🌱 Finding Meaning in Grief with David Kessler 🌱 EP 391

In this deeply insightful episode of Grief 2 Growth, host Brian Smith welcomes the world’s foremost grief expert, David Kessler, to explore how we can find meaning in grief. David, a grief counselor and author of Finding Meaning: The Grief Workbook, shares his personal experience of losing his son and provides practical tools for processing grief. Brian and David dive into the emotional, spiritual, and psychological aspects of healing after profound loss.

David has worked alongside iconic figures in the grief field like Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and Louise Hay, and his experience as a grief educator and counselor offers invaluable wisdom to anyone seeking hope in their grief journey.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:
- How to move from feeling "buried" by grief to feeling "planted" for growth 🌱
- David’s personal story of losing his son and how it transformed his approach to grief counseling 🕊️
- Practical tools for **finding meaning in grief** and navigating complicated emotions such as guilt, anger, and regret
- The importance of balancing the spiritual and human aspects of the grieving process 🙏
- How to take small steps toward healing, even when the pain feels overwhelming

About Our Guest:
David Kessler is the world’s leading authority on grief, with decades of experience guiding thousands through the most difficult moments of their lives. He has co-authored books with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, including *On Grief and Grieving*, and worked with Louise Hay on *You Can Heal Your Heart*. David’s latest work, *Finding Meaning: The Grief Workbook*, provides actionable tools for navigating grief and finding peace.

Resources Mentioned:
- David Kessler’s Website https://grief.com
- Finding Meaning: The Grief Workbook by David Kessler https://griefbook.com


- 👉 Have you been able to find meaning in your grief? Share your story with us in the Grief 2 Growth community: http://grief2growth.com/community)
- 💬 What’s one tool from David Kessler’s advice that resonated with you? Leave a comment or review to let us know!

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

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

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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 there. I'm Brian Smith. I'm your host of grief to growth and where we explore life's most profound questions, who we are, why we're here, and where we're going, especially through the lens of grief and personal transformation. So whether you're joining us for the first time, you've been in this journey with us for a while. I'm grateful that you're here, and today is a very special day. Today I'm honored to have with me and one of the most respected voices in grief counseling. His name is David Kessler. You probably already know who David is, but he's the world's foremost expert on grief with decades of experience guiding 1000s through the darkest moments of their lives. You may recognize David from his work with legends like Elizabeth Cooper Ross, with whom he co authored on grief and grieving and life lessons. He's also worked with Louise Hay on you can heal your heart, and has acclaimed books like finding meaning in the needs of the dying continue to offer profound insights and to navigate life's most difficult moments. David's unique experience from working with terminally ill patients to serving as a Los Angeles Police Department reserve officer, gives an unparalleled understanding of both the medical and emotional aspects of grief. He's also been featured on major platforms like CNN, PBS and the Dr Oz Show. In a day, we're gonna be diving deep into topics from his latest release. I happen to have David here on launch day, and it's called finding meaning grief workbook, which, again, just hits bookstores, actually, today. Now I've had the privilege of personally learning from David through his grief educator certification, and I had the honor of introducing David at the helping parents heal conference in 2022 so I'm I'm so I'm very familiar with David's work, and his work continues to inspire so many people, including myself. David and I also share the fact that we have both had children who have transitioned. I don't like to use the word loss, but David and I both have children who have transitioned, so we've got that in common as well. In our conversation, we'll explore self reflective tools for releasing pain, for navigating complicated grief and for finding meaning and loss. So stay with us as we uncover the wisdom of David's work, and join me afterwards at grief to growth.com/community to continue the conversation with there with that. Like to welcome David Kessler,

David Kessler  3:02  
great to be with you here and see you again.

Brian Smith  3:05  
Yeah, I'm really excited to have you here. David, as I said, you know, I've taken your grief educators program, I've introduced you to helping parents heal. So I feel like I know you a little bit now, you are one of the world's foremost experts on grief, and you've been working in the grief field for a long time, but I know you've also experienced the loss of your son. So how did that have things changed for you since you know before that, and what did you learn actually going through that grief yourself?

