Zibby is joined by leading grief expert and psychotherapist Meghan Riordan Jarvis, whose poignant and vulnerable memoir, END OF THE HOUR, was published by Zibby Books last year! This time, she discusses CAN ANYONE TELL ME?: Essential Questions about Grief and Loss, her essential and empowering guide for grievers and their support networks. The conversation delves into Meghan’s mission to demystify grief and provide actionable strategies to navigate it, from creating rituals to finding community.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Megan. Thank you for coming back on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Can Anyone Tell Me Essential Questions About Grief and Loss. Congratulations. 

Meghan: Thank you. Thank you so much. I mean, I can't believe I was ever in conversation with you once, never mind twice.

This is just crazy. It's such an honor. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Well, so for anyone listening, Megan and I originally were in the same book club. I started Zibby's book club in the And Megan was one of the first people to join, and out of that came her memoir, End of the Hour, which we ended up publishing. And now she has this other book, which we did not publish because we don't do this kind of book, but is also like amazing and so helpful in the way Megan has been helpful to me and people in my life and so many others during such a time of grief and everything.

So thank you. It's amazing. 

Meghan: Voila! Thank you. I mean, I, yeah, one of the things that I don't even know if I have said this to you before, I mean, one of the phrases I use often is like, you're kind of stitched into the hem of my life, like, there are so many things where, you know, there's a conversation or connection or something that you have started or helped me with or been a part of, and that this book, honestly, I started thinking about this book, you know, I was writing End of the Hour, and I was thinking about my job as a clinician and how we, A, a little bit lie to grievers.

We sort of put it on them, right? We're sort of like, well, you know, this will help you. When we know it doesn't really help, we just don't have a lot else to offer them. So we like a little bit lie. We also. act as though it's like a personal experience that they are going through that they need to like go and do on their own instead of this developmental process that's part of life that we all need to be educated in.

The way we are about teenagers, right? Like everybody knows that teenagers have these raging hormones and we support them in that and there's so much. biological information and neurological information that we have about the grief process that we just kind of, like, keep to ourselves for no reason. So, you, you sent me an email after your mother in law died and said, I cannot keep my thoughts straight.

I have, I have, like, brain fog. And my memory is just not intact. Is that normal? And I was like, yeah, That's hella normal, but I had this, I had this thing that I often have, which is like, I wanted to apologize to you from the field, because everybody should just know that, everybody should just know that brain fog, it isn't a, a given, but it's a standard grief response.

So I read 188 books about grief and loss. Some of them were memoirs. Some of them were novels. A lot of them were clinical books. And really what I was doing was trying to find the book that had all the answers to the things that I think we need to be telling the truth about. And of course I couldn't find it.

Cause that's how everybody ends up writing a book is they're like, Oh, I wrote the book that I wanted. And I worked with Jessica Dulong, who we both know, and I've known since Childhood and my, and it's how I got my agent. And we were like, you know, let's go. So each chapter in this book is, is a genuine experience that I've had with a client, another person or myself where it's like, I just fundamentally believe it would be helpful to grievers.

And the people who are supporting them, if we said it more plainly with more truth, and then offered some actual support that wasn't like, go see your therapist, because grief is not a mental health problem. It impacts your mental health, but it's just a normal developmental experience that we all have.

Zibby: Wow. Well, I think the way that you organized the book and gave everyone all of the information, and obviously you have so much information in that brain of yours, which comes seeping out anytime you open your mouth, which is amazing. But now everybody who doesn't necessarily know you personally can benefit because you organize it in such a great way.

And it has your sense of humor too. Like, why are my friends annoying me all of a sudden? And like chapters, like that people wouldn't necessarily seek out help for or realize that they are related to grief or whatever, but they're in here. And then the exercises, too, that you give for every chapter. And I love how you say, here's something you can try.

Because you're not like, this is going to fix it. You're just like, try this breathing exercise. Try this writing exercise. Like, give it a shot. Why not? 

Meghan: Yeah, because I think, you know, What we're really needing to do is give grievers some hope that the moment that they're in right now, that early loss, which feels confounding.

You know, you know this, I just really felt like I was not at all myself after my mother died, and I didn't know how to find myself again. And the question I was asking was like, what am I gonna do? What, what should I do? And, that is not the same as saying, how do I get over this grief or how do I cure myself of the grief?

Because that doesn't happen. You just learn to sort of become a griever. You can't act as though the 24 hours of the day for somebody that just lost their husband or their brother or their dog or their marriage is just going to have like one or two moments where they're going to have a hard time or an hour's worth in a therapy office.

