 00

  Because my job is to look after our family and try and keep us together. So we were told right at the beginning, we were now prime candidates for divorce, mental illness and family estrangement. And I just remember thinking, well, thanks for that. But my job, not on my watch.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  And so my acceptance, going back to you, Hugh, is

• 23:49Speaker 00

  I had this voice in my head that said, choose life, not death. Don't lose what you have to what you have lost. And so it became about putting all my attention on what was, what was there in our world and who and what I wanted to live for.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  That is so, don't lose what you've, don't lose what you have to what you have lost. That's incredible. Wow.

• 24:16Speaker 00

  And that's it, isn't it?

• 24:18Speaker 02

  When you were, when you've been telling this story and what you've gone through, it's hard not to place, think of your own situation, how you would respond, even though that's an impossible mental task, I think. But I have to admit that my first, there was something in there that was like, I don't think I want to. I don't think I want to be resilient.

• 24:43Speaker 00

  Don't want to think about it.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  Well, no, more like if, if I was to be faced with such a monumental tragedy, that there would be a feeling of, I don't think I can do this. Like, I don't think I want to be resilient. I just want to crawl into a hole and no longer be here.

• 25:01Speaker 00

  I want to do all those things.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:03Speaker 00

  And I totally agree with you. I can remember, I can visualize, I can visualize where I was standing in my bedroom, our bedroom, one day where I just thought, I don't want to do this. I don't like my life any longer. Actually, that was what I remember thinking.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:20Speaker 00

  And then thinking, well, I don't have any choice.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Well, I wanted to ask what, what role, and I'm struggling to think of a different word. The word that's coming to my head is values or your, or purpose.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Play, plays in, in that space because the only thing I could think of that would be the reason that I would pull through is for the other, as you just said, for the other, for my wife and my other child, in my case.

• 25:50Speaker 00

  I'm a mama bear and as I say that, you know, I've got one son flying home right now. And when I get into the airport tonight, he will have just got home when I get home and um, the other one will be home for Christmas and all I care about are us three.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  Four, including me.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:14Speaker 00

  Um, but it was, yeah, you can get pretty purpose driven in the bleakest moments of life. And I think that is important because it's so different to what you are experiencing, Hugh. Whereas yours is an un- ongoing unfolding and demanding in the everyday. I mean, ours was demanding in the everyday, but this is what's kind of interest, interest me about the difference between death losses and living losses. And in Stressful Life Event Study, we asked people, if you've experienced a death loss before, how does your living loss compare? And I can't remember the exact statistic, but it was something like forty six percent of them,

• 26:57Speaker 00

  it's just under half, said my living loss is harder than my death loss.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  Because the bizarre thing, though, the, I don't know, the, whatever, the thing about death losses is that it's a, mostly it's a done event and then you get to have to relearn to live in the world without that person here. And yet, there isn't sort of, you've got the challenges every day of watching your other children and the impact and your family and for your partner. So they're just very, very different. And, and I kind of learned that from the earthquakes, that the natural disaster that is a flood or a fire is very different to the earthquakes because they

• 27:42Speaker 00

  keep going. You keep having these seismic waves and that is what you're experiencing with your different form of living loss.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  That analogy.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. There's something interesting that I think, I don't know why we do it as humans, but it does seem to be a need to place things in a hierarchy or something and try and say this is worse than the other. But it does seem like from what you're saying, it's just, nothing is harder or easier. It's just different.

• 28:10Speaker 00

  I think grief is subjective and I think your grief is your grief. And if you are feeling miserable, stunned, overwhelmed, munted because, because something has happened.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  I'm hearing you say munted.

• 28:23Speaker 00

  You can set it. We can all leave here saying munted. But yeah, it is, it is subjective. It's, you know, we're all, so my PhD was in wellbeing science and looking at how we measure and conceptualize psychological flourishing. And about four years, because Abby died in the last year of my PhD, so it took me about four and a half years to do it. The sum synopsis of my four and a half years work can be summed up in five words, which you might know, Hugh, which is that wellbeing is feeling good and functioning well. And I think that's really helpful to know here because for all of us, for everyone listening, all of our families,

• 29:06Speaker 00

  all of our lives, what we're all aiming to approximately do is to try and feel mainly good and function mainly well as often as we can, given whatever is going on for us.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  It's, I took a very, maybe a quite, maybe you didn't mean this, but out of those words, I immediately thought in a slightly different way of the feeling good of.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Taking in a very literal sense of feeling good. So like that I, cause I.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Feel the good stuff.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  Being able to feel well, like being able to feel the world and being able to engage with the world. Um, because I have spoken about this a bit recently, but I've really tried to lean into feeling more.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  Cause I find it to be the thing that makes me feel alive.

• 29:59Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  And I loved your choice of words, cause to me it wasn't so much about the good part about, but about the feeling.

• 30:05Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  If that makes sense.

• 30:06Speaker 00

  Hmm, totally.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, being able to feel.

• 30:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, being able to feel. And actually, the kind of synopsis of how will I ever get through it? Is that we have to accept all of it.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 30:18Speaker 00

  You know, the beauty, the pain, the, the ups, the downs, all of the emotions. And try and sit with them. I think in many ways, pop psychology has done us huge disfavour. Because people have started to think that the goal is positivity or the, what you need to do is more positive thinking.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 30:40Speaker 00

  And we're all aiming to be happy all the time. Frankly, that's just complete rubbish. That's balderdash.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  You know, we can't all be happy all the time. So what we're actually trying to do in my world is experience our feelings, um, to understand our feelings, to be able to sit with them, to notice them, to feel them. As you say, and work out how to live with them, when frankly, they're a lot. Life's, life's a lot.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 31:09Speaker 00

  Bloody hell, everyone. We have a lot to cope with, don't we?

• 31:12Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Um, I feel a note here, how to keep hope alive. So how do you keep hope alive in, in, cause I feel like that moment you're talking before in your bedroom, I'm guessing part of you felt like, what am I even here for? How do you keep hope alive in, in moments like that? Because that's something I, I have to say, I'm, I'm in a wonderful place right now. And a lot of us, because my child's in a wonderful place and they're, they're absolutely thriving. Um. And so that's really helped me with the acceptance. So I feel like I'm, I feel like I'm fully there. Something could happen where they have a setback and maybe I'll go back as well, but that's what I feel at the moment. But keeping hope alive at certain points was, I felt, it just felt very difficult.