David Kessler  3:34  
Well, you know, I had so much pain when I was a child with my mother's death, she was in one of the first mass shootings of the US while she was dying at a hospital, and I will tell you, I thought my pain was behind me, and my role in life was helping others. And when my younger son died unexpectedly, I was thrown back into the epicenter of pain. And, you know, I don't know whether it's that, I think it's we just can't know anyone else's pain when you're not in it, or whether my pain had been so long ago. I mean, I knew how horrible it was in my childhood, but when I was thrown back into the epicenter of it, I wanted to write every parent I had counseled a note saying I didn't know the pain was that bad, and I also had a, you know, this mind of my work, that had to take my own medicine. I had to go to a grief counselor. I had to go to a grief group. And, by the way, Brian, I. Handout, go to a grief counselor, go to a grief group like it was candy. Okay, yeah, you go to a grief group. Let me know how that goes. I live in Los Angeles, when I had to go to a grief group, it took me three times my friend, I got to the group and there was no parking. I couldn't go in. The next time there was too much traffic, I couldn't get there. I forgot how hard it was to show up for yourself in pain. And not only that, I also had had that experience of going to a grief group, and I wanted to be the grief expert, and I had to sit in a chair five feet from my own books, had a cap on. No one knew that was me, and I couldn't say, oh, that's me over there. I'm the grief expert. I had to be the father that had to bury a child. So it's been a real huge experience in my life, as anyone would know that it would be,

Brian Smith  6:23  
I appreciate you sharing that. I think it's really important for us to understand that it's difficult to go through this. And you know, sometimes I find people that just don't seem like they're quite ready to do that thing right, to take that step, to go to the grief group, or go see a grief guide or grief grief expert, because it's just so it's, it's like, it's, you really can't understand it till you've been

David Kessler  6:46  
through it, right? Yeah, absolutely. And to understand, you know, when someone's like, oh, well, here's what someone else did when they were in pain. Like, okay, they had a different loved one. I'm a different person. Our pain is all different because our relationships and our loved ones are so different.

Brian Smith  7:10  
And that's another really good point that that the relationships are different, because we do find we're not supposed to compare grief, but we do find ourselves, right? And I was actually once talking to someone once, and I said, there's nothing like losing a child. And they reminded me they just lost a spouse, and they said, you know, it's all different. We can't You can't quantify grief.

David Kessler  7:33  
Well, let's talk about that. Brian, you know the important thing is around this is people always want to know whose grief is the worst, and it would be easy, and I could get a lot of traction on it's probably a child's death. But then someone says, but you don't understand, my spouse of 50 years was murdered in front of me, and I'm like, Oh, I don't know that. I can say that wasn't as hard as mine. That sounds pretty hard there. That sounds pretty gruesome. And then, you know, there's this thing about, well, there must be a hierarchy, which is the worst death? Is it a child? Is it a spouse? Is it a murder? Is it a long illness where they're dying? You know, inch by inch, is it, you know, all these different things. And I always say the worst loss is yours. Worst loss is yours. I mean Brian, I can't know. I really can't even compare my loss and yours. We both had children that died. I you know, you could talk about it for a week, and I still will never know what it's like to be Brian and have to say goodbye, and nor will you know what it's like to be me. So the truth is, we can never know anyone else's grief, right? So the challenge becomes this, to understand when we're comparing, we're in our mind, not in our heart, and we don't have a broken mind. We have a broken heart. But the other piece is, if you run across someone who's going, How dare them go on and on about their fiance, or can you believe she's going on and on about her miscarriage or her stillbirth? I mean, have a 16 year old child, you know, all whatever anyone's saying, they're getting too much for their loss. What we're really saying is my grief hasn't been witnessed enough I have if I'm saying. Saying Brian shouldn't be getting all that sympathy. I'm really telling people I haven't gotten enough. That's often what sometimes underlying it. And I have what I call security in my grief. Anyone around me can talk about their grief. I live in a world where there's room enough for all our griefs. Your grief doesn't take away from mine. It's not like a sum total pie that if Brian gets more, David has less. That's the reality. And you know, I say to people, sometimes I go, but David, just between us three parents, you gotta know it's the worst. And I'll say, You know what, a younger my older son walked in and found his brother. He's still so devastated. I don't know that I can tell them that grief doesn't count as much as mine. I think all tears count.