They need to be given things. that feel like, okay, this, I'm creating a grief practice. This is what I'm going to do every day. And that's going to help me learn to carry this loss in a way that like, I don't have the emotional muscles for right now. And I've actually created this whole curriculum off of come in.

Anyone tell me. So can anyone tell me ends up sort of being like the precursor book that you read the prerequired reading. And the course is called the grief mentor method. And it has these six core components around that are imperative to grief and loss and really what they are. I have this big, you know, wipe off board in my office and anytime anybody told me that anything helped them in grief and loss, I wrote it on the board.

So if you tell me going to a trampoline park helped you, which a client did tell me, and then I was able to be like, Ooh, I think I can probably tell you the neuroscience behind why that helped. If you tell me knitting helped, if you tell me that random sex with someone in a bar helped, these are all real things. I put them on the board because my experience with grievers are they have no idea how to do this moment or even imagine doing a moment ahead of time. So rather than saying, right, I'm a person where if you said, what do you want to eat? That is a really hard question for me to answer. But if you said, do you want Chinese or do you want Italian?

That's easier for me. So the book really sort of sets us up for like, What do you think is possible that you could do? What feels possible? Some people jump right into, they're going to start a foundation. And there is kind of this element of like, if you do not build something that is significant and gives back to the world, then you really haven't found meaning in your grief.

Like, that's not what it takes. You don't need to do all that. But you do need to do something, because you can't go backwards. You will never be who you were before this loss. It doesn't mean it has to, you know, mean that you're not going to travel down the same path, but you might take a couple of left turns and you probably have to add some things that weren't there before.

So the grief mentor method really is like, it's almost like a bookshelf full of ideas which are organized in these components. So one of mindfulness. You, you do really have to kind of connect into your body to feel it. your feelings in order to grieve. So we teach people a million ways. And when I say a million ways, I mean like coloring, doing puzzles, certain apps.

mindfulness. And then we ask people, what's their energy look like? Are they, you know, really anxious? Or are they really kind of feeling depressed? Because you don't, you don't attend to both of those things the same. And then we talk about nourishment, which I also talk about in the book, which is like, look, your serotonin's in your gut.

So I, I mean, after my dad died, I basically only ate like Rolled up pieces of ham and Swiss cheese. That was kind of like all I could do. And then I was like, Oh, I need to drink a green smoothie because I need the macro nutrients of kale in order to create serotonin. So we talk a little bit about that.

And we talk about the translation, which You know, that was the process I was in with you, which was like, what is the story I tell myself about what happened? Because it really matters how you talk to yourself about what you've gone through. You know, are you positioning yourself as a victim? Are you positioning yourself as a heroine?

Like, are either of those totally true? And then how well are you able to communicate to others? Some people's grief story, they're like, no one will talk to me. And what they're not aware of is the way in which they are presenting their story is so off putting. It's not, it's not inviting engagement in the way that they want it to.

And then the concept of going outside, literally physically getting outside. Maybe also, there's a chapter in Can Anyone Tell Me, which almost was the title of the book, which is Why Do I Think That Butterfly Is My Mom? A lot of people really are presented with this concept of like, what do I believe happens after death?

And they're brought into the spiritual conversation that maybe they weren't, weren't looking for. So we talk about that in the outside, but also you're going to have to go outside of your networks. This is that part where like, why do I kind of hate everyone who is in my life right now? And how do I find people that I feel like I can just innately connect with?

It's kind of nobody's fault, but it happens a lot. And then the R in mentor is ritual and rest. So it's the idea that we always want to have that thing where we can say, this is what I do to honor my dad. But you can't invent it in your head. You have to like, Oh, actually, this is random. I didn't do this on purpose.

But this is what I do to honor my dad. This is his 1986 Ralph Lauren cologne that he used to wear when he was like in his mid forties going out to cocktail parties. The way I think of him as healthiest. So on his birthday and on Father's Day, and when I miss him, I just, I just wear his cologne. It's the best.

It's the best. I love it. But also rest, you know, grief is such a learning process. I always think about how when I sent my kids to kindergarten, which was three hours, it was three hour kindergarten. That was what they were starting or preschool. They came home, like ate an entire box of goldfish crackers, drank two squeezy boxes of, of apple juice and then like conked out like they had been minors, you know, they were so tired.

