Invisible Loss- The Grief You Didn't Know You Had- Christina Rasmussen EP 382

🌱 Have you ever experienced an "Invisible Loss"? These often-overlooked forms of grief can shape our lives in profound ways. In this episode of Grief 2 Growth, Isit down with acclaimed grief educator and best-selling author Christina Rasmussen to explore the powerful concept of "Invisible Loss."

Christina, who founded the Life Reentry process after the devastating loss of her husband to cancer, shares her insights into how these hidden griefs can keep us stuck in survival mode. Together, we delve into how to identify if you're caught in a "waiting room" of psychological stagnation and offer strategies to reconnect with your true, thriving self.

In this episode, you'll discover: 
✨ What "Invisible Loss" really means and how it differs from traditional grief 
✨ Techniques to break free from survival mode and embrace your authentic self ✨ How to confront the fear of the future and find hope 
✨ The importance of recognizing and honoring all forms of grief, no matter how small

Whether new to the podcast or a loyal listener, this conversation will open your eyes to the impact of "Invisible Loss" and guide you towards healing.

Don't forget to join our community at grief2growth.com/community to continue the discussion. Together, we can navigate this journey of growth through grief.

🎧 Listen now and start healing your Invisible Loss 🌟

Thanks for your support. Stay tuned for more exciting stuff next year.

Check out my Substack https://grief2growth.substack.com

You can send me a text by clicking the link at the top of the show notes. Use fanmail to:

1.) Ask questions.
2.) Suggest future guests/topics.
3.) Provide feedback

Can't wait to hear from you!

I've been studying Near Death Experiences for many years now. I am 100% convinced they are real. In this short, free ebook, I not only explain why I believe NDEs are real, I share some of the universal secrets brought back by people who have had them.

https://www.grief2growth.com/ndelessons

Transcript

Brian Smith  0:00  
Close your eyes and imagine. What if the things in life that cause us the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if, like a seed. We've been planted, and having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is grief to growth, and I am your host. Brian Smith, hey everybody. I'm Brian. I'm the host of grief to growth. And whether you're joining us for the first time or you're a longtime listener, welcome to the show. Here at grief to growth, we navigate the complexities of life. We explore who we are and where we came from, why we're here and where we're going today. I'm thrilled to have with us Christina Russ Rasmussen. Christina is an acclaimed grief educator and a best selling author of second first Where did you go? And her latest book, invisible loss, after the devastating loss of her 35 year old spouse to stage four colon cancer, Christina founded life reentry process in 2010 helping 1000s find compassion, grace and an exit from what she terms the waiting room. She has a master's degree in guidance and counseling, and she's currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in painting and drawing. Her grief work has been featured on ABC News and Women's World, The Washington Post and even the White House blog. In this episode, we're going to go deep into the concept of invisible loss and how that differs from traditional grief. We'll explore common examples of how these overlooked losses often overlooked losses, and discuss the consequences of failing to acknowledge them. Christina will also help us understand how to recognize if we're stuck in a waiting room of psychological stagnancy and the importance of comparing our current selves to our original selves, we'll uncover on visible losses are often tied to moments of impact and how our survival self responds to these events and its unique language, Christina is going to guide us in mitigating the effects of a collective survivor voice and utilizing our three Inner personas, the survivor, the watcher and the thriver. And finally, we'll tackle the fear of the future and strategies to move past stagnancy. So I know that all of my listeners, you're you're familiar with grief, and I know you're going to get a lot of this conversation after the conversation, after you listen to the podcast, make sure you join us at grief to growth.com/community to continue the conversation there. And with that, I want to welcome Christina Rasmussen,

Christina Rasmussen  2:45  
Brian, thank you for so much for having me. And as I listen to this introduction, I always say is that me, did I do that? And it makes me feel kind of very reflective, especially with this third book coming out. We're recording this interview the day before it comes out, comes out tomorrow, actually, and when everyone's listening, it would have already come out. And I'm in this very reflective place. I just wrote my blog that I'm going to release tomorrow, and was talking about the last 20 years, actually, since my my first husband passed away, and and the battlefield, the journey staying there, I'm putting down my swords, maybe for the first time, my my tools, my backpacks, my all the things I've been carrying with me, not only for myself, but also helping so many others and just listening to you. I try not to listen to my own interview, so I miss sometimes, often, maybe all the time I can, I can listen to myself. And so when someone is introducing me live, I sit here and just reflect. So thank you for that. Yeah, well, I'm

Brian Smith  3:59  
excited to have this conversation with you today. I know you've got a lot to offer when someone has has lost someone, and it puts them on this path, I always like to honor that person by first of all, let's talk about about your spouse and talk about him and his life, who he is.

Christina Rasmussen  4:17  
Yeah, so I never thought that I would lose him and and I remember when he was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer, I wished it was me. I really did. I wished it was me. I at the time, I felt that it would have been easier for me to experience my own death and experience his and we had when he when his diagnosis took place. We had a nine month old and a two and a half year old, two girls, and he was, I would always say, getting chills as saying that he was the better of. Of the two of us he was the smarter he was the I think the better parent. He was the the one with all the discipline, discipline and the the math. I when we found out for the diagnosis, one of the first thoughts was, how am I going to teach my kids math? He's, I don't, I don't do that very well. He's the smart one. He's the one that can do all these hard things. And it can't be that he's the one living and the world lost someone great and someone so young. I mean, he was 31 when the diagnosis took place, and he was 35 when he died, and as I have I wrote today in the upcoming blog, I said I didn't know then how young we were and how much life we would live without him, Brian. I didn't know how much like how many I didn't know how time is. I didn't know how time was going to be so long afterwards I you know when you are however young you are, you always feel old, right? You feel like, you know when we turn 20, I'm like, I'm 20 now, when you turn 27 Oh, my God, I'm so old. I can't believe I'm 27 so I was, I was 34 when he passed, and 3030, years old when, when he was diagnosed. And I remember thinking it was the end. It was my life, the life, our life, was over and and I was old, but I was so young, and you can only see that from the other side, from all these years that have gone by and looking back now, I mean, I have him with me, even though I'm remarried. He Eric, my husband today, who also loved his spouse. By the way, that's how we met. We sat next to each other at a support group, yeah. And so he lost his very young wife, same age, same period of time, same year, a few nine months earlier than than mine, sorry, later than mine. He has he had two daughters same age as my daughters, wow, like and we lived eight minute drive. I remember because we used to drive when the babysitter would come in the evening, because we couldn't just see each other like two single parents working full time with two young kids, right? But I brought my first husband with me and in our lives and in my kid's life every single day, Brian to this day, like I wrote, I'm writing this blog, you know, all these years later, and I start with him today, and I believe that, you know, we I I'm honoring him. Myself, my kids and I and I know that my husband today, Eric, understands that he has always been like that for me, and it doesn't mean that I don't love him, or I not happy with him, or it doesn't mean any of those things. And in my way, I'm teaching the world to to live these two lives, the one that we are starting over again and and doing new things and but also having the other life close by in a very healthy way, in a very wonderful way. I mean, I believe in in all supernatural things as well. So I believe in all these great things that I don't think we ever die, and there's a connection that is beyond the physical world. I believe that deeply. So sorry. I'm rambling, but you said in your email that you love rambling so perfect. I'm like, That's great. So

