Lean Out Podcast

Solocast: How to Deal with Loss

• Dawn Baker • Season 3 • Episode 21

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In this solocast episode, Dawn Baker talks about the realities of grief and loss. She discusses the five stages of grief and the newly-minted "sixth stage." The information in this episode applies to EVERYONE, not just people who've lost a loved one. Dawn identifies the many different types of grief she's seen in her coaching practice. Listen for actionable steps and thought-provoking questions on how to deal with grief. 

** My 1:1 coaching specials are still ongoing for May! I have 2 spots left with special pricing. In this period of rebirth and renewal, prioritize your balance with the support of a coach. Sign up for a consultation here. ** 

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Welcome to the lean out podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Don baker. Are you looking for a new approach to finding authentic and sustainable work-life balance? You've come to the right. Place. For inspiration. information. and a community. community. of like-minded. Professionals. Let's get to the show. Hello. Hello. Thanks for being here. Thank you for pressing play on this podcast today because I know the title is not the most enticing. Grief and loss are not topics people love to discuss because they're typically associated with sadness and negativity. The thing is, loss in accompanying grief are a part of being human. So in my opinion, we need to identify it when it comes up, normalize it, and find ways that work for us to deal with it. Before we go on to this solo cast, I'd like to remind you that during the month of May, I am running a special on my coaching services, and this is for three, four, and six session packages. I have a couple more spots available for this service, so if you have been thinking about getting coaching, if you have an upcoming career transition or something that you've been navigating that you would like support with, you can go to practice balance.com/getin touch, and there is a link there to sign up for free consultation through Calendly. I will also place the link to directly schedule the consultation in the show notes, so you're probably wondering why I wanted to talk about this topic. My daughter's favorite chicken died unexpectedly recently. This chicken, whose name was blueberry or boo boo for short, was totally babied by her constantly. The chicken was a little different than the other chickens, and my daughter definitely gravitates toward the underdogs. Booboo always kind of looked immature as the chickens developed, like she was just a big baby chick. It may have been that she was stuck in a pile with the wrong breed. I don't know, but she didn't look like the other chicks. She didn't have all the same characteristics. Her body was shaped a little more round, and she never got much of a comb or a waddle, and this chicken would just let herself be coddled. My daughter would take her out of the coop area and walk around with her stroking her head and her wings. She would sing to her and play house with her and blueberry would blissfully close her eyes when receiving all this attention. It was so cute. One day when the chickens were all about a year old. My daughter went out to the coop and just found blueberry dead face down in the wood shavings. There had been no sign that she was sick and none of the others seemed to be having any sort of problems. I know that sadly, kids undergo much more traumatic experiences than this with human loss, but man, this was traumatic for her. It was such a big shock, unfortunately, this all went down when I was gone on one of my clinical work assignments and, ugh, it was just horrible to not be able to hug her. My heart hurt so bad for her. Even through a phone, I could see the immense sadness and shock in her eyes. Incidentally, my husband stepped up and was amazing, but that's a whole other story. They varied booboo in the backyard, and that was about a month or so ago, and she is not over it, which is fine. She goes out and talks to the grave and she writes blueberry letters. What made me think to do this podcast was a conversation I had with her one night. She came into the bathroom late in the evening when I was getting ready for bed and she was supposed to be asleep. She was in violent tears about blueberry. Why did she have to die? She was sobbing. So we had this discussion about a couple of things. One, that sometimes things happen that we do not have control over. And two, we talked about what it means to grieve. I told her about the different stages of grief. So let's talk about those now. They are denial, which is refusing to acknowledge or avoiding the topic of the loss, anger, wanting to blame people for what happened or being angry with yourself or others, or God bargaining, which is going through the what ifs. Wondering if you did something slightly differently, would the outcome still be as it was? Depression. The deep sadness and a feeling of hopelessness or loss of interest in your other activities and acceptance, which is letting go of the struggle of the grief and working to move forward. These come from the well-known Kubler-Ross model of grief, but interestingly, they don't happen on some perfect timeline. David Kessler co-authored a book with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross to further explain the stages and clarify some things that people often get wrong about them. Mainly that the only rules for