• 31:56Speaker 00

  And I think, and it is very difficult. Um. And I think really the bigger conversation we're also having here is that life is precious and wild and fragile and all of those things. So you have your good bits. And we all know, I mean, can something awful can happen to any of us. Took me a long time to be able to live with the vulnerability around that. Um. Hope. So, um, a couple of things. So let me talk in theory and then we let me talk in practice. So, um, from a theoretical standpoint, I like the definition that hope is about willpower and waypower. Have you ever heard that before?

• 32:30Speaker 01

  No.

• 32:30Speaker 00

  So willpower is your motivation to keep going. Like, how will I ever get through this? What's going to get me out of bed in the morning? Um. And that comes to your values, I think, doesn't it? That's like, what is important? What am I here for? What matters to me?

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:47Speaker 00

  And how do I want to behave in this moment? So that's your willpower. And your waypower is your ability to circumvent obstacles that come into your path.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:00Speaker 00

  So willpower and waypower, and you need both for hope. And so to give you a practical example, because like this is kind of, I think, the work I love doing. So there was a January, I don't know how many, in truth, I don't know how many years ago, but I'm going to say kind of five years in or something after Abby died. Um. January was always the worst month because everyone else is playing happy families on the beach and our boys were teenage boys. And, um, you know, understandably, we're off with their mates and wanting to do that. So our family went from being one of the families on the beach, all five of us, to just the two of us, or Trevor going back to work and just me and the dog. And so January was just awful. And one year I thought, okay, I just can't face,

• 33:44Speaker 00

  I feel so hopeless and helpless. Um, I don't know how I'm going to get through this year ahead, another year of trying to tell myself that this is okay. And so I went and got myself two wall charts, one for work and then one for the good stuff. And I got it home and I got out different coloured pens and I thought, right, for every month, make yourself Lucy, put something in here that you are going to look forward to. And so I, with a green pen, I'd put getting out, you know, getting out into the bush, getting really outdoors, because definitely that experiencing big, wild places helped me. I knew that. So I put those in. And then I'd put, as the years of,

• 34:28Speaker 00

  I do this every year. And now I have a calendar that people kind of wait for and, and use and they do it in their families. And I get all these amazing messages and pictures from people with their family all standing around their calendar. But I do blue for my boys, because I've also, I mean, Ed, the eldest, has been living overseas on and off for the last couple of years. But before then, I used to put in to make sure I'd see one of them each month. And so you're just basically populating your months and your weeks with things to look forward to. So you are literally giving yourself those little nuggets of hope to cling on to.

• 35:08Speaker 03

  Hmm. That's so good.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  So you can get those, you can buy those, these resources that you have, you can get them online?

• 35:14Speaker 00

  Yep, you can get them from my website. And I've bought each of you one here with me.

• 35:19Speaker 03

  That's so exciting. I was gonna go and get one. I didn't know you'd made them, but I was gonna, that's so exciting.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  So we'll put a link. Yeah, we'll put a link to those, because that's a, it's such a fabulous, I think I've known that intellectually and I have kind of in my mind always had, I've got to have something to look forward to. Um, and I remember during COVID, like thinking, God, I have something to look forward to. And they weren't great things to look forward to. But, um, but to actually have a practical resource like that, I think is just brilliant.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  So the next question I'd love to discuss with you. And I, the word here just nearly makes me cry, but the amount of times, three in the morning, four in the morning, I felt this, when we're trying to help our child get to sleep or deal with something, again, not now, but just in the last few years. Um, why do I feel so lonely?

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Have incredible friends and, you know, I'm surrounded by wonderful people, yet I felt so unbelievably lonely, even telling the people I love most in the world about what we were going through. I remember one night, our sister lives in Los Angeles and she'd come home and was spending time with us and mum and dad were there. I think Josh and Sophie and the boys had been around, would all been there and our child had a huge meltdown and I was struggling with it and everyone was trying to do what they could to help us, but it's not much you can do in those moments. I just remember crying a lot and it's because I thought, gosh, I feel lonely even here. Like my whole family's here and I feel everyone I love most in the world is here except for Ryan, he wasn't there.

• 36:50Speaker 03

  Didn't want to go. I prefer to stay home to be honest.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  And I just remember feeling so lonely. Well, that's where the tears came from because I'm lonely amongst the people I love most.

• 37:02Speaker 00

  And it is one of the things people say most to me. And I think the loneliness comes from the fact that ultimately you, only you can live through this and do this. And you have to keep asking yourself, you're asking yourself the questions in your head about how am I going to get through this? What am I going to do? What does this mean for me? How are we going to survive this? I can't run away. So what am I going to do? And as much as you have support, it is, everybody deals with things differently as well. So if we go back to the grief is as individual as your fingerprint, then nobody feels the

• 37:44Speaker 00

  things that you do. No one experiences them. No one has the same doubts and stories running through their head. We're all different. And so to just give you an example, in our marriage, Trevor is really extroverted and I'm kind of one of those introverted people that I'm all good for about 90 minutes and then I want to go and, you know, lie down in a darkened hole.

• 38:10Speaker 00

  Any of those here? Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. So you can all relate to that. Yep. Um, so we made that work for us, um, but we've been married a long time and I knew he would need people. But for me, I had to make that work for me. So I would leave him at home and he would be opening the, you know, the doors to everybody and making them cups of tea. And I worked out a way where I could just drive one person somewhere or go and pick something up. And so I had to find my way through it. But I think your loneliness comes, so it comes from the fact that nobody is the same as you. It comes from the fact that we are so misunderstood and that the process of what we're going through is really misunderstood.