Brian Smith  8:56  
that's what we're here for. That's That's exactly what we're here for. So you're right. It's interesting that we always feel like we're old, no matter what age we are, once we get to be like at 21 I have a 27 year old daughter, and she talks about being old now, so I remember that, but we don't. Also we failed to estimate how much life we have in front of us, and you touched on it very well, like when we lose someone that close to us, that as a spouse, if children, you just want to crawl in the casket with them. You just, you just, you want to go with them your life. You feel like your life is over. So what did it take? What was it like for you to make that transition, to come into from there to I want to teach people the life reentry process. The very

Christina Rasmussen  9:45  
bizarre thing about me is that when I studied my Master's in Counseling, my thesis was on the stages of bereavement, that was before his diagnosis, before any awareness. Us on what was about to happen. I wanted to be a grief therapist, and I was studying my master's in the UK, Northern England, and I remember my professor saying to me, and I share this story often, because it gives you a glimpse of me as a person before anything happen, and I still feel like this part of me I've managed, and we'll talk about how to bring your original self here. But she said to me, you want to study about grief. You're such a happy person, you know, like, what are you thinking? And I remember saying to her, I love people so deeply I could not imagine what it's like to lose someone we love, whether it's a child, spouse or someone really close to us. And I want to, I want to know how it is to to help someone like that. I mean, I cannot possibly imagine it. And when I was saying that to her at Durham University, in that very historical town, some of Harry Potter was filmed there. By the way, it's a very imagine this very, very old English northern town. I had no idea that my life just very few years after that would change forever. And before his diagnosis, I was volunteering for hospice in Houston, Texas. We used to live there at the time, and I used to facilitate support groups of spouses who lost their of partners who lost their spouses, and and I also was part of the program where you would go and sit with a dime so the family members would go home and shower and give them a break. And Brian, I had no clue that this, like, I don't know why I'm getting so many goosebumps today. It's you, Brian, you bring this out of me. But like, it's like, I didn't know that any of this was going to happen, and I think it was part of my destiny, and I understand that now, but when it did happen to answer your question, all of the theory that I had learned, all of the tools that I had in my toolbox about grief, all the traditional education that I received, made no sense to me whatsoever. It was like I remember, after he passed, thinking about my my sitting with facilitating the support groups. And I remember people crying in those groups, and I remember thinking I had no idea what they were going through. Wow, none I had nowhere near I didn't understand it, even though I could imagine, I could, I could, I couldn't imagine it, or I could imagine it, or whatever, like a form of sentence I was thinking at the time. No clue as to the fact that when you go through something so devastating, and young too and and I would imagine, I know that from the 1000s of stories I heard old when you're older as well. Pain is so complex and so deep and so catastrophic that you do not believe that you could make it out like it took me. And I say this because it's important to say it, even with all the resources and who I am today and the teacher that I've been and the writer that I've been, it took me, and I remember the time two and a half years after, I remember it was the first day that I felt for the first time I had, like, maybe half an hour in my day where actually didn't feel like I wanted to die, or I was devastated. And I remember being jolted, kind of surprised, and kind of taken, like taken by surprise, thinking, oh my god, I'm feeling feeling okay this moment. And I was shocked. It took two and a half years for just that first moment of of feeling not happy or joyful, but actually okay, yeah. And, and if the two and a half years felt like there was decades that went by, but also like yesterday was, it's such a dualistic way to live after loss, right? Brian, you know this so well,

Brian Smith  14:13  
yeah. And I would, I would agree, from my experience, it was about two and a half three years. And it's interesting how we try to rush people through grief. And you know, you know, it's been six months, you know, over yet it's been a year. Are you ready to start dating again? You know, all the things that people say, and then people come to me and they'll say, I feel like I'm stuck, and I'm like, Well, tell me about your experience. Well, it's been six months, not stuck. You're not stuck. It's early. It's the so I'm glad that we were normalizing this now we're getting it out there for people. There isn't I don't know how you feel about stages of grief or stages of bereavement. I don't think everybody's grief is different. So I tell people, whatever, whatever is your experience. Is your experience. But I think it's pretty typical that it might take a couple of years, you know, to get back to just that, just a

Christina Rasmussen  15:07  
little bit of normal, just for a day, but like, just for an hour, just for and then you may have a whole week back to that darkness, but then in June, that week, you know, that it can come back. And I was, I was writing an article. It's not out yet. It will be out this week for Psychology Today. And I was citing the kind of diagnostic, the complicated grief, new diagnosis. And I was like, and I was telling Eric, my husband today, I was like, Can you believe that they made it into like something that's problematic, and that if you're not, if you haven't moved on or feeling better in a year, then you should be be on medication. And the decision to be on medication is personal, and I completely honor and respect that. But I think we took steps back, and I'm writing about that. We took step steps back, when, when we we made it into this like condition, diagnosed, diagnosed, the psychiatric like this is why we have to keep having these conversations. Because when someone who's grieving so deeply is being told that within six months or even a year, you should be back and you should be back at work, by the way, in a week, right? Five