And the reason they were tired is everything they did that day was new. Everything. Like, sitting in a circle, putting the trucks away, lining up for recess. They'd never done any of that before and their little minds were like, oh my god, so many new things. Grief is like that. It's like, oh my god, so many new things.

Like, now that I'm thinking about Thanksgiving, I have to think about Thanksgiving differently. Now that I'm trying to pick up the phone, they're not there on the other end of the phone. So really encouraging people to rest as part of it. And what I, what I tried to do with, can anyone tell me in really bite sized pieces with normal language, anywhere I could use it, explain to people why all that stuff is so important and sort of why we have been.

We should have given this information to people a long time ago. It's, it's our miss, I think, from the field of trauma, to not have offered concrete suggestions with real, understandable explanations as to what is going on. We grieve with our bodies. We can talk about bodies. We can talk about bodies across cultures and genders and all the things, but we instead sort of say like, well, feel your feelings.

I, there's a guy that when I, when I'm on my podcast with grief experts, somebody always says like, feel your feelings or honor your emotions, or, and then he'll immediately send me an email that says, no one knows what that means. Megan, no one. And I just, I appreciate his candor about it because, you know, we've added a lot of like therapy language or soft when really it's more like, I don't know, being in boot camp or something.

It's like full contact. It's so hard and we need to be able to give people more. So that they can say, I have 24 hours, this is what I'm going to do to get me through those 24 hours. I'm going to focus on this. 

Zibby: So this program that you're referring to, where is it? Like, what, who is it for? How do you take it?

Like, what, what is it? 

Meghan: We are, well, so the best, if someone is like, Oh my God, I need to know more about that. Come to my website and just send me a DM, but it's literally rolling out with the, with the publication of this book on October 29th. So they're happening in pairs. And we have a couple of things going on.

One is we're training clinicians so that they can know all the exercises and be able to sort of be in it. What's exciting about it for clinicians is we think about the concept of the, of the curriculum is kind of like playing trivial pursuit. We've made, it's a rainbow of colors each, and you just, you want to have kind of fun.

you want to have answered a question in each one of the colors. So, you know, just like I always go for arts and entertainment and avoid science, you're probably going to do the same in the grief mentor method. Like if you're not an outdoorsy person, that's probably not what you're going to do, but we're going to ask you to try some things anyway.

So right now you can learn more about it on the website, but if people follow me on Instagram, it's going to be in a lot of places soon. We're taking it to Kripalu and. January, I have a bunch of colleagues, Barry Liner Grant's coming and Alison Gilbert and we're going to be using it as a way to create a grief camp at Kripalu in January.

It's going to be up at Omega in May. Um, and then my team is offering it in various ways. One of which is going to be a really accessible, inexpensive platform that you can just get prompts. Every day from the New York Times, I get a like, just for you, Megan, and it has like The articles that it thinks that we, you know, I would like I've selected.

And that's what we're hoping for. The grief mentor method is that we'll be able to put it in a prompt so that once people go through the process every day, they'll just get some suggestions of how they might attend to their grief that day with exercises. 

Zibby: You might want to do something. Not, I mean, not that you're asking, but you know,.. 

Meghan: I will, I'll take all the advice.

Zibby: So, you know how in Baby Center, they had like, when your baby's two weeks old, three weeks old, or like, it's the size of this, or now your baby's four, or whatever. I don't know of a grief site that does that. Like your grief is, you know, it's your two month anniversary, it's your year anniversary, here's what you should look out for.

This is probably coming. I don't know, maybe there is, but that would be useful. 

Meghan: I don't think, I mean, you know, I don't think there is. And even if there was, there's not enough grief resources anyway. So even if we were duplicating somebody else's efforts, but I, I love what you're onto, which is the idea that, you know, everybody knows it's harder.

It's more physical in the earlier days of grief, like the sleeping and the eating and the, you know, um, catastrophizing in your brain and the brain fog. But I love the idea of sort of helping people through their timeline because. You know, one of the things that we, that we sort of get wrong with grief is we act as though the problem is the person who died or the thing that we lost, and that's, that's only part of it.

Part of it is who I am in my life right now, right? So if I'm, as I am, a mom in her 50s of three teenagers, And I lose my mother. That's a different experience than a mom who just gave birth to a baby who loses her mom. 

So part of what we're trying to do is help people really personalize it for themselves and, and how, you know, how, what are their needs and how to, so what we focus on are those symptoms.

So rather than the timeline kind of more, what we say is like, how much sleep are you getting? 