• 38:55Speaker 00

  So partly it's disenfranchised by society. People don't get what you're going through, Hugh. Um, they might want to get it, but they've also got really busy lives themselves. So ultimately they get, you know, drawn back to those. And eh, you know, we don't like it. And one of the hardest things about coping with any kind of loss is that at a time when we need other people most, other people can be really annoying and frustrating and disappointing. Hmm. Um, and there's lots and lots of bereavement research that points to that.

• 39:35Speaker 00

  The fact that it's really typical for people who are going through something, whether that's a death loss or a living loss, to feel ostracized, disappointed, not seen, you know, and valued. So I, I mean, really, there is no solution other than it's really common. And we all have to find our ways to connect with people. And a bit of that is accepting the good, like actually this person is driving me nuts. But what is it that they do bring to the party? You know, what can I ask of them? And maybe they're not, um, good at hugging, you know, but maybe they're really good at mending the fence that's now got a hole in it. Hmm.

• 40:18Speaker 00

  Um, so I've forgotten whose book this was, but I read somewhere, someone said, you know, you don't go to the hardware store for milk.

• 40:28Speaker 00

  It's like, yeah, I thought that was kind of quite good, isn't it? Like, choose who you go to for what? And cast your net wider is one of the recommendations in this book.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  I imagine that would be quite a common thing going through when you're in like peak grief period. And there are people trying to reach out and trying to support you and trying to be there. And like you, you know, you use the word, you know, people can be annoying. And I imagine it's just like, yeah, I know you're showing up because you don't show up like this. This is, this is not good, but then you can't tell them you're doing it wrong.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  You talk about social ineptitude and how that can, I don't know if you have to talk about that now.

• 41:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. So that was, that's some bereavement research where Carrie Drygore, who identified three forms of social ineptitude, which basically means three ways that people let you down typically when you're grieving. And I hope I can remember them off the top of my head, but there's something like when expected support doesn't materialize, people just, and that's very often health professionals. So someone you think should be in a role that they should come and be helpful and say the right thing.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Unhelpful encounters and advice. Yeah.

• 41:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then there's the other people who walk to the other side of the street and just plainly ignore you. And like, I'm just too embarrassed to, yeah, too embarrassed to grief, illiterate grief, awkward. Just, just don't want to bar of it. And then there's the kind of friends and family who really do let you down, the people that you definitely thought would be there. There's a great piece of research that says, in fact, I'll give this to you. Can you guess who provides the best form of bereavement support to us? What kind of role?

• 42:16Speaker 03

  I, I actually know this because of the research for this episode, but I wouldn't have guessed it.

• 42:21Speaker 00

  Go on.

• 42:21Speaker 03

  Pets.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  Yes, our furry friends, better than counselors, better than friends, better than family, better than the clergy.

• 42:28Speaker 03

  Not your pet.

• 42:29Speaker 00

  Cause they're just, so they're just so good with the right advice. Have you got a stressful pet?

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Well, yesterday he ate the nanny's keys. He eats everything that we need. But I just want to say on that last night, we had a hellish night last night with one child vomiting. The other one just wasn't sleeping because she had a worry she knew what it was. And I was roach chatting through two bedrooms and the dog followed me to every he just lay next to me when I was lying next to Elsie and I would Patrick calls and when he lay next to me, he just followed me and lay next to me the entire time. And I was thinking, I felt really bad what I said about you at lunch to the imperfect crew yesterday. Yeah, and not that I was grieving, not that I was grieving in a grief moment, but that, gosh, they do have a sense of like, I was, I was in it last night and I saw the dog went, I might go and lie next to him, that might make him feel less alone.

• 43:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean tactile, don't say the wrong thing, show up, always pleased to see you.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:24Speaker 00

  Um, yeah.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  I don't know if this, he's not a pet, he's a friend, but um, I

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Ryan.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  It's the, the bait, what you just said there about kind of being there, just not saying anything like by um, a long time ago now, when we were about eighteen, one of my friends lost his dad. And it was the day of the funeral and I didn't really know what to do and I made it and my Tom,

• 43:53Speaker 02

  he called me and said, are you coming to the funeral? I'm like, I didn't really know his dad very well. I don't know if I should go. I don't know what to say. And I remember, I've never forgotten this, he said, no one knows to say, but we're going, we're, let's go. And just this like, it doesn't matter, we're going and we're just gonna be there.

• 44:08Speaker 00

  Hmm, so good.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:10Speaker 00

  Um, I did some research asking people what they want people to say and do and what they don't want them to say and do. And this was just, um, I run a coping with loss community on Facebook. So this is very non-scientific, literally just put in there. And the responses were just fascinating and they did really confirm that what is good and right for one person is just anathema for the other, you know, if they don't want it. But they did all agree on the fact that just please don't ignore us, say something rather than ignore us. And very often people, um, clients will say to me, just say to me, I don't know what to say to you. Like, you know, that's not so hard, is it? Because I can't, I'm not in your shoes, but I just am here for you.

• 44:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, there was, there was a really funny moment on, you know, Conan O'Brien, on, you know, Conan O'Brien, he's a comedian, American comedian, uh, Tonight Show host, and he has a podcast and he had, uh, another comedian called Will Arnett, who, who's American as well, and they're talking about Conan, the passing of Conan's father and when he died and, um, and, and Will messaged Conan and said, you know, sorry to hear about your dad. And Conan said, uh, thank you so much. I blame Jason Bateman, which is like one of Will Arnett's, um, co-hosts on Smartless, the podcast they do together. And Will said, yeah, to be honest, I didn't want to say, but I feel like he did have something to do with it. And then there was a little, this huge back and forth that they explained about like, and,

• 45:37Speaker 03

  and then like a couple of days later, Will said to Conan, hey, I don't know why, um, but Jason's asking for your sister's address.

• 45:49Speaker 03

  Anyway, it was just Conan talks about how important it was for him to laugh.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  In such a, in such a hard time. And it's like, someone like Will, I guess, has the ability and they have a relationship that they could be, you know, such dark humour.

• 46:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:04Speaker 03

  But knew that Conan would be okay with it and it was all, anyway, I just thought that was brilliant.

• 46:08Speaker 00

  Why would we think we were not gonna laugh? I mean, to be human is to laugh.