Brian Smith  16:23  
days, five days,

Christina Rasmussen  16:27  
seriously, like, what is wrong with the world, right? And I remember working in the corporate world afterwards, and I hated every minute. I hated the fact that nobody acknowledged that I was this brand new widow that had this so when he died, the girls were four and six years old, and I was alone. I had no family around me. I actually sent them home because I said I needed to feel real, which I needed to face reality of what this is and and to see how I can do this on my own. And my parents live in Greece, so everyone, they couldn't just come over for an evening. They either had to come and live with me or not at all. And it was either or. But I remember working at this corporate world I was in HR, and thinking to myself, My God, this is the most cold community, communal experience that I have to face every day, cold and cutthroat, and I remember thinking millions of other people like me around the world have to face that every day after they've gone through losing a child, losing a spouse, having gone through something so devastating, they have to kind of get dressed within a week. They have to put themselves together. And I remember having so much anxiety and crying all the way all the way there, every day, every day, and it made it worse, right? It wasn't like that's not the kind of business you want to have. So I was very inspired by how, at the time, we didn't have what we have now, by the way, a lot, there's a lot of books, there's a lot of resources. If we if there were so many books out there, then I wouldn't have written anything. I would have just read everything that was there and just got my life back together and gone to be an artist, which it took me much, like many more years to say yes to. But I say this now, but you can't change destiny, right? Brian is what it is. So I remember thinking, there's going to be another way to do this, and there's going to be a community that I can, I can create something. And I remember going at 2am one a night, in the middle of the night, thinking to myself, it's two and a half. Two years later, I feel a little better. I feel stronger. I had this fire in me, and that fire burns me as well. It's a lot of drive. I had this fire in me to create something for others, and in 2010 I resigned from my job, and that was a really big decision to make, and I started writing online, and created this Facebook page, which at the time in 2010 Facebook was just coming out, it was and I started writing just a few words, and then the words became paragraphs, and then longer, and then the blog. And I remember the when I started writing the blog, I gave myself this enough space to write because I didn't think I had any more and then that kept growing, and I started seeing how others are going through the same thing, and running my classes. And I was feeling stronger, and I was feeling better and and I guess, as I'm saying this to you now, I think, I think the work helped me heal as well. And I you won't find me say this maybe ever like I said. I'm in a lot of reflection right now, and me reading all these stories, and I. And helping others help help my own journey as well. And that's how it started. My first group was about 22 people. I will never forget it. And about a week before that, nobody had signed up. I was, you know, I created life reentry. And I was like, reenter your life. Use brain science, you know, and I had immersed myself in brain science, because nothing that I had in my toolbox was working, and that was the only thing I understood that, that actually I felt like, yes, the heart is heartbroken, but the brain is breaking in so many ways, and it's so much harder to lift the heart because the brain is the brain is afraid, and it's keeping us stuck longer. It's keeping us stuck forever longer than we have to when. And that's how it all started. And I learned everything I learned from the people.

Brian Smith  20:57  
Time for a real quick break. Make sure you like and subscribe. Liking the video, we'll show it to more people on YouTube and subscribe you will make sure you get access to all my great content in the future. And now back to the video. You know, I think it's really interesting because I I assumed that you got into this work after your your husband passed, and I'm glad I asked that question, but it also brings up from for me anyway, you know, it's very unusual, I think, for someone to go into that field as a young person not having experienced some sort of trauma, whether it's a loss of a spouse or a parent or, you know, something. So do you think that that was you used the word Destiny earlier? Do you think it was destiny? Do you think your, maybe your Higher Self knew that this was coming in some subconscious way? I mean, that's a very unusual field for someone to pick to go into. I love

Christina Rasmussen  21:49  
your question, Brian, very intelligent question, because there was definitely, like I said, you're giving me the chills, because I remember I didn't quite understand my decision either when I was doing my thesis in the stage of bereavement. And I remember thinking, I cannot imagine how they're going through this. And maybe, maybe that was preparing me for what's to come. I mean, we were, I was so young, there was no like nobody in my my family in Greece, everyone's so healthy, everyone's still alive, like I have all my aunts and my parents, like they live in the blue zone in Greece. They're living like I hadn't experienced I had a breakup, like a boyfriend cheated on me at the time. There was that was hard, obviously, but I hadn't lost anyone the year after my graduation from my master's, my very first tragedy happened, and that was before he was diagnosed. And I talk about it, but not I don't bring it up as often. Was that my, you know, we got pregnant, and I had to give birth at five months of pregnancy, and she, the little girl, passed away immediately after she was born, and at the time, that was couple of years before his diagnosis, I couldn't face that. I could not face it. I could not cope with it. I was, I couldn't understand what happened. And then he got and then we had two children. As soon as we had the second one, nine months in, he goes, he got diagnosed. And I was, I was angry, obviously, with my destiny, you know, because obviously, you're right, there must have been some kind of either the higher self or intuition or predestined, or I choose this life for myself. And I'll tell you this Brian every time, every time, because it's a hard this has been a teaching, this work and and helping people. As you know, this is not an easy thing to this is not like, like, it's not like, oh, here, let's go. Let's go help people who have gone through so much. It's, it's not like that. It's, it's very devastating many ways. And a lot of work. And I tried, I tried to say goodbye to it a few times I even tried really hard not to write this book. And I'll tell you this Brian like it was very clear, this was not my choice. It was very clear. I I especially this last book. I said this last book because, according to me right now, this is my last book on grief I will ever write. Maybe I'll write fiction. I don't know. Maybe, God knows what I'm going to do. I don't know. I have no idea. And I say that starting tomorrow, which is the book's release. And for those who are listening, the book has already released. But where we're sitting right now, I have said to myself. I'm stepping in to a very new chapter tomorrow morning, and with the release of this book in the world, I'm completing this cycle. Brian, you're a very good listener, by the way. Can I just say that? Thank you for listening. I'm completing the cycle of this, this large Chapter, Chapter of giving. And I'm saying this, I'm asking for permission maybe complete this. And I hope, and I was just writing before what got on, I hope, obviously, write a lot, especially right now. I'm writing everything. This book stops being about me, and this is my book, and it becomes about everyone else, and I hope it kind of takes my job. It that the book I gave, I gave the whole process away with this book. At the back of the book, I give people a nine week guide to every group, every facilitator they don't need me. I'm no longer teaching therapists and coaches to do like I am giving it all to everyone all these years of this work, and I feel I don't know what will happen, because I don't think we do have free will, but honestly, I don't know. I don't know how much of this is destined things are up to us. I'm really good at this, meaning I can help a lot of people that have guilt when I say, you know, I'm not going to teach again another class, or I'm not going to write another book. But I feel guilty Brian for saying that, you know,

Brian Smith  26:36  
yeah, I could, I could understand that. I mean, I can understand, you know, again, it's almost another type of loss. And I know you talk about invisible loss, and maybe you can help to find that for us, because a lot of times people, we think of grief as losing a person to death, and it is definitely that. But we can grieve all kinds of things, loss of a marriage, loss of a job, you know, a loss of innocence, lots of different things. So let's talk about other types of losses.