Brian Smith  11:08  
Yeah, that is such a brilliant observation. And I noticed even in helping parents heal organizations that I'm part of, we I don't know what it is about human nature we tend to want to do that, you know. And I know parents who have lost their children over long periods of time, as you said, and that sounds horrible and horrifying, but you know, then we'll say, well, at least they got to say goodbye with me and my daughter was was sudden. So sometimes we do still have that, that human nature that says, I want to compare mine to yours,

David Kessler  11:44  
right? And it's a way that we distance ourselves from connecting with one another, yeah, yeah, distance ourselves. And that's a sad part that you know, the more we can go all tears. Count yours. Doesn't take away from mine.

Brian Smith  12:06  
Yes, I think that's, I think that's a wonderful observation that we all need to keep in mind as as we go through this. And I'm curious now you're, you're the foremost expert on grief people. Everybody knows.

David Kessler  12:19  
There's a bunch of us, one of them. So I want to ask you, here's one of the other things. I say everyone is listening here who has probably had to become a reluctant expert on grief?

Brian Smith  12:30  
Yeah, yeah, we're all experts. So, so my question for you is, which experts do you look to? What? Who inspires you?

David Kessler  12:40  
You know, I gotta tell you, there's people like in my online tender hearts group, there are people who have been with us. They're even now, they're helping as moderators for other people. And I see the pain they showed up in, and I see where they have gone from and what they have gone through. And so I think they're, they're really my heroes with this. And you know, one of the things that, as you know, with the grief educator program and with my online group, I the real teachers of me have been the people who have been in grief and who I've gotten the privilege to work with. And you know, with this new workbook I have, it's really so much of what I've seen in the people, and they're the true heroes to me that they found ways to work through their what ifs and their guilts and their if onlys and and all those things that I think you know, the day to day people are the ones I look up to

Brian Smith  13:51  
the most. Yeah, yeah, thank you. That's a great that's a great answer. Now I know for for myself, spirituality has played a big role in my my processing for my grief. What role does spirituality play for you, or what do you recommend for people that are going through grief in terms of spiritual practice?

David Kessler  14:09  
Well, I think one of the challenges is sometimes unknowingly, we comfort people with spirituality. And if you walk into your clergy, or you open a conversation about spirituality, you want that, and you expect that. Unfortunately, there's times people are in the human experience. I'll give you an example. Someone says, David, live in a neighborhood right around the school. My child came home every day. I gave them a snack. I heard them run outside. I heard all the kids. Playing outside every day. That happened all the time, and David, all those kids are outside my door still, and you don't know the emptiness of me just listening. Or someone said, I'm doing a group for brief spouses. Someone said, sitting at dinner and my spouse is no longer there, and we say things to them like, Oh, your son is always with you. Oh, your husband's always there at dinner with you. We're comforting them with spirituality and missing the human experience. So I'll give you one more example I don't know. Two months after my son had died, a friend of mine who writes books on spirituality, she writes books on these she called me up and she said, How are you doing today? And I said, I am angry. I'm angry at my son, I'm angry at God, I'm angry at the universe. And she says to me, do you want the human or the spiritual response? And I'm like, ooh. And I said, I actually want the human and then the spiritual. She said, Okay. She said, I hear your anger. I hear your anger, and I'm surprised you haven't broken furniture, and I'm like, wow, she really gets me that she sort of knows I could, like, I'm so angry I could snap a couch in half. I'm that angry. And we talked about my anger, and she patiently listened. And then at a certain point. She said, are you ready to hear the spiritual and I said, Yes. And she goes, David can't die. David's eternal. His body is over, but David is eternal. And so I think, to me, spirituality. You know, when I think, what is spirituality? Spirituality is love. It's the love that connects us, and my love for my son can't die.