• 46:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:12Speaker 00

  It's as natural and instinctive as crying. I think, I think pretty early on I wrote something about that, um, that I had, basically, Tommy, Tommy Shelby and Ragnar Lothbrok were the two men that got me through my grief. And I, and that was like, and sorry you Trevor too, my, about him. But, you know, it's like, just why, why do we have to be so, I actually don't know why we have to be so serious about it. And one of you said in your, a previous podcast that, cause I've thought about this, it's a bit like birth. We, you, we talk about, why do we talk so much about birth? When birth and death are the same, they're not the same, obviously, but. Like, universal human experiences.

• 46:56Speaker 00

  We're all obsessed with talking about birth. And yet, when it comes to death, no one wants to talk about it. And just as birth is, you know, chaotic, hysterical, all of that. I mean, just these intense life moments are full of everything.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  I haven't, I don't think I've said this before, Josh, but our grandma passed away in two thousand and nine, I think it was. Her granny, dad's mum. And she, one of the things she did for us when she was, when we were kids, was whenever we left her house, she would make faces at us. Those ridiculous faces and they were, they were very funny. And I became funnier when we're older because it's not funny to make faces to teenage boys, but she kept doing it. So that was even funnier. And when, when she passed away, we were all gathered in her home, her aged care home. And we had the option to go and see her and spend time with her after she died.

• 47:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  And it was like, do you want to go and do it? And I remember thinking, yeah, I do. And I remember going in there and I saw I'd never seen a dead body before. And I remember looking at her face and I laughed because I thought, you would love the face you're making right now. I've never seen this face before. This is unbelievable. I had this like, I didn't laugh out loud in my head. I was like, Granny, you would, this is maybe the best face you've ever made. The face is outrageous, what you're doing right now.

• 48:09Speaker 00

  So good.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Uh, but I remember thinking that was like, she would have been, she would have loved that.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  It's, but it's true though. It's like the, we do laugh, we do feel, we do find things funny at times when.

• 48:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. And well, and actually, why would we suppress that? Because your positive emotions are just as vital for your process of adapting to loss as your negative emotions are, of course, part of it. They are, there's this beautiful grief theory called oscillation theory, which is about how when you are grieving, you're essentially doing two things. You're going through the loss bit, so that's kind of one zone that you have to occupy. But you also have to keep going and get on with the rest of life. So they call it the loss zone and the restoration zone. And their researchers, their Dutch researchers, show that what you want to do, what healthy grieving is and is typical, is that you want to.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  To kind of oscillate between the loss zone, where you're crying and you're hiding under the duvet and you're lying on the floor, and the restoration zone, where you have to get up and get on with things and you have to go and, you know, take the kids to school or go back to work or whatever. But part of what happens when we go ebb and flow between them is that when we are packing up the kids and we're doing things that are everyday life things, we laugh and we experience positive emotions. We have people around us. We might have a moment of kind of pride or you just, you know, might be singing in the car or something. And that's giving you respite from the heavy lifting that is the hard work of grieving and the crying and the all of that.

• 49:45Speaker 00

  And so I think, I think also that kind of applies to life. When you've got a really big problem or challenge, I quite like this idea that you can approach it in bite sized chunks. You can sometimes go fully in on it and then you can go, whoa, that's enough of that. And what their research in terms of oscillation theory for grieving showed is that you don't want to spend too much time in the grief zone or too much time avoiding the grief zone. And I think that kind of applies more broadly to the problems that we face in our life.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  That's a fantastic theory.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  Um, yeah. A really big question that I, I remember saying to a friend soon after diagnosis when I was just so exhausted from the whole process and where we're at and how the child was at the time. Again, they're in such a great place now, but the analogy I used to them is I said, I think this is going to put my flame out. I just don't think, I don't, I just had this thing like my flame will be out now forever. I remember they actually said to me, which was quite incredible, but they said, um, yeah, maybe it will dim it for now, but I, it one day your flame will bright, will shine so much more brightly because of this. And I thought, well, that's a nice thing to say right now and you're very good with words. So thank you for that. But in my head, I was like, well, that's not, that's not what's going to happen.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  The question that people, and I was asking, will I ever be happy again? That's the question that I continually, because I liked being, I liked that identity as like a really happy person. And all of a sudden I wasn't and I wanted to know. And this is one of the questions you've been asked a lot. Will I ever be happy again?

• 51:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so that is one of the chat, first ten chapters in the book, Will I Ever Be Happy Again? And people often ask me that and.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  I mean, that's the, to ask you the question.

• 51:26Speaker 00

  Am I?

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm so happy. Um, I am, yeah.

• 51:32Speaker 00

  Makes me wanna cry, cause um yeah, I really have a good, full, happy life. Um, the reason I want to cry is that when you ask me if I'm happy, then I think of us as a family.

• 51:50Speaker 00

  Now, um, we go to a regular festival each summer in February, um, and the four of us, the two boys, Ed, Paddy and Trevor and I, um, and we are very good friends. And we have such a great time over this two day festival and we all absolutely love live and breathe music. The boys are both musicians. Um, and um, so yes, am I happy, you know, the summer is here and I will be going back to Electric Ave um, with my family again. Do I stand there and every year and wish that Abby was on their shoulders?

• 52:27Speaker 00

  Every year, um, our boys are so incredible. And beautiful and she just would have looked good up there. Hmm. And every year Trevor and I look at each other and go, yeah. And we're often there with lots of her friends too. Um, so, um, I think this is why this book is, um, like really the hashtag for this book is all of it. You just, um, you've just got to drink in the good and soak it all up. Um, and I am, we are definitely really happy. Ed said to us sometime this year, he said, I think we're a very different family because of it and we're much closer. Hmm.

• 53:08Speaker 00

  And related to that, um, I have a beautiful nephew, um, Rufus, Roof Dog, we call him. Um, who is, I think, about, about to be twenty nine and he was born Down Syndrome twenty nine years ago. And so I was living in London and I tell the story of Rufus. So, you know, late night, middle of the night, phone call at three A M. Um, it was my mum and she said Rufus has been born and he has Down Syndrome. And as a family, we all grieved and we grieved the difference between where we were and what we thought his life would be. And we grieved for his three siblings at the time and for my sister and, um, her husband.