Christina Rasmussen  27:11  
So I want to say that around 2014 or 15 I remember teaching my classes, and most, 95% of the people at the time had had lost either a child or a spouse, and some of them multiple, a child and a spouse, two children like three children like it was. And then there were people who would come in, because the work is so much bigger than just one catastrophic event. It's about who we are as people and how we move. It's about life more than it's about grief and but I remember seeing people, so I created this concept called the waiting room, where we this is the place where we go after we experienced a loss, and we go there to recover and heal, but we step into that Survivor Mode, that survivor persona, and we end up staying there thinking, that's our new life, that's our new chapter. And what we don't know. And I've had Brian, so many people write to me afterwards say, oh my god, I was in the waiting around didn't know they didn't so that even just hearing this for the first time, frees people in many ways. So what we don't realize is that we go into place between two lives, the life we left behind and the life that we could have. We think we're already in that life, but where we are is that waiting room mindset where it's a little comfortable, we're still afraid to step outside of that comfort. It's hard, and we think it's always going to be hard, and especially for people. And this was created for those who experienced tragedies, especially for people who their tragedies five years, 10 years down the road, and they their life is, is not what it needs to be for them anymore. But they don't believe they could be any better. They don't believe that they could ever have that life, that the not a dreamy life, but a one that's close to the to what I call that original self, that self that is, that is that it's them that to say yes to the things that belong to them, to the smallest things, actually. So as time would go by and I was teaching these classes, I could see people come back to the waiting room and being getting stuck there. And it wasn't the tragedy Brian and it was so easy for me to say, to say the words that you know grief lasts forever. There's a version of grief that does last forever, and I call it remembering, and I call it memory, and I call it love, and I call it connection and attachment to that person that will always be a part of our lives. And we talked about. That in the beginning of our conversation, but we need to heal as well. We need to find our way to healing. And I would see people get something would pull them back. And I was like, it took me a long time to figure it out. And I said to myself, this something else is pulling them back. And, and I don't know what it is, and, and there's a there's an exercise in my classes and now in the book called The cleanse. And this cleanse, which I actually do right now in my on my Facebook page, public for everyone people. People just come in and do it publicly to remove the stigma of expressing grief and expressing loss from our words, I started seeing something and that something was not the grief. And people said, write down in front of everyone, everything that's on your mind right now this moment, whatever you're thinking. And Brian, I can see you're a thinking person, by the way, sure. Yeah, you have a lot of thoughts, right? And so am I? I'm actually an introvert. People think I'm an extrovert, because I talk a lot when I'm with another person, but I recharge alone, and I need a lot of alone time because I have a lot of thoughts like you, but we started seeing in these cleanses, and I say, be honest with whatever is coming to your mind right now, not not About Your loss in the past, just whatever. If that's what's coming on your mind. Now say it, but whatever you're feeling. Do you feel fear? Do you feel what are you feeling? And we started seeing a different form of loss that had to do with the way I define it is unacknowledged forms of of of loss, that I call moments of impact, that we found ourselves feeling abandoned, disregarded, isolated, rejected, public humiliation of any kind, and because of those moments and those events in our lives, we actually had To abandon the perception of who we thought we were and modified it to the perception of what others thought of us and and imagine one of the main invisible losses that I've seen, and there's many, there's 1000s of them, but the some of the themes that I've seen, One of them is being shamed in a classroom, being shamed in a meeting by by a teacher, by a figure you know, an authority figure, by your boss, in front of your peers, in front of your friends. In that moment in time, we actually forget the magnificence of who we are, the skills, the gifts that we have and we doubt ourselves, and in that doubting, we go into that survival mode when we experience a tragedy, Brian, those survivor skills, that that that survivor mindset, that voice, that protected us in those moments, comes Back to help us with the tragedy. So we actually step into the habitual nature of living in the waiting room and in survival mode and that, and the longer we stay there, the harder it is to get out. Yeah, and getting out of the weight room is not about not grieving, actually healing. Grief has a lot of tears and and raw emotions, and that's actually called Living as well. Like, like having life that, like, when we're grieving, we actually saying yes to life because we are allowing those emotions to be felt. But that anxiety that comes from suppressing grief, the anxiety that comes from suppressing ourselves, that's oppressing our life. That's the stuckness of the waiting room, and that's a very different thing. It's not the brokenheartedness that keeps us stuck, but it's the survivor mechanism that came to protect a broken heart that leaves us there.

Brian Smith  33:56  
Interesting. I had never heard that term before, waiting room, but I've definitely seen it. And as soon as you started talking about what, I'm like, okay, yeah, I get this, I see this. And I think it's really important, when we're talking to people that are in those early stages of grief, they'll ask, is it always going to be like this, or the actually, the way they'll phrase a lot of times, is, Will I always grieve? And I'm like, these are two different questions. Yes. The answer to one is yes. The answer to the other is no. The grief I anticipate. It's been nine years for me since Shayna passed. I anticipate I will grieve Shayna for as long I like what David Kessler says. He says, People ask me, How long are you going to grieve? He's like, how long are you planning on being alive? I agree with him completely and but it's not the same. It's not the it's not the waiting room. It's not the it's not that that feeling of hopelessness, and it's not that feeling that I don't want to be here anymore. I think a big part of that also is like you, and I believe that our life with our loved one does go on. They have gone on. It's not the that. Tragedy that we think it is when it, when it happens in the moment, there are, there are silver linings that come along with it as well. So I, again, I really appreciate that, that term, as far as I've heard it that, and I'll put that way, but I think it gives it something very, very real. We can kind of picture that, that that thing, and that that time can be six months, two years, three years, 10 years, you know, it could be as long as you choose to stay there.

Christina Rasmussen  35:28  
Yeah, and also people who have not had tragedies. And this is this book is about, yes, this book is perfect for anyone who's gone through tragedy. But what I want to create in the world is take grief out of the fringe. You know, I don't know that's the expression. Take it out of the sidelines and bring it to the forefront and say that we are all grieving something. Yeah, we all go through these devastating moments, and then we try to suppress them because they're they're seen as complaining. I want to create a world where Brian, we feel free to cry, to share a moment of impact that put us in the waiting room so we can get out. Because unless we we talk about it, unless we process it and understand it. And the tricky thing about invisible loss. And it took me three different drafts this this book. Took me three complete rewrites of the book. And since this was the third book, here's my big head coming in thick, I can do this. No problem at all in the time allocated No It took much longer, and and, and shame on me for not understanding that something that we have not been able to articulate and use language to explain and express how, how could I put it in writing, in a book where I wouldn't even be there, this wouldn't this wouldn't be in a class setting, that people would take this book by themselves and Go through it on their own, and to make it understandable and also easy for them to discover their own invisible loss, because there are so many different versions we you and I can have the same experience, exactly the same moment of impact, and it would impact us so differently. Yes, yeah, and we have to have empathy for the other person. Just because this didn't impact me the same way as you, doesn't mean that it doesn't break your heart.