Brian Smith  17:35  
Yeah, thank you. That is, it's a wonderful illustration, I think of we are, we have to remember we're both human and and spirit. And you know, we talked, you talked to the term that we you didn't use, but we talked about spiritual bypassing, where we try to say, I'm just I'm not going to do I'm not going to be human, I'm going to rise above that. I think one of the important things about witnessing grief with someone is understanding that that anger and depression and sadness and all that is a part of it, and we're not here to bypass those human feelings,

David Kessler  18:09  
right? Exactly? And, you know, we try, it doesn't always work, though.

Brian Smith  18:16  
Yeah, well, again, we're, I think we have to, we're, we're both. We have to, we have to remember that we're both, and we can't, we can't just, I mean, that idea, and I've seen people, and some examples of the people I've worked with that with two partners, where one is doing that and just quoting the Bible all the time and saying, there's nothing going you know, I don't feel bad and angry, and the other one's actually Angry at that person because they're not being human, of course,

David Kessler  18:43  
right? And the truth is, you know, we all have to be where we are and who we are. You know, I did a TV show, and the TV show that I did, the host was William Shatner, Captain Kirk, yeah, and he was lovely, and he's had a wife that died, so he and he's taught, he's been on my podcast, and he knows that story of like having to deal with grief and loss. But I'll tell you, Star Trek had what they called on the TV show, a prime directive. If they went to a planet and the planet didn't have a wheel, they couldn't teach him how to do the wheel. They had each place, each society, had to discover their own wheel. So many times people want to tell people in grief what the next step is, what they should do, how they should do it. And you know, each of us have to discover our own path, and you can't rush that.

Brian Smith  19:57  
Yeah, no, I'm not rushing that is another really important thing. I think because society will tell us it's been six weeks, it's been six months, it's been whatever you should be here, and that, I think, places undue pressure on people to to get over it.

David Kessler  20:15  
And you know, one of the things that I loved being able to do in this workbook is I have no one can see it, I'm sure, but hopefully they'll see the workbook I'll show to you. I have this page that it talks about I'm Private in my grief. I'm completely open. And then it walks you through these scenarios when you're meeting a stranger at work and all that, and it helps you understand how open or if you have any shame. Some of us have shame in our grief. Yeah, some of us feel ashamed that we're still grieving, and sometimes it's it's because the outside world is, quote, shaming us. Yeah,

Brian Smith  21:05  
very often.

David Kessler  21:06  
You know the new term now, prolonged grief. I feel like prolonged grief sounds like we think you're grieving too long. Yes,

Brian Smith  21:15  
yeah. It's a very, it's a very controversial term. And I know people have asked you and how long is my grief going to last? What's your answer to that?

David Kessler  21:24  
How long is the person going to be dead?

Unknown Speaker  21:27  
Yeah,

David Kessler  21:28  
if the person's going to be dead for a really long time, you're going to grieve for a really long time. You're going to grieve for a really long time. And doesn't mean we'll always grieve with pain. Hopefully we'll grieve with more love than pain, but we really gotta get there in our own way, in our own time and at our own pace.

Brian Smith  21:52  
Yes, yes. And again, I've learned so much from you, and that's one of the things I always quote you on when people ask me, Is my grief going you know, how long is it going to last? And it's been nine years for me now. We're coming up on 10 years in June, and I anticipate, I know it'll be as long as I'm alive. Now, it doesn't feel the same as it did nine years ago, but there are days when it still hurts and that's okay,

David Kessler  22:16  
and it's always changing.

Brian Smith  22:19  
Yeah.