• 53:54Speaker 00

  And, and is Rufus happy? Rufus is so happy. Are we all happy with Roof Dog? Rufus is a, is one big party machine. He is the most incredible man. He has brought more to our life to answer what you were saying about one day you'll look back on this. And my sister, I asked her for this book, what she thought about comparing back then to what she thinks now. And she says that, she said, I just wish someone had told us that he was only one gene different to the rest of your family and that he will bring more to your family.

• 54:34Speaker 00

  And you will all change and grow because of him, not in spite of him. And so, um, yeah, like Rufus is famous for his family speeches. We, he couldn't speak when he was younger and now we can't shut him up. Hey Roof Dog. Um, so, yeah, it is.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  What is he? And what does he love? What does he?

• 54:56Speaker 00

  Beer.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 00

  Sorry. I don't mean to you, I mean actually sorry to my family for just saying that.

• 55:04Speaker 00

  No, he lo-, you know, he loves the dogs. He loves his, um, his siblings is what he really, really loves. He loves his friends and, um, he lives independently four, five nights a week and goes home on Friday night for pizza and beers. And, um, and he's got a girlfriend and has a great life. So I think that is part of all of this, isn't it? That what I understand is that when you have these big life events and you get your diagnosis or someone walks out the door who wasn't meant to have gone, um, your assumptive world comes crashing down. So the assumptions you have made about how your life should be, other people should behave,

• 55:45Speaker 00

  and how the world should work are all suddenly, someone's put a wrecking ball to them. And over time, our job, what happens.

• 55:55Speaker 00

  And this is literally what you can see in the research, but I can, I see this in my own research, in the conversations that I've had with people and the stories that they've shared with me, that over time, and it takes time as you come to terms with it, what you are doing is rebuilding your new assumptive world, which is basically your set of core beliefs about how you should work, the world should work, other people should work. And you rebuild it into a new operating system that is fit for purpose now that you know this thing to be true. Does that make sense?

• 56:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 56:30Speaker 03

  Something that I've been wanting to ask, and it's sort of related to what you just said, actually. And it could be too personal. And so if it is, please shut me down. But when you lose a child so suddenly and so tragically, and you have other children, does the worry increase then on in?

• 56:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I, a few years ago, I probably wouldn't have wanted to talk about this so much when the boys were younger. So Ed was 16 the week after Abby died. So he got his driving licence a week later.

• 57:06Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 57:07Speaker 00

  Which was horrendous. And Paddy was 14. So within, you know, within a couple of years, they were both driving around. And my husband bought Ed quite a fast car. Like, he looks back on it and just says, what was I doing? He bought a kind of Subaru that was just a little bit faster than it needed to be.

• 57:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:28Speaker 00

  So that was a curious moment for us. But I definitely had to, that was, I felt like that was part of my job, was to somehow let them live and not to crush or diminish their lives and their freedom and autonomy for my own gain. And so I had to work out, in Resilient Grieving, I talk quite a lot about this, because how do you deal with that vulnerability when you know someone can die in an instant? And so I kind of made deals with myself that I would assume that they were okay until a policeman was standing at the door was one of the things I used to say to myself. And then I would also just put in anything that I, any kind of area of influence I could

• 58:11Speaker 00

  do, I would, so I did at one time, Ed was going to come back from a surf comp, three hours north of us, um, sorry, Ed, the first anniversary of Abby's death, which is just not, wasn't great timing, but I, in the end, I just couldn't resist any longer. And I found someone who was at the surf comp, who I didn't know very well. And I texted them to say, please can you, if you're driving back at the same time. And in the end, they had two cars and they kind of put his car in between them and pretty much shepherded him down the road, you know, just so that kind of belief and bravery to just reach out and go, I'm desperate, please, but I'm just going to hope that these people won't find that too demanding. And when the boys were loose at university, which they were,

• 58:56Speaker 00

  I did have moments where I chatted to their friends and just said, if you're ever worried about my boys, you will go and you don't have to talk to us, you'll just talk to some other adults you know, or my sister, or, you know, just, they're precious. And, and then occasionally I would say, as they were all about to get in the car, driving back to university, I'd go up to the driver and say, they're going to hate me for saying this, but I have already lost a child. So just at that moment that you think you're going to pull out and do that overtaking, please think of me. And I'd see my, whichever boy squirm in the back and hate me. And I am, once again, Ed and Paddy, I'm really sorry, but you know, I just had to do a bit of self preservation and I tried to let

• 59:40Speaker 00

  them go as much as I could. And they did.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  So happiness is a choice. Is that a

• 59:49Speaker 00

  Ongoing choice, isn't it? I think in the daily actions of our day, every day. And it's different for each of us. What makes you happy? It's a funny question, isn't it? What makes you happy?

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  And not one we're necessarily very good at.

• 1:00:04Speaker 03

  Well, it's sort of, I mean, I feel like in the last like 10 years, particularly since we started doing the podcast, I've become sort of more conscious of everything like life and is that, you know, happiness sort of seems like a, not a fool's errand, but a little bit of a,

• 1:00:21Speaker 03

  I don't know, it's just like, it's so vague.

• 1:00:24Speaker 00

  Hmm. It is vague.

• 1:00:26Speaker 03

  But, but at the same time, it's like, we all wanna be happy, but then rarely do we take the time to actually measure, what is that measure of happiness? Like, when, when do you know you've got there? And how do you know it's gonna last if it is?

• 1:00:39Speaker 00

  The challenge with positive emotions is that they're fleeting. So, you know, they, they're like Teflon, whereas negative emotions are like Velcro. They stick to us and hang around and linger. So I think that when I think about my things to look forward to calendar, that is why I like to put the green stuff in there, which is the back to nature stuff. And then the human connection with blue with our boys. And I think I use pink for kind of family events and things. But it is just noticing the small moments, you know, it's always sounds so banal, doesn't it? But the moment where you turn your face to the sun and hold your cup of tea, coffee and just think,

• 1:01:21Speaker 00

  oh, I think it is quite helpful to break them down and then go, okay, there's contentment. And then there's awe, A W E, you know, and for me, that is if I can climb to the top of some mountain or crash through a wave, you know, and see the sunrise, look back on your friends all kind of golden. And then you just go, whoa, this is pretty good. And music definitely does it. So it is about finding the things that work for you and then trying to intentionally sprinkle more of them across your lives, your days. But it is, it's a funny thing, isn't it? Cause you kind of have to be fake about it.