Brian Smith  37:32  
Yeah, absolutely. I'm actually working with a client right now who lives in Israel, and you know what happened there on October 7, you know, it's interesting because I talked to two different people that went through the same event and have very different, you know, feelings about it. Some some people are like, Okay, well, I'm back to life as normal. And other people like, I'm still traumatized by this. I, you know, I can't, I can't even think about, you know, going back to my home or whatever, and, and either reaction, neither one is, is right or wrong. We all have different responses. I think people started getting a little bit of an indication of this, because you talk about moments of impact, I think of covid, because when you said the words, we're all grieving now, yes, we were going through covid, that's one thing I kept saying, We're all we're all grieving now we can't, we can't leave our houses. We can't we can't go to work, we can't get together with friends and family. You know, we had a real sense of what it's like to lose the way that we live, and everybody felt vulnerable. So that was, that was a moment of impact that on our society, on everybody,

Christina Rasmussen  38:35  
yeah, and I used to say, when everyone tell my gosh, everyone just went in the waiting room, and I was like, Wow. I never thought in my lifetime, or in any lifetime, I would ever see see the work like literally land in in everyone's life, everyone. Some people actually and the being that invisible loss is different for everyone. Some people found it great to not have to go to work. Some people found it freeing. It changed their life. They never went back to the life they left behind. Other people found it the worst thing in the world, because they had to work with their kids, the small kids in the house. They had to face their partners. People got divorced after having to live with the same person that barely saw because they had two different work schedules. There were so many versions of life re entry afterwards that I saw that blew my mind, and I remember I was writing this book, and the proposal of this book went out to the publishers literally around the end of that, towards the end of that covid period of time, and and I said to I remember my agent and everyone, I said, we're going to see a lot of books coming out about grief, as long as we can all carry that forward. And after the you. Kind of fashionable thing to do is to talk about grief, is to continue talking about it, and to continue to look at our lives beyond the covid era and beyond what happened, and to see it in other parts of our existence and invisible loss is about the loss of self, ultimately, and we lose ourselves when we are impacted in a way that is traumatic to our heart, and it's invisible to others, and it's also invisible to us because we don't actually understand what's happening to us. And I want to share a story that I started sharing during these interviews, and at first I was uncomfortable sharing it, and but then the more we share invisible losses, I think the better our life is, and the better everyone's life around us is as well. And someone said to me, I want to talk to you about loss because about this invisible loss, because you have gone through tragedy, but then you also have created a space for others who haven't to to talk about grief in a in a way that gives them validation as well. And and there's such a fine balance. But my there was one experience, one moment of impact, that I was blown away, that impacted me, Brian, you and I, a lot of you who are listening, I imagine, have gone through what I say, unthinkable tragedies. And I used to write and say because we've been through this unthinkable tragedy, we can do the most impossible things because we're so strong. We are warriors. We we've been through these horrible things, and we we found our way to the other side, and we're tough. So when this happened to me, and I will share the story, I was shocked as to why. I broke down and cried my eyes out for the whole night afterwards me, I said to myself, I am like, I've been through so much. Not only I've been through so much, I've seen so much like I am tough as nails, like so I was, I was in New York City, and I was at an event with fellow authors, and I got invited to this dinner party, dinner place afterwards with five or six Other authors. I was, I'm like, oh, maybe I'm also cool, you know, finally, or however, was I thinking this? Like, oh, wow, I'm invited. You know, I felt great about it. And we're all human. It's important to share this behind the scenes, moments and and I remember I'm waiting there to go with everyone. And this woman starts to approach me, this, this the girl that invited me, and she comes to me, and I was sitting on the other side of this room. She said, Christina, I I'm so sorry. She goes, I have to uninvite you. You can't come to the dinner party. Wow. I said, What do you mean? What do you mean? Said, I'm sorry, you can't come. And I remember sitting there, and she said, I'm sorry, and she I have to go. And she walks there, and I had to walk towards the elevator with the five or six authors that were all going to dinner, they all knew I wasn't coming, and I had to get into the elevator with them and go downstairs, and they had to take a right and have take a left. And Brian, that was a moment of impact for me, someone who's been through so much loss, someone who's experienced tragedy at least twice, two big events that I was sitting there crying minds out like a little girl High School. Yeah. How could that be? I know now how that could be, because it's, it's you're ashamed, you're embarrassed, you're you're being rejected publicly, or you're being seen as not good enough. And it took me down to my knees, and it took me a while to overcome this, and I really had a lot of thoughts about it, and I started to really pay attention to these moments, not just for myself, but for everyone else. And and learned that these are devastating events that can actually put us in the waiting room and change the perception of self completely. And now we know we have low self worth. We think of ourselves as less, and we don't dare go out there for bigger opportunities and for the for the things that we so deserve, for the life that we want to live. So when then we get hit by another tragedy after this. Now imagine that survivor mindset comes in to help us, and it puts us further into that waiting room and we hide and we go under the bed, metaphorically speaking, and we never want to come out and. Very again, because it's not worth it, and life is really hard, right?

Brian Smith  45:03  
Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that story. I think it's really, really important that that we people understand, and the more that we share stories like that, the more people understand that they're normal, they're okay. Because we think, Okay, well, that's not a big deal. I should I shouldn't feel this way about that. And that's, you know, intellectually speaking, maybe it's not, but we, we are human beings. We have emotions, we have feelings, and it's important to acknowledge those feelings. And so many people are we're ashamed, right? Because, oh, you know, people will tell you shouldn't feel that way. Well, I never tell anybody you shouldn't feel anyway you feel the way you feel. Yes, and it's important to acknowledge that, acknowledge and to understand it, right? You're, you're shamed. You feel like your persona has been attacked. So that's, that's okay, you know,

Christina Rasmussen  45:51  
had anything like that happen to you? Brian, um,

Brian Smith  45:56  
I've been fired from a job. So, yeah, I remember being, you know, fired from a job. My daughter was, was nine months old, and it wasn't, it wasn't my fault. It was something so long story, but something that someone else did. In fact, I actually went to management and said, This guy did this thing, and it was wrong, but what he had done was the customer, the customers, threatening to sue the company. So they're like, everybody that was in the room, we're just going to fire all of you. And they fired my boss too. So it was one of those moments where I felt like, Okay, this is unjust. This is unfair. You know, I'm like, I'm going to sue them. I'm going to get a lawyer, you know, all those things. And this is what's interesting about perspective. It's been 27 years now, because it was when Kayla was nine months old. Best thing that happened, it was, it was time for me to move on from that company, and I wasn't willing to do it. So I think it was the universe saying, move along. And that's the way I view things now, with the with the with the advantage of being able to look at it from, you know, 27 years later. But yeah, I do, I do understand that feeling, you know, a little bit. And again, really important for us to acknowledge that there are all types of losses. And I love this, because people that come to me, you know, they said, Well, do I have to have to loss a person to work with you? And I'm like, No,

Christina Rasmussen  47:18  
I'm so glad people coming to you for other things, because you know how the work you're doing has to do with, with, with the human, human, the human as a whole, versus an event. It's something that has happened.