David Kessler  22:20  
You know this last year was my eighth year since I had to say goodbye to my son here on Earth. And I gotta tell you, this year has his birthday and death day. Really close his birthday. Oh my gosh. It just was brutal. It was it took me down deep. His death day didn't faze me. I and I was prepped for the other I was prepped for, oh, I know what happens his birthday. I'm going to get a little cupcake. I'm going to wish you know that's going to be okay. It's been a lot of years, and then the death day is going to be hard. Ooh, this year it caught me by surprise. It was the complete opposite. Like, it's not like his death day was a good day, I mean, but the day that really got me this year, and every year is different,

Brian Smith  23:19  
yes, and I've had the same experience every every year is different. I don't know how it's actually going to be on on that day. It's always, for me, it's always bittersweet. You know, the birthday, of course, because we want to celebrate. And with our daughter, we have a little ritual. We get we go out and get pizza, we have ice cream, because that's what she loves. And, you know, but still, there's sometimes when I wake up in the morning on that day and I'm like, you know, it's another year that that, you know, she's not here. Those days, still, they do activate us in certain ways, and that's and again, I appreciate you sharing this, because I want people, we need to, I think, normalize these feelings that that that's okay. So if there must

David Kessler  24:03  
think you and I, you're, I'm eight years you're nine. People are like, Well, I'm sure that's over, right? That's not over, right? No, that's not over. And then you know, you and I can also say, Well, I bet we both live in a world where people like, Well, it's been so long. Do we mention their kids who Brian looks like he's okay? I don't want to mention. No, we always want our kids minnow mentioned. We always want you know their names to still be around. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. It's not bereaved parents that sort of, you know everyone.

Brian Smith  24:40  
I think one of the big fears that people have when when someone passes, is that they'll be forgotten. I've heard this from people who have lost fathers, spouses, children, pets, whatever it is. We all want them to be remembered, and we want their names to be spoken. And

David Kessler  24:57  
people in grief are also afraid. Of that other people are afraid, but I think we're the ones that are really afraid. And people around me Don't mention my son's name, but I gotta tell you, anytime I'm always the first to bring it up, if I'm like, Oh my gosh, you know, I was thinking about David the other day, and, gosh, he would have been thinking this, about this, or this is a moment I wonder. They're right there with me. They're like, so funny, you say that I thought about David the other I mean, they're, you know, our loved ones really aren't forgotten by anyone, but we sometimes think, in our grief, if I'm not hearing it, it really does mean they all forgot, and they did, yeah,

Brian Smith  25:48  
well, there's that, there is that little dance right where they I've heard people say, Well, I don't want to mention it, because I don't want to make them sad. Or I brought her name up, and then they started crying. So I've I made them think about about their daughter, again, spouse, whatever it is, not not understanding. We think about them all the time and and for me, it's very intentional. And you can see my daughter's picture behind me on my watch face, every time I look at it, it's a picture of her. I want to remember her. I want to remember her every day, right?

David Kessler  26:19  
Absolutely.

Brian Smith  26:20  
So in your opinion, are there things about society, society's view on grief that we would like to change? If you could, if you could wave a magic wand and say, This is what you don't understand about grief, and bring an understanding to society. What would that be?

David Kessler  26:41  
How deep and thick it is and how long the shadow of grief is.

I have in this new workbook, so many exercises, and I had a couple of questions. I did live with some people in grief today online. Just a small question on acceptance people who were a little further out, like you and I, and I'll tell you if you want to hear it, yeah, please. It's, it's fascinating to me. And because people think, like, I'll give you an example, someone in my son's class years ago said to me, Oh, I read your new book in an afternoon. This is years ago. It was a nice read. And, you know, it's, it's, it's like, it's important, we know all that. And I was really hurt. Yes, I was like, it's a nice afternoon read. Do you not understand this is a grief book, right? But here's the thing, she wasn't in grief. That same person said to me years later, like, I you know, our mind is like Teflon. The good things don't stick, the bad things, you know, get stuck, like Velcro. And I remembered that comment, and oh my gosh, years later, she goes, David, my parent just died. I went back and reread that book. Oh, my God. I sat with that first page for weeks. It just met, and I'm like, Oh, she didn't mean the book didn't really she wasn't in grief. So I think what people don't understand is, like we were talking about acceptance and just a couple of questions. And by the way, in the workbook, I've got like, checklists and things like that, because people think, oh, Lord, this is going to be hard. And, you know, they think, I don't want to go into my pain. Why do I want to go into that book, and I'll go tier one. The pain is in in the book. You can keep the book on the shelf, and you're not keeping the pain on the shelf. The pain is in you. And that's why I created a free three part series for anyone who gets the book now@griefbook.com so that we'll start the book together, and they'll see me doing it too. But we were talking about acceptance. The world thinks there's like one big acceptance, and you and I had to say yes to it at one time, and then we were done, right? Just these two questions took us an hour to talk about and sit with. The parts of this death I have accepted are the parts I still cannot accept. Are if I accept my loved one's death fully, it means this just little things like. That people who are further along, you know, what do you think like, if you had to answer one of those questions, what would you think?