• 1:01:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  You gotta create them, sort of thing.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. The thing that I had really helped for me was a saying that I think came up. I think the saying was more for people to motivate them to exercise, but I think it helped me dragging myself to the stuff that I did make me happy. So. The saying was, um, motivation follows action. So I think a lot of people were like, get motivated and then you exercise. It's just like the motivation that comes from. So you do it in the first place and that gives you more motivation. And I've felt that very strongly at my darkest moments was just like, dude, you don't want to do it. You don't feel like doing it, but you know, from years and years of evidence that running or being with these people or listening to this music or, or like those things make you happy. So just do that, just

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  go, go and do it. You don't want to do it. And then that led to motivation to do it more. Um, and that's what really helped me.

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm, I'm was a runner and I can't run at the moment. Last two years I've had one, both knees are just giving me a niggling.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Ah, sorry.

• 1:02:58Speaker 00

  And no, but it is, you know, it's, it's, I, I have really realised that recently. I've lost one of my major sources of happiness, you know, great music and running in the hills. And you do have to keep reinventing them, don't you? You have to find different things. Um, so, and if you have things like that, it's kind of easier to tap into them pretty easily, isn't it? Cause they're more regular.

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  Um, but I think that intentional planning is important and just keep asking ourselves, like, seriously, Lucy, what makes you happy? What is it? Who is it? What do you do? Like, um, and be on top of it. Um, and not to think, I'll be happy when I get the car or get the shoes or whatever it is, you know, it's the work, daily work.

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Um, I'd love, I'm conscious of your 90 minutes and I don't want to have, it'd be a strange episode if you're lying on the ground in the corner very soon.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  It's on the dot, the 90 minutes.

• 1:03:53Speaker 00

  Lucy has powered down.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  She gave us a warning. She said it's 90 minutes. So, so I just want to get now to the questions that you kind of flip onto your readers. Um, and there was, there's a couple that I'd love to just ask you to talk about here, um, before, before you shut down. But, um, so the first one is, do you know your strengths? I think that's a really important question for someone to, to have a think about when they're in this.

• 1:04:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:19Speaker 03

  Great question.

• 1:04:20Speaker 00

  And you guys have done, you've covered strengths work before, haven't you with Emily?

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, Em talked about the V I A.

• 1:04:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  Strength Survey.

• 1:04:27Speaker 00

  Yes, so the V I A, or as I call it, the V I A, is a strengths survey that you can go and do online. And it is free, you have to give your email. And it is the world's biggest scientific survey that you answer a barrage of questions. And in return, you get emailed to you, your strengths profile. And so to do that, the scientists who created it, Martin Seligman and Chris Peterson, both of whom I studied with at UPenn, which is pretty amazing.

• 1:05:00Speaker 03

  Legends.

• 1:05:01Speaker 00

  Legends. And what happens is that they have given you 24 strengths to consider through all these different questions. And when you get your email, it, it gives you your strengths profile. It ranks those 24 strengths according to the ones that are most like you, to the ones that are least like you. And then you have to remember that even the bottom ones, even 23 and 24 are still strengths. So it's really, it, it basically was created as a scientific tool because we can't study strengths or have conversations around strengths unless we have a framework to give us the language. So we know we're all kind of talking about the same things.

• 1:05:41Speaker 03

  You started with Chris Peterson.

• 1:05:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:43Speaker 03

  Really?

• 1:05:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, Chris Peterson's been to our house.

• 1:05:45Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 1:05:46Speaker 00

  And had too many beers and then my husband had to drive him home.

• 1:05:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, for those, for those who've been following the podcast for a long time, Chris Peterson, I'm.

• 1:05:54Speaker 00

  Pito, Trevor calls him.

• 1:05:57Speaker 03

  Be careful how you say that.

• 1:06:01Speaker 03

  But he, is he the other people matter?

• 1:06:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:04Speaker 03

  Guy?

• 1:06:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, he, I mean, I feel like we've talked about him. I mean, other than Martin Seligman, he is probably the other person that we talk about maybe. Well, I think about Chris Peterson a lot. I feel like I'm now one degree of separation away from.

• 1:06:15Speaker 00

  And he was a great man. He did like a beer and a cigarette.

• 1:06:20Speaker 03

  Really?

• 1:06:20Speaker 00

  Which always kind of made me laugh because he's, you know, a wellbeing guru. Um, and yes, other people matter is his phrase, meaning that, yeah, the outstanding finding of wellbeing and resilience research is that nobody goes it alone and we need other people. Um, what were we talking about?

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  The V I O.

• 1:06:40Speaker 00

  Oh, the V I O.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  I mean, knowing your strengths, you know.

• 1:06:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I did some research a few years ago as part of my PhD where we had a really big 10,000 people um data set and asked them a barrage of questions. And from that, I was able to categorize people, the top 25% who were really psychologically flourishing. And then we did lots of kind of fancy statistics to look at what did you have to do to make yourself more likely to be flourishing? And we discovered that the people who knew their strengths were nine times more likely to be in that top flourishing category. And, and I thought, wow, that's pretty cool. That's good finding. But then I was amazed to discover

• 1:07:22Speaker 00

  that the people who said that they regularly use their strengths were 18 times more likely to be flourishing.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  Gosh.

• 1:07:31Speaker 00

  So it really does give you the potency of um understanding what your strengths are, knowing what they are, but also using them, not forgetting to use them.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's awesome.