Brian Smith  47:31  
Yeah, exactly. And all these techniques that we talk about, the tools that we're giving people can be used for all their life is full of this. Life is full of things that don't go the way we want them to go. And all these things apply to all different types of losses. You use some some language. I want to get some definitions on. Talked about the survivor, the watcher and the thriver. Let's talk about who they are. Oh, my God,

Christina Rasmussen  47:55  
let me just start by saying the very first time I wrote about them was for my first book, second, first, and I remember thinking, the world is they're going to love me or think I'm crazy. I was afraid, I said to myself, but this is what I'm seeing in my work. I so every person you meet has these three narrators, these different parts of ourselves and one, the one part comes from that survival mindset, that fear center, the amygdala center, the protective part of us, that the voice that you hear inside of you says, I don't think you should leave the house right today, because there's a work going on outside. And that's Metaphorically speaking, like, I don't think you should date this person. Because remember what happened last time you went on a date? You shouldn't go after this job, because you're probably not going to get it. That is the survivor self, like hide, lie to this person, because if they, if you tell them the truth, they're going to reject you. There's a part of us that is in survival mode all the time, and I would say, before anyone works on themselves, as they're going by their day, and they're living their life, and they feel this burden when they wake up. They feel this heaviness. They sigh. They go, Gosh, here we go. It's Tuesday. Oh, my God, that when you feel like that every day, I would say, and I've met so many people, and I know you've met them, Brian too, I would say that survivor voice occupies 68% of your of your thoughts. You're afraid, you have anxiety, you're you're not speaking your mind. You're not showing up as yourself. You're not showing up as that authentic, original self. You're far from it. Actually, you're pleasing other people. You're making sure that that they get what they need from you, so they don't reject you. That's where people pleasing comes from that the survivor self. But then as you do the work, the work reminds you that there's a part of you that is a witness, that is what I call the watcher, and someone who's been watching over you from the beginning, that's the part of you, Brian that has all the wisdom from all the hard experiences. Remember we just said to. Me looking back at that event of losing your job was the best thing that could happen to you, because it was time for you to move on, and you wouldn't have left otherwise, and you learned so much from looking at it. That's that wise voice that we actually suppress so much because we are in survival mode. We don't hear it. We actually cannot listen to our own wisdom. We forget it completely. And I would say that occupies on a regular day without doing any of the work, or any work whatsoever, 15% so we are 95% and there's the 5% of that thriver kid like self, that part of you, Brian, that's playful, that is not afraid to go out and have fun and enjoy themselves and be who you are and you're like a kid. Over the years, I have this exercise in the book that I used to do in my classes, where I call it the bridge to the thriver self, and I help people access a memory from the past that they were thriving in. Because when you're in survival mode for so long, you actually can connect to that part of you at all. You're disconnected from it. A lot of people can't, can't see themselves as playful, as having fun, as saying yes to themselves. And I remember there was one guy and this happened, I would say, Gosh, after I wrote the first book, before I was really understanding invisible loss and finding the words for it. And I remember this guy in my class raising his hand and saying, I don't remember my thriver. I don't have a thriver self. I don't have memories that are good. And I remember thinking to myself, my first response was, like, that's not possible. How can you not we all born as babies that giggle and like, we're born to play and have fun with our friends and neighborhood, you know? But what happens is, when we are surviving for so long, when we and there's so much research and studies on that. And when I was writing the book, I was blown away by the by the truth of what I'm going to say next. We revisit the memories that keep us afraid and in the waiting room a lot more than the memories that help us feel free and exit, right? And the less time we spent remembering the good times, the more deleting of these memories we are doing, and we don't know it. And actually, when we have not thought about something that we enjoy doing, we were free. We were in that innocent place where we were not afraid of anything. We hadn't experienced loss. When we forgotten that place, it feels as if it never happened. We actually cannot remember it, because the visit to that surviving experience, to that remember you remember how it was. It was so hard then make sure you don't lose your job. Because when you lose your job, you have a baby, you have family, you better not talk to your boss like that. You better not tell them the truth anymore, right? You better be very careful. So we forgot the goodness of the things that happened in the past, because those things do not protect us. Actually, those things open the door to the weight room, and we are we are then free to go and and experience more loss, and we don't want that. So it's very important to have access to that witness and watcher and self, and then the thriver self, but the survivor self, the part of us that keeps protected. Unfortunately, we can decrease that percentage. We can change the script. I call it mental stacking. We can actually rewrite that survivor voice and keep it in control. But unfortunately, Brian, after all these years, I've been doing this work for 14 years, we can never get rid of the survivor self. Can you believe it? I tried, yeah,

Brian Smith  53:54  
yeah, no, that's absolutely true. You know, it's interesting as you as you use the terms you were talking about it, I used to teach something called Positive Intelligence, which you may be familiar with, and it's similar. The term we use is saboteurs. So we have the saboteurs, and then we have the sage. And so you were talking about the survivor, I'm thinking saboteurs. And the thing is, they're designed to keep us safe, you know, and we we have to have that where as human beings, we have to have the voices says, don't walk in front of the bus. It will kill you, because the bus will kill you. But the thing is, is it says to you, like, I'm here to protect you. You need me. You've got to hold on to me. You can't let me go. I'm the one that got you to where you are today. Without me, you would, you wouldn't have gotten this far. That's right,