Brian Smith  30:13  
Well, the parts that I've accepted about about her passing is that I won't see her again physically. You know, in this lifetime, the part that I haven't accepted yet is that I won't see her again, that you know all the things that I'm going to miss as my other daughter goes through her milestones, it's been, it's been nine years now, right? So she'll never, I'll never see her get married, and I'll never see her have children. And when she passed, she was 15, and I didn't that didn't affect me. I didn't really think about that. I mean, some people do. I'm not the kind of person that thinks that far out ahead. But for me now, you know, being at the age I am now, it's like, oh, you know, her, her cousins and her, her friends are getting married and stuff like that, and I'm like, wow, Shayna will never have that. She'll never be I'll never see her as an adult. So that's still something that sits with me,

David Kessler  31:11  
and it's fascinating to the outside world. You and I are years out, except it's was done long ago, right? No daily practice, practically, like, I had to accept, oh my gosh, there's year eight. Holy cow, year eight might mean there's going to be a year 10. Well, like, wait a minute, this is really, like a long time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. People think like, we just work through these things in an afternoon. And that's not the way this works. Yeah,

Brian Smith  31:47  
same thing for me. Well, Shayna was 15 when she passed, and I made a deal, and I haven't discussed this openly, but I was like, okay, she was here for 15 years. Maybe I can make it 15 years after, you know? So if I, if I can make it 15 years, then that's to me that seemed like that's long enough. I don't want to be here any longer than that. And now I'm like, Okay, I'm coming up on 10. It's going to be 10 in June. Um, so, yeah, those, those thoughts still go through your head, you know, 910, years later, and you said, we can, I could tell myself it's not that long but, but now it's like, yeah, it's a long time.

David Kessler  32:26  
You have to keep wrapping your mind around it. It's tough work. It's tough work. So you know the outside world would go, Oh, yeah, I bet Brian and David had a tough first year accepting it, but they're all good now, it's not how it works. Is that, no,

Brian Smith  32:48  
it's not. But, you know, I don't want it to also, don't want to say that it's all gloom and doom, because it's, it's not there's, yeah, sorry, I was going to say there's there's also, I hate the term silver linings, but it's just true there there are silver linings. There are blessings that come along with it and but it is daily work. It is, it's literally a daily practice for me.

David Kessler  33:13  
I and I'll tell you, one of the things in this workbook is that I do help people a uh, excavate some of that pain. They don't even realize they're holding on to the disloyalty, the shame, but I'll tell you, we get towards the end, there's the seven questions that are around, you know, not finding that post traumatic stress, but the post traumatic growth. And one of the things I put in here that I love is the hero's journey. I don't know if you remember we talked about that in the grief certificate program you went through, but all those movies we love, any of the DC Comics, Marvel Comics, they're all about the hero's journey. And what the hero does is they're going through life normally, and then their life gets turned upside down, usually by death, and they have to go into the dark nights, and then they come out the other end after the refusal of the call, I'll never be happy again. All those things we do, we come out to realize we are the hero of our own journey. And I like not only put those hero journeys in the book, but I put a place for people to write down their hero journey. Because I wanted, I've done a couple of books now on my own. I wanted a co author, and the co author of this new book, new workbook, is everyone who does it with me. They're writing. Finding their book. And, you know, people ask, Do I have to go back to the original finding meaning to do this workbook? Nope, you can start right there.