• 1:07:41Speaker 00

  But I still thought it was quite hokey when I first discovered all that research. Um, and I was in America and it, you know, I've been to a lot of um those conferences where people are like, oh, strengths and your zest and this. And, and of course, I didn't feel at all zesty. I'm, you know, enthusiasm and zest is supposedly one of my strengths. And when Abby died, it disappeared for probably a couple of years. Um, and forgiveness was one of my lowest strengths and we forgave the driver instantly, all four of us. And so I think it speaks to the fact that That people often, you need to know your strengths and without doubt, you know,

• 1:08:21Speaker 00

  for me, those are things like love of learning and curiosity and optimism and love. And so it's easy to see how those played out in our grieving, that those were useful things. I mean, for me, love of learning was kind of a thing that saved me because I went to do research immediately and find if we could find a roadmap to survive. But some of those strengths weren't kind of foremost of mind, but the difference that forgiveness made for us as a family is just huge because it enabled us to dial back the blame and get on with trying to keep the show on the road and not getting fixated and stuck, I think.

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  The next question that you ask the audience is who and what do you want to live for?

• 1:09:14Speaker 00

  Quite a big question, isn't it?

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's inspiring though. It feels like an inspiring, more aspirational question to be asked at a time like that.

• 1:09:23Speaker 00

  I think it's a really important question. And again, I think we don't necessarily, we're not necessarily in everyday life aware of the answer to that question. And when something terrible happens, very often it reveals who and what matters most. I actually truly think that struggle is the great revealer of who and what matters most. I do think, I would not call it a gift because you don't want it and you want to avoid it. But the research shows that through the struggle to come to terms with the terrible things

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  that happen, we rethink everything and people let us down and people come into our lives. And so this is the rebuilding of your assumptive world. And so for me, I remember thinking that it was like I had these kind of goalposts that I thought my life was going over here and, you know, kind of imagine what was, what it might look like. And suddenly they shifted and they were over here. But really what was important to me now, what was my true north? And that is, you know, somehow keeping our family unit alive and not losing what we have to what we had lost.

• 1:10:40Speaker 00

  And then I found in the research for this book, for How Will I Ever Get Through This? I found Mike Steger's work on meaning really helpful. So, because we all kind of want meaning alive, don't we? But we don't really know what that is or how to get it. So I like the fact that he breaks it down into three parts. And the first is, I have significance. So do you, is, you know, what's, you know, who matters to you and who do you matter to? Yep. And then the second is purpose. Have I got something worth getting out of bed in the morning for? And those two are pretty easy. The third one is trickier because that's the coherence piece. This goes back to the sense making.

• 1:11:22Speaker 00

  Can I integrate the events of my life into a longer life story? You know, can I make sense of what's happened here? But I feel that that was quite useful for me to look at meaning and what matters through those three lenses of what's significance, what's the purpose? And how do I cobble all this together?

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  It doesn't need to be like grandiose, you said, like it doesn't have to be that.

• 1:11:52Speaker 00

  No, you don't need to be writing War and Peace or Saving the Planet. No, I think it, you know, absolutely can be identified by looking at the bits of your day that are really meaningful to you and that stand out and the pieces of connection. I'm a big believer though in listening out for the whisper. And I write a lot about that in this book. Because I think we do have those little glimmers or whispers in our lives saying, oi, something to pay attention to here, this matters. And this counts. So you might want to discover more of that. And that's different for everyone.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  Does everyone get through this stuff? Do we?

• 1:12:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, this, I mean, seriously, the, the research shows that as much as we think people really struggle and we hear so much, don't we, about post-traumatic stress. We hear much less about post-traumatic growth, for example, but the statistics for that tell a story. So on, if you remove the military and just think about the general population, so not military folk, for the level of post-traumatic stress in the general population is eight percent, whereas the level of post-traumatic growth is sixty percent.

• 1:13:13Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  Huge, hey? And most people don't have never even heard of post-traumatic growth.

• 1:13:18Speaker 03

  Post-traumatic growth needs a way better publicity department.

• 1:13:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:22Speaker 03

  That needs to be out there.

• 1:13:24Speaker 00

  You know, the, I think the untold story of human resilience is we have this incredible capacity to somehow survive. Doesn't mean we like it, you know, and I'm always really at pains to point that out. I'm not saying it's good. I'm not trying to glorify suffering and pain and misery because they are terrible, you know. But we do have this incredible capacity to, in the micro moments of our days, find ways of thinking, acting and being that help us drag ourselves through. Struggle is your friend because struggle is our biggest teacher.

• 1:14:06Speaker 00

  We don't like it, we want to avoid it, but a life without struggle isn't a life. But what, and the other thing I haven't said is, we don't want to grieve and we don't want to talk about grieving, but we spend our lives talking about love. Love is literally, you know, the thing we care most of us about, yeah. So we grieve because we are hardwired for attachment.

• 1:14:34Speaker 00

  And we live in a world of impermanence.

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:14:38Speaker 00

  So we grieve because we love and you just can't have one without the other.

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:14:43Speaker 00

  And yet we want to talk endlessly about love and never about grief.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:14:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, Dr. M, when we did our episode on grief, Dr. M talks about that in in detail. And we'll obviously link to that episode in this one, but yeah, it's such a good thing to remember.

• 1:14:57Speaker 01

  The last one, we will, so who and what is still good in your world? The great, I mean, it's kind of consistent with a lot of what we've talked about today already, but important question to be asked.

• 1:15:10Speaker 00

  Yes, and um, I opened that chapter with the story about Rufus, my nephew and his birth. Um, and my mum calling in the middle of the night to say he has Down's syndrome. And what a huge grief loss that was for us at the time. Which now we look back on it and think that doesn't feel like a loss. And there's this amazing poem that my sister and husband sent out at the time that's called Welcome to Holland. Which is essentially about the fact that when you are planning a baby and you're pregnant and you're hoping, you know, you get towards the birth. You're all excited and you've read the manuals and you kind of know what to expect. And you've told your other children or your friends and family.