Christina Rasmussen  54:40  
that's exactly what it says, and it lies to you, in many ways, it there's a lot of truth and facts, but there's a lot of future catastrophizing. And I talk about this in the book, and I say, you know, it's, it's most people are so afraid to leave the waiting room because they survivor says you'll have to make a big jump. Life, in your life, to actually change your life. And that is not true. You do not have to. Actually, I don't believe leap and the the net will appear like No, do not leap, especially if you've experienced a tragic loss. You I called this another, another term is the plugin. And I remember, and I always go like this, because I always saw this plug in my hand. I'm a very visual person. I saw everything in front of me. I see the weight room. I see the life before the weight room. I see the life after the weight room. I literally see the map in my mind. Brian, I can't run away from myself, but so I'm like, I'm as I'm writing, as I'm coming, coming with this, this, map, this, this process. All these years ago, I said to myself, we just have to plug into this new life. Just a plug. Just plug in. And how can we do that? We do that by taking a step in the right direction, not any step, by only allowing a 5% risk or fear. So the step has to be rewarding. It has to feel good. It has to rewrite some of the fears in your mind and say, Well, that wasn't so bad. The bear wasn't out there to get me when I left. You know, nobody like, nobody died, nobody like, I actually got out and came back in and I feel safe. And actually, as a matter of fact, I feel better. So we start to create these mental stacks where we we see what's inside the mind, we see how much of that survivor voice is, and we try to step into that wisdom that we have inside, to change that script, and then to take action from the part of you that is very wise, because when we're taking extra action from the part that is trying to protect us. Yes, there may be a bear somewhere, especially if we're in a cabin up in the woods somewhere, right? But ultimately, 99.9% of the time the bear is not outside of our house. Again, this is a metaphor, right? And the survivor self says it is, and if you get out there again, you're going to be hurt again, and you're not going to be able to recover this time, especially when we're going through so much visible, invisible, traditional, non traditional, there's people, as you know, from your community, not only they've gone through a death and a loss, but they've gone through multiple divorces and breakups and lots of children and and lots of jobs. They have experienced everything, and you're thinking, how is that possible for one person to go through so much they're never going to leave unless, unless we find that 5% risk free step for them, a way to remember that thriver self, a way to even have a glimpse that actually they know there's a good life that's possible for them, even even an internal change, right? Someone asked me the other day, so life reentry can also be just how we feel inside. That changes about this is your life can look exactly the same, and I say exactly right, it it doesn't have to look like you move town and you change your house and you know you you left your marriage and like this is not, this is not life. Reentry is about life. Reentry is about it is that too, but it's about your perception of self and how you view life going forward, and that you increase that thriver a little bit, and that water a little more, and your survival cell goes to 50% maybe, and then your choices are changing, right? Brian, yeah.

Brian Smith  58:33  
Well, the thing is, life is always coming at us, and life always will come at us. And it was, it's so interesting having this conversation next I was just talking with the client this morning, and he said, I'm so tired of outside circumstances dictating how I behave, you know, because he we're working on some things, trying to, you know, get him to do some, some better behaviors. And he goes, I could still do this. I could still do the things I want to do. I'm I'm using these outside things as excuses. And he goes, I don't want to do that anymore. I'm like, That's it. That's, that's the secret. Because we can't change the world. We can't change what's going to happen around us, but we can always change how we respond to it. So life, reentry, yes, outside stuff, great. And I, and I'm a big believer in baby steps. I use. It's from an old movie. What About Bob? It's psychologist is telling baby steps. Because I tell clients, I want you to have success. The thing is, if you set goals that are too big, they're too audacious, and you try to go from A to Z, and you fail, then you won't try again. So let's go from A to B, and from B to C, and from C to D, and then eventually you'll get to where you want to go. It's

Christina Rasmussen  59:40  
a long alphabet, right? Yeah, long alphabet. And that's, that's the beauty of it, Brian, right?

Brian Smith  59:46  
It's a journey, right? Exactly, exactly. So I love, you know, I love your your your process, and I love the terminology using. I like the visualizations. I like that because when you when I heard waiting room, I could picture a waiting room, and I can pick. Someone sitting in the room, there's a door on the other side of it, and they're just sitting there. And, yeah, you know, get up and get up and walk to the door.

Christina Rasmussen  1:00:07  
And I want to say also, the more intelligent you are, the more invisible your losses, and you don't know you're in the waiting room. Yeah. And I want to speak to that because the survivor self becomes more and more intelligent, the more you're actually out. You try to outsmart it, right? And I was in a very big waiting room that I couldn't see for a really long time. I was like, Look, I'm living my dream life. I've done so much, I've I've done so many things that I thought were impossible, like look at, look at all the things I've done, but then I was struggling, and I didn't know exactly why, and I wasn't I wasn't sure how I was going to find my way. And I share this with people, because I created this work. I have experienced many life reentering myself. I've seen a witness, 1000s of others. But I want to say that if I struggle with this, it's okay that you struggle with like I believe in in in being able to outsmart that survivor self. But the more you're aware, sometimes the harder it gets. And it was least last December I started having panic attacks Brian. And I was like, what? I'm sure I'm having a heart attack. I was immediately, I'm about to die. This is it? This is this. Is it. This is what's gonna happen. I have very funny survivor self inside my head sometimes. And I went to my doctor and she's like, you know, these are just panic attacks you're having. What's is something coming? What's coming to you in your life? And it was, I was in December, was it six months away from the book? And I was a, I the writing had ended, the book had been submitted, and now I had to start putting myself back out into the public arena, and that for me, has always been a hard thing, but because I had changed my life so much in the last five years, I went back to school. I was studying art. I want to see myself as an artist. I was had changed my life so much that I was so afraid of losing the life that I had found myself in, and I panicked. So what I had to do was see that the waiting was a metaphorical it was an internal experience. So I had to find a way, somehow in the next few months, to get where I am today and feel really great about it, Brian and that I did my friend, and that was not easy. It took a lot of the stack that called it the mental stack. It took a lot of plugging in in ways that were more than 5% risk, because I didn't have the time I needed to get to where I am now. I started working out more, moving my body more, I started to do all these reframe exercises that's part of the stack. And reframe, reframe, like I journal, cleanse, I mean, and I couldn't believe I actually, no matter what happens tomorrow, Brian, I feel like my this latest life reentry in the way that it's happened, and look how happy I'm. I mean, I love having these conversations now, and I was so afraid of them, and I've had so many I've I've had so many conversations, so many interviews. I've done two other books like I was shocked as as I was feeling like this, but getting here and feeling as good as I do, I want to tell anyone listen to how to what your mind is telling you from that survivor place so you can change it. What are you really afraid of? What is the thing that you don't share with others because you feel like they won't understand. I want you to start sharing that I'm here talking with you, Brian, sharing. Actually, it's harder to share invisible loss than traditional loss for me.