You know, and part, part of what I'm most excited about and this book, the last several chapters are maybe the most important to me is that we are, we work really hard to say, okay, if none of the advice and the support and the exercises are working for you now, it's time to go see.

A trauma informed therapist who specializes in grief and loss, who can give you not not support, but treatment can help treat the fact that you haven't slept in a year. That's really important to me because I think even in the field of grief and loss, we do not do. A great job of helping people feel empowered to know the difference.

Right? Like if you played tennis and your elbow twitched, you yourself would be like, I should probably go see a doctor about that. But there is this very like, because we have made grief kind of seem like a personal failure of some kind, like, Oh, you are being impacted by this rather than this is the thing that happened to you.

People are really hesitant to say, Oh, I need more support and I need more help and I need it. you know, all across their lives at work and in their religious communities. And so what we really want to be able to do is say like, okay, but here's the red line. Here's how you have, here's when, you know, here's how, here's how you can distinguish.

And one of those things is if everything that we've suggested didn't help you doing this for three months and you are no better, don't wait longer than three months. Because a lot of the other thresholds are like, well, if you're still yearning for a year, or you still have profound sadness after 18 months, like, that's a really long time to not have core support around grief and loss.

So we're hoping, I mean, I'm hoping, because what we've had before is like the, you know, the stages of grief, which really, Don't offer much. They just sort of tell you you're on exit four on the highway. They don't really say like what you should do there. And they're not really intended for grievers. So they have a lot of limitations.

What we're hoping with can anyone tell me is that the grief mentor method that comes out of it is going to make people feel like there's a million possibilities that they wake up every day. And if they take a walk with a friend, guess what? That's one of the things that we say people have reported help them with grief and loss.

So look at you grieving. You have no idea how to do, but you're already doing it because the hope, the hope that you are going to one day, not only grieve and maybe be able to have a semblance of something that doesn't feel so intense is really, it's really important for grievers to feel like they have that.

And it's hard to imagine when your brain is kind of in this really stunned, like hit by a frying pan place that we, the many of us find ourselves in. 

Zibby: Maybe there should be like a hat or a t shirt that says look at me grieving. 

Meghan: Look at me grieving, right? 

Zibby: Right. 

Meghan: So where you know, we have a book festival coming up.

Zibby: Yes. 

Meghan: Yes. So we haven't fully lot we haven't it comes out on Friday people are gonna know but there's it's called the grief tastic book festival And brunch and there's 35 authors coming and we have all this swag Like bracelets that say, excuse me while I grieve and griefy and I'm sad and, you know, they're, they're more tongue in cheek than serious, but they are really designed to sort of like, you know, help people feel more okay about this thing that's happening to them that, you know.

you know, for the most part, nobody did anything to deserve it. It's just what's happening. And I want to say one other thing about the book. So, so I am doing a whole bunch of like bookstore and JCC and events with the book and I'll, we haven't put them up yet because they're so still getting established, but my delightful team came up with, we're having an insight tour, which basically means we send you an early version of the book.

So you get the PDF of the book, you get to read it. And then I come to your group, your organization, and talk about two of the chapters that you think is most relevant to your group. So we just opened this up to sort of friends and family. And I'll tell you the thing that is the coolest about it. is people are like, okay, so most of my friends are going through menopause.

Can you come and talk about like loss related to that? And yes, of course. I have a group of women who, you know, all of them are empty nesters this year. 

And I want to talk about what does that mean to be an empty nester? There's a group, it's men and women who are all recently divorced or uncoupled in some way.

And they want to talk about that. And so even though when they were putting this sort of speaking tour, the lecture tour together. I was like, I don't know who's going to want to talk about this. It's ending up, I'm really excited about it because it's like, Oh, I'm going to have one kind of conversation and another kind of conversation and another.

So I just want to offer that to folks that if that's in her, if that's encouraging and exciting to you also get in touch with us because we're putting that together kind of up and down the East coast and the West coast right now. And I do think that book will lend itself. We just got a trick group was like, Hey, come and talk to us about the spirituality chapter.

And it's just so fun for me because it's a lot to cover. It's a lot to talk about. And I just think what better than having like a little discussion group with people who are going through it. You know, and that's how the book is designed, is to sort of pick it up and be like, Oh, that, the name of that chapter, Why Is My Brain Broken, like, that is for me.

Or, you know, the chapter that says, like, Why Do I Hate All, Why Do I Suddenly Hate All My Friends and Family, like, that is for me. And if that's what you're going through, you maybe are not going to go and look at the chapters about why you're not eating and sleeping, because that's not what you're thinking about.

And it's really designed for grievers in that way, but also people who are supporting grievers. You know, to be able to look it up and be like, wow, she's really doing chaotic things right now. Like, how do I, how do I support her? And then hopefully out of these 35 chapters, there'll be something that resonates and offers something core.

That's helpful. 

Zibby: I'm going to throw out one more idea. Nothing. 

Meghan: I love this. 

Zibby: I don't even know why I'm doing this, but.. 

Meghan: Oh my God, I love it. 

Zibby: But there are people all over the country who are going through these types of things, and who aren't on the coasts or, you know, don't have the time or whatever. But it would be great if you did, not that you have time for this either, but one Zoom for each chapter, and the people who, you know, need it or can come in and just like pop into your group.

Meghan: God, that's such a good idea. Why should I be surprised? 

Zibby: No, you could do like one a week. You could do one a week and then you could market to all different groups. So the empty nesters would know to come on XYZ day and then you could market to people who, you know, maybe prolonged, I don't know, whatever.

So, but I think that would be more useful almost than you going to a 10 person group. In California or something, which is wonderful, but like to scale to scale it and have it be a free resource or paid or whatever for people who.. 

Meghan: Well, all of it is sort of free because I'm putting it together with work I'm doing across the country. So, you know, it really is just the cost of the book. Like it won't make a lot of sense if you have. Well, I mean, it would still but by the book. Yeah, but that's really I love the idea. We do have some courses that we're going to be offering for free, but I actually love this idea of like it.

The class might just be a discussion about the chapter of the book. That's a really, that's a, and also I would love those conversations. I would love those lectures. We do a lot of one hour lectures, particularly for companies right now that are sort of based on one of the chapters. 

Zibby: But it's all the different people now they go to like all different, places to get this stuff?

Like, I just had someone reach out to me today about, like, divorce, you know, the child loss you feel during divorce on a non custody day. Like, there is no group for that. 

Meghan: That's right. 

Zibby: So if you centralize, like, all the ways, then it's far more than death, you know? 

Meghan: Well, it is. I mean, and that's what the, the book, although I think if you read the book, you'll feel that a little bit skewers, like skews towards the loss of someone that you loved, but it really is intended to be around any kind of loss.

And you know, I'm in my fifties and that for women around me is, you know, some of it is loss of dreams. You know, they're not going to become an Olympic athlete. And. Yeah. They didn't realize that until just now, but what you just described, which is there are all these little niches that are very specific to, you know, single moms who their kid does something amazing and they don't have a partner to turn to and say, like, Oh my God, look at the amazing thing.

That's a kind of grief. 

So yeah, there to have topical classes that are maybe anchored in the chapters. So look for that. 

Zibby: Okay. Well, you're doing so much already, so. 

Meghan: We are doing so much, but we, you know, anywhere there's a need, we're doing a lot of sort of like testing it, right? Like, do people want this or do they want this?

And some of the things that I'm like, this is the best idea we ever had. People are going to love this. Falls totally flat. And I'm like, oh, well, learned. Yeah. And then little things like I do, I do a, um, talk about neurodivergence in grief. Yeah. And I'm like, well, this is sort of interesting. That is always, when I teach that class, people are so interested, not just for themselves, but also for other people about how grief might be different.

So.. 

Zibby: No one's talking about that. 

Meghan: Yeah. And you need to talk about it because it actually does really matter. Everyone thinks that the idea of having a ritual like a funeral is, helps all people, but it doesn't. It totally excludes some people who would not normally go to a place where there was loud music or 350 people.

Yeah. 

Zibby: Wow. Well, Megan, you're just getting started. This is so exciting. I can just hear the, you know, excitement and all the, the facets of this movement again, just a jumping off point. But can anyone tell me is like such a great user friendly manual, if you will, of with so many things that address so many of the common concerns that aren't really organized or talked about in this way.

So congratulations. 

Meghan: Thank you so much. And thank you for being just a core supporter. I think of all of this work that I do that's outside of the office as being the growth that happened to me through my own grief and loss. And you just, I mean, you were there and being like, of course you should do this.

Let's do it. Come on. from the very early days. So I'm just so grateful. I'm grateful for all your support and enthusiasm. 

Zibby: Thank you. All right. Well, I'll see you with the grief tastic or whatever. Okay. All right. Bye Megan. Bye.