Brian Smith  35:08  
Yeah. Well, I tell you one of the one of the great things about doing the work that I do is I do get to see people on that hero's journey. And I do get to see the transformations. I interviewed a young man yesterday, who, after his father passed, started a whole brand new business doing something that doesn't even hadn't even existed before, and he's doing it because of his father's passing. You know, not even really in spite of it. So I get to see that. So it's not something we can talk to people about when they're first in that early part of that journey, but there is so when people look at me and say, Oh, you're nine years out and you're still going through difficulty, like, Yeah, but I'm nine years out and I'm also a totally different person than I was, and I think, in fact, a good way, yeah,

David Kessler  35:54  
and look, I have happiness and I have joy, and I'll tell you something, I don't do it anymore, but I used to, you know, do 30 cities and three countries and do all those meetings and lectures. And I'm older now, I sitting in front of my computer here, but I would go to these hotels to 300 people in a meeting in the room next to us, the meeting room next to us was the nurses down the hall, was the realtors down the hall was the Rotary Club, or whatever it was, wedding all that the staff would say to me afterwards, Hey, your Group is laughing the most. Why is that? What were you teaching? And I would say, grief. And they would go, grief. What kind of grief are people laughing with? What they didn't understand is those of us who have been through these dark nights. We can go deeper, we can cry, we can sit in the pain. But you know, what else we laugh a little harder, yeah, we get, you know, look sitting here looking at your daughter's just face looking back. We get the most precious thing we have here with one another is time, yeah? So, you know, you get, let me make the most of this. Let me connect. Let me live while I'm here. I want to do two things. I want to grieve fully around my son, and I want to live fully in honor of him.

Brian Smith  37:34  
Yeah, wow. I love that. Yeah, I think that's so. I completely agree. And as you were saying that, I've been to three helping parents heal conferences now, and my experience in that first one was, was the same thing you're talking about. I mean, it was just so being with 500 people that shared that experience. And could go, we could go deep like like that. You'd sit down with lunch with somebody, or breakfast with somebody you never met before, and in five minutes, you know, you knew you had that thing in common, and you knew that they were there for that reason. And we just got back from helping parents heal, like, I guess, about a month ago, and it's such an uplifting experience. It's like, it's like being in heaven. It's really, it's hard to explain to somebody that hasn't been there. So there is this transformation that we can make. We have a choice to make when we go through this process, right?

David Kessler  38:27  
So true. My friend, it and what we run from pursues us, and what we face transforms us. Yes,

Brian Smith  38:36  
yes, absolutely. So David, you've written many, many books on on grief, and people are familiar with your work, so tell people how, how this new book is different. Well,

David Kessler  38:47  
you know, people always talk about, oh, do your grief work? Well, what? What's my grief work? And I always say, well, your grief work is anytime you're really spending time with your grief. But I've had the privilege of teaching therapists for years tools and techniques, and I really thought about, let me put these tools and techniques into a book for people in grief and for people who maybe want to learn and be helpers themselves. You know, so many of us are like, I can sit with someone else in grief, but I'd love a little more tools and techniques. So that's what this is. And you know what? You can literally gently open it to any page and do it, or you can do it front to back. There's tougher questions, like acceptance that we talked about. There's the hero's journey, there's the seven questions, there's the feeling wheel. We think we have three feelings, angry, sad, you know, happy, but there's so many feelings. And how do you process those? So it's really as if you and I are. Sitting together at your kitchen table, and I'm walking you thing through things gently that can help. Little disloyalty checklist you could do in two minutes if you just want to dive in, in case the book scares you, you're like, let me just do that little checklist so it's filled with those things. And I'm so thrilled that you know, I'm hoping when this airs, it is all over, but it is sold out on Amazon. Barnes and Noble, they're all trying to get more. I didn't know that there would be such demand, but when this is on, it'll be all back up and reprinted. But boy, people need to know, I don't know where to begin, right? Know what to do, so that's what I hope the finding meaning workbook is. And Brian, in our new modern world, I gotta tell you something that I'm a Sarah, sorry to tell you there's AI copycats on Amazon, and they aren't even good AI, they didn't even come up with good grief questions. So for anyone who's going to buy this, please look for the teal book, right? Paul teal, and I am the author, so look for the finding meaning workbook. But even better, if folks go to griefbook.com griefbook.com griefbook.com I have three free classes that I'm going to teach on it for anyone who gets it, and there's a link to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your independent bookstore, to make sure you get the right book.