Brian Smith  1:04:15  
Yeah, well, it makes sense, because again, we intellectualize and we rationalize and we say, well, I shouldn't feel this way. This is, this is embarrassing. So, yeah, I appreciate you doing that. I think it's really important that we do that, because we have to model this behavior for other people. You know, so many times, you know, I'll be working with a client, and they'll break down, they'll start crying, and then they'll apologize for crying, like, don't, this is a good thing, yeah, you know, I'm like, this is a good thing. Don't, don't you feel better now that you've let that out. You know, don't ever apologize for crying and don't ever apologize for your feelings. I if you're angry about something, if someone, if you lost a loved one, whether it's through cancer or suicide or whatever, it's not, it's normal to feel angry sometimes. Times that they left you, and people will then, well, then they feel guilty that they feel angry. And I'm like, don't feel guilty that you feel angry. You know, Anger is an emotion. Emotions are meant to they're there for a reason, and we have to let them go through us. And someone

Christina Rasmussen  1:05:13  
asked me in one of the interviews, what's the difference between invisible, lost grief and traditional lost grief? And there is actually a big difference, and I want people to know that just because they're different, it doesn't mean they can't have received the same amount of compassion. You have people who take their life and we don't understand why we say they had everything right, everything right, and they I didn't know they were suffering. Nobody knew. And I'm trying to help people understand it's not your fault that we, we live in a world, in a in a collective place where we're not allowing people to express this type of losses with with respect.

Brian Smith  1:06:04  
Yeah, that's a really, really good point, because I remember Naomi Osaka, the tennis player, came out a couple years ago, and talked about all this stress that she was under and and she let it out, you know, and some people criticize her, because, again, it's like, well, you have everything you know, you're number two in the world, and you're you're young, and you're beautiful, and you have everything. And there was a pro golfer that just took his life a couple of weeks ago, 30 year old guy on the tour, and I was reading the article, so my wife was like, this guy wasn't like, he sucked either. He was good. You know, he was, he was competitive. We don't know what's going on in people's lives. We so we need to honor all types of loss and all types of grief that people going through. So the invisible losses are just as important to our mental health as their traditional losses. Yeah, and

Christina Rasmussen  1:06:52  
they feel different. It's if someone looks successful and competitive and they look like they're on top of the world. They might be very depressed. People don't, my gosh, like they might feel as if this success has dropped them from who they are. You We don't know. We do not know what they're going through. They may think there's no way out of that. They They may think that they can't change their life, they can't leave the profession, they can't walk away from money. They can't walk away from the job that it's providing for their families, right? There's so many things, and they are too afraid and too ashamed to even share something like this. And I'm not saying that suicide is preventable. I don't know enough to say that, but what I'm saying is that we will live in a better world if we allow permission, if we give permission for people to express these moments of impact, that that changes the way we see our life and ourselves, and if only we can talk to someone that that that can Listen and have true, not fake compassion, but true compassion Brian that gets it. And I feel like you are that person for your clients and for your community. I mean, I can feel it just by sitting in front of you without knowing we've never met before, but I know this about you. Well, I

Brian Smith  1:08:15  
thank you. I appreciate that, because I feel that's really important for people. Because I had a guy who his cat died. And, you know, he sent me a, you know, he sent me a thing to have a discovery session. We were talking, I, he said he lost his best friend. I, I assumed it was a person. And then as we were talking, he said something about his cat, and I'm like, Oh, this is terrible. He lost his best friend, and he lost his cat, and he's like, No, it was my it was my cat and, and it's like, I'm feeling, you know, real grief. And I'm like, that's fine. That's That's okay. I had a guy that he caught. He was actually in South America, and he we had a session. He had his cat. Didn't even die. He just lost his cat. It was gone for a couple days, and he goes, I feel really silly, you know, talking to you about this, because I know people have much bigger losses, and I'm like, no every loss, every loss, needs to be honored. So I really appreciate the work that you're doing, and I really appreciate you giving people permission to mourn everything, whether it's because you didn't get invited to a dinner party or whether it's you know, because your life is changing in a way that you really don't know where it's going to go. We all, we all feel there's a there's that safety part of us, that survivor part of us that says, just stay where you are. Just Just stay here, even if something looks like it's good on the surface. You got this, you got a great new job. It's a job you've always wanted. But then that goes well, what if it doesn't work out? You know? What if they find out you're not as good as they think you are, yes,

Christina Rasmussen  1:09:44  
yes. And I love that you mentioned pet loss, because I've gotten some of these emails too, where I think it's a person, and actually it's, it's, it's a cat or a dog. And when I lost my my dog, Tyson, a few years ago, I. I wrote about it, the response to the blog about me losing my dog, with 1000s of stories from people who lost their dogs from a community that has experienced human tragedy, this was coming from them, because ultimately, we feel the most unconditional love from our dog or a cat, because they're with us in our most lonely times. They're the only existence that is next to us. There's nobody else, and it's the most one of the most horrific losses, and nobody gives you the time or space to grieve the pet that was with you for 1015, 20 years. For cats, especially, they live for a really long time. Dogs, I remember thinking, while the response is was out of this world, sharing their own, their own experience with their the loss of their pet. And in all the best seller list of grief right now, there's a book Higher, higher ranking than mine, that is about pet loss, or losing your dog, or something like that. And I was like, That's great. Yeah, that is great, because we finally starting, starting where, not where we need to be to live in a world that understands the human condition, Brian that understands the human condition where vulnerable beings the need to process. They need to be seen, they need to be loved, they need to be understood, and we need to have companionship around us that we go through this path, this journey together and these conversations will make this future possible, and without these conversations, I think, I think it's going to be a dangerous world otherwise. That's why I'm so grateful for saying yes to this not and we've both gone through tragedy. We have listeners who have gone through a lot of tragedy, and to allow space within this community to talk about moments within ourselves that are catastrophic and devastating, but they don't look like someone died. That's about loving ourselves and saying yes, yes to all parts of us.

Brian Smith  1:12:14  
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Christina, we're coming to the end of our time. I want to thank you so much for doing this today. Thank you for the work that you do. Thank you for the book that's coming out. It'll it's going to be it is out now, as people listen to this, please remind people the name of your book and where people can reach you.

Christina Rasmussen  1:12:30  
I If, if that's the only one thing you do after this conversation is the first thing I say, tell someone about your invisible law. Share and you mentioned the beginning, Brian, to go to the community that you have, that you have created, afterwards, to talk about your invisible losses. If nothing else, go grab it on Amazon. It's literally a handbook, like it's it's going to take you on a journey. My website is christinara.com i i hope this book finds its way to coaches and therapists and and people that they pass it on to someone else that they they read it with, with a friend. They go through this journey together. And I hope I will. I don't need to write another book that this is it. This is and why. At the back of the book I give, I give the whole work to everyone to take it into their support groups and and to work with it, with the people in our lives, very grateful for this journey and and I'm feeling very joyful having had this conversation with you, Brian. So thank you for having me here today. Yeah, me

Brian Smith  1:13:34  
too. Thanks for being here. Have a great rest of your day.

Christina Rasmussen  1:13:36  
Thank you, Brian. You

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