• 1:15:56Speaker 00

  And this woman called Emily writes about, my sister gave this to us years ago, in Rufus's birth announcement card. That basically what she says is, so you're on your trip to Italy and you're all excited about going to Italy. And you land and the person over the announcement says, I'm welcome to Holland. And that's how they describe finding out that your baby has Down's syndrome. It's like, it's different. It's not what you expected and you're a bit gutted at the time. But actually, my sister has been the most incredible strengths-based parent. And she has always chosen to focus her attention on what is good in Rufus's world and who is good in Rufus's world.

• 1:16:40Speaker 00

  And um, she's done so in a way that has amplified his strengths. And I think is a really standout lesson.

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:50Speaker 00

  To us all.

• 1:16:51Speaker 03

  One thing I'm finding quite interesting throughout this is that I haven't.

• 1:16:58Speaker 02

  I'm lucky thus far in my life to have not experienced that much intense loss. And I think I've had a really wonderful life thus far. But it hasn't meant that I haven't struggled through a lot of it. And what I'm finding really moving and interesting, and I think it's a really good ad for your book, is that I think that all of this is so helpful, even if you're not experiencing a living loss or a death loss. I, I think as a, as a parent dealing with the everyday sort of challenges of two little kids, what you said before about the assumptive life.

• 1:17:39Speaker 02

  I find that the, whenever I'm struggling with it, it's when I've assumed something's gonna go a certain way. And the moment that I get that assumption out of the way and just stop and deal with what's actually in front of me, the problem becomes halved and it becomes so much easier and, and there's joy and there's laughter and there's, there's everything in there. But it's the moment I get out of the, and I, I know, as you've said, we're predictive machines. So it's a hard thing to do, but continually trying to get back to stop, get rid of these assumptions is just deal what's in front of me. That's, um, it's one of the great lessons of life that I'm trying to imbue more and more. But just to say that everything you've talked about, I find, uh, it makes me wanna live a more fulfilling, better life.

• 1:18:23Speaker 00

  Thank you. And I think what you've said is so true. It's our expectations set us up to fail. And to be disappointed, don't they? In so many different of our life zones. And I guess that is really what so much of my work is about is it literally is the opposite of toxic positivity and happyology. And, you know, and you can, um, positive thinking, because no amount of positive thinking is going to help you when times are tough and. Dire. But actually, what what will help you is that kind of pragmatism to go, okay, well, this is awful. But what do I need to do? What are the ways of thinking, acting and being that I can bring to this situation?

• 1:19:05Speaker 00

  You know, what are the assets and resources and what's worked for me in the past? Because I've got through stuff in the past, so I probably will get through this too. Not fun, not pretty, not what I wanted, but actually doable. And the science backs that up. That we are incredibly adaptable humans, which is really good news for us all going forward. Like, we live in an era of uncertainty and disruption, don't we?

• 1:19:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:30Speaker 00

  And actually, as much as we don't like it, humans are incredibly adaptable and able to flex and change. And I think that is sort of the untold story of human resilience, really.

• 1:19:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, beautiful. You've you've sort of answered that a bit of this already, but I think to to wrap up, I think it would be fascinating to

• 1:19:55Speaker 02

  know what you've learnt most from doing the work that you do.

• 1:19:59Speaker 00

  Everybody is struggling with something. And and I guess in some bizarre way now, I have a sort of strange bird's eye view in that people are very happy to share their struggles with me, which is a huge honour. People often think that my work would be really miserable, and it is anything but. Truly, I think that grief and grieving and death and loss are almost like a portal taking you to another realm where let's get real and actually discuss what's really going on in the world. And so it's a huge honour and privilege to have those conversations. But what amazes me particularly about the work I do, like the workshops I do and the workplaces I go to.

• 1:20:45Speaker 00

  Some workplaces don't want a bar of it, as I'm sure you can all imagine, and other workplaces are brave enough to say, actually, we we do welcome hard conversations. And when I run particularly something like a panel where everybody from that workplace is happy, like they might have four people sit up front and say, I'm going to talk about when this happened, I'm going to talk about when that happened. They're all going to share something really real and personal, then it literally changes the whole company culture. Because everyone is suddenly real, not perfect. And everybody is willing to just be that more bit vulnerable. And explain and describe how they managed to get through that in a probably pretty ugly,

• 1:21:29Speaker 00

  not very stylish fashion of somehow, you know, getting through it. And I think it is, I slightly feel like we're entering a new era where people can be more real. I hope so. And yeah, so all the people who have managed to get through something, it changes you, all of this, you know, we learn from it. We are morphed and warped by it. But it is all part of living a full life, that whole wild and precious life thing, you know, that's what we're all kind of signed up for, aren't we? The good, the bad, the ugly, all of it.

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  Um, beautiful.

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  I just like, we met for the first time just downstairs before we, and I obviously know your story, but just like, as soon as I looked into your eyes, you could see like, this person's been through a lot and she's extraordinary. That's just on, you just, you just feel it straight away. Like you are just extraordinary and we are so privileged for so many reasons, but to hear you share that story in a way that, I mean, you really went there today for us, but that is going to help so many people. I mean, your work already does, but my gosh. Yeah, I feel so lucky.

• 1:22:42Speaker 00

  Thank you. I'm a bit of a muppet, really.

• 1:22:47Speaker 01

  It was like muppet, munted and balderdash all of a sudden.

• 1:22:51Speaker 03

  That's a good answer.

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  That's a great answer.

• 1:22:53Speaker 03

  It's such a pleasure to meet you Lucy. Thank you so much.

• 1:22:56Speaker 00

  Thank you all. And for everyone listening too, you know, really appreciate you sharing my work and helping other people find their way through this.

• 1:23:06Speaker 02

  Thank you. Brilliant.

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 1:23:11Speaker 02

  If you enjoyed what you just heard and would like to hear some more, there's actually some extra bits that we couldn't fit into the episode. You can listen to them now on patreon.com/theimperfects for free. And if you'd like to join our newsletter, you can do so at theimperfects.com.au. And while you're there, you'll be able to see the names and faces of all the incredible people who help make this show. A show made on the lands of the Wurundjeri Wurundjeri people, and we pay our respects to elders past and present. The Imperfects is not a licensed mental health service, and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment, or assessment. The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you're struggling, please see a healthcare professional or call Lifeline on 13 11 14.