Brian Smith  41:34  
Awesome. That's people to get the real one. Yeah, it's good to know. And the AI is that that can be real issues. I'm glad, I'm glad that you brought that up. But I think this kind of circles back around to the very beginning, when you talked about, you, even as the grief expert, taking that first step, you know, going to a grief group, and that could be so daunting for people. It's like, I don't, I don't know if I'm ready for this. I don't know if I want to open up. I don't know if I'm going to cry in front of people. This is something you can do. That's, that's a low risk thing, right? It's not a substitution for talking to a person, but it might be a great first step to start to work through and understand those feelings, like the feeling will explain to people what that is, because I didn't know it till I took your program and it's, I think it's awesome,

David Kessler  42:18  
yeah, it's a big wheel that I've got tons of feelings on tons of them, and I just ask people to, like, name a few feelings. Like, any given moment we're like, I don't know what I am, and like to really look at it and go, are you loving? Are you serene? Are you lowly? Are you isolated? Are you hurt? Are you jealous? Do you feel rejected? Are you discouraged? I mean, there's a million feelings we don't even think about until we're like, oh, oh yeah. There's a lot of the like, because you've seen it. I say to people all the time, what are you feeling? They're like, I don't know. I'll put the feeling up, and they're like, I'll say name five. And they're like, five, I can't find one. And then they look at the feeling, well, they're like, I'm this, I'm that, I it's easy. We're a lot of feelings. We're full of feelings.

Brian Smith  43:08  
We are. That's what we are. We are people that make meaning out of things. And it's all about feelings. You talked earlier about the head and the heart, and it's, it's that it's getting to that heart, and it's getting those, getting those feelings out, processing those feelings, expressing those feelings, and in whatever way it takes, and finding tools. Sometimes it takes to do that because we're not, we're not taught by society. I think especially I'm gonna, I'm gonna generalize here, especially men, because typically we ask a lot of times we ask men what they feel they're like, I don't know what a feeling is. Yeah, I'm happy or I'm angry.

David Kessler  43:44  
We haven't been taught the language, yeah? Teaching us the language. Well,

Brian Smith  43:49  
I've also been taught to suppress what it is we feel too. So I

David Kessler  43:53  
was told, stay strong. Yeah, stay strong means take care of everyone else and don't have no feelings of your own.

Brian Smith  44:00  
My daughter passed away, and my parents came down a few weeks later, and several times it was my family. They're here to support me. It was great. I'm glad they were here. But several times I left the room. I go up to my bedroom and cry, or I go outside and I cry or something. And I'll never forget when my mother was leaving, she said it was a great day. Nobody cried. That's the family that I was raised in. We don't, we don't share feelings in front of each other. And, you know, it's something that I'm, I'm still working through, but, you know, especially then I was like, wow, okay, we're not, we're not supposed to cry. You know, my, my daughter just passed away. Her her granddaughter, 15 year old. But it was a great day, because nobody cried. And you know, that's, that's nothing against my mother, that's, that's just the nature of our family. We're taught to be strong. And I'll be working with clients sometimes, and they'll apologize for crying, and I'm like, No, you don't understand. This is a good thing. I'm glad that you're crying because they always, you always feel bad. Sure. Here's

David Kessler  45:01  
your evidence of love, you know, yeah,

Brian Smith  45:05  
yeah, absolutely. Well, David, again, thank you so much for doing this today. It's been great talking to you again. Remind people of the name of the real book and the website we can get it,

David Kessler  45:16  
finding meaning workbook. Finding meaning workbook. And David Kessler is the author. Look for the teal one that's completely teal. It's the finding meaning workbook,

Brian Smith  45:30  
awesome. Well, thanks for being here, David. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank

David Kessler  45:33  
you so much, Brian, thank you for all the work you're doing in the world.

Unknown Speaker  45:37  
Thank you. You

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