grief are that there are really no rules. Everyone grieves differently. Some experience all of these stages and some do not. They do not necessarily happen in the order originally described either, and there is no period of time that passes when you should be over your grief. The other thing Kessler points out is the only way to get past grief is to experience it. You can't just convince yourself to get over grief no matter what society tells you. In my coaching experience, I've had many clients who are grieving losses, and I don't mean just the loss of a beloved friend or family member, though sometimes those do come up as well. I'm referring to other losses, which can be just as jostling, like divorce or kids leaving the household a miscarriage. The loss of a patient even if you weren't that close to them. I was recently involved in a case where the patient ended up dying in the or and any of you in surgery or anesthesia know that this is a very rare occurrence. It definitely affected me even though I was only there for the very beginning of the case. In this situation, the bargaining stage was really strong for me. You could experience the loss of a very important physical item. Something like wedding rings come to mind. I had a guest on last year, Dr. Sasha Hilt, who lost her house and 90% of her possessions in a tornado. She talked about her experience with grief, and I'll link that episode in the show notes in the realm of career transition and work life balance. It can also be, of course, the loss of a job, the loss of a specific role at work, or the loss of an identity. The grieving process applies to all these kinds of losses too. So here are my tips for navigating life when you're experiencing grief. Number one, identify your grief for what it is. Don't turn away from it. No matter how much you cringe at the negativity, no matter how long it's been, no matter how trivial you think the loss might be perceived by others, take care of yourself and have compassion for yourself. How would you treat your friend who was going through the same thing? We often don't treat ourselves as we do friends and loved ones, but in my mind, you are your closest friend. If you need outside support, find help. There are so many grief support groups, but maybe your loss doesn't fall into the typical categories covered by a group. In that case, you can always find a therapist or a coach who will guide you through your own unique grief journey. Number two, learn to swim in the ocean of your feelings. I love this quote, which is attributed to Vicki Harrison. Grief is like the ocean. It comes in waves, ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim. Your grief might be like waves undulating in the ocean, growing bigger, and then crashing and then reforming. Or maybe it's like that piece of plastic that's floating out onto the horizon that keeps floating far away from you until you can't see it anymore, and then one day it just shows up again. Unexpectedly like, hello, here I am. This can happen too, and this doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you, so learn to swim in the uncertain ocean. As I've talked about before on the show, true confidence is about knowing you can handle any feeling, whether positive or negative. How can you be more emotionally agile? Our feelings are merely data. We don't have to identify with them or decide something about ourselves because we experience them. Negative feelings are a part of life. And we also don't have to try to get over it quickly and move on. So take your time and remember that if you feel like you're drowning, you can always find help, as I mentioned in number one. Number three, find meaning. Meaning is about how we interpret the past to inform our direction. Now. Dr. Jordan Grumet, who was on the podcast in January of this year to discuss his book, the Purpose Code talked a lot to us about meaning and how it applies to finding your purpose. I will link that episode also in case you missed it in the show notes. And David Kessler, the grief expert I mentioned earlier, wrote a new book a few years ago called Finding Meaning the Sixth Stage of Grief. The sixth stage is really about reframing the process of moving on. I heard him say in an interview, we think we have to make grief smaller. The grief doesn't get smaller. We have to grow around the grief. So how did you grow from your experience? What did it teach you? How can you use it to help others? How might it be a gift and an opportunity? I hope you found this podcast useful. Again, we all experience losses and we all experience grief. It's part of being human. How have you dealt with loss in your own life? Can you share an example? Leave a comment on the blog post for this episode that is found@practicebalance.com, or send me a DM on Instagram at practice balance. Thanks for listening today. Thanks for listening to the lean out podcast. If you find these conversations inspiring and useful, please forward them to a friend and also leave a review on iTunes or Spotify so that other people can find them easier. If you want to get in touch with me, you can find me at my website, practice balanced.com, where you can subscribe to my newsletter and get updates regularly about new podcast episodes, blog posts, speaking, engagements, and coaching services. You can also support my work by buying my book, lean out a professional woman's guide to finding authentic work-life balance for yourself, a friend, family member, or coworker. Have a great day and we'